Dam Parenting

TW: this episode talks about miscarriage and pregnancy loss. Skip it if today isn't the day. It will be here.
Released on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day 15 October 2026, this episode is for anyone who has lost a pregnancy or a baby while living in the Netherlands, and for anyone supporting someone who has.
Melissa, an American living in Rotterdam, went through three pregnancy losses in the Dutch system before having her two children. She talks honestly about a missed miscarriage at her first midwife (verloskundige) appointment, deciding between medical management and a D&C (curettage), a second loss alone during Covid, a termination for medical reasons, and a near-sepsis emergency at Erasmus MC.
We cover:
Going through miscarriage as an expat, in a second language and an unfamiliar healthcare system

Why grief after early pregnancy loss is normal, and why it can last months

What to say (and not say) to a friend after a miscarriage

Sibyl, the app Melissa built for pregnancy loss support

Sibyl is a private companion app for pregnancy loss, built from lived experience with gynaecologists, fertility specialists and a reproductive mental health psychologist. It's for any kind of loss, from failed fertility treatment to stillbirth, whether it happened yesterday or months ago.
OFFER: One month free with code DAM2026
Website: https://www.sibyl.care
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6787125952
Instagram: @sibyl_app

Support in the Netherlands: your huisarts (GP) or verloskundige can refer you to a psychologist, including English-speaking ones.
If you're here for someone else, send this to them, or just message them that you're thinking of them.
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DAM Parenting is an English-language podcast for international and expat parents in the Netherlands. We arrived without a village, but we built one anyway. The village is for the hard days too.

Is it ADHD, or is your child just exhausted from a new school, a new language and a new country?
It's #ADHDAwarenessMonth. Child psychologist Kate Berger from the Expat Kids Club on why some kids hold it together all day and fall apart at the front door, what a Dutch teacher really means by "druk", and how to get from a first worry to an assessment. Plus the one thing she says parents nearly always know first.
Guest: Kate Berger, child psychologist and founder of The Expat Kids Club, supporting families in the Netherlands for over 18 years.
Mentioned on the episode: -https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/health-care-support/personal-budget/
- Tilt Parenting
-The Expat Kids Club provides psychoeducational assessments and screenings for many neurodevelopment conditions, including ADHD and ASD. We do not formally diagnose, but use standardised assessment measures that yield information to provide reports that include diagnostic indication (if relevant), as well as tailored recommendations for access to academic accommodations (aligned with IB-standards), and additional (mental) health services in supports in NL and abroad. We also, of course, offer therapeutic intervention. For more information about our services please see expatkidsclub.com 

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Does ADHD affect your sex life? If you or your partner has ADHD, "not tonight" can land like a door slamming, and nobody has told either of you why.
It's ADHD Awareness Month, and DAM ex goes there. Sex and intimacy counsellor Debby Poort explains why the intense early spark shifts, what rejection sensitivity does in the bedroom, and why so many couples end up feeling more like parent and child than partners. Plus the medication conversation almost nobody has with their doctor.
For the partner with ADHD and the one who loves them. Neither of you is the problem.
Guest: Debby Poort, sex and intimacy counsellor at Yellow Wood.
Her free welcome course: sexandintimacycounseling.nl.
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Kicking off ADHD Awareness Month with the least polished episode I've ever made. Recorded nine hours before it went out, at my kitchen table, in one take. The deadline is the only thing that has ever made me do anything.
I was diagnosed in my forties — the same month this podcast launched. Three medications in three months, none of which worked, and then I was told I'd maxed out my dose. And what I felt wasn't "the system failed me." It was "I've failed. Again."
In this one:
– What a late ADHD diagnosis actually feels like as a parent
– Why ADHD medication not working can feel like a personal failure
– New University of Warwick research linking ADHD to gut problems, IBS and constipation
– Why calling it a deficit of attention was always a con — it's regulation, not concentration
– Why neurodivergent mothers burn out more than everyone else
– And why "just rest" is the most useless advice ever given to a working parent
All of October is ADHD on DAM Parenting — for you, your partner, your kids. Debby on sex and intimacy when your brain won't settle. Adina on the grief nobody warns you about after a late diagnosis. Kate on raising neurodivergent children here. Mimi on languages. And Liam and me on a Saturday, going through everything we've tried that didn't work.
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🎧 Last month's episode on regulation with Adina Petre

Your child understands every word of your home language, and answers you in Dutch. Every time. If it started when school or daycare went back, you're not imagining it.
Why does my bilingual child only answer in Dutch? Mimi from Growing Up Multilingual explains why the school language takes over so fast, whether you should insist on a reply in your language, and why she'd retire one very popular piece of bilingual parenting advice.
We also get into the child who seems embarrassed by the home language, one easy thing to try this week, and what to do if you feel you've already lost ground.
For international parents raising bilingual and multilingual children in the Netherlands, where Dutch at school can quickly become Dutch at home too.
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Check out our website: damparenting.nl