The Wayward Podcast Episode 4, Wayward Mom Life: What just happened?

The fourth formal installment of The Wayward Podcast was about being a mom. Not just having the title, but the real truth of what it means to forever dedicate a piece of your brain to another person’s existence.

Oh my gosh. This show has become more than an interest of mine, it’s kind of my friend. As always, I was really relating to The Wayward Podcast topic. In fact, I’m thinking of just always starting these posts with that intro from now on. “Hello, I loved The Wayward Podcast this week again, it was about me, again.”

One week it’s about periods (I’ve had plenty of those), and another week it’s about fears (I have a few of those), and now it’s about what having kids really means (I have six of those). I told you. It’s about me. And you, it’s also about you. This is what I love about the thing.

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Kim and Briana, your goal was to make a show where we can all relate, be on the same wavelength. You wanted us to know we’re all wayward sisters (and brothers!).

You did a thing. It happened. It’s happening. THANK YOU. I think it’s time for a slumber party and some Madlibs. Let’s do this.

Being wayward as a person absolutely spills over into mothering. But even for someone with mothering experience, the struggle is always real. This week’s episode of The Wayward Podcast points out that it’s easy and even natural to look at a woman on the brink in the store with her kids and think, “what the hell is going on over there?”

But let’s get real. When that woman looks like she’s ready to sit on the floor and cry or she’s apologizing to everyone around for her kids’ noise, what’s really happening to her? Chances are, it’s not just the kids that are having a meltdown. These “Wayward Moms” are mere human creatures just like us.

Water you doing?

Yeah, if you’ve had a child, you probably know what’s going on there. Sure, some kids are just a little “extra.” But more often than not, that woman is overwhelmed. Maybe just for this moment, maybe in general. If her baby is fresh, chances are that woman’s exhausted and almost certainly dehydrated.

It’s my single unsolicited piece of advice I always give every single mother. So I am throwing it in here, too. Drink more water, more than you can imagine tolerable. Water is literally the source of our body’s functioning.

This isn’t even mother advice, it’s for all the humans because the majority of people are underhydrated. For someone who is breastfeeding, that can reach clinical levels in a matter of a few days.

A healthy person should take in a minimum of 1/2 of their body weight in ounces of water daily to be normally hydrated. If you weigh 100 pounds, you need 50 ounces of water. Fact check: 8 glasses is not the standard; it is based on weight and behavior!

A teacup is 8 ounces, a bottle from the store is usually around 16. Find a favorite vessel and know how many of them you need to consume daily.

For a smoker, an athlete, someone feeding another person with their own body’s water, that amount increases substantially. What happens when you don’t have enough water? Your organs dry up (your  brain is an organ, so is your skin). For a nursing mom, the baby won’t get enough milk, you will get tired, the baby will get cranky, you’ll go insane.

You will get more wrinkles. You will lose your train of thought. Everyone around you will suffer. Your body will also literally fear not having enough and our famous friend, water retention, will show its ugly, swollen face. That’s right, this is how our body speaks to us and attempts to defend itself against damage.

In the worst scenario, you will end up in the hospital. Many nursing mothers reach the point that they really should be in a hospital but they don’t speak up. As they discussed on The Wayward Podcast, “mom shame” is real. We think, “I can take it. I’m supposed to take it.” This is reminiscent of what we do to ourselves in relation to the pain and realities of our monthly inconvenience.

Ctrl+Alt+Del

The Wayward Podcast welcomed its first guests in this episode. Kim’s neighbor and friend, Emily, joined the show with her fresh little baby, Harper. Emily was able to give us a great firsthand insight to what’s happening to a mom’s head when the world is on her shoulders.

One of the first topics on this Wayward Podcast was how a mother dedicates a piece of her brain to her new person and never really gets it back. This is necessary and has a lot to do with a little thing many of us know as “mom brain.”

This is that state where we pour baby formula into our coffee or forget to dry the clothes we washed last night. Less commonly, mom brain can be our friend. Like when we impulsively throw a roll of Mentos on the belt at the last second and shove them in our purse (this is a true story).

A week later when we’re digging for the insurance card at the strep throat visit, we find those Mentos and “Hooray! *I’m so eating those when I get out of here*” Then again later when we find them after another week and actually get to sneakily shove them in our mouths so any given child won’t hijack them. But in most cases, it is just a blob of multi-tasking, schedule-keeping, mess-cleaning, errand-running, survival maneuvers.

Emily said it was like having a bunch of tabs open in her brain all the time. This is so relatable. We know what happens when we allow that, right? Our device slows down, glitches happen. Eventually, the whole thing will just freeze.

“Sorry, something went wrong!” “Sorry, you are running low on storage and no more messages can be received.” “Please delete a few items.” Time to install (or avoid, if already jittered) some caffeine and make some tough choices.

But um, what can I do away with? Well, first to go should be our personal restrictions. Emily shared her story about deciding to accept failure (we’ll get back to that), and give her daughter a device to entertain herself so she could take time to care for her own skin.

This is something she tries to stick to as a way of maintaining her self-care. And she should! This practice of routine is a healthy decision and something to keep us consistent, an anchor of sorts for our day. So it comes down to prioritizing and filing things away for later or, uh, never.

What Emily was experiencing when she decided to violate her own imposed limits with her daughter’s screentime was a matter of survival. An onlooker may not see that, but that’s just one reason it’s not accurate to judge from a distance.

Emily, Harper’s mom

The ladies addressed this in The Wayward Podcast. The first question is, “who do you think you’re failing?” Emily said, “I don’t know!” That’s because the answer is, no one. While she set herself goals for raising her kids, she has to keep that anchor in place and sometimes we have to negotiate. In this case, Emily violated a self-imposed rule about limiting her daughter’s screen time.

The goal is to do everything, but sometimes, when life gets “super lifey,” as Kim put it, the goal is just as simple as avoiding the need for a hard reset. Briana reminded us that asking for help or taking that time you need is not a sign of weakness, but one of strength. If we don’t close some of those tabs, the freeze is inevitable and it’s no longer a choice, it’s Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Briana also pointed out the unfair judgments imposed on mothers by society and our own brains. We commend someone for hiring a personal trainer, but frown upon a therapist? Both are asking for help and both make a person stronger. So what’s the difference?

Briana also talked about something she and her husband have recently dug into. They are working to perceive the world as a whole, single entity. In the thinking that we are all one, energetically, what we do to ourselves, we do to each other and vice versa. .

This goes along with the saying that Kim offered up, “If you want self-esteem, do esteemable acts.” These two things together are the reason Emily and Harper were on The Wayward Podcast this week. Emily had gone home, put her (correct) key into her (correct) front door, and it just did not work. For her, that was the last straw.

She had that, “I am done” moment. There, in Kim’s closet, she talked about her story of her face routine, her previous view of mothers, and all the intricacies of how her brain will never be the same now. We struggle to make sure we remember that we are more than our jobs or our relationships. We are not just Emily, Harper’s mom. We are also just Emily.

Emily talked about how Kim will see her just sitting and staring and she will just say something to her or give her a quick boost about how she gets it. Emily says that this can totally change everything about her mood and day and it’s so simple. Going out in the world and just having that moment for someone can be a lifesaver.

Emily was locked out of her apartment and had a baby with her. As The Wayward Podcast was rolling along at its usual pace, Harper woke up and started making little baby sounds. Emily’s immediate reaction was knowing it was time to do something.

She apologized and the ladies talked about how that wasn’t needed and Emily agreed, she does it too often. We all know about this! I talked about it right at the start of this post. Emily’s brain was just doing its thing. Her amygdala was alerted and she went into another mode.

It’s that little sound that will make a nursing mother drench her shirt in a grocery store. The baby was hungry. I was just listening across the universal airwaves and I knew it the second she made a peep. Our brains are literally wired to respond to this. Even the smell of a baby has actually been bottled for sale because it does something to us, physically.

Sometimes, there is just nothing we can do. This is a fine torture for a mother in the car with her crying baby or someone locked out of their apartment where their baby’s formula and bottles live. Kim and Briana wrapped up the podcast at that point because they all knew it was time to help find a solution. They came back on and filled us in on what they came up with and it was so me.

After some brainstorming, Harper was going on with her only form of communication, crying. A mother’s ears will burn and turn on her if her child is wailing for long enough. The fight or flight mechanism makes her basically freak out. This is when it’s critical to make some survival choices.

Unfortunately, we don’t always have the benefit of a helping hand when we really need one, and when that is the case, it really is the right thing to do what Briana said she had done before (and I sure have), walk away. Make sure the baby is safe, and get out of there. You need to reset that brain mechanism in order to get the job done and stay sane. I am serious, that is important.

So what do you do in this case? Briana said, “don’t mess with three moms.” Emily was flustered, Briana and Kim were on the case. Briana held Harper and gave her some of her own soothing energy while Emily and Kim headed off to do a thing. In the kitchen, they found a solution. That’s what we do. We find a way.

So schedule a crying session for your bath time later like Emily suggested, or do some quick fix breathing techniques to get from here to there. Touch your fingertips to your thumb one at a time while you spell out calm like Kim and her daughter, or something else unique to you.

And take that time before it’s a breaking point. It’s not necessary to have some extreme moment to know you need to balance your emotional state and physical health. Get that babysitter and take a long, dark, soak with that bath bomb you got for your birthday last year. Turn some Supernatural on your laptop and eat ice cream in the tub, or sprouts, or whatever moves you. You don’t even have to leave home. You can just get that hour you critically need.

Whatever the case may be, we are strong, we are brave, and we are human, we are vulnerable. You can’t control that primitive survival response any more than Pavlov’s dogs could. It’s a thing.

We don’t always need help, but we do deserve it. Briana reminded us, “You have to be a whole person to be a good partner and a good parent.” Kim reminded us that “If I want my child in a loving, caring, supportive partnership, I need to be a loving, caring, supportive partner.” Let them see you struggle and ask for help. Show them what it really means to be strong.

A crying baby isn’t a sign of failure, it’s a sign the baby trusts someone will respond. It’s a sign of success. No need to apologize, but we all do it. No need to punish ourselves for handing the kid a tablet while we wash our faces, but we’ve all been there. There’s no need to think we have to do everything, but we’ve all tried.

Just take it from The Wayward Podcast, “We’re all f&*$ing in this together, moms or not.” Ask, and you shall receive. Heartache to heartache, we stand, right? No promises, no demands, because love is a battlefield. Namaste. Carry on.

Well ladies and gentlemen, what was your take on this episode of The Wayward Podcast? Do you have something to add? Can you relate? Let us know in the comments below or send us a tweet!

The Wayward Podcast has new episodes airing on Mondays. Listen live at 12pm EST or check out previous episodes on the web at Podbean.