It’s not the much-talked-about podcast Serial, but it is brilliant, and we love it. The Longest Shortest Time is a parenting podcast with a difference. Hosted and created by Hillary Frank, the series of conversations is a bedtime companion for parents who want to hear in the middle of the night that they are not alone. “And that as never-ending as those first months seem, they don’t last forever,” says a description on the podcast’s site.
Hillary, who has also had work aired on This American Life, created the podcast after the birth of her daughter in 2010 didn’t go as she expected (or the way the books sometimes say it should). The experience left her with a long and painful recovery and proved that parenting doesn’t always go to plan.
She says on the site, “Motherhood is not always giggles and hand-clapping and learning to walk. But things do change, and often they get better. And the things you’re going through, even if they’re not in the books, they happen to other people, too.”
The Longest Shortest Time features mums and dads telling surprising and relatable stories about their own longest shortest times. From feeding to childbirth, and sleep to sex, the podcast covers all sorts of subjects and struggles; including ‘The Life of a Pregnant Butch: How to Look Masculine With a Bun in the Oven’ and ‘Listen: If Breast Pumps Could Talk, This Is What They’d Say’.
