June 17, 2025 • 37 mins
In this solo episode, Anya and Madison share their deeply personal journey through postpartum depression, partner support, and rediscovering identity in early motherhood. It’s a conversation about cracks, resilience, and the quiet things we’re too afraid to say out loud.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just the heads up for our listeners today that our
episode touches on topics like suicidal ideation, depression, and other
sensitive mental health content which may be triggering for some people.
If you are experiencing any of these feelings or know
someone that is, please know that it is okay to
share these feelings. We urge you to call or text
nine to eight eight, a confidential suicide and crisis hotline
(00:21):
available twenty four to seven. Hi. Everyone, Welcome to these
packs puck.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I'm Madison Packer and I'm Anya Packer. Madison and I
are both former pro hockey players. We met through hockey
and fell in love, and now we're married with two
awesome toddlers, ages two and four.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
These days, we're opening up about the chaos of our
daily lives, between the juggle of being athletes, raising kids.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
And all the messiness in between. So buckle the puck
up because there is a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Helloo, what up?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I'm good.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
We're two floors apart, but it feels like a mile.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Oh my god, you're done.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
You're done.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Hot the hot take.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
We saw earlier in the month the Protections List come out.
We've had some time to marinate think about it. We
played this game a couple weeks ago where we said
who we would have picked. Let's talk about the selections
that have been made.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I think it's very interesting some of them. I get
we weren't far off. I like Ottawa's picks. The human
in me like really empathizes for the players because right, like,
they had connections to those markets that they were in
and now the bag has been totally shaken. But I
understand what Ottawa did. I liked it without being some
(01:44):
type of way. I think that it says a lot
more about what coaches value right and the character of
players who were not protected, than it does about the
talent of the players who were. And I say that
because there were a lot of very good players left
on the board, and you look at some of the issues,
and you look at some of the you know, the
(02:05):
key components and topics that gms and coaches continuously hit on,
culture being one of them, a massive one in New York.
I think that people are finally starting to recognize what's
important in building a team, and it's not always the
best talent, it's the best people. Sure.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Let me put my business hat on though, Yeah, I
don't understand some of the picks, and like, sure, I
understand culture, I get it, but you want butts and
seats to watch games being one, and you can't tell
me that you have three choices. This is where I'm like,
my mind goes absolutely eight. But I protect somebody today, okay,
(02:47):
and they are on a three year deal that lapses
at the end of this season and then they leave,
which is gonna happen for a lot of these picks
because we aren't necessarily choosing the youngest players, we aren't
necessarily choosing the foundational players, and you're opening yourself up
to the risk that a player is going to be protected,
(03:08):
right and then leave the following year.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Well, but yes and no, because by exposing some of
your higher cap players than you're opening up cap to
be able to pay players younger players more. One. Two.
That's a big part of it. What's also going to
be interesting is the locker room culture and dynamic when
unprotected players go unselected and they feel as though maybe
they deserve to be protected, and now they have to
go back to the team that maybe didn't value them
(03:32):
in the way that they value themselves. I think that's
I think that's going to be interesting. I agree with
your point on butts and seats and winning games, but
I think that we've seen year over year that a
toxic team doesn't win games.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Agreed, But let's just take Boston for example. You have
Aaron Frankel, Megan Keller, Alena Mueller. You leave Hillary Knight,
which we've talked about. She's not after this Olympics.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
She's done. She's probably phasing out of her.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Career in general. She has one more year in her
Fleet contract. Probably if I'm a GM, probably gonna pick
her up. Great player, even for one year worth the
risk of taking. Yeah, and she lives in Minnesota, so
she's not really married to Boston, even though she likes it.
She's been there, she's played a number of iterations of
these pro leagues in Boston.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Probably gonna get picked up.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Hannah Bilka on the sheet, she's gone, Sid Bar on
the sheet, she's gone, like you're leaving yourself open, and
maybe the hail Mary is Sid Bart Hannah Bilka. But
Night's gone and you lose Bilka. You've gotten yourself to
a place where you know tappany could be gone. You're
(04:43):
heavy hitters are on the board.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, but I mean everyone had to make a hard decision, right,
I mean, they're the real The only winners here are
Seattle and Vancouver. I mean, like, well, they're going to
get eight first round picks right out of the gate.
That's crazy. I think that there was no per way
to do it. Obviously. I think the league did the
best that they could. But I don't understand only being
able to protect three players because I think what it's
(05:06):
gonna do. Yeah, I think I think it's gonna really
deplete the rest of the league. But again, you have
the salary cap at play, right, so you really can't
take these heavy years because you have to. However, what
you can do so two things interesting. One, salaries are
now going to be disclosed.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Only to each other, not to the not to the public.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
You think that all these kids are gonna say quiet
about their salary. There was there was a take. There
was a take a couple of weeks ago. Uh, the
other babs, I think it was right who was like,
there's no salary disparity. Bullshit. I were like, putting it
on the pod bullshit. The difference in pay is massive.
It's massive, and I think that you're gonna see that,
and it's gonna start to get around right one. Two,
(05:50):
there is now opportunity for other players to prove what
are we doing here? So let's take for example, Abby Rock.
She has one year left on her contract. No one
knows the amount somewhere in the eighty thousand dollars range.
If Vancouver wants to sign Rock, they have to honor
her one year eighty thousand, but they can also offer
(06:12):
her a little more and extend her contract. Like there's
the ability for those teams also to sweeten the pot
for some of these players to try and get them
to come huge advantage. So I think out of the gate,
those two are the only ones that first of all won,
but they're also just going to I mean, it's going
to be really really interesting to see how the other
teams are able to compete, because now you have to
(06:34):
go back to a draft. Now what money is left
on the table after all of this has happened. I
still think New York's a winner because I think that
they're going to probably offload a lot of their expensive
players and be able to fill some of those holes
in a strong, good way. And I'm hopeful for that.
I want the hometown team to bring it home. But
I think it's really interesting. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Like I said, for me, there's too many veterans on
the board, there's too many veterans on expiring contracts on
the board for me to feel comfortable if I was
the GMI, just do things differently because you know, you
think about like an Abbey Boreen, Right, she's probably gonna go.
She played a year in Minnesota, won the Cup, played
a year with Montreal, they were the first place team
at the end of the season. She's probably gonna go.
(07:13):
That's the third team for that athlete in three years.
And she's not really getting her teeth cut at any program.
But she's a top line player for every team that
she's been on. She's an incredible blockey player. And she's
gonna get moved around and bounced around because they're protecting
the pool and Stacy Combo and I just think, like,
(07:35):
so back to the three players not being enough, it's
just not enough or like something's not right.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I also think you're going to see teams take their
time in a different way. Right, Like we've already seen it,
you're going to continue to see it. Teams are going
to take their time to plug and fail and figure
out what works best. I hope.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
So I think that the challenges were so obsessed with
having things happen in a certain timeline, so that what
we can community events, Like think about the Natasha Cloud
whole breakout in the off season in the WNBA, Natasha
Cloud is on Phoenix, she goes to Unrivaled, she gets
traded to Connecticut, and she's gutted right like posts like
(08:15):
Phoenix Mercury told me that this was where I was
gonna end my career.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
I moved there.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I moved my family, my friends, like I re uprooted
my life. Like just frustrated. Understand that it's a business,
but she's frustrated. Then New York comes out of nowhere
and makes the appropriate deal with Connecticut to pull her
in kind of last minute to be on the Liberty
and she won Player of the Week, right fit, right time.
(08:39):
It doesn't need to happen and be built and then
have three years of runway to be a good thing.
Continue to build the athletes and find the spaces for
your team. If you're gonna protect Alena Mueller, get her
her linemate, find her perfect match, it's not just jammin
or anywhere that you think it works. I'd love to
(09:00):
see Chloe Rard up in Boston. Dude, chloea career that's
been decimated in New York person because of poor decision making.
I would love to see her up in Boston. You're
reading my mind. If you have Chloe Rard as a
free agent and you can pick her up, and you
have Aleena Mueller and in college they ravaged people, they
should be together again. That's what I want gms to do.
(09:21):
I want gms to take a minute look at the
player pool and be pragmatic about their choices because it
doesn't have to happen immediately. It has to happen appropriately.
So that's my rant. I'm not perfect, but my armchair
general manager skills are great. Can always make it work
in my brain. Check in with me, tell me how
(09:46):
you're doing. I feel like it's a good time to
maybe take a WUSA and tell me where you're at.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I'm good. I'm a crisp ninety two. I would be
very close to one hundred if I had had the
opportunity to shower before we got on this pod. I
came in hot from my workout and Uh, it's a
little cold down here. I'm a little sweaty, and your
girl forgot to put on deoda want. I came in
(10:14):
like a wrecking ball.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Now that being said, I am doing well.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I feel good.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
The other day I broke the television, completely ruined it.
Now I will say it was not my fault. I
blame this completely on Visio.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
This is top three wife moments. I was shocked by
your response to this. I was like, who is she
and what has she done with Tanya? This is where
I stand. I'm either yes, babe, anything you want, or
I'm a cheap ass. So I'm either Anya or Tanya.
And in this moment, I'm on the phone with Visio
and they tell me.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Oh, your clicker's not working. Here's how you fix it.
Blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, now that everything's fixed,
connect your TV to the internet so that you can
use your phone as a remote if your clicker ever
goes down again. Okay, great, sounds good. Well, connect to
get to the internet. Forced an update that broke the
television because the TV was old. Now is this an
on your problem or a Visio problem? Let's call it
(11:12):
what it is. Not my fault, but whatever, it's still
broken at my hand. So I rush out and I
went and buy a new TV to replace the old.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Team rolled in with a seventy inch television for our bedroom.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I'll never sleep again. I'll never sleep again. However, they
no longer make sixty inch televisions. That's how old our
TV was. It's like ten thirty at night. You're like,
you're like coming in hot with a new TV. Can
you come down and help me open the trunk to
the truck. And it's just seventy inch? Yeah, flat screen TV.
Because I was pissed off and I want I didn't
(11:46):
want you to be mad, and I didn't. I wanted
to watch the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. So I'm
not watching that on some dinky little TV. I'm getting
a freaking flatty. If I gotta watch a TV in
my bedroom, it's gonna be a big old flatty. So
I am like a seventy because I'm kind of hype
that we have a new TV. I'm kind of pissed
that we had to buy one, but I'm feeling like Anya,
I was not cheap, o, Tanya. I could have bought
(12:07):
a small one and I was like, I went full
gas and bought a new TV. I feel like TV's great,
really pissed about the whole visio situation, but they did
give me a credit back on the TV for like
half of the cost of it, so I think everybody
won in this scenario. I'm gonna put this topic to
bed because I could keep talking about my TV qualms. Today.
(12:28):
We don't have a guest. We just have us and
we talk about something that we both are super passionate
about and also something that kind of affected us differently,
which is always an interesting kind of three sides to
the pancake. No matter how then the pancake, which is
your favorite thing to tell me when you're trying to
show me the middle of something that I don't want
to say it is.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I'm excited for this conversation because I think it's, as
we talk about in the episode, it's something that is
not talked about enough. We talk about your postpartum journey,
how I tried to support or through that, what to expect,
what we didn't expect, and I think it hopefully will
shed some light for other people who might be going
through it. Excited to get into that conversation after the break,
(13:20):
we are back today. It is a solo episode. Anya Solo.
Are gonna chat about our journey as parents, most specifically
talk a little bit about Anya's postpartum experience and my
experience as her partner in that, but mostly just everyone
(13:43):
talks about postpartum and no one really talks about their
experience or what that looks like. And so we wanted
to take the opportunity to tell our story, talk about
what we went through, how we managed it, how we
navigated it, and hopefully create space for other people to
feel seen. So as common as childbook birth is, there's
always a postparton experience for the birthing mom, and we
want to talk about that.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I will say, I think the one thing that we
get asked about the most, because we had kids first
before any of our friends and anybody with kids first
knows two things. One, you then become the person that
everyone asks the questions to. But two, it's like this
kind of like chaos time where being the first mom
means that you're the first in success but also the
(14:28):
first and failure. Going through the process of becoming a
mom is really crazy and hard and so harrowing and lonely.
It's super lonely.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I think that's the hardest part, is like you're all
excited to have the baby, right, and everyone's so excited
for you, and you just can't wait for this great
thing to happen, and then you don't really know what
to expect the first time, right, even like we thought
that we were prepared and that we had done everything
that we could, and then Whalon arrived and it was like,
I was so excited we had the baby, excited to
(15:00):
bring him home, excited to do all the things changes
out with seven thousand times, and you just assume that
the other person in that equation is equally excited, not
taking into account like the severe loss and disconnect hormonally
that occurs.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, I mean, preparing for my mental health was something
that I really tried to make sure I had all
buttoned up. I was still in talk therapy, I was
still going through all the things I didn't medicate when
I was pregnant. But I was very very intentional about
my process of mental health recovery because I knew it
was going to be really hard for me. I can't
explain the feeling that I had when I looked at
(15:37):
Whalan and I felt nothing, like it was a true
feeling of nothing. And I could see how happy you were,
and I could see how excited everyone around me was
and how happy everybody was, and I couldn't feel anything.
And when we talk about the loneliness, there's two sides, right,
(15:57):
There's people don't know how to be around or don't
want to be around a newborn baby. I don't want
to be around other people. And then the loneliness that
comes from feeling like the thing that you were put
on the earth to do has been removed from your
body and is now perfectly capable without you. And I
had this postpartum depression that made me just feel like
(16:19):
I didn't want to be there.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I think the hardest part in supporting and understanding that
is just that is understanding that right like you and
I had two completely opposite experiences and emotion rushes and
like dopamine rushes and all these things, like your hormones
are completely imbalanced and out of whack, and regardless of
what you're feeling in the moment you breastfed, you were
(16:44):
very very adamant and committed to doing that for a
long time, but specifically like you wanted there's just a
science data whatever, no judgment, but that's what we chose
to do. And so you were waking up and feeding him,
you were round the clock doing what you needed to
do so that he was getting everything you felt like
he needed to get, and all that time feeling completely
(17:08):
disconnected and not wanting to talk about it at first.
There's actually a picture of you laying on the couch
that I think you posted that like so perfectly I
think sums it up because it's just you, like with
this like blank face, holding Whalen, trying to smile but
not really even being able to. And that was when
you had like really started talking about what you were
going through. And it's like you said, it's like this
(17:30):
complete disassociation from this thing that you've just spent all
this time bonding with and creating, and then all of
a sudden that just feels like it's gone. And on
the opposite side of that, like I couldn't relate to
that because I was just so excited to meet him
and hold him, and so then all of a sudden,
you're like we're in the house, it's COVID, and you're like,
I just need you to get out of the house,
(17:50):
so I would take Whalan out for walks or it's
not a bad thing, but it's just like you don't
know how to support that person because then, like I
also didn't want to leave you alone. I didn't like
I never felt like I couldn't leave you with him
or like you were going to do something, but I
felt like I couldn't leave you. I felt badly for you.
I could tell how sad you were, how lonely you were,
and I was trying to give you what you needed,
(18:11):
but also I was scared.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, And I think each time the hardest part is
you feel like you're failing, right, because I'm supposed to
be his mom, I'm supposed to be excited. I think
I guess I couldn't rationalize what I felt like I
was supposed to be doing and what I was doing
and then make those things line up. And I think
(18:34):
that's where postpartum depression gets so misconstrued. Is that point, right,
is like people think, oh, you just got the baby blues,
and they chalk it up to this very nominal feeling
of now being sad because your hormones are out of whack.
I remember sitting over Harlan's crib and thinking, you look
so much like me. If I take my life in
(18:57):
this battle with my mental health, your whole life life,
people are going to say you look just like your
mom and you're never ever going to know what I
looked like. You can see a picture and you can
say yeah, but you won't know. And I think that
in that moment of darkness, I really scared myself because
that was what helped me through it. For that baby,
(19:20):
is that like she looks too much like me. I
can't let her live a life of suffering where she'll
never meet me and everyone will tell her that she
looks like me. And I don't know. Again, I can't
explain what the brain does in those moments, but I
can certainly tell you that didn't feel like the blues.
That didn't feel like this very small baby blues style thing.
(19:42):
And it didn't feel like I could call my friends.
It didn't feel like I could call anybody and tell
them that. I don't even know if I've ever told
you that, But it's just this feeling where you don't connect,
like you don't you're not there. And people tell me
all these stories about the beginning of our children's lives,
and I can't recall a single one, and I have
(20:03):
a great memory.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I will start with I was incredibly pleased full experience
with our medical team and the doctors at Greenwich Hospital
and the people that we used, but having gone through
it with Waylan, right, in order to get pregnant, you
have to go to counseling, you have to do all
these things to get pregnant, and then they're very dialed
into your mental health, to your nutrients, to everything about
(20:25):
you while you're pregnant and while you're making the baby,
and very focused on making sure that that baby is
as healthy and everything as possible. And then as soon
as the baby's born, you're in the hospital for a
couple of days and it's like, Okay, you guys can
go home and you're all set and that's it. We
felt very prepared because we had a very supportive doctor
(20:46):
and staff through the process. But then we got home
and we were like, we're not prepared for this, and
we tried really hard to prepare, Like we knew you
were going to struggle, we knew your history with mental health,
and we knew it was going to be good days,
bad days, Like we're just going to ride this thing out,
but we had no idea what that looked like. And
then having gone through that right and being able to
(21:07):
prepare again the second time with Harlan. Like I shared
that feedback, I'm like, you know, it really feels to
me like we're all very I just put this on
my Instagram the other day, but like it feels like
we talk about abortion and pro life and all these
things like what happens after the baby's born, how do
we care for the mom, how do we care for
the baby, what do we provide? And when you were
pregnant with Harlan, having watched everything that went on with
(21:29):
Waylan in the aftermath, you came home it was August thirtieth,
and you're like, I am done. I can't do this.
Like and so I called the hospital and I'm like,
we're coming in at six o'clock in the morning. My
wife needs to have this baby. They're like, ah, well,
we can't do that. I'm like, her due date, I
think her due date was the thirty first, but she
(21:50):
just like didn't want to come out. But as soon
as I said to them, no, I'm very concerned about
my wife's mental health, her history is well documented with postpartum.
I don't want to start this journey off on a
bad foot. We need to get her in. They immediately
got you in. They immediately provided extra support at the hospital.
And we've talked about it before. Maybe because Harlan looked
(22:10):
more a little more like you when she was born
than Whalan. I don't know, but I felt like your
journey after Harlan it wasn't easier, Like you still struggled
and still i'm sure experienced things and feelings that I
can't relate to, but I felt like we were more prepared.
I felt like it was an easier journey for me
as a support system because I felt like you were
in a better space. And I feel like that was
(22:32):
because we had a really unfortunate and bad experience and
we were able to then say, Okay, no, this is
what we're preparing for. These are the resources and the
things that we think that we need to make it
a little bit easier hopefully.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I think the other thing, too, is I just maybe
lost the ego of not being able to have it
all my shit together as a new mom, and I
think as a birthing mom, the concept of you can
do it all.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
You have it all.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
You made this human. You're a hero, you're a superhero.
You're a creator of bones. That is true and that
is real, and that is your actual power. I made bones.
I can't fathom that. But I can cry, and I
can hate myself and I can not want to be
around those bones. And that's okay, too, right. There's a
(23:25):
beautification of being a mother that is so important because
it's in so many cultures women are vessels, and they
are and they are disrespected, and it is hateful, and
people treat women like shit. But in America, in so
many instances, we do this thing where we boss woman
it up and make it like this amazing, amazing superhero
(23:49):
power and it is. But that doesn't mean that that
superhero doesn't have cracks and falters and pain and suffering.
And I think when we look at mothers, we expect
them to be a superhero and able to take it
on all the time, all by themselves.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And the system is disgustingly broken. We've talked about our
frustrations with like the childcare aspect, the identity aspect as
a mom, but you read and see these horror stories
of moms who just lose it entirely and make horrible
decisions right, And you sit there as a parent and
I would never hurt my kids. I would never do
(24:27):
something like that. But it's like you can understand someone
getting to a mental point where they just break and
whether they get help, they have help, Like the system
is so strapped that it can't help all the people
that need help. People are going to continue having babies,
people are going to continue to have postpartum depression, and
(24:48):
it's something that we have to continue to talk about
and something that we have to continue to prioritize resources for,
because in my opinion, moms should have immediate aftercare in
the same way that infants newborns do. Like it's not
just a question at the hospital do you feel safe
going home? Yeah, everyone's all like when you're in the hospital,
you're all excited to take your baby home. It's when
(25:09):
things start to settle in and your body starts to
settle in and life starts to quote unquote normalize to
what that's going to look like, and all of a sudden,
you're like, oh my goodness. Like I remember going home
with Whalen and being like hitting for me. It was
actually when he was in the hospital when I said
I was going to Dunkin Donuts and I took off
for like nine hours. I just started driving because I'm like,
nothing can happen to me. Like I have to provide
for this kid for the rest of my life. That's it.
(25:32):
I have to keep this kid alive for the rest
of my life. And to your point, when you're the
birthing mom in a heterosexual dynamic or same sex couple, right,
but like everyone's situation in dynamic is different, so much
more invisible labor falls on the mom and people get
to a point where they just break.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
That is the truth I was gonna say. People do
this to us. They put us in this box where
I birth the children. So it's my responsibility, and I
think it's some of the most damaging stuff. And I
only see it so clearly because it's you and I
and not just you're my partner. But like I can
see how people assign us tasks when they say things
to us. Somebody asking me to miss something and leave
(26:14):
the kids with you, even though you're their mother. You
are perfectly capable. It's like, can Mattie watch the kids?
And then when your friends ask you to go out.
They're like annual stay home with the kids, not a question,
not a problem, and no question of my confidence, not
that my people question your competence. The idea that the
non birthing person has a different responsibility set and that
(26:36):
just isn't real, and that isn't our real, but it
isn't the lifetime real. All this to say, in the
postpartum journey, there's an awful, awful lot that we just
don't feel.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Comfortable talking about.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
And I think a big element of it is the
resource challenge, right, And it's constantly the resource challenge. But
it's like, Okay, I birth this baby and I leave.
And then there are these new places that crop up
all around the world that are like it's for moms.
It's the Postpartums Spot. It's a quiet room, it's a
nursing center, it's a whatever they're calling it, and it's
(27:12):
one thousand dollars a month to be a member and
you get to go and there's like massages and baby
care and help with lactation specialists and all this stuff.
Why is that a luxury and not something that we're
looking at as a real benefit that women need because
it is a major trauma all your hair falls out. Listen,
(27:33):
it all gets back to normal, and then you have
beautiful children. Like the positives outeigh the negatives here, but
let's call it what it is. Your skin goes haywire,
you have malasma. You just birth to human your organs
have moved. Your shit doesn't work the same way. Like
I now am prone to getting sties. Welcome to it.
Like there are these things about your body that are
(27:54):
changed forever. In some cultures, your friends come to the
birthing ceremony, the first drop of blood, they take that sheet.
They run down to a cemetery, they dig it a grave,
They mourn the loss of their friend. They come back
after the birth has been done, the woman has her child,
and they introduce themselves because you are a completely different
(28:17):
person after you make human beings. Everything about you is different.
It's beautiful, it's amazing, but you're just different. And the
more we make women feel like they have to be
their old selves after they make human beings is where
we lose the love in the process, because you are
(28:39):
evolving and you're changing, and you're doing all these amazing things.
And that is where I made it through postpartum, is
by accepting that I'm no longer the person I was before,
and we maybe had some time where we had to
reintroduce ourselves to one another. But I'm okay that I'm
a different person. I love the person than I am,
(28:59):
and I love the fact that I went through the
experience and stumbled majorly. If everything for me is easy,
it's not worth having. Having children was never easy, and
it certainly worth.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Having the other part of it that I think is interesting.
I'm gonna stereotype and I'm not trying to, but like
I'm just gonna paint with a broadbrush for a second.
(29:32):
A lot of couples that have kids are heterosexual, right,
the average heterosexual man does not empathize with a woman's
experience during childbirth. There are a lot of great dads
and a lot of great husbands out there, but just
the emotional intelligence and the understanding, right, Like, we had
a family member who loves you more than anything in
(29:53):
the world come and stay with us after Wayalam was born,
and like, let's be real, ladies, When you have babies,
like it's a whole wild experience and your body experiences
trauma and it has to heal, and that is it
takes a lot, and so you have stuff at the
house to help you to feel better, to be comfortable whatever.
We found the best way to do that was to
(30:14):
have like little caddies of stuff that you needed in
the bathroom. One of our male family members used the
bathroom and was like, you might want to move that
stuff from the toilet, like you know, guys stand to pee,
and we both were like, well, then don't or I
don't know, use a different bathroom, go outside, like it's
your space after what has been to date the biggest
trauma of your life, and we have set all aside
(30:36):
the things that you need to heal. And again, that
wasn't a malicious like, that wasn't anything other than and
innocent like, oh, hey, you might want to move this,
and it was like, well, no, you might just want
to go to the bathroom somewhere else, because that's what
she needs to get better. Postpartum is postpartum depression, your
postpartum experience bodily, physically, everything, and having gone through it
(30:57):
twice with you, having had conversations with other people, and
like you are very open about it, and lots of
people are like, it's like almost like giving women permission
to breathe when they feel like they can trade war stories.
And when you have a baby, you bleed and you
might poop on them and grow. Stuff happens, and you
see things that you wish you didn't see, but at
the end of the day, you have this perfect little
human being who you get to take home. And I
(31:18):
think that we don't spend enough time talking about the
hardship and the badness, and that causes people to sit
in it right and just feel alone and feel isolated
and feel like they're the only one. And I think
it's difficult. Further difficult when you have a male counterpart
or a female counterpart who doesn't understand because they didn't
(31:40):
also go through it. And I think for me it
was easier to empathize one because I'm very empathetic, but
mostly because I am a woman and I'm watching you
go through this. I think that that helped me understand
a little bit better, right, watching you go through it
and trying to imagine emotionally and physically, and I think
that that was import so as two people who have
(32:02):
gone through it, and to close, I'll ask you a
question that I'll answer the same one, or you can
ask me a different question if you want, But what
is your advice to someone going through a postpartum struggle
or trying to navigate their postpartum experience, whether it's depression
or their body image. What would you say or what
(32:23):
advice would you give to someone navigating their postpartum experience.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Well, so there's a whole other flip side to the coin.
I'm going to ask you a question that has nothing
to do with supporting me, because you are a fabulous
support system. We could talk about that for hours, and
I think you do have good advice there. But I
think being a non birthing mother is particularly difficult, and
(32:50):
I want your best advice for any of our listeners
that might be in that perspective on how to navigate
being the mother to our children without the birthing element.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Oh, you're gonna make me cry.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Cry.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Ah, that's a good question. Well, I need a second
to compose myself because that's a that's a that's a
sad question for me. That's a hard question for me
because it's very loaded.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I don't want it to be sad. I mean, like,
I mean from the perspective of like, I think it's
really hard. I I.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It's emotionally taxing, and I think that it was what
we've shared before. Whalen is your egg, Harlan is your egg.
We use the same donor, so we both grew up
in houses that had non biological parents present. I don't
value that or feel like that's like vitae, but I
think that the current political climate of things has made
(33:49):
me start to think more about things that I thought
about when Whalen was first born. And I think that
the hardest part is feeling connected because I didn't really
get to feel that until he was born. Like for
me as the supporting parent, it didn't become real until
I got to hold him for the first time. It's
hard to understand what someone else is going through when
(34:09):
you're like constantly questioning and constantly trying to validate yourself.
And I think that's compounded even more for us as
a same sex couple, because it's constantly defending your position,
constantly validating you're right. As a parent, and as a
non biological parent, that's even harder. But I will tell
you that every single person that we meet is like, God,
your son looks just like you. He has all the
(34:33):
same mannerism as you. Oh if You're so right. He's
just like you, looks like you, acts like you. He
is you, And that, to me is all the validation
in the world that I need because that tells me
that I'm an incredible mom. Harlan gravitates more towards you,
I think, because like she's just girly girl and whatever.
But I never thought of it as anything other than
(34:55):
he's my son, because that's what it is. She's my daughter,
That's what it is. And I think it's easy to
all how what everyone else is saying to creep in
and cloud your judgment, But at the end of the day,
a piece of paper or a drop of blood doesn't
make you apparent. Your commitment to your kid does reach
as he's gotten older, Like it's just it's been so rewarding.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
You're right, and it's good advice. And the thing is
your sage advice is really important.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
And the only other piece I want to add because
I did want to answer the question that I asked
because I'm selfish, But I think that honesty is super
important in the process, and that's all I will say.
But I think that a lot of times people don't
have a good dialogue right and they don't feel comfortable
talking about what's actually going on. And you were honest
about how you felt, you were honest about what you needed,
You were honest when you were going through it a
(35:40):
little bit with Harlan with Whalan and he understood. And
so I just think that's a huge piece to the
puzzle as well, is the communication and the honesty, and
the more that we again just talk about what someone's
going through and how it feels or whatever, the more
it's recognized and the more support that person can feel
like they have.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, man, I think it's great advice. I always appreciate
your thoughts on that topic though, because I know how
particularly challenging it is, or I don't know, and I
see how particularly challenging it is. But all that to say,
this is a very very important conversation. I like that
we can be the people that start it and kind
of navigate through it. But at the end of the day,
(36:19):
you're right, people just need to feel comfortable to talk
about it. They need to say how they're feeling, they
need to share with what they're going through. And if
they can do all of that, if we create just
a tiny inch of space for people to share a
little bit more about what they're going through at any
point in time, We've done the right thing. Postpartum as
hard as hell. It needs a lot of attention, it
(36:39):
needs a lot of levity, it needs a lot of patience.
But at the end of the day, it really just
needs partnership. So thanks Patna always. That is our episode
today for These Packs Buck. I'm excited. Next week we're
going to talk about a little bit of some different stuff,
so join us.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
That's it for this week.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Thanks for listening, and if you like what you heard,
spread the word seriously right now, take your phone out,
text a friend and tell them to subscribe.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
And be sure to rate and review us on Apple
Podcasts and Spotify if you haven't already. It really really
helps Until next week. I'm Madison Packer and.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I'm Onya Packer and this was These Packs Puck.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
These Packs Puck is a production of iHeart Women's Sports
and Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. It's hosted by us
Madison and Aya Packer. Emily Mehronoff is our senior producer
and story editor. We were mixed and mastered by Mary Deo.
Our executive producers are Jennifer Bassett, Jesse Katz and Ali Perry,
Just the heads up for our listeners today that our
episode touches on topics like suicidal ideation, depression, and other
sensitive mental health content which may be triggering for some people.
If you are experiencing any of these feelings or know
someone that is, please know that it is okay to
share these feelings. We urge you to call or text
nine to eight eight, a confidential suicide and crisis hotline
(00:21):
available twenty four to seven. Hi. Everyone, Welcome to these
packs puck.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I'm Madison Packer and I'm Anya Packer. Madison and I
are both former pro hockey players. We met through hockey
and fell in love, and now we're married with two
awesome toddlers, ages two and four.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
These days, we're opening up about the chaos of our
daily lives, between the juggle of being athletes, raising kids.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
And all the messiness in between. So buckle the puck
up because there is a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Helloo, what up?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I'm good.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
We're two floors apart, but it feels like a mile.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Oh my god, you're done.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
You're done.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Hot the hot take.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
We saw earlier in the month the Protections List come out.
We've had some time to marinate think about it. We
played this game a couple weeks ago where we said
who we would have picked. Let's talk about the selections
that have been made.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I think it's very interesting some of them. I get
we weren't far off. I like Ottawa's picks. The human
in me like really empathizes for the players because right, like,
they had connections to those markets that they were in
and now the bag has been totally shaken. But I
understand what Ottawa did. I liked it without being some
(01:44):
type of way. I think that it says a lot
more about what coaches value right and the character of
players who were not protected, than it does about the
talent of the players who were. And I say that
because there were a lot of very good players left
on the board, and you look at some of the issues,
and you look at some of the you know, the
(02:05):
key components and topics that gms and coaches continuously hit on,
culture being one of them, a massive one in New York.
I think that people are finally starting to recognize what's
important in building a team, and it's not always the
best talent, it's the best people. Sure.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Let me put my business hat on though, Yeah, I
don't understand some of the picks, and like, sure, I
understand culture, I get it, but you want butts and
seats to watch games being one, and you can't tell
me that you have three choices. This is where I'm like,
my mind goes absolutely eight. But I protect somebody today, okay,
(02:47):
and they are on a three year deal that lapses
at the end of this season and then they leave,
which is gonna happen for a lot of these picks
because we aren't necessarily choosing the youngest players, we aren't
necessarily choosing the foundational players, and you're opening yourself up
to the risk that a player is going to be protected,
(03:08):
right and then leave the following year.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Well, but yes and no, because by exposing some of
your higher cap players than you're opening up cap to
be able to pay players younger players more. One. Two.
That's a big part of it. What's also going to
be interesting is the locker room culture and dynamic when
unprotected players go unselected and they feel as though maybe
they deserve to be protected, and now they have to
go back to the team that maybe didn't value them
(03:32):
in the way that they value themselves. I think that's
I think that's going to be interesting. I agree with
your point on butts and seats and winning games, but
I think that we've seen year over year that a
toxic team doesn't win games.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Agreed, But let's just take Boston for example. You have
Aaron Frankel, Megan Keller, Alena Mueller. You leave Hillary Knight,
which we've talked about. She's not after this Olympics.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
She's done. She's probably phasing out of her.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Career in general. She has one more year in her
Fleet contract. Probably if I'm a GM, probably gonna pick
her up. Great player, even for one year worth the
risk of taking. Yeah, and she lives in Minnesota, so
she's not really married to Boston, even though she likes it.
She's been there, she's played a number of iterations of
these pro leagues in Boston.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Probably gonna get picked up.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Hannah Bilka on the sheet, she's gone, Sid Bar on
the sheet, she's gone, like you're leaving yourself open, and
maybe the hail Mary is Sid Bart Hannah Bilka. But
Night's gone and you lose Bilka. You've gotten yourself to
a place where you know tappany could be gone. You're
(04:43):
heavy hitters are on the board.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, but I mean everyone had to make a hard decision, right,
I mean, they're the real The only winners here are
Seattle and Vancouver. I mean, like, well, they're going to
get eight first round picks right out of the gate.
That's crazy. I think that there was no per way
to do it. Obviously. I think the league did the
best that they could. But I don't understand only being
able to protect three players because I think what it's
(05:06):
gonna do. Yeah, I think I think it's gonna really
deplete the rest of the league. But again, you have
the salary cap at play, right, so you really can't
take these heavy years because you have to. However, what
you can do so two things interesting. One, salaries are
now going to be disclosed.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Only to each other, not to the not to the public.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
You think that all these kids are gonna say quiet
about their salary. There was there was a take. There
was a take a couple of weeks ago. Uh, the
other babs, I think it was right who was like,
there's no salary disparity. Bullshit. I were like, putting it
on the pod bullshit. The difference in pay is massive.
It's massive, and I think that you're gonna see that,
and it's gonna start to get around right one. Two,
(05:50):
there is now opportunity for other players to prove what
are we doing here? So let's take for example, Abby Rock.
She has one year left on her contract. No one
knows the amount somewhere in the eighty thousand dollars range.
If Vancouver wants to sign Rock, they have to honor
her one year eighty thousand, but they can also offer
(06:12):
her a little more and extend her contract. Like there's
the ability for those teams also to sweeten the pot
for some of these players to try and get them
to come huge advantage. So I think out of the gate,
those two are the only ones that first of all won,
but they're also just going to I mean, it's going
to be really really interesting to see how the other
teams are able to compete, because now you have to
(06:34):
go back to a draft. Now what money is left
on the table after all of this has happened. I
still think New York's a winner because I think that
they're going to probably offload a lot of their expensive
players and be able to fill some of those holes
in a strong, good way. And I'm hopeful for that.
I want the hometown team to bring it home. But
I think it's really interesting. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Like I said, for me, there's too many veterans on
the board, there's too many veterans on expiring contracts on
the board for me to feel comfortable if I was
the GMI, just do things differently because you know, you
think about like an Abbey Boreen, Right, she's probably gonna go.
She played a year in Minnesota, won the Cup, played
a year with Montreal, they were the first place team
at the end of the season. She's probably gonna go.
(07:13):
That's the third team for that athlete in three years.
And she's not really getting her teeth cut at any program.
But she's a top line player for every team that
she's been on. She's an incredible blockey player. And she's
gonna get moved around and bounced around because they're protecting
the pool and Stacy Combo and I just think, like,
(07:35):
so back to the three players not being enough, it's
just not enough or like something's not right.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I also think you're going to see teams take their
time in a different way. Right, Like we've already seen it,
you're going to continue to see it. Teams are going
to take their time to plug and fail and figure
out what works best. I hope.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
So I think that the challenges were so obsessed with
having things happen in a certain timeline, so that what
we can community events, Like think about the Natasha Cloud
whole breakout in the off season in the WNBA, Natasha
Cloud is on Phoenix, she goes to Unrivaled, she gets
traded to Connecticut, and she's gutted right like posts like
(08:15):
Phoenix Mercury told me that this was where I was
gonna end my career.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
I moved there.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I moved my family, my friends, like I re uprooted
my life. Like just frustrated. Understand that it's a business,
but she's frustrated. Then New York comes out of nowhere
and makes the appropriate deal with Connecticut to pull her
in kind of last minute to be on the Liberty
and she won Player of the Week, right fit, right time.
(08:39):
It doesn't need to happen and be built and then
have three years of runway to be a good thing.
Continue to build the athletes and find the spaces for
your team. If you're gonna protect Alena Mueller, get her
her linemate, find her perfect match, it's not just jammin
or anywhere that you think it works. I'd love to
(09:00):
see Chloe Rard up in Boston. Dude, chloea career that's
been decimated in New York person because of poor decision making.
I would love to see her up in Boston. You're
reading my mind. If you have Chloe Rard as a
free agent and you can pick her up, and you
have Aleena Mueller and in college they ravaged people, they
should be together again. That's what I want gms to do.
(09:21):
I want gms to take a minute look at the
player pool and be pragmatic about their choices because it
doesn't have to happen immediately. It has to happen appropriately.
So that's my rant. I'm not perfect, but my armchair
general manager skills are great. Can always make it work
in my brain. Check in with me, tell me how
(09:46):
you're doing. I feel like it's a good time to
maybe take a WUSA and tell me where you're at.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I'm good. I'm a crisp ninety two. I would be
very close to one hundred if I had had the
opportunity to shower before we got on this pod. I
came in hot from my workout and Uh, it's a
little cold down here. I'm a little sweaty, and your
girl forgot to put on deoda want. I came in
(10:14):
like a wrecking ball.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Now that being said, I am doing well.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I feel good.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
The other day I broke the television, completely ruined it.
Now I will say it was not my fault. I
blame this completely on Visio.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
This is top three wife moments. I was shocked by
your response to this. I was like, who is she
and what has she done with Tanya? This is where
I stand. I'm either yes, babe, anything you want, or
I'm a cheap ass. So I'm either Anya or Tanya.
And in this moment, I'm on the phone with Visio
and they tell me.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Oh, your clicker's not working. Here's how you fix it.
Blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, now that everything's fixed,
connect your TV to the internet so that you can
use your phone as a remote if your clicker ever
goes down again. Okay, great, sounds good. Well, connect to
get to the internet. Forced an update that broke the
television because the TV was old. Now is this an
on your problem or a Visio problem? Let's call it
(11:12):
what it is. Not my fault, but whatever, it's still
broken at my hand. So I rush out and I
went and buy a new TV to replace the old.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Team rolled in with a seventy inch television for our bedroom.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I'll never sleep again. I'll never sleep again. However, they
no longer make sixty inch televisions. That's how old our
TV was. It's like ten thirty at night. You're like,
you're like coming in hot with a new TV. Can
you come down and help me open the trunk to
the truck. And it's just seventy inch? Yeah, flat screen TV.
Because I was pissed off and I want I didn't
(11:46):
want you to be mad, and I didn't. I wanted
to watch the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. So I'm
not watching that on some dinky little TV. I'm getting
a freaking flatty. If I gotta watch a TV in
my bedroom, it's gonna be a big old flatty. So
I am like a seventy because I'm kind of hype
that we have a new TV. I'm kind of pissed
that we had to buy one, but I'm feeling like Anya,
I was not cheap, o, Tanya. I could have bought
(12:07):
a small one and I was like, I went full
gas and bought a new TV. I feel like TV's great,
really pissed about the whole visio situation, but they did
give me a credit back on the TV for like
half of the cost of it, so I think everybody
won in this scenario. I'm gonna put this topic to
bed because I could keep talking about my TV qualms. Today.
(12:28):
We don't have a guest. We just have us and
we talk about something that we both are super passionate
about and also something that kind of affected us differently,
which is always an interesting kind of three sides to
the pancake. No matter how then the pancake, which is
your favorite thing to tell me when you're trying to
show me the middle of something that I don't want
to say it is.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I'm excited for this conversation because I think it's, as
we talk about in the episode, it's something that is
not talked about enough. We talk about your postpartum journey,
how I tried to support or through that, what to expect,
what we didn't expect, and I think it hopefully will
shed some light for other people who might be going
through it. Excited to get into that conversation after the break,
(13:20):
we are back today. It is a solo episode. Anya Solo.
Are gonna chat about our journey as parents, most specifically
talk a little bit about Anya's postpartum experience and my
experience as her partner in that, but mostly just everyone
(13:43):
talks about postpartum and no one really talks about their
experience or what that looks like. And so we wanted
to take the opportunity to tell our story, talk about
what we went through, how we managed it, how we
navigated it, and hopefully create space for other people to
feel seen. So as common as childbook birth is, there's
always a postparton experience for the birthing mom, and we
want to talk about that.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I will say, I think the one thing that we
get asked about the most, because we had kids first
before any of our friends and anybody with kids first
knows two things. One, you then become the person that
everyone asks the questions to. But two, it's like this
kind of like chaos time where being the first mom
means that you're the first in success but also the
(14:28):
first and failure. Going through the process of becoming a
mom is really crazy and hard and so harrowing and lonely.
It's super lonely.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I think that's the hardest part, is like you're all
excited to have the baby, right, and everyone's so excited
for you, and you just can't wait for this great
thing to happen, and then you don't really know what
to expect the first time, right, even like we thought
that we were prepared and that we had done everything
that we could, and then Whalon arrived and it was like,
I was so excited we had the baby, excited to
(15:00):
bring him home, excited to do all the things changes
out with seven thousand times, and you just assume that
the other person in that equation is equally excited, not
taking into account like the severe loss and disconnect hormonally
that occurs.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, I mean, preparing for my mental health was something
that I really tried to make sure I had all
buttoned up. I was still in talk therapy, I was
still going through all the things I didn't medicate when
I was pregnant. But I was very very intentional about
my process of mental health recovery because I knew it
was going to be really hard for me. I can't
explain the feeling that I had when I looked at
(15:37):
Whalan and I felt nothing, like it was a true
feeling of nothing. And I could see how happy you were,
and I could see how excited everyone around me was
and how happy everybody was, and I couldn't feel anything.
And when we talk about the loneliness, there's two sides, right,
(15:57):
There's people don't know how to be around or don't
want to be around a newborn baby. I don't want
to be around other people. And then the loneliness that
comes from feeling like the thing that you were put
on the earth to do has been removed from your
body and is now perfectly capable without you. And I
had this postpartum depression that made me just feel like
(16:19):
I didn't want to be there.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I think the hardest part in supporting and understanding that
is just that is understanding that right like you and
I had two completely opposite experiences and emotion rushes and
like dopamine rushes and all these things, like your hormones
are completely imbalanced and out of whack, and regardless of
what you're feeling in the moment you breastfed, you were
(16:44):
very very adamant and committed to doing that for a
long time, but specifically like you wanted there's just a
science data whatever, no judgment, but that's what we chose
to do. And so you were waking up and feeding him,
you were round the clock doing what you needed to
do so that he was getting everything you felt like
he needed to get, and all that time feeling completely
(17:08):
disconnected and not wanting to talk about it at first.
There's actually a picture of you laying on the couch
that I think you posted that like so perfectly I
think sums it up because it's just you, like with
this like blank face, holding Whalen, trying to smile but
not really even being able to. And that was when
you had like really started talking about what you were
going through. And it's like you said, it's like this
(17:30):
complete disassociation from this thing that you've just spent all
this time bonding with and creating, and then all of
a sudden that just feels like it's gone. And on
the opposite side of that, like I couldn't relate to
that because I was just so excited to meet him
and hold him, and so then all of a sudden,
you're like we're in the house, it's COVID, and you're like,
I just need you to get out of the house,
(17:50):
so I would take Whalan out for walks or it's
not a bad thing, but it's just like you don't
know how to support that person because then, like I
also didn't want to leave you alone. I didn't like
I never felt like I couldn't leave you with him
or like you were going to do something, but I
felt like I couldn't leave you. I felt badly for you.
I could tell how sad you were, how lonely you were,
and I was trying to give you what you needed,
(18:11):
but also I was scared.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, And I think each time the hardest part is
you feel like you're failing, right, because I'm supposed to
be his mom, I'm supposed to be excited. I think
I guess I couldn't rationalize what I felt like I
was supposed to be doing and what I was doing
and then make those things line up. And I think
(18:34):
that's where postpartum depression gets so misconstrued. Is that point, right,
is like people think, oh, you just got the baby blues,
and they chalk it up to this very nominal feeling
of now being sad because your hormones are out of whack.
I remember sitting over Harlan's crib and thinking, you look
so much like me. If I take my life in
(18:57):
this battle with my mental health, your whole life life,
people are going to say you look just like your
mom and you're never ever going to know what I
looked like. You can see a picture and you can
say yeah, but you won't know. And I think that
in that moment of darkness, I really scared myself because
that was what helped me through it. For that baby,
(19:20):
is that like she looks too much like me. I
can't let her live a life of suffering where she'll
never meet me and everyone will tell her that she
looks like me. And I don't know. Again, I can't
explain what the brain does in those moments, but I
can certainly tell you that didn't feel like the blues.
That didn't feel like this very small baby blues style thing.
(19:42):
And it didn't feel like I could call my friends.
It didn't feel like I could call anybody and tell
them that. I don't even know if I've ever told
you that, But it's just this feeling where you don't connect,
like you don't you're not there. And people tell me
all these stories about the beginning of our children's lives,
and I can't recall a single one, and I have
(20:03):
a great memory.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I will start with I was incredibly pleased full experience
with our medical team and the doctors at Greenwich Hospital
and the people that we used, but having gone through
it with Waylan, right, in order to get pregnant, you
have to go to counseling, you have to do all
these things to get pregnant, and then they're very dialed
into your mental health, to your nutrients, to everything about
(20:25):
you while you're pregnant and while you're making the baby,
and very focused on making sure that that baby is
as healthy and everything as possible. And then as soon
as the baby's born, you're in the hospital for a
couple of days and it's like, Okay, you guys can
go home and you're all set and that's it. We
felt very prepared because we had a very supportive doctor
(20:46):
and staff through the process. But then we got home
and we were like, we're not prepared for this, and
we tried really hard to prepare, Like we knew you
were going to struggle, we knew your history with mental health,
and we knew it was going to be good days,
bad days, Like we're just going to ride this thing out,
but we had no idea what that looked like. And
then having gone through that right and being able to
(21:07):
prepare again the second time with Harlan. Like I shared
that feedback, I'm like, you know, it really feels to
me like we're all very I just put this on
my Instagram the other day, but like it feels like
we talk about abortion and pro life and all these
things like what happens after the baby's born, how do
we care for the mom, how do we care for
the baby, what do we provide? And when you were
pregnant with Harlan, having watched everything that went on with
(21:29):
Waylan in the aftermath, you came home it was August thirtieth,
and you're like, I am done. I can't do this.
Like and so I called the hospital and I'm like,
we're coming in at six o'clock in the morning. My
wife needs to have this baby. They're like, ah, well,
we can't do that. I'm like, her due date, I
think her due date was the thirty first, but she
(21:50):
just like didn't want to come out. But as soon
as I said to them, no, I'm very concerned about
my wife's mental health, her history is well documented with postpartum.
I don't want to start this journey off on a
bad foot. We need to get her in. They immediately
got you in. They immediately provided extra support at the hospital.
And we've talked about it before. Maybe because Harlan looked
(22:10):
more a little more like you when she was born
than Whalan. I don't know, but I felt like your
journey after Harlan it wasn't easier, Like you still struggled
and still i'm sure experienced things and feelings that I
can't relate to, but I felt like we were more prepared.
I felt like it was an easier journey for me
as a support system because I felt like you were
in a better space. And I feel like that was
(22:32):
because we had a really unfortunate and bad experience and
we were able to then say, Okay, no, this is
what we're preparing for. These are the resources and the
things that we think that we need to make it
a little bit easier hopefully.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I think the other thing, too, is I just maybe
lost the ego of not being able to have it
all my shit together as a new mom, and I
think as a birthing mom, the concept of you can
do it all.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
You have it all.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
You made this human. You're a hero, you're a superhero.
You're a creator of bones. That is true and that
is real, and that is your actual power. I made bones.
I can't fathom that. But I can cry, and I
can hate myself and I can not want to be
around those bones. And that's okay, too, right. There's a
(23:25):
beautification of being a mother that is so important because
it's in so many cultures women are vessels, and they
are and they are disrespected, and it is hateful, and
people treat women like shit. But in America, in so
many instances, we do this thing where we boss woman
it up and make it like this amazing, amazing superhero
(23:49):
power and it is. But that doesn't mean that that
superhero doesn't have cracks and falters and pain and suffering.
And I think when we look at mothers, we expect
them to be a superhero and able to take it
on all the time, all by themselves.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And the system is disgustingly broken. We've talked about our
frustrations with like the childcare aspect, the identity aspect as
a mom, but you read and see these horror stories
of moms who just lose it entirely and make horrible
decisions right, And you sit there as a parent and
I would never hurt my kids. I would never do
(24:27):
something like that. But it's like you can understand someone
getting to a mental point where they just break and
whether they get help, they have help, Like the system
is so strapped that it can't help all the people
that need help. People are going to continue having babies,
people are going to continue to have postpartum depression, and
(24:48):
it's something that we have to continue to talk about
and something that we have to continue to prioritize resources for,
because in my opinion, moms should have immediate aftercare in
the same way that infants newborns do. Like it's not
just a question at the hospital do you feel safe
going home? Yeah, everyone's all like when you're in the hospital,
you're all excited to take your baby home. It's when
(25:09):
things start to settle in and your body starts to
settle in and life starts to quote unquote normalize to
what that's going to look like, and all of a sudden,
you're like, oh my goodness. Like I remember going home
with Whalen and being like hitting for me. It was
actually when he was in the hospital when I said
I was going to Dunkin Donuts and I took off
for like nine hours. I just started driving because I'm like,
nothing can happen to me. Like I have to provide
for this kid for the rest of my life. That's it.
(25:32):
I have to keep this kid alive for the rest
of my life. And to your point, when you're the
birthing mom in a heterosexual dynamic or same sex couple, right,
but like everyone's situation in dynamic is different, so much
more invisible labor falls on the mom and people get
to a point where they just break.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
That is the truth I was gonna say. People do
this to us. They put us in this box where
I birth the children. So it's my responsibility, and I
think it's some of the most damaging stuff. And I
only see it so clearly because it's you and I
and not just you're my partner. But like I can
see how people assign us tasks when they say things
to us. Somebody asking me to miss something and leave
(26:14):
the kids with you, even though you're their mother. You
are perfectly capable. It's like, can Mattie watch the kids?
And then when your friends ask you to go out.
They're like annual stay home with the kids, not a question,
not a problem, and no question of my confidence, not
that my people question your competence. The idea that the
non birthing person has a different responsibility set and that
(26:36):
just isn't real, and that isn't our real, but it
isn't the lifetime real. All this to say, in the
postpartum journey, there's an awful, awful lot that we just
don't feel.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Comfortable talking about.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
And I think a big element of it is the
resource challenge, right, And it's constantly the resource challenge. But
it's like, Okay, I birth this baby and I leave.
And then there are these new places that crop up
all around the world that are like it's for moms.
It's the Postpartums Spot. It's a quiet room, it's a
nursing center, it's a whatever they're calling it, and it's
(27:12):
one thousand dollars a month to be a member and
you get to go and there's like massages and baby
care and help with lactation specialists and all this stuff.
Why is that a luxury and not something that we're
looking at as a real benefit that women need because
it is a major trauma all your hair falls out. Listen,
(27:33):
it all gets back to normal, and then you have
beautiful children. Like the positives outeigh the negatives here, but
let's call it what it is. Your skin goes haywire,
you have malasma. You just birth to human your organs
have moved. Your shit doesn't work the same way. Like
I now am prone to getting sties. Welcome to it.
Like there are these things about your body that are
(27:54):
changed forever. In some cultures, your friends come to the
birthing ceremony, the first drop of blood, they take that sheet.
They run down to a cemetery, they dig it a grave,
They mourn the loss of their friend. They come back
after the birth has been done, the woman has her child,
and they introduce themselves because you are a completely different
(28:17):
person after you make human beings. Everything about you is different.
It's beautiful, it's amazing, but you're just different. And the
more we make women feel like they have to be
their old selves after they make human beings is where
we lose the love in the process, because you are
(28:39):
evolving and you're changing, and you're doing all these amazing things.
And that is where I made it through postpartum, is
by accepting that I'm no longer the person I was before,
and we maybe had some time where we had to
reintroduce ourselves to one another. But I'm okay that I'm
a different person. I love the person than I am,
(28:59):
and I love the fact that I went through the
experience and stumbled majorly. If everything for me is easy,
it's not worth having. Having children was never easy, and
it certainly worth.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Having the other part of it that I think is interesting.
I'm gonna stereotype and I'm not trying to, but like
I'm just gonna paint with a broadbrush for a second.
(29:32):
A lot of couples that have kids are heterosexual, right,
the average heterosexual man does not empathize with a woman's
experience during childbirth. There are a lot of great dads
and a lot of great husbands out there, but just
the emotional intelligence and the understanding, right, Like, we had
a family member who loves you more than anything in
(29:53):
the world come and stay with us after Wayalam was born,
and like, let's be real, ladies, When you have babies,
like it's a whole wild experience and your body experiences
trauma and it has to heal, and that is it
takes a lot, and so you have stuff at the
house to help you to feel better, to be comfortable whatever.
We found the best way to do that was to
(30:14):
have like little caddies of stuff that you needed in
the bathroom. One of our male family members used the
bathroom and was like, you might want to move that
stuff from the toilet, like you know, guys stand to pee,
and we both were like, well, then don't or I
don't know, use a different bathroom, go outside, like it's
your space after what has been to date the biggest
trauma of your life, and we have set all aside
(30:36):
the things that you need to heal. And again, that
wasn't a malicious like, that wasn't anything other than and
innocent like, oh, hey, you might want to move this,
and it was like, well, no, you might just want
to go to the bathroom somewhere else, because that's what
she needs to get better. Postpartum is postpartum depression, your
postpartum experience bodily, physically, everything, and having gone through it
(30:57):
twice with you, having had conversations with other people, and
like you are very open about it, and lots of
people are like, it's like almost like giving women permission
to breathe when they feel like they can trade war stories.
And when you have a baby, you bleed and you
might poop on them and grow. Stuff happens, and you
see things that you wish you didn't see, but at
the end of the day, you have this perfect little
human being who you get to take home. And I
(31:18):
think that we don't spend enough time talking about the
hardship and the badness, and that causes people to sit
in it right and just feel alone and feel isolated
and feel like they're the only one. And I think
it's difficult. Further difficult when you have a male counterpart
or a female counterpart who doesn't understand because they didn't
(31:40):
also go through it. And I think for me it
was easier to empathize one because I'm very empathetic, but
mostly because I am a woman and I'm watching you
go through this. I think that that helped me understand
a little bit better, right, watching you go through it
and trying to imagine emotionally and physically, and I think
that that was import so as two people who have
(32:02):
gone through it, and to close, I'll ask you a
question that I'll answer the same one, or you can
ask me a different question if you want, But what
is your advice to someone going through a postpartum struggle
or trying to navigate their postpartum experience, whether it's depression
or their body image. What would you say or what
(32:23):
advice would you give to someone navigating their postpartum experience.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Well, so there's a whole other flip side to the coin.
I'm going to ask you a question that has nothing
to do with supporting me, because you are a fabulous
support system. We could talk about that for hours, and
I think you do have good advice there. But I
think being a non birthing mother is particularly difficult, and
(32:50):
I want your best advice for any of our listeners
that might be in that perspective on how to navigate
being the mother to our children without the birthing element.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Oh, you're gonna make me cry.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Cry.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Ah, that's a good question. Well, I need a second
to compose myself because that's a that's a that's a
sad question for me. That's a hard question for me
because it's very loaded.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I don't want it to be sad. I mean, like,
I mean from the perspective of like, I think it's
really hard. I I.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It's emotionally taxing, and I think that it was what
we've shared before. Whalen is your egg, Harlan is your egg.
We use the same donor, so we both grew up
in houses that had non biological parents present. I don't
value that or feel like that's like vitae, but I
think that the current political climate of things has made
(33:49):
me start to think more about things that I thought
about when Whalen was first born. And I think that
the hardest part is feeling connected because I didn't really
get to feel that until he was born. Like for
me as the supporting parent, it didn't become real until
I got to hold him for the first time. It's
hard to understand what someone else is going through when
(34:09):
you're like constantly questioning and constantly trying to validate yourself.
And I think that's compounded even more for us as
a same sex couple, because it's constantly defending your position,
constantly validating you're right. As a parent, and as a
non biological parent, that's even harder. But I will tell
you that every single person that we meet is like, God,
your son looks just like you. He has all the
(34:33):
same mannerism as you. Oh if You're so right. He's
just like you, looks like you, acts like you. He
is you, And that, to me is all the validation
in the world that I need because that tells me
that I'm an incredible mom. Harlan gravitates more towards you,
I think, because like she's just girly girl and whatever.
But I never thought of it as anything other than
(34:55):
he's my son, because that's what it is. She's my daughter,
That's what it is. And I think it's easy to
all how what everyone else is saying to creep in
and cloud your judgment, But at the end of the day,
a piece of paper or a drop of blood doesn't
make you apparent. Your commitment to your kid does reach
as he's gotten older, Like it's just it's been so rewarding.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
You're right, and it's good advice. And the thing is
your sage advice is really important.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
And the only other piece I want to add because
I did want to answer the question that I asked
because I'm selfish, But I think that honesty is super
important in the process, and that's all I will say.
But I think that a lot of times people don't
have a good dialogue right and they don't feel comfortable
talking about what's actually going on. And you were honest
about how you felt, you were honest about what you needed,
You were honest when you were going through it a
(35:40):
little bit with Harlan with Whalan and he understood. And
so I just think that's a huge piece to the
puzzle as well, is the communication and the honesty, and
the more that we again just talk about what someone's
going through and how it feels or whatever, the more
it's recognized and the more support that person can feel
like they have.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, man, I think it's great advice. I always appreciate
your thoughts on that topic though, because I know how
particularly challenging it is, or I don't know, and I
see how particularly challenging it is. But all that to say,
this is a very very important conversation. I like that
we can be the people that start it and kind
of navigate through it. But at the end of the day,
(36:19):
you're right, people just need to feel comfortable to talk
about it. They need to say how they're feeling, they
need to share with what they're going through. And if
they can do all of that, if we create just
a tiny inch of space for people to share a
little bit more about what they're going through at any
point in time, We've done the right thing. Postpartum as
hard as hell. It needs a lot of attention, it
(36:39):
needs a lot of levity, it needs a lot of patience.
But at the end of the day, it really just
needs partnership. So thanks Patna always. That is our episode
today for These Packs Buck. I'm excited. Next week we're
going to talk about a little bit of some different stuff,
so join us.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
That's it for this week.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Thanks for listening, and if you like what you heard,
spread the word seriously right now, take your phone out,
text a friend and tell them to subscribe.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
And be sure to rate and review us on Apple
Podcasts and Spotify if you haven't already. It really really
helps Until next week. I'm Madison Packer and.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I'm Onya Packer and this was These Packs Puck.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
These Packs Puck is a production of iHeart Women's Sports
and Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. It's hosted by us
Madison and Aya Packer. Emily Mehronoff is our senior producer
and story editor. We were mixed and mastered by Mary Deo.
Our executive producers are Jennifer Bassett, Jesse Katz and Ali Perry,
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