IVF struggles, a traumatic birth experience and postnatal depression are no joke but comedian Lily Phillips is both entertaining and enlightening people about what motherhood can really be like.
Phillips, who shouldn’t be confused with her namesake on the OnlyFans website, has appeared on many TV shows, including The Stand Up Sketch Show, and is now bringing her razor-sharp wit to the Edinburgh Fringe.
Her new show, Crying, gives a more honest account of life as a new mum than can often be found on social media and is particularly topical with understaffed maternity wards, botched birth care and lack of post-natal support all hitting the headlines recently.
But although Phillips has turned her experience into an often hilarious show, it has taken her two years to be able to see the funny side.
“It’s annoying when you’re a stand-up comedian going through the darkest moments of your life because someone always tells you to think of the material you’re going to get out it – yeah, well, when I’ve stopped crying,” she said.
However once Phillips did start talking about it, she developed a “kind of birth Tourette’s” with the result that the new show is an unfiltered journey through IVF treatments to the trials of early motherhood – including a traumatic four-day labour ending in the use of a ventouse and forceps and a doctor triumphantly winning a “tug-of-war” with her vagina.
In the show, she questions the glossy picture of motherhood sold by Instagram’s maternity algorithms and calls out society’s often unrealistic expectations of new motherhood.
“It feels like if you say anything negative about having a baby, you’re labelled mentally ill,” Phillips told the Sunday National. “But maybe you’re just having a normal reaction to a horrific event.
“Whatever birth you’ve had, you’re probably at your weakest physically and then you have to look after a baby who can’t do anything.”
She added: “You’re given this rose-tinted version of it being a magical time when it’s sort of like being at war. But I felt I couldn’t say that because I was suffocated by the joy of everyone else.”
The frequently unrealistic expectations of how a birth and new motherhood should be made Phillips feel like a failure.
“I really wish someone had told me what could happen, so at least I would have been more prepared and wouldn’t have felt like I’d failed,” she said.
“The idea of creating a perfect birth is toxic and misleading because if you don’t have this perfect birth, you feel like a piece of shit and you feel you can’t tell anyone that you didn’t. There’s this silencing around it, which obviously makes it so much worse.”
This extends into early motherhood with the idea that if a mother is really chilled, the baby will be too and life will be a breeze.
That’s not true either as some babies go by the book and some just don’t, according to Phillips.
“You get the baby that you get but as women, we’re all programmed to feel guilty and as if everything is our fault,” she said.
Phillips points out that most of the process, including going through IVF, is up to the woman.
“Our IVF went the best way it could have gone, but it’s still a bit of a shit thing a woman has to do because of the hormones you have to take,” she said.
“We ended up almost messing up the whole process because my partner forgot what his name was.
“I know that sounds totally unbelievable but he actually did because he goes by his middle name and not his first name.
“I wish it wasn’t true because I now have a child with this person who doesn’t know his own name.”
After going through IVF, Phillips thought the hard part was over but the worst was yet to come, not only with a horrendous birth experience, but also with the lack of aftercare.
“I felt like it was the opposite of aftercare,” she said. “Everyone else is talking about mental health and well-being and how important that is, except for the postnatal ward in a hospital.
“It feels like they’ve got a tick list of how to give a woman postnatal depression.”
One of the rules on her ward was that the only visitors allowed were siblings of the baby.
“I was like ‘wait a second. I just had one. I can’t pop out another sibling, just so I can have a visitor. This is crazy’.”
Phillips added: “Then I would ask them a question about how to look after my baby because I’d never had a baby before, and they would just chuckle or roll their eyes as if I should know better.
“You’re sold this idea that it’s so natural and it’s the same with the whole breastfeeding thing, but if you’ve never done something before, why would you suddenly be good at it?”
By contrast, she believes that if men gave birth, it would be made pain-free and quick so they could watch the football while it happened.
“No one would judge them, but we have to do it the hard way, even though I’m sure it costs the NHS so much more if you have a terrible birth,” said Phillips. “It’s not good for society if women are starting their lives as a mother broken. It’s not even safe.”
The show is graphic but Phillips is unapologetic.
“Usually the audience starts to go with me and a lot of the women spend the whole time nodding.
“I can get everybody laughing about it, and that’s just so gratifying.
“We’re talking about this mad, often distressing thing ,but we can laugh at it, which eases the tension and means that then you can go off and have a conversation about your birth or someone else’s birth rather than be stuck in this kind of toxic positivity.”
Phillips has not written the show for any political reason, but would be pleased if it did help to make changes for the better in maternity wards.
So far, the reaction to the new show has been “pretty positive”.
She said: “I think people now know a bit more about what they’re coming to, whereas I’ve had a few men becoming confused and angry because they thought they were coming to a normal comedy night and then I’m like, ‘OK, I’m going to talk about giving birth for an hour’.
“I did have a guy walk out of the show. His wife stayed. She had a nice time.”
Lily Phillips: Crying is at Monkey Barrel, MB2, from now until August 12 at 1.30pm
