July 16, 2025 • 14 mins
The arrival of three new babies in my extended family has sparked a wave of nostalgia and reflection about the raw truths of early parenthood—those jarring realities nobody adequately prepares you for.
Remember when someone first told you "you'll never be alone again" after having a baby? For me, that statement landed like a thunderbolt. As someone who cherished solitude and quiet moments, the reality of motherhood hit hard: working with babies under each arm during conference calls, two-hour bedtime routines, and the complete dissolution of personal space. Yet within these challenges lies the beautiful, messy truth of family expansion—watching your lineage grow and seeing siblings bond despite the exhaustion.
Perhaps most surprising is how parenthood transforms marriages. The flood of hormones, sleep deprivation, and differing parenting philosophies create a perfect storm where even the strongest partnerships face unprecedented tension. Add well-meaning but overwhelming advice from family members, friends, and even childless acquaintances who've "read all the books," and it's no wonder new parents feel overwhelmed. But take heart in knowing these struggles are universal and temporary. As one wise family member told me during my darkest moments, "This is literally the hardest part—once you get through this, everything else will be a breeze." Eight years later, I can confirm she was right. My evenings are mine again, bedtime routines have shortened from hours to minutes, and I've reclaimed pieces of my identity I feared were lost forever.
Wondering how to survive those early years? Trust yourself. Despite all the advice, you and your partner are the parents. You decide what's best for your child. Your instincts matter more than any parenting book or well-meaning suggestion. And remember—you will find yourself again on the other side of these challenging years, different perhaps, but whole.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning everyone .
This is Still Bros' podcast.
This podcast was created forwomen, by women, to elevate
women's voices.
Very happy to be here with allof you today and a little bit of
a celebratory episode.
So I actually want to take aminute in this episode to say
welcome to three of the newestfamily members to my family, my
extended family.
We had some really, reallygreat stork deliveries this year
(00:22):
Three cousins all in a row,back to back.
We had some new arrivals and Ican't say enough about how
thrilled I am about this.
Now, as a mom and as a grandmaI do I get very excited.
Seeing families expand andseeing the expansion of a
lineage is is, to me, such abeautiful thing.
(00:46):
And you know, quite often whenmy husband and I have our whole
family here and it would be ourfive kids, so combined, five
children, two grandchildren andthen our son-in-law and whenever
we're all here, there's alwaysa moment when I look at
everybody and then I'll turn tomy husband and I'll say to him
you know, everyone here minusmyself and my son-in-law would
(01:08):
not be here today without youand it's such a huge, huge
blessing to be able to pull aunited family together.
It is very hard to do that.
It is incredibly hard to haveyour family come together and be
supportive of each other andremain united and it takes work,
like a lot of work, and ittakes a lot of, you know, not
(01:29):
sacrifice but, in some instances, sacrifice.
My husband sacrificed a greatdeal for his older children to
make sure that they stayedunited as a family unit, and
then now we have our three kidsand watching everyone grow
together is the most beautifulthing.
It's the most beautiful feeling.
So I do want to have a bigshout out to my cousins and
(01:51):
their wives, and my cousin andher husband, and to my aunt and
uncle, who went from onegrandchild to four, wait, two,
three, four within a couple ofmonths.
A Big congratulations toeverybody there.
I'm thrilled to come and visit.
I have some bits of plannedalready.
Really, really welcome and veryexcited for all of you.
(02:13):
Now, in honor of all the newarrivals in the family, my other
cousin, melissa, and I, who arenot part of this new arrival
crew, we started kind ofreminiscing about like, oh you
know things, what do we wish wehad done differently when we had
babies, or what was shockingfor us when we, when we first
had our kids and this is goingto sound kind of dumb, but one
of the biggest shocks that I gotand again it's going to sound
(02:34):
stupid, but please just bearwith me One of the larger shocks
that I got when I was when Iwas expecting my son my husband
said something to the effect ofwell, jenny, when I was
expecting my son, my husbandsaid something to the effect of
well, jenny, you know, you'renever going to be alone, ever
again.
And the way that he said it wasmore of like a you'll always
have him, he's always going tobe there.
That's your.
You know.
Your son is growing in yourstomach.
(02:55):
But for someone like me, whenhe said it in my head it was
like dun, dun, dun and I waslike I'll never be alone again.
And you know, because I'm verymuch a person who enjoys
solitude, I like quiet and Ilike my alone time, and which
sounds insane because I'vealways wanted like five or six
kids, and so to say that soundsnuts, but I do.
I like to have some alone time,I like to have some quiet, like
(03:18):
I like to do my thing.
I like to read, for Pete's sake, like can't really do that with
an infant, when you're likechasing after a bunch of kids.
So you know, that was like abig one for me.
And it's funny because this issomething that my cousin and I
were talking about today.
And as our kids have grown,we've come to the realization
that there's almost never amoment where we're by ourselves.
Now, me, yes, because I workedduring the day and I work from
(03:39):
home and my kids are in camp,which you all know at this point
, so I get to have that freedom.
But now that's only eight ornine years later.
Before, yes, there was alonetime while you're working, but
there was no true, just you'realone and you're doing something
for yourself.
Like this podcast could nothave existed when my kids were
infants, because they would haveall been crying on this podcast
with me, like I would have hadtwo on my chest, one in my lap,
(04:02):
and I would have been recordinglike that.
Like that's to the extent ofyou know me always being with
them.
My husband has a picture of mewhen I was working.
Oh boy, going back to thesememories.
But me, when I was working, Ihad my laptop, you know, propped
up on the side on a pillow.
I had a child under each arm,had my headphones on and I had a
(04:23):
child sitting in my lap, inbetween my legs, and in the
picture you can see from theangle that I am running a
webcast and on a conference call.
But I have all my babies withme and that's how they grew up
they actually I.
I again had the great fortuneof being able to work from home
and because of that I was ableto still accelerate my career
while taking care of my kids.
(04:44):
Nevertheless, not having alonetime is always a shock, and it
continues to be a shock when youdon't get that really much
needed like solitude moment.
Outside of that shock, one ofthe other things that nobody
talks about and so I'm going totalk about it is how difficult
it is after you have a baby.
Now people will say that, ohyeah, it's hard, you'll get
through it, you'll be fine.
The amount of rage that I usedto feel when I had my babies and
(05:09):
they were infants and peoplewould come to the house and they
would come in and they would befreshly showered and look
rested and they looked like theyhad eaten, like healthy food
and their skin was glowing andthey would kind of just come in
and say, oh, you'll be fine,you'll get through it, you're
tough, you can do it.
And in my head I was alwayslike F you and I feel a little
(05:30):
bit bad because I mean, I knoweveryone was really well
intentioned, but at the sametime I'm like I was exhausted, I
was overwhelmed.
I had postpartum depression,which nobody really knew about
at the time.
It would always be like this,like you're basically spitting
in my face.
It was very hard for me to gofrom you know, from having the
(05:53):
kids and that joy, but then toalso be like, oh my God, the
overwhelming amount of work.
It was one of the mostdifficult moments of my life
because your brain goes throughchanges, your body physically
went through a change, yourhormones are a disaster.
Now you're sleep deprived.
In these moments is the firsttimes that you will likely feel
(06:14):
like you hate your husband and Isay that with the nicest way
possible, because you don't hateyour husband.
Clearly you procreated with himlike you don't hate him.
You chose to marry this.
I chose you like.
I chose you as my person.
But kids throw something elseinto the mix, whatever it is and
I have an idea which I'll talkabout in minute, but like
something happens there and itmakes you and your husband
(06:35):
sometimes at odds and it doesn'thappen.
Maybe it doesn't happen toeverybody, but I would.
I would bet money that it does.
But people just don't talkabout it.
Nobody wants to talk about that.
They don't want people to belike oh, what's wrong with you?
You have marriage problems.
Nobody wants to have marriageproblems.
The secret is we all havemarriage problems and it's okay
because everyone has marriageproblems.
Do you think anyone's a hundredpercent happy?
(06:56):
I said to my cousin recentlythat my husband and I have found
a way where we like argue.
But we know we know each otherso well that the arguments last
about three and a half minutes.
They're not really heated andit kind of just like fizzles.
You know it's a stupiditybecause it's like what are we
going to fight about?
What is there to fight about atthis point?
But when you have a baby, youknow the fights are intense and
(07:17):
it gets real because you nowhave two people that have very
strong opinions about what issupposed to be happening with
this child.
And not only do you have twopeople with strong opinions, you
have to deal with in-laws aswell, because now all of a
sudden, everybody has opinions,and then you get the joy of
having pressure from otherpeople who think like this is my
moment, this is my time toshine, to tell you what you need
(07:38):
to do as a parent.
My favorite and I'm gonna saythis because this was me and I
just wanna slap myself in theface for this one my favorite
are the people that don't havekids that come around and say
well, you know what?
I read this book.
And the reason why it's myfavorite is because that's
exactly how I used to talkbefore I had kids.
My husband and I, like we'redating, he already had kids and
(08:01):
I used to say to him I have kids, you know, I'm not gonna let
them do this, or I'm only gonnaread books to them all the time.
That's all I'm gonna do and I'monly only going to let them do
this and I'm never going to dothis.
And what article says?
And there's research that hassaid blah, blah, blah.
And now I just want to punchmyself in the face because I'm
like oh my God, like I must havesounded so dumb.
(08:27):
And I say it to him now and helaughs at me because he's like
yeah, you used to really justtry to no idea what you were
talking about.
And it's comical, if you reallythink about it, the amount of
people that feel preparedbecause they've done loads of
research.
And I'm going to call out mycousin here because this is
something we were joking about.
So my cousin, who was cooriginal co host for the podcast
when I had my son, she flew infor it.
(08:49):
She stayed with me at thehospital.
She was there when he was bornBeautiful moment and then she
flew in for my brother's kids.
She's down in Florida, so sheflew in for everybody's kids to
be born.
She helped out the first weeklike great, amazing, amazing.
And so much so that we werelike, oh you know, when you have
a child, this is gonna be likeand I actually even said it to
her like, so this shows you likehow much we I just kind of
(09:12):
assumed I was like, oh, it'll beeasy Once you have a kid, like
you're going to, it's going tobe like a no brainer, you're not
even going to be like blinking.
She had a really awful.
She had a really awful struggleafter she had her daughter
because she had postpartumanxiety really badly and she
struggled really hard and Iactually I, you know it was
crazy because she even said ittoday.
She's like I thought that I wasgoing to have the easiest time
(09:34):
because I had witnessed all ofyou and I just assumed like,
yeah, oh, I know what I'm doinghere.
And then when it pushed him toshove, it's like, oh wait, I
don't know what I'm doing here.
It's totally different whenit's your child and you're
responsible for this.
Tiny things, life completelydifferent scenario.
So, yes, that's another point tobe made For all the new moms
out there.
You are going to get so muchadvice.
(09:54):
The reality is you're theparent and you have to do what
you think is best, no matterwhat anyone else says.
You have to do what's best foryour child.
So, if you want your kid on acertain specific schedule,
that's it.
That's law, that's it.
Do what you feel like is bestthat you need to do.
Now, yes, be open to people,listen to you know, if you want
(10:15):
to listen to reputable opinions,somebody that you trust, by all
means.
But at the end of the day, thatchild is your child.
You have to do what's right forthem by your book and your book
alone.
That's how I live my life andit's something my husband and I
feel very strongly about andfeel very strongly about, and I
really don't care what anyoneelse's opinions are about how
I'm raising my kids.
I like how I'm raising them.
I love the people they'returning out to be.
(10:35):
So you got to just do that.
Stick with that.
Do not feel pressure to moldanything specific.
It is up to you and yourhusband.
What is best for that child andyou two need to work on that
together.
That is not meant to be foreveryone to have an opinion and
you're taking a stock.
Now this third thing here.
It's not, it's not going tofeel good to hear it, but when I
was in the thick of thingsreally being complicated with my
(10:58):
kids and just really my healthand everything not doing well
and whatnot, when I was in thethick of it, somebody said to me
and I almost cried when theysaid it but a woman, an extended
family member, approached meand just said you know, I know
you're really struggling.
Now I don't.
At that time I didn't talkabout my struggle and I didn't
complain.
You are not going to hear mecomplain.
(11:19):
And so she just kind of pulledme aside and she's like this is
literally the hardest partyou're going through right now
is the.
This is it.
Once you get through this, likeeverything else is going to be
like a breeze, but you have to.
This is where you have to getthrough, and everyone, including
this woman, said to me when youhit five years old and you
start going after five, thingsare different.
It will start to loosen up andI can't tell you how right on
(11:42):
that was and I was, and in themoment I remember being like, oh
my God, that's four years away.
What am I going to do?
Like obviously you're going tosurvive it.
Like it is what it is.
You have a child.
You're gonna, you're gonna makeit work.
I was like kind of out of myhead.
Now my kids twins are eight,son is nine, and I've got my
evenings back.
It took about eight years, butI got my evenings back.
(12:02):
Now you're wondering, like whatare you?
What are you talking about?
Because bedtime used to take meabout an hour and a half to two
hours, because I know I'm aproblem.
My husband would put them tobed, say goodnight, and he would
just vacate Like he would just.
I mean it was like the dust inthe wind just run from the room
and then for mommy, it was likeI need another hug.
Well, let's do this.
And I like to do prayers atnight with all my kids.
(12:25):
Some of them are traditionalprayers, but then I also do a
set of affirmations for my kidstoo.
So whenever I would pick up onsomething new that I wanted them
to just say out loud, I wouldadd it into the affirmation.
So that's, that's what we do atnight.
And but what was happening isthey're like oh, can you sit
with me a little bit, can youhold my hand?
And I'm their mother and myhusband.
I was like there's going tocome a time where they're not
(12:45):
going to want me to hold theirhand.
So I got to do it now.
He was like all right, just dowhat you need to do, and.
But then after a while itbecomes like very cumbersome.
I'm like I'm tired too, like Ijust want to go to bed.
Please stop calling me back inhere.
We rectified that situation thisyear, finally and by finally I
mean me really um, um, lettinggo a little bit.
But I did, and now I'm as quickas my husband in and out and
(13:09):
everyone for the most part.
Uh, he's in their rooms, that'sit, no more.
You know, up and down and backand forth, which I'm grateful
for, like I there's no other wayto put that I am grateful for
it.
I get to go and hang out withmy husband for an hour or two
before we both go to bed, likethis is awesome.
It's awesome.
I can't, I can't even tell you,but it took eight years to get
here.
It's a long.
It's a long road and there'sgoing to be much more to go
(13:32):
because my kids are still little.
So it's a lifetime of figuringit out with your partner and I
keep saying I apologize, I keepsaying, husband, but your
partner, like the person thatyou, you've chosen to be with
through all this.
It's a lifetime together, youknow, and kids need both their
parents.
They do I'm speaking from theheart here on this like you need
both your parents and I see iton my kids.
(13:54):
So another big round ofcongratulations all around to my
family, my extended family andall of the new additions.
I do want to take anothermoment to just say
congratulations to my cousin.
This week marks a milestone forher family with a birthday, and
that marks you another year asa mom.
So you are one of the greatestmoms that I know.
(14:16):
Advocating for your daughterhas never, never been a problem
for you, and commend you all theway on everything that you're
doing.
So congrats all around and Ihope you all enjoyed this little
trip down memory lane.
So congrats all around and Ihope you all enjoyed this little
trip down memory lane.
I tried to remember as much asI could and I will catch you on
the next one, take care.
Good morning everyone .
This is Still Bros' podcast.
This podcast was created forwomen, by women, to elevate
women's voices.
Very happy to be here with allof you today and a little bit of
a celebratory episode.
So I actually want to take aminute in this episode to say
welcome to three of the newestfamily members to my family, my
extended family.
We had some really, reallygreat stork deliveries this year
(00:22):
Three cousins all in a row,back to back.
We had some new arrivals and Ican't say enough about how
thrilled I am about this.
Now, as a mom and as a grandmaI do I get very excited.
Seeing families expand andseeing the expansion of a
lineage is is, to me, such abeautiful thing.
(00:46):
And you know, quite often whenmy husband and I have our whole
family here and it would be ourfive kids, so combined, five
children, two grandchildren andthen our son-in-law and whenever
we're all here, there's alwaysa moment when I look at
everybody and then I'll turn tomy husband and I'll say to him
you know, everyone here minusmyself and my son-in-law would
(01:08):
not be here today without youand it's such a huge, huge
blessing to be able to pull aunited family together.
It is very hard to do that.
It is incredibly hard to haveyour family come together and be
supportive of each other andremain united and it takes work,
like a lot of work, and ittakes a lot of, you know, not
(01:29):
sacrifice but, in some instances, sacrifice.
My husband sacrificed a greatdeal for his older children to
make sure that they stayedunited as a family unit, and
then now we have our three kidsand watching everyone grow
together is the most beautifulthing.
It's the most beautiful feeling.
So I do want to have a bigshout out to my cousins and
(01:51):
their wives, and my cousin andher husband, and to my aunt and
uncle, who went from onegrandchild to four, wait, two,
three, four within a couple ofmonths.
A Big congratulations toeverybody there.
I'm thrilled to come and visit.
I have some bits of plannedalready.
Really, really welcome and veryexcited for all of you.
(02:13):
Now, in honor of all the newarrivals in the family, my other
cousin, melissa, and I, who arenot part of this new arrival
crew, we started kind ofreminiscing about like, oh you
know things, what do we wish wehad done differently when we had
babies, or what was shockingfor us when we, when we first
had our kids and this is goingto sound kind of dumb, but one
of the biggest shocks that I gotand again it's going to sound
(02:34):
stupid, but please just bearwith me One of the larger shocks
that I got when I was when Iwas expecting my son my husband
said something to the effect ofwell, jenny, when I was
expecting my son, my husbandsaid something to the effect of
well, jenny, you know, you'renever going to be alone, ever
again.
And the way that he said it wasmore of like a you'll always
have him, he's always going tobe there.
That's your.
You know.
Your son is growing in yourstomach.
(02:55):
But for someone like me, whenhe said it in my head it was
like dun, dun, dun and I waslike I'll never be alone again.
And you know, because I'm verymuch a person who enjoys
solitude, I like quiet and Ilike my alone time, and which
sounds insane because I'vealways wanted like five or six
kids, and so to say that soundsnuts, but I do.
I like to have some alone time,I like to have some quiet, like
(03:18):
I like to do my thing.
I like to read, for Pete's sake, like can't really do that with
an infant, when you're likechasing after a bunch of kids.
So you know, that was like abig one for me.
And it's funny because this issomething that my cousin and I
were talking about today.
And as our kids have grown,we've come to the realization
that there's almost never amoment where we're by ourselves.
Now, me, yes, because I workedduring the day and I work from
(03:39):
home and my kids are in camp,which you all know at this point
, so I get to have that freedom.
But now that's only eight ornine years later.
Before, yes, there was alonetime while you're working, but
there was no true, just you'realone and you're doing something
for yourself.
Like this podcast could nothave existed when my kids were
infants, because they would haveall been crying on this podcast
with me, like I would have hadtwo on my chest, one in my lap,
(04:02):
and I would have been recordinglike that.
Like that's to the extent ofyou know me always being with
them.
My husband has a picture of mewhen I was working.
Oh boy, going back to thesememories.
But me, when I was working, Ihad my laptop, you know, propped
up on the side on a pillow.
I had a child under each arm,had my headphones on and I had a
(04:23):
child sitting in my lap, inbetween my legs, and in the
picture you can see from theangle that I am running a
webcast and on a conference call.
But I have all my babies withme and that's how they grew up
they actually I.
I again had the great fortuneof being able to work from home
and because of that I was ableto still accelerate my career
while taking care of my kids.
(04:44):
Nevertheless, not having alonetime is always a shock, and it
continues to be a shock when youdon't get that really much
needed like solitude moment.
Outside of that shock, one ofthe other things that nobody
talks about and so I'm going totalk about it is how difficult
it is after you have a baby.
Now people will say that, ohyeah, it's hard, you'll get
through it, you'll be fine.
The amount of rage that I usedto feel when I had my babies and
(05:09):
they were infants and peoplewould come to the house and they
would come in and they would befreshly showered and look
rested and they looked like theyhad eaten, like healthy food
and their skin was glowing andthey would kind of just come in
and say, oh, you'll be fine,you'll get through it, you're
tough, you can do it.
And in my head I was alwayslike F you and I feel a little
(05:30):
bit bad because I mean, I knoweveryone was really well
intentioned, but at the sametime I'm like I was exhausted, I
was overwhelmed.
I had postpartum depression,which nobody really knew about
at the time.
It would always be like this,like you're basically spitting
in my face.
It was very hard for me to gofrom you know, from having the
(05:53):
kids and that joy, but then toalso be like, oh my God, the
overwhelming amount of work.
It was one of the mostdifficult moments of my life
because your brain goes throughchanges, your body physically
went through a change, yourhormones are a disaster.
Now you're sleep deprived.
In these moments is the firsttimes that you will likely feel
(06:14):
like you hate your husband and Isay that with the nicest way
possible, because you don't hateyour husband.
Clearly you procreated with himlike you don't hate him.
You chose to marry this.
I chose you like.
I chose you as my person.
But kids throw something elseinto the mix, whatever it is and
I have an idea which I'll talkabout in minute, but like
something happens there and itmakes you and your husband
(06:35):
sometimes at odds and it doesn'thappen.
Maybe it doesn't happen toeverybody, but I would.
I would bet money that it does.
But people just don't talkabout it.
Nobody wants to talk about that.
They don't want people to belike oh, what's wrong with you?
You have marriage problems.
Nobody wants to have marriageproblems.
The secret is we all havemarriage problems and it's okay
because everyone has marriageproblems.
Do you think anyone's a hundredpercent happy?
(06:56):
I said to my cousin recentlythat my husband and I have found
a way where we like argue.
But we know we know each otherso well that the arguments last
about three and a half minutes.
They're not really heated andit kind of just like fizzles.
You know it's a stupiditybecause it's like what are we
going to fight about?
What is there to fight about atthis point?
But when you have a baby, youknow the fights are intense and
(07:17):
it gets real because you nowhave two people that have very
strong opinions about what issupposed to be happening with
this child.
And not only do you have twopeople with strong opinions, you
have to deal with in-laws aswell, because now all of a
sudden, everybody has opinions,and then you get the joy of
having pressure from otherpeople who think like this is my
moment, this is my time toshine, to tell you what you need
(07:38):
to do as a parent.
My favorite and I'm gonna saythis because this was me and I
just wanna slap myself in theface for this one my favorite
are the people that don't havekids that come around and say
well, you know what?
I read this book.
And the reason why it's myfavorite is because that's
exactly how I used to talkbefore I had kids.
My husband and I, like we'redating, he already had kids and
(08:01):
I used to say to him I have kids, you know, I'm not gonna let
them do this, or I'm only gonnaread books to them all the time.
That's all I'm gonna do and I'monly only going to let them do
this and I'm never going to dothis.
And what article says?
And there's research that hassaid blah, blah, blah.
And now I just want to punchmyself in the face because I'm
like oh my God, like I must havesounded so dumb.
(08:27):
And I say it to him now and helaughs at me because he's like
yeah, you used to really justtry to no idea what you were
talking about.
And it's comical, if you reallythink about it, the amount of
people that feel preparedbecause they've done loads of
research.
And I'm going to call out mycousin here because this is
something we were joking about.
So my cousin, who was cooriginal co host for the podcast
when I had my son, she flew infor it.
(08:49):
She stayed with me at thehospital.
She was there when he was bornBeautiful moment and then she
flew in for my brother's kids.
She's down in Florida, so sheflew in for everybody's kids to
be born.
She helped out the first weeklike great, amazing, amazing.
And so much so that we werelike, oh you know, when you have
a child, this is gonna be likeand I actually even said it to
her like, so this shows you likehow much we I just kind of
(09:12):
assumed I was like, oh, it'll beeasy Once you have a kid, like
you're going to, it's going tobe like a no brainer, you're not
even going to be like blinking.
She had a really awful.
She had a really awful struggleafter she had her daughter
because she had postpartumanxiety really badly and she
struggled really hard and Iactually I, you know it was
crazy because she even said ittoday.
She's like I thought that I wasgoing to have the easiest time
(09:34):
because I had witnessed all ofyou and I just assumed like,
yeah, oh, I know what I'm doinghere.
And then when it pushed him toshove, it's like, oh wait, I
don't know what I'm doing here.
It's totally different whenit's your child and you're
responsible for this.
Tiny things, life completelydifferent scenario.
So, yes, that's another point tobe made For all the new moms
out there.
You are going to get so muchadvice.
(09:54):
The reality is you're theparent and you have to do what
you think is best, no matterwhat anyone else says.
You have to do what's best foryour child.
So, if you want your kid on acertain specific schedule,
that's it.
That's law, that's it.
Do what you feel like is bestthat you need to do.
Now, yes, be open to people,listen to you know, if you want
(10:15):
to listen to reputable opinions,somebody that you trust, by all
means.
But at the end of the day, thatchild is your child.
You have to do what's right forthem by your book and your book
alone.
That's how I live my life andit's something my husband and I
feel very strongly about andfeel very strongly about, and I
really don't care what anyoneelse's opinions are about how
I'm raising my kids.
I like how I'm raising them.
I love the people they'returning out to be.
(10:35):
So you got to just do that.
Stick with that.
Do not feel pressure to moldanything specific.
It is up to you and yourhusband.
What is best for that child andyou two need to work on that
together.
That is not meant to be foreveryone to have an opinion and
you're taking a stock.
Now this third thing here.
It's not, it's not going tofeel good to hear it, but when I
was in the thick of thingsreally being complicated with my
(10:58):
kids and just really my healthand everything not doing well
and whatnot, when I was in thethick of it, somebody said to me
and I almost cried when theysaid it but a woman, an extended
family member, approached meand just said you know, I know
you're really struggling.
Now I don't.
At that time I didn't talkabout my struggle and I didn't
complain.
You are not going to hear mecomplain.
(11:19):
And so she just kind of pulledme aside and she's like this is
literally the hardest partyou're going through right now
is the.
This is it.
Once you get through this, likeeverything else is going to be
like a breeze, but you have to.
This is where you have to getthrough, and everyone, including
this woman, said to me when youhit five years old and you
start going after five, thingsare different.
It will start to loosen up andI can't tell you how right on
(11:42):
that was and I was, and in themoment I remember being like, oh
my God, that's four years away.
What am I going to do?
Like obviously you're going tosurvive it.
Like it is what it is.
You have a child.
You're gonna, you're gonna makeit work.
I was like kind of out of myhead.
Now my kids twins are eight,son is nine, and I've got my
evenings back.
It took about eight years, butI got my evenings back.
(12:02):
Now you're wondering, like whatare you?
What are you talking about?
Because bedtime used to take meabout an hour and a half to two
hours, because I know I'm aproblem.
My husband would put them tobed, say goodnight, and he would
just vacate Like he would just.
I mean it was like the dust inthe wind just run from the room
and then for mommy, it was likeI need another hug.
Well, let's do this.
And I like to do prayers atnight with all my kids.
(12:25):
Some of them are traditionalprayers, but then I also do a
set of affirmations for my kidstoo.
So whenever I would pick up onsomething new that I wanted them
to just say out loud, I wouldadd it into the affirmation.
So that's, that's what we do atnight.
And but what was happening isthey're like oh, can you sit
with me a little bit, can youhold my hand?
And I'm their mother and myhusband.
I was like there's going tocome a time where they're not
(12:45):
going to want me to hold theirhand.
So I got to do it now.
He was like all right, just dowhat you need to do, and.
But then after a while itbecomes like very cumbersome.
I'm like I'm tired too, like Ijust want to go to bed.
Please stop calling me back inhere.
We rectified that situation thisyear, finally and by finally I
mean me really um, um, lettinggo a little bit.
But I did, and now I'm as quickas my husband in and out and
(13:09):
everyone for the most part.
Uh, he's in their rooms, that'sit, no more.
You know, up and down and backand forth, which I'm grateful
for, like I there's no other wayto put that I am grateful for
it.
I get to go and hang out withmy husband for an hour or two
before we both go to bed, likethis is awesome.
It's awesome.
I can't, I can't even tell you,but it took eight years to get
here.
It's a long.
It's a long road and there'sgoing to be much more to go
(13:32):
because my kids are still little.
So it's a lifetime of figuringit out with your partner and I
keep saying I apologize, I keepsaying, husband, but your
partner, like the person thatyou, you've chosen to be with
through all this.
It's a lifetime together, youknow, and kids need both their
parents.
They do I'm speaking from theheart here on this like you need
both your parents and I see iton my kids.
(13:54):
So another big round ofcongratulations all around to my
family, my extended family andall of the new additions.
I do want to take anothermoment to just say
congratulations to my cousin.
This week marks a milestone forher family with a birthday, and
that marks you another year asa mom.
So you are one of the greatestmoms that I know.
(14:16):
Advocating for your daughterhas never, never been a problem
for you, and commend you all theway on everything that you're
doing.
So congrats all around and Ihope you all enjoyed this little
trip down memory lane.
So congrats all around and Ihope you all enjoyed this little
trip down memory lane.
I tried to remember as much asI could and I will catch you on
the next one, take care.
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