Leonie Huie is the founder of Empower Me, a coaching, training and events business she started in 2019 after being inspired by her twin daughters. Created to empower other mothers and improve their own work-life balance, Leonie is also a public speaker and teacher. And now, excitingly, her debut book titled The First Year Is Survival has just been released.

A book written to help parents of twins and multiple children survive that tough first year of parenthood, Leonie is particularly passionate about supporting mothers in making positive changes.

I grabbed five minutes with Leonie, finding out more about twin motherhood, her brilliant new book and words of empowering advice.

You have a brand-new book out, called The First Year Is Survival. Tell us all about it?

The First Year Is Survival is the literary equivalent of a hug and a hot cup of tea after a bad day. Being a parent for the first-time is tough but the workload is doubled, or tripled, with multiple babies! Through personal reflections and interviews with parents from around the world, the book guides parents of twins and multiples through the first year of life in the new role, openly addressing challenges such as anxiety, post-natal depression, returning to work, behavioural and emotional changes, and offers advice about how to get a good night’s sleep, keep communicating with your partner, maintain a healthy relationship with your friends and family, and how to avoid shutting down and shutting up. By the end of the book, the aim is that you’ll have more practical and realistic ideas of what to do to help you and your new family throughout that first year. You never know, you may even find that you’ve not just survived but thrived over those 12 months!

What main piece of advice would you offer to parents of multiples?

Enjoy every moment of it as they grow so quickly. There will be challenging times and you may have moments of overwhelm but the love and cuddles you receive outweigh this. Please don’t be afraid to ask for help no one will judge you for doing so. Having multiples requires all the help you can get so if it’s available, use it to your advantage.

As mum to beautiful twin daughters, life must be very busy. When you get a moment, how do you make time for yourself?

Life really is busy but when I have time I like to listen to my Calm app, do some yoga or meditation, a spa day or massage and reading books.

Which empowering motherhood lessons you’ve learnt so far stand out to you the most?

• You have to eradicate limiting beliefs from your psyche in order to achieve in life.
• Listen to your inner self because most of the time it’s telling you exactly what you need to do.
• Embrace failure, it’s good. It will help you to grow.
• Don’t be afraid of change you’ll never know what’s waiting for you if you don’t try.
• Work-life balance is something I advocate when working with mums. We have many hats, can effectively multitask but sometimes things get on top of us so manage the two accordingly, plan ahead, be realistic with daily tasks and ensure you have days that are family focused only if you can.

It’s so tricky right now to entertain little ones. How have you been managing during the pandemic and where do your daughters love to go in London?

It really is tricky as my girls are so active. In the summer we spent as much time as we could outdoors in many different parks. We did fruit picking, went to the Zoo, Peppa Pig World, Aquarium, Jump. Their favourite place is the park, going on the swings it’s pretty challenging pushing 2 kids on swings along but I’ve learnt the manage. I’m sure my twins would sleep in the park if given the opportunity.

Now it’s a bit cold we are mainly indoors the twins do have football in the park every Saturday which they love. We bake cupcakes and cookies then decorate them, we make our own pizzas, we do painting, drawing, playdough, puzzles, numeracy and literacy games, learn new nursery rhymes. They love watching Cbeebies Mr Tumbles and The Baby Club. My husband and I purchased them 2 tortoises for their 3rd birthday so they look after them really well, feeding, bathing etc. Gives them some sense of responsibility.

You can buy The First Year Is Survival by Leonie Huie here: www.amazon.co.uk

Head over to Leonie’s website www.empowerme.london, for free resources, business coaching, affirmation cards and more.