This is the Second Shift. In this first episode, you’ll meet Amanda Leon-Joyce, a new mum with a lockdown baby, enjoying a hybrid maternity leave/furlough. What’s different about Amanda is the shape of her family: she’s in a polyamorous relationship, so her baby has two dads as well as a mum. We talk about how this came about, what it meant in the context of pregnancy in lockdown, and Amanda shares her homebirth story.

Amanda is on all the social media – you can find her instagram @mandaleonjoyce and that’s a good place to start.

This is the Positive Birth hypnobirthing digital pack that she used: https://thepositivebirthcompany.co.uk/digital-pack

I asked her after the recording to recommend any other resources on polyamory, which is just not a well-documented or much talked about subject. Here’s our reading list:

Polyamory and Pregnancy, by Jessica Burde

For a more general book on polyamory, Opening Up, by Tristan Taormino

‘'There’s zero evidence that it’s worse for children': parenting in a polyamorous relationship’ - Guardian article by Lucy Fry, Feb 2020