Who are we?

Well, here’s the low down on how Bubs and Boobs Co came about. There’s two halves to this whole—Celeste and Pippa—and they both have their roles and expertise. If you’ve read their About Page, you’ll have learnt a lot of this already, but in a blog post we can afford to expound a little.

In Celeste’s case, she developed an eager interest in natural healing skincare after having problems with her sensitive, psoriasis-prone, skin, growing up. She also suffered scarring from a horrific traffic accident and searched everywhere for a natural product that could help her. Like all go-getters do, if you can’t find what you want, you make it yourself. Celeste immersed herself in research and found the benefits of honey were too numerous to ignore. So what did she do? She started beekeeping, of course (told you, go-getter). Eventually this new interest led to her business, Apiary Made, which sells both beeswax wraps and natural skincare to not only happy Australians, but all around the world. Meanwhile, Pippa, a textile designer, was doing her own thing as well. In 2013 she started her fashion and accessories label, Squeak, and sold her silk scarves, kimonos and robes online.

Now, two young—ah hem—ish women, running their own businesses in Melbourne, both exhibiting at the same trade shows and markets, you’d think they knew each other, right? Wrong. The soon-to-be-duo had not yet met, and wouldn’t for a while, as in 2019, Pippa walked into the unknown, like many women do, and had a baby…oh holy bleeping son of a mackerel. She had walked into hell.

Like many mothers, more than will even admit it, she had a rough time at the start. And if anyone wants to read the gory details (cause she’s not shy on sharing when it comes to that stuff), you can read about it here. But let’s just say her breastfeeding journey was not represented in those happy, maternal, stock images you find when you type ‘breastfeeding’ into google. Those ones show a mother gazing lovingly at her baby while it suckles contently at her perfectly supple breast. Pippa’s google image would have been of her crying, digging her fingernails into a pillow, while her baby sucked and slurped and pulled and twisted her nipple nearly clean off her lumpy, infected boobs. There would have been endless creams and balms scattering the table, a breast pump near by, wet flannels, dry flannels, gel nipple pads, panadol packets, antibiotics, and even weird little boob warming pads to try and get the milk flowing easier. She tried everything. Nothing worked. She brought in four lactation consultants and paediatrician. No one helped her. No one picked up on her daughter’s tongue and lip tie. Not until the damage was done.

So, here we come to the part of the story where Celeste and Pippa finally cross paths. Pippa had survived the early motherhood phase and was in need of some office space to run her business from. She knew a friend, the talented and magnanimous Tom, was renting some space off some other chic with a business. That chic was Celeste, and voila, a connection was made. The three of them ran their various product businesses from a run-down, 1970’s, former importer/exporter office building, in the burbs of Melbourne. They became a little support group for each other (particularly when the crapshow of covid hit), sharing their successes and failures, fears and hopes with each other. And then one day, Celeste ran an idea past Pippa for a new product she had in mind, a Manuka honey-based boob balm for breastfeeding mums.

Well, poor Celeste, she didn’t realise what a pandora's box she had just opened, and horror stories came pouring from Pippa’s mouth, but some advice too. The number one being that Pippa didn’t believe honey would work, not because it wasn’t a great product, but because it’s doctor’s advice not to feed your baby honey until they are at least one year old. Having not had kids, this was something Celeste had no idea about, and so she poked Pippa for more information, which honestly didn’t require much poking.

Did Pippa realise at that moment that she was effectively in the mother of all job interviews? No. She was just another mum who had so much history, knowledge, frustration and horrors built up inside, but always assumed no one wanted or should hear about them. Mums like to suffer alone… until the realisation hits them that they don’t need to… and then they want to tell everybody.

So, after a few months had passed and Celeste had worked on her recipe to remove all Manuka honey from the product, but still have the unbelievable benefits of Manuka itself, she asked Pippa if she would go into business with her. The opportunity to make those horrendous first six months of motherhood mean something, and potentially help others who were in the same situation, was too good to pass up. Pippa accepted on the spot. Queue instrumental music, rising into a crescendo.

And there we have it, Celeste brings her skills as a product developer, and Pippa brings hers in knowing the problem and customer, as well as e-commerce. Together they both have the expertise in business management, so boom, Bubs and Boobs Co is officially out in the world, ready to help mothers and babies everywhere.