Maternity leave made me lonely and broke. How I found new income and community

When you’re expecting a child, we talk about preparing for birth, nappies, sleep schedules and weaning. But the financial shock? That’s brushed off as part of the deal. One minute, I was a secondary school teacher with a steady salary, and the next, I was on maternity leave with a newborn in my arms and a payslip that looked like a typo.

It’s not just the obvious things like nappies, formula and clothes that your little one outgrows in weeks. The baby classes, soft play sessions and the trips out just to break up the day and keep your sanity intact also play a huge role.

Statutory maternity pay drops to under £800 a month after 6 weeks of being off, so we had to survive on a household income of around £3200. We were in debt which was taking a chunk of that up, and renting, which was really expensive. I went back to doing a few days of supply teaching after six months of being off, even though I really didn’t want to, but had no choice.

At home, the financial strain and pressures don’t just sit in your bank account, they impact your relationship too. It hits differently when you’re both already exhausted, adjusting to a completely new dynamic, and responsible for keeping a tiny human safe and fed. As a first-time parent, my partner and I find ourselves having conversations we’d never had before about budgeting and making small sacrifices that somehow felt big. I got everything off the Facebook Marketplace, and my friends gave me hand-me-downs. We had to be picky with having the heating on, and using the machine dryer was only an absolute necessity.

Back in 2019, I was living in my small home with my partner and our newborn daughter. We were blissfully happy with our beautiful, healthy girl. But another truth we don’t discuss is just how lonely maternity leave can be. In the daytime, when your partner is at work, and it’s just you and the baby at home, there’s only so much daytime TV and doomscrolling you can handle. Then one day, an idea came to me to start an online community.

I started The Cardiff Mum Instagram page as a way of entertainment for myself; to share my days out with my newborn and documenting our new journey. Before I knew it, local mums were commenting and suggesting new places in the area for us to visit.

We loved our family adventures, but the days out started to add up. I looked at our outgoings and noticed the large amount of food waste that was taking place every week and knew that this couldn’t continue. I began planning our meals for the week and using ingredients that stretched across multiple different dishes, which nearly halved our food waste and bills.

I would set myself personal challenges to create “five meals for £25” which was purely something we did in our household to afford the family days out and – quite honestly – survive! I would stretch a tub of double cream and a pack of frozen chicken breasts across three dinners for the week, for example, chicken in a garlic sauce, a butter chicken curry, then a chicken pie and mash with frozen veg.

Then, one weekend, thanks to the British weather, we were stuck indoors with no new adventures to share, so I decided to post one of the meal plans online. Almost instantly, the post received hundreds and thousands of likes and comments, and so many people began sharing the content that my followers tripled in just one day. What started as a private solution became something bigger, entirely by accident.

The messages were flooding in faster than I could read them, with people calling it a lifeline and parents telling me they could finally afford small treats again. It was overwhelming, but in that moment, I realised what felt like a quiet, personal struggle to stay on top of finances was actually something that was shared by so many families across the UK.

Cooking five meals for £25 wasn’t a quirky challenge, nor was it content. For our family, it was a necessity. It was me standing at the kitchen cupboards, trying to make ingredients stretch, and trying to keep us afloat. I’ve been lucky enough to go on and write two cookbooks, and in March this year, finally released my cookbook “5 Meals for £25”. It went straight to the Amazon No.1 spot, which was utterly mindblowing!

I’m so grateful for the community I’ve built and the opportunities that have followed since starting Cardiff Mum. But the part that’s often lost is I never set out to become a content creator, and I still don’t fully feel like one; I’m just someone who had to find the joy in adapting when life got harder.

The followers and opportunities off the back of it allowed us to buy our own home. But now I’m an influencer because of it. So now I generally show my love of cooking and my honest outlook on life and motherhood – and this attracts brand partnerships which has given us an amazing life, holidays, and the ability to renovate our first home.

If there’s one thing adjusting to maternity leave and family life has taught me, it’s this: we need to talk about the fin…