The Interview: Ann Wason Moore sits down with Dr Amanda McCullough

A Gold Coast medical researcher says antibiotic-resistant bugs are becoming commonplace in the city. And the amount of overprescribed prescriptions is stunning.

Amanda McCullough. Photo: Supplied.

SOME mothers are just born over-achievers.

Bond University medical researcher Dr Amanda McCullough is a perfect example.

Not only does she have a PhD in human behaviour, she won a national award for her work last year, is a qualified life coach and the creator of popular maternal website Not Just Mum.

In fact, she even has two uteruses.

Not that that’s actually a good thing.

In fact, like almost every mother, she struggles with the juggle of work, life and, above all, sleep.

Amanda McCullough with her son. Photo: Supplied.

Fortunately for us lesser maternal mortals, she makes good use of her academic intelligence and is currently authoring an e-course optimistically titled Surviving Sleep Deprivation.

It’s an area where her science and values collide, and not for the first time.

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Amanda won the 2017 Bupa Health Emerging Researcher Award for her work that showed Australian GPs prescribe almost 6 million antibiotics each year, at a rate four to nine times higher than guidelines recommend.

Even now, she admits she was shocked by the results.

“Of those 6 million prescriptions, over 5 million were overprescribed,” says Amanda, who is originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Amanda found out GPs are overprescribing medication. Photo: Supplied.

“Half of diagnosed colds and flus are prescribed antibiotics, when really it should be more like 11 per cent.

“I knew overprescription was a problem, but I had no idea it was at these epidemic levels.

“This is why we’re seeing antibiotic-resistant bugs becoming commonplace. It’s happening everywhere now, most Gold Coast GPs have seen it.”

Amanda says remedying this ill requires a fine line between over-vigilance and under-medicating.

She says patients should not be scared to use antibiotics, but should be sure it’s truly necessary.

“It was a lesson I had to learn myself, even with all of my medical background,” she says.

“I was quite determined that my son would never have antibiotics. Then he contracted a double ear infection and the only thing to do was prescribe antibiotics.

Amanda with her son. Photo: Supplied.

“It was a great lesson that everything has its place and what we most need is reason and a reasonable response.”

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Amanda says it is this attitude that has informed her course on sleep deprivation, which is based partly on science and partly on experience.

She says the emotions of parenthood must be weighed against the evidence of baby sleep training techniques.

“I’m a first-time mother of a terrible sleeper. It’s an extremely loaded issue. You worry for your baby, you worry for yourself and your partner, you feel that you’re failing, that you should do more, that you should do less.

Amanda is also a blogger. Photo: Supplied.

“There are just so many questions in this area — should you wrap the baby, can you put him on his tummy, should you co-sleep? As parents we try to follow all these rules, but then our stress levels are just through the roof.

“Then you hear people say they did sleep training for three days and it fixed everything … well, what is the real evidence?

“For me, I just couldn’t do the sleep training. My son would cry until he vomited.

“I wanted to create an e-course where the facts are there, but the judgment is not.

“The most important thing we can give ourselves as mothers is self-compassion.

“In my own experience of sleep-deprivation, I focus on the practical aspects like making sure I have one reason each day to get out of the house; that I find something to celebrate, no matter how small; on the days when it’s really bad I asked someone to come to me.

“My husband and I also accepted we would just sleep in shifts. There were 50 nights we slept on the sofa. If our son came in, one of us would get kicked out.

“We just tried to accept that this wouldn’t last forever. And that it’s not our fault.”

Despite years of study and an academic career, Amanda says motherhood has been one of her greatest challenges.

It is a view shared by many other mothers, judging by the response to her blog Not Just Mum, which she says aims to support first-time mums to move from passionate career woman to motherhood and back again

While she continues to work at Bond University, she is also developing her role as a life coach — although she prefers the term mentor.

“It’s not just your baby who is born, it’s you as a mother,” she says.

“Motherhood is a phenomenal change and I think I was quite naive. I really thought my baby would just slot into my life.

Amanda McCullough. Photo: Supplied.

“Nobody told me what it would be like — and I wouldn’t have believed them either. Nobody understands until you have a child. You’re stripped of everything — hot meals, showers, sleep, dignity.

“Fortunately, I had my blog. I’d started writing it while I was pregnant. Part of my challenge was that my brain was always so valued, it was a surprise to find this creative side coming out.

“I’ve always mentored and coached people around me. When my son was three months old I decided to do this coaching course. It was all online and in my own time and it was so fortuitous because there was a lot coming up for me during that time.

“As a new mother it’s so easy to lose your identity. It’s a time of redefining myself … just like I rebuilt my body after a C-section and breastfeeding, I’m rebuilding my mind, too.

“I knew other women like me, well-educated in their 30s with their first child, were experiencing this same phenomenon, but no one was talking about it in an honest way.

“I realised that combining my intellect and intuition was something special I could offer.”

However, Amanda says she has also suffered the curse of the analytical brain.

She says the discovery of her extra uterus threw her carefully planned pregnancy off course.

“It’s certainly a strange moment when they tell you that you have two uteruses,” she says.

“It really shaped my pregnancy. There were so many scans and so much uncertainty.

“There were three major risks — that my child would come too early, would be too small or would be breech.

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“I made it to 39 weeks, he weighed a perfect 7lb 4oz (3.29kg) but he was breech, which meant I had to have an elective caesarean.

“It really shouldn’t have been such a big deal but to me it was just the worst thing ever. In my head I was thinking there are already too many unnecessary elective C-sections, I didn’t want to add them.

“It’s all ridiculous now but these are the knots we twist ourselves into. There is always this pressure for perfection.”

Amanda says isolation from her family only added to her anxiety.

With her mother in Ireland, she says she had formed a new circle of similarly “orphaned’’ friends.

“I quickly came to realise that so many mothers, so many women here on the Gold Coast are in a similar situation,” she says.

“That’s part of my role as a mentor, to help these women who feel they have to do this all on their own. I’ve been one of them. There are days when we all feel lonely, when we feel we are just failing everywhere, when we need more than just a cuppa and a chat.

“The Gold Coast may be my adopted home but I love it, not just for the beauty of its beaches and the climate but for the people too. I really feel I’ve found a fantastic, supportive community here.”

And that’s the mother of all achievements.