- Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the Breakdown with Bethany. I'm Bethany Braun-Silva. And today my guest is Gretchen Rossi, a former cast member of the Real Housewives of Orange County. Who's also an entrepreneur and a loving mother. She's also famously engaged to another cast member from the Real Housewives of Orange County, Slade Smiley. So, we're gonna be talking about her not being married, living in sin and different ways you can keep kids safe with an amazing life-saving device. You're not gonna wanna miss it.(upbeat music) So, we were to say like, mom life, I actually have to run and pick up my kids. So, we're gonna jump right in. And your daughter, Skylar is about two and a half. She's gonna be three in July. So, I just wanna know how is that going? I mean, pandemic, toddler, all of it, what's going on?- So, I love to say that it's like that juxtaposition of it. It's the most incredible thing ever that you will do, but it is literally the hardest thing you would ever do. It's all about maintaining a balance and good time management, which I still haven't got down (laughs). It's so much harder than I think I thought it was ever gonna be. I think I had this vision of everything's just gonna be, rainbows and butterflies and I'm gonna have this kid and it's just gonna be so much fun. And then you like wake up and your house is a disaster and you have no time for yourself or self-care. And you have this little person that need you 24/7. And you're just like, ah, (laughs).- I know, it's a lot, it's definitely a lot. And actually when I was preparing for this interview, I was researching about different interviews you've done. And you talked openly about postpartum depression and that even like, that may have even been a reason why you might not even be getting pregnant right away. So, I wanna know sort of what was that like in the beginning and how has it evolved till now? Because one of my favorite things that I say a lot is that postpartum, that postpartum period is not six weeks. It's not even six months. It's like the time from you becoming a mother and beyond. My kids are six and 10, and I feel like I'm still in the postpartum period. So, tell us a little bit about how it was then opposed to now almost three years later.- So, I will say it's definitely a lot better. I really had bad postpartum depression. And I think for me in particular, because I was older having her, I think that was the hardest part, I went from almost 41 years of my life, waking up in my life, being about me, and (laughs) about what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go and where I was gonna travel to next or whatever it was or what career move I was gonna make. And when you have a child, it just all stops like right then and there. And you're like this milking machine, it changes every single aspect of your life. And you think okay, I got this, I can be a working mom. I can just feed this into my everyday life. But really you just don't realize how much energy, time that it requires and you are so exhausted, you're sleepless. And I think that all adds to it. And I also had a C-section and I think when you have a C-section, at least I learned after the fact, I didn't have a C-section by choice, it kind of happened in within 24 hours of having her. When you have a natural birth through the birth canal, there's certain hormones that are released. And when you have a C-section, there's certain hormones that aren't released. And so, your body kinda goes into almost like a hormonal shock, if you will, and your body just get it's way off. And so, I think for me, it was a combination of I've done four and a half years of IVF, and I had so many hormones in my body from that. And then I had the C-section and my body, it just freaked out. And the chemical imbalance that was happening in my body was something I couldn't control. And that was another frustrating part as I consider myself a very happy go lucky, upbeat person most of the time. So, the fact that I was so down and depressed was really hard for me to wrap my mind around and being that I wanted her so badly, you feel like this guilt on top of it. But thankfully I started using our bio range CBD products and I feel like I naturally was able to get myself better. I did not wanna do the pharmaceutical drugs, even though my pediatrician and my gynecologist almost had to do an intervention with me. They wanted me to take the pharmaceutical drugs. And I said, no, I'm gonna try the natural way. I took our CBD products. Thankfully, I came out of it. But like you said, and I'm sorry, this is such a long answer. But like you said, it's strange because you almost go through these like periods of where you feel like you're back in postpartum because of all the different stages that your children go through. And it's like, you have to completely re-arrange your schedule or your thing, or like now they're potty training. So, you have to like figure that out in your life they change their sleeping schedule, or whatever happens. So, it's just constantly bobbing and weaving with these kids (laughs).- You absolutely said it. I think that's one of the things that surprised me too, when I became a mom. It's like, we get over one kind of hurdle and then we're thrust back into another. And one of the ones for me, and I know you speak about this a lot and you can certainly relate to it. You represent this amazing product, is that your kids are now starting solids. You're so happy, is a huge milestone, but as they enter toddlerhood, you're cutting up food, and then there's that concern about choking, which I know is like, you are such an amazing spokesperson for, and I actually had never heard of life back. So, please tell us about life back. I wanna tell our viewers that we are filming this. When is today, Gretchen? The 15th, the 14th, but-- We don't even know is don't know the day.- No idea what the date is.- But 3/28 is a really important day. So, I want it all about that.- Okay, so March 28th is National Choking Awareness day. And this is a really important thing for me to share because I had a pretty big scare with Skylar when she was one, it was her first birthday, and it was a mermaid theme party. And we had all this sequence table cloths everywhere, sequence on 'em were really pretty large about the size of a quarter. And a couple of the sequences had fallen off of the table cloth and were on the ground. And she had picked up one of those sequences and put it in her mouth. Now, thank God, I happen to see the reflection of the sun and see it in the back of her mouth. And I freaked out and I went running across the pool'cause she was taking pictures with these mermaids we had there. And I like fell on the ground, jumped in the pool, like started sweeping her mouth. And everyone's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? I'm like, she has something in her mouth. And they're like, no, she doesn't, she's fine. I'm like, no, I saw it. There's something in her mouth. And thankfully I like went way up in the back and I got the piece of sequence out. Now when something like that happens to you, you're physically shaken. I was crying, I was shaking. Like all my friends came up to me. They're like, it's okay, she's okay, dah dah dah. And I'm like, I know but she would've like choked and more than likely died on that. And that's when I went into this deep research, if you will, trying to find a product or trying to find solutions in case, God forbid, I was ever in that predicament again. And the helmet maneuver didn't work or the current choking protocols did not work because you think of like a little baby and doing some of those current choking protocols is little scary on a small little being like that. So, that's when I came across LifeVac and I have one of them here.'Cause it's easier to explain when I have it in hand. This is a LifeVac device. And what this does, is it goes over your nose and your mouth, like so, and it's literally a place push and pull and it dislodges anything that might be obstructing your airway. And it's saved already just under 300 lives. It's not only for children but it is for adults. The kit that you get comes with the child mask and the adult mask, which is so nice. You don't have to buy two separate masks. And I keep one in my car and I keep it right here in my kitchen closet here, in case, God forbid, anything was ever happen with her. I take 'em to birthday parties, I take 'em to restaurants, I take it everywhere with me. And it's almost like a sense of peace I have, knowing that I have this as a back-up plan. We always recommend that you try the current choking protocols to begin with. And then if that's not working, you can pull this out. There has been so many viral videos, for videos that have gone viral of people in their home videos, pulling this out and saving their child, EMTs, we've had firefighters use this. We've had a retired police man, use one of these devices on a 10 month old, that was choking on a pancake in a restaurant. He just happened to be one of the people dining there. And he ran out to his car and saved this baby's life with this. So, this truly is something that works. This ups your chances of survival from 50 to 70% to 99%. And I don't know about you, but as a mom, why the heck when I not have one of these everywhere I go, just as a safety precaution. So, for National Choking Awareness month, you're doing, what's called save a life challenge. I just posted it today. So, if you guys hear about this, please repost it. It's just a slide that talks about saving a life and having an important device like this in your home. And it's really just about spreading the word, because at this point, like you, like me, I had no idea of device like this was even available to us. So, now that I know this, I just wanna tell everybody, use my voice, use my platform to let as many people know about this,'cause it can save not only your child, but also a loved one, the seniors, your husband. I had a friend whose husband passed away right in front of her and her children, choking on a piece of steak. So, it's just silly. This should be like a fire extinguisher in our homes, on the airplanes, in our businesses. This should be everywhere.- I totally agree. We've had not quite a scare as you described with your daughter when she at her birthday, but we've had of course, we've had scares too. It's something that kids are learning and we're watching and it could happen so quickly. So, guys be sure to go over to Gretchen's Instagram and check that out.- They can also find it @lifevac.net. If they wanna go directly to LifeVac. And then if they use code Gretchen10, then they can actually get 10% off. And I say that because I just don't want you guys to have any excuse not to get it. My code doesn't help me, it's not about that. It's about just get one, don't think about it, just have it in your home as a safety precaution. That's the most important to me. I've received so many DMs and emails from people saying, thank God that you posted about this, because it saved my grandchild, they saved my friend, they saved this. Those kind of emails and text messages or DMs is everything to me.- Yeah, and I just got me thinking too, because in that moment you're so stressed and you're not really thinking, like you might have practiced that helmet maneuver, that infant CPR, but to have that device which requires almost no thought process, it seems so easy to use. It is just sort of like a no brainer. Like I'm gonna have three, I'm gonna buy.- And that's why I have have one in my car and in my house. Because a lot of the times when you're running out the door, you're gonna forgetting about it. So, I literally have it in the back of my car so that when I'm pulling out the stroller or the diaper bag, it's just right there and I can grab it. And I can't tell you how many times I've been at a party and like kids, especially when you're doing like super bowl parties or stuff like this. And there's a whole table set of up of like vegetables, or a hot dog or something like that. 4th of July when there's things there and kids are up there just reaching, and they put something in their mouth and obvious parents are talking, we're not even paying attention to what's happening. Next thing they're choking. It's like, can you imagine if one of your friends had that available and was able to save your child or you were able to save somebody else's child? What a cool thing?- Yeah, that's great, I love it. Like I said, I'm gonna get 'em. But while I have you here, I have to switch topics just a little bit, because my husband and I, he's my now husband. But we were together for a long time and not married. And we had two boys before we got married and decided like this really marriage wasn't a priority. Like the kids were the priority and all that, but I got like super pressured (laughs). So, you're famously not married.(laughing) Not in a negative way. Like you even did the broadcast about it. You guys have been engaged. Like even your engagement, the way you proposed was so not traditional. So, I wanted to like talk to you about that, almost for like my own personal (laughs).- I love it.- What's that like, have you gotten judgment? Do you feel like you're kinda breaking a taboo or doing something taboo or breaking a stigma? I'm just so curious because I love it (laughs).- Yes, you know what? For us, it never was about like lemme prove a point. It really wasn't about that slate. And I knew four days after being together that we were in love and that we wanted to be together for the rest of our life. We could just fill it in our soul. And when we got engaged, we had every intention of getting married. And we actually even picked a date and then he got booked to go do a mini-series down in Mexico. And it was during that time period. And then we kinda didn't realize that it was Memorial day weekend. And so, a lot of our friends and family wouldn't have been able to come at that date. So we were like, ah. So, we kind of just decided, okay, we'll pick another date. Well then we just got so heavily involved in IVF and in that whole process, and that is very expensive. IVF process is very expensive. So we just decided, we're not gonna put all of our money into a big wedding where we really rather have this family. And we already felt like we were married. We felt like, it's like we didn't have to have a piece of paper in a big expensive wedding in order to prove that we were together and in love. And so, that's really what it came down to for us. It was more about just not filling the need to have like this marriage certificate to prove that we were loving and committed. But with that said, we're not against marriage at all. And as a matter of fact, we've already made our commitment before God and with each other. And so to me, I feel like we're married. I call him my husband, he calls me his wife. We don't think of it as anything other than that, we truly value each other at that level. We just don't feel the need that we have to go necessarily make it a legal thing. And one day we might, honestly, Sky might just be a like, mom, dad, I want you to be officially married and we'll be like, okay.- That's what happened with us. So, my husband's Catholic and when we were getting our son baptized, first of all, that was like in and of itself a little stressful 'cause we were married and we were going to the Catholic church, to baptize our son. So, the priest said, he's like, that's fine. He was very kind. But he was like, when your child grows, it might be something that offers them a little bit more comfort and security. So, we'll see what Skylar says (laughs).- Yes, we'll see what she says. But like I said, him and I already kinda had a private ceremony. We haven't really talked about this much. We already did a private ceremony. Him and I, Sky was actually there. And we made our commitment before God with super important people in our life. And that's really what matters though.- Awesome, I love it. My final question question to you, Gretchen I love your style. You're so fashion forward and you have this adorable little girl. So, us about all these like matching moments. Because you do it so well. Is Skylar, does she love it, or is she still kind of too young to know that you guys are doing like this awesome match (laughs)?- So, she went through like a little bit-- I don't know how to explain it, as an infant till about eight months she had no clue. And it was just like, oh this is fun. Mommy and me matching outfits all the time. But I shouldn't say no clue, but she was just like, yeah, whatever, I'm a baby. Then at about one till about maybe two months ago. So, like two months and two and a half, something right around there. She just was not having it. Like she was over it. And she was just like, no, I don't wanna to take picture. I don't wanna match, I don't want anything. And then all of a sudden at two and a half, she wants to look like mommy. She wants to sit at my makeup chair with me. She wants to do her hair. She wants to get dressed in pretty dresses. She wants to match mommy. She wants to take pictures. Now it's starting to get so much fun because she's really into it now. We got her one of those like fake little phones, that is like a target. And it has a thing where it's like tic tic tic. And so, she's like cute, like mommy smile. And then she like smiles and we take one to go. So, it's really cute now'cause she's into it. But it took her a minute and I was just like, you can't not be like a fashion girl if you're my daughter, right? (laughs)- I'm so happy that she's into it again. I hope it lasts a really really long time. Gretchen, thank you so much for talking with me today. Let's remind everybody where they can go for that LifeVac information, also where they can find you on Instagram.- So, on Instagram you can find me @gretchenrossi, and then LifeVac you go to lifevac.net. You can use code Gretchen10 to get a percentage off and save a life.- Great, thank you so much.- Great to see you.(upbeat music)