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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
Motherhood Unfiltered: The Messy Truth
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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Good morning everyone. This is Still Bros' podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. Very happy to be here with all of you today and a little bit of a celebratory episode. So I actually want to take a minute in this episode to say welcome to three of the newest family members to my family, my extended family. We had some really, really great stork deliveries this year Three cousins all in a row, back to back. We had some new arrivals and I can't say enough about how thrilled I am about this. Now, as a mom and as a grandma I do I get very excited.
Speaker 1:Seeing families expand and seeing the expansion of a lineage is is, to me, such a beautiful thing. And you know, quite often when my husband and I have our whole family here and it would be our five kids, so combined, five children, two grandchildren and then our son-in-law and whenever we're all here, there's always a moment when I look at everybody and then I'll turn to my husband and I'll say to him you know, everyone here minus myself and my son-in-law would not be here today without you and it's such a huge, huge blessing to be able to pull a united family together. It is very hard to do that. It is incredibly hard to have your family come together and be supportive of each other and remain united and it takes work, like a lot of work, and it takes a lot of, you know, not sacrifice but, in some instances, sacrifice. My husband sacrificed a great deal for his older children to make sure that they stayed united as a family unit, and then now we have our three kids and watching everyone grow together is the most beautiful thing. It's the most beautiful feeling. So I do want to have a big shout out to my cousins and their wives, and my cousin and her husband, and to my aunt and uncle, who went from one grandchild to four, wait, two, three, four within a couple of months. A Big congratulations to everybody there. I'm thrilled to come and visit. I have some bits of planned already. Really, really welcome and very excited for all of you.
Speaker 1:Now, in honor of all the new arrivals in the family, my other cousin, melissa, and I, who are not part of this new arrival crew, we started kind of reminiscing about like, oh you know things, what do we wish we had done differently when we had babies, or what was shocking for us when we, when we first had our kids and this is going to sound kind of dumb, but one of the biggest shocks that I got and again it's going to sound stupid, but please just bear with me One of the larger shocks that I got when I was when I was expecting my son my husband said something to the effect of well, jenny, when I was expecting my son, my husband said something to the effect of well, jenny, you know, you're never going to be alone, ever again. And the way that he said it was more of like a you'll always have him, he's always going to be there. That's your. You know. Your son is growing in your stomach. But for someone like me, when he said it in my head it was like dun, dun, dun and I was like I'll never be alone again.
Speaker 1:And you know, because I'm very much a person who enjoys solitude, I like quiet and I like my alone time, and which sounds insane because I've always wanted like five or six kids, and so to say that sounds nuts, but I do. I like to have some alone time, I like to have some quiet, like 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 like chasing after a bunch of kids. So you know, that was like a big one for me. And it's funny because this is something 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 a moment where we're by ourselves. Now, me, yes, because I worked during the day and I work from 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 or nine years later.
Speaker 1:Before, yes, there was alone time while you're working, but there was no true, just you're alone and you're doing something for yourself. Like this podcast could not have existed when my kids were infants, because they would have all been crying on this podcast with me, like I would have had two on my chest, one in my lap, and I would have been recording like that. Like that's to the extent of you know me always being with them. My husband has a picture of me when I was working. Oh boy, going back to these memories. But me, when I was working, I had 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 child sitting in my lap, in between my legs, and in the picture you can see from the angle that I am running a webcast and on a conference call. But I have all my babies with me and that's how they grew up they actually I. I again had the great fortune of being able to work from home and because of that I was able to still accelerate my career while taking care of my kids.
Speaker 1:Nevertheless, not having alone time is always a shock, and it continues to be a shock when you don't get that really much needed like solitude moment. Outside of that shock, one of the other things that nobody talks about and so I'm going to talk about it is how difficult it is after you have a baby. Now people will say that, oh yeah, it's hard, you'll get through it, you'll be fine. The amount of rage that I used to feel when I had my babies and they were infants and people would come to the house and they would come in and they would be freshly showered and look rested and they looked like they had eaten, like healthy food and their skin was glowing and they 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 always like F you and I feel a little bit bad because I mean, I know everyone was really well intentioned, but at the same time 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.
Speaker 1:It was very hard for me to go from you know, from having the kids and that joy, but then to also be like, oh my God, the overwhelming amount of work. It was one of the most difficult moments of my life because your brain goes through changes, your body physically went through a change, your hormones are a disaster. Now you're sleep deprived. In these moments is the first times that you will likely feel like you hate your husband and I say that with the nicest way possible, because you don't hate your husband. Clearly you procreated with him like you don't hate him. You chose to marry this. I chose you like. I chose you as my person.
Speaker 1:But kids throw something else into the mix, whatever it is and I have an idea which I'll talk about in minute, but like something happens there and it makes you and your husband sometimes at odds and it doesn't happen. Maybe it doesn't happen to everybody, but I would. I would bet money that it does. But people just don't talk about it. Nobody wants to talk about that. They don't want people to be like oh, what's wrong with you? You have marriage problems. Nobody wants to have marriage problems. The secret is we all have marriage problems and it's okay because everyone has marriage problems. Do you think anyone's a hundred percent happy?
Speaker 1:I said to my cousin recently that my husband and I have found a way where we like argue. But we know we know each other so well that the arguments last about three and a half minutes. They're not really heated and it kind of just like fizzles. You know it's a stupidity because it's like what are we going to fight about? What is there to fight about at this point? But when you have a baby, you know the fights are intense and it gets real because you now have two people that have very strong opinions about what is supposed to be happening with this child. And not only do you have two people with strong opinions, you have to deal with in-laws as well, because now all of a sudden, everybody has opinions, and then you get the joy of having pressure from other people who think like this is my moment, this is my time to shine, to tell you what you need to do as a parent.
Speaker 1:My favorite and I'm gonna say this because this was me and I just wanna slap myself in the face for this one my favorite are the people that don't have kids that come around and say well, you know what? I read this book. And the reason why it's my favorite is because that's exactly how I used to talk before I had kids. My husband and I, like we're dating, he already had kids and I used to say to him I have kids, you know, I'm not gonna let them do this, or I'm only gonna read books to them all the time. That's all I'm gonna do and I'm only only going to let them do this and I'm never going to do this. And what article says? And there's research that has said blah, blah, blah. And now I just want to punch myself in the face because I'm like oh my God, like I must have sounded so dumb. And I say it to him now and he laughs at me because he's like yeah, you used to really just try to no idea what you were talking about. And it's comical, if you really think about it, the amount of people that feel prepared because they've done loads of research. And I'm going to call out my cousin here because this is something we were joking about.
Speaker 1:So my cousin, who was co original co host for the podcast when I had my son, she flew in for it. She stayed with me at the hospital. She was there when he was born Beautiful moment and then she flew in for my brother's kids. She's down in Florida, so she flew in for everybody's kids to be born. She helped out the first week like great, amazing, amazing. And so much so that we were like, oh you know, when you have a child, this is gonna be like and I actually even said it to her like, so this shows you like how much we I just kind of assumed I was like, oh, it'll be easy Once you have a kid, like you're going to, it's going to be like a no brainer, you're not even going to be like blinking. She had a really awful. She had a really awful struggle after she had her daughter because she had postpartum anxiety really badly and she struggled really hard and I actually I, you know it was crazy because she even said it today. She's like I thought that I was going to have the easiest time because I had witnessed all of you and I just assumed like, yeah, oh, I know what I'm doing here. And then when it pushed him to shove, it's like, oh wait, I don't know what I'm doing here. It's totally different when it's your child and you're responsible for this. Tiny things, life completely different scenario.
Speaker 1:So, yes, that's another point to be made For all the new moms out there. You are going to get so much advice. The reality is you're the parent and you have to do what you think is best, no matter what anyone else says. You have to do what's best for your child. So, if you want your kid on a certain specific schedule, that's it. That's law, that's it. Do what you feel like is best that you need to do. Now, yes, be open to people, listen to you know, if you want to listen to reputable opinions, somebody that you trust, by all means. But at the end of the day, that child is your child. You have to do what's right for them by your book and your book alone. That's how I live my life and it's something my husband and I feel very strongly about and feel very strongly about, and I really don't care what anyone else's opinions are about how I'm raising my kids. I like how I'm raising them. I love the people they're turning out to be. So you got to just do that. Stick with that. Do not feel pressure to mold anything specific. It is up to you and your husband. What is best for that child and you two need to work on that together. That is not meant to be for everyone to have an opinion and you're taking a stock.
Speaker 1:Now this third thing here. It's not, it's not going to feel good to hear it, but when I was in the thick of things really being complicated with my kids and just really my health and everything not doing well and whatnot, when I was in the thick of it, somebody said to me and I almost cried when they said it but a woman, an extended family member, approached me and just said you know, I know you're really struggling. Now I don't. At that time I didn't talk about my struggle and I didn't complain. You are not going to hear me complain. And so she just kind of pulled me aside and she's like this is literally the hardest part you're going through right now is the. This is it.
Speaker 1:Once you get through this, like everything else is going to be like a breeze, but you have to. This is where you have to get through, and everyone, including this woman, said to me when you hit five years old and you start going after five, things are different. It will start to loosen up and I can't tell you how right on that was and I was, and in the moment I remember being like, oh my God, that's four years away. What am I going to do? Like obviously you're going to survive it. Like it is what it is. You have a child. You're gonna, you're gonna make it work. I was like kind of out of my head. Now my kids twins are eight, son is nine, and I've got my evenings back. It took about eight years, but I got my evenings back. Now you're wondering, like what are you? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:Because bedtime used to take me about an hour and a half to two hours, because I know I'm a problem. My husband would put them to bed, say goodnight, and he would just vacate Like he would just. I mean it was like the dust in the wind just run from the room and then for mommy, it was like I need another hug. Well, let's do this. And I like to do prayers at night with all my kids. Some of them are traditional prayers, but then I also do a set of affirmations for my kids too. So whenever I would pick up on something new that I wanted them to just say out loud, I would add it into the affirmation. So that's, that's what we do at night.
Speaker 1:And but what was happening is they're like oh, can you sit with me a little bit, can you hold my hand? And I'm their mother and my husband. I was like there's going to come a time where they're not going to want me to hold their hand. So I got to do it now. He was like all right, just do what you need to do, and. But then after a while it becomes like very cumbersome. I'm like I'm tired too, like I just want to go to bed. Please stop calling me back in here.
Speaker 1:We rectified that situation this year, finally and by finally I mean me really um, um, letting go a little bit. But I did, and now I'm as quick as my husband in and out and everyone for the most part. Uh, he's in their rooms, that's it, no more. You know, up and down and back and forth, which I'm grateful for, like I there's no other way to put that I am grateful for it. I get to go and hang out with my husband for an hour or two before we both go to bed, like this 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's going to be much more to go because my kids are still little. So it's a lifetime of figuring it out with your partner and I keep saying I apologize, I keep saying, husband, but your partner, like the person that you, you've chosen to be with through all this. It's a lifetime together, you know, and kids need both their parents. They do I'm speaking from the heart here on this like you need both your parents and I see it on my kids.
Speaker 1:So another big round of congratulations all around to my family, my extended family and all of the new additions. I do want to take another moment to just say congratulations to my cousin. This week marks a milestone for her family with a birthday, and that marks you another year as a mom. So you are one of the greatest moms that I know. Advocating for your daughter has never, never been a problem for you, and commend you all the way on everything that you're doing. So congrats all around and I hope you all enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. So congrats all around and I hope you all enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. I tried to remember as much as I could and I will catch you on the next one, take care.
