Ep 07: Parenting Twins and Embracing Imperfection

Today, I'm joined by Melissa to talk about the unexpected emotional challenges that come with raising twins and how important it is for parents to regulate their emotions to better guide their children. Melissa shares her proactive approaches to her twins' nutrition and development, and why it is okay to admit our imperfections as parents.

Episode Highlights:
(00:00 - 01:51) Melissa talks about her experience as a new parent and the unexpected gift of giving birth to twins

(07:35 - 08:46) Melissa shares about the challenge she encountered called "cluster feeding", and why emotional regulation is the hardest during the first month

(24:33 - 25:35) How Melissa prioritizes self-care and socializing to help her nervous system calm down

Do you have a story to tell?
If your breastfeeding experience has been transformative for you and you'd like to share it with others, then please let us know! We're always looking for new stories to let other people know what's possible. Just send your name and a short overview of your journey, or even just your words of wisdom for new parents.

Also, if you need support and want to connect with other parents who understand what you're going through, check out the Nourished Young Community so we can help support you on your journey.

Visit www.nourishedyoung.com to learn more.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Avery Young and this is The Nourished Young Podcast. From the subway train to the soccer field, everywhere I go, people have a story to tell me about their experience feeding and caring for their new baby. I decided it was time to amplify those voices so we can all know what's real and what's possible, and make those who are beginning their parenting journey feel a little less alone.

Today, I'm going to be talking with Melissa as she shares her story about learning how to be a new parent of not one, but two children at the same time with her twins who are now almost two and a half, and how the emotional struggles of being a new parent was really surprising to her. Hi, Melissa, welcome to The Nourished Young Podcast. I am so happy to have you here.

Melissa:
Thank you for having me. I mean, I mentioned this earlier, but you are so instrumental in my breastfeeding journey that I'm just really excited to be able to contribute to your new adventure.

Avery:
Thank you, so why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your experience as a parent.

01:19
Melissa:                                                                                                                                                         
Yeah, so I am 40. Yeah, I'm 40. I had my kids when I was about 37. I'm a new mom of twins. I still consider myself a new mom. I don't know when that newness ever goes away, but my husband and I both wanted twins. My husband is an only child, so with my age and just background, we just wanted to make sure that we were able to have more than one kid and we had twins and it was exactly what we wanted. It's definitely been a journey. I think leading up to having kids, I was very focused on the health aspect that I could control. I was really big into reading nutrition books. I'm really big into specific to twins. I made sure I had a lot of protein because I knew that was going to be really important in the labor and delivery.

I was so focused on learning how to that birthing process that I completely overlooked what it was going to mean after the fact. Here we are now, they're older, and I have a girlfriend of mine who said to me, "My mom said to me, don't call it the terrible twos. It's kind of going to plant the seed of that's where your head's going to go."

Avery:
I love that.

Melissa:
She's like, "I call it the terrific twos, and you also don't want your kids hearing them, calling them terrible, and they're kind of going to play into that." I've always called it the terrific twos, and I don't think we've had much turmoil relative to what I feel like, especially, I'll go on Reddit a lot. I feel like it's just parents just really laying it out and the people will post, "I just can't get my kid under control, et cetera."

I don't think I've had the worst of it, but when it's the worst of it, I would say the part that I have found to be hardest is emotional regulation. Part of that is mostly for me, but also making sure that I'm teaching, I'm giving my kids the tools that they need to succeed in the future. I am very mindful of the fact that one, they're female. Two, I'm Hispanic, so they're part Hispanic, and all the societal implications that comes with a woman and being a Hispanic woman, and I don't want them to grow up that if they were to cry, if there's a conflict now, they're like, "Ah, you're so emotional," and all those stereotypes. Even for myself, I think I'm very smart. I think I'm a lovely, wonderful person, but I know my limitations and I struggle with emotional regulation.

It could be from ADD, it could be just who I am, but I wanted to make sure that I gave my kids the tools that they needed. You read the books, you know the script, and then in the moment when your kid's having the meltdown, I don't remember the script. The script is out the window, and now I'm like, "How do I take my kid off the ledge without making them feel like ..." I don't want to say like, "Oh, you're being difficult." Just any of these trigger words that will make them think that they're lesser than, but in the moment it's like a cortisol going through your body. You're not even thinking of straight, so to speak. Then added to that for some context, I think everyone's, especially now that I'm a parent, I'm noticing how much of community plays into the parenting role.

For me and my husband, both our moms are deceased, my husband's father is deceased. My father lives in a different state, and so we have no family with us. I think the emotional regulation is a lot more prevalent in the context of we don't have the break that maybe my cousin had my aunt living next door to him, so he would just drop off the kid, go on a date. It allows you those breaks you need to have that center so that you can give your kids your all without breaking. We don't have that. That definitely plays a factor into needing to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves, to take care of our kids.

 05:39
Avery:                                                                                                                                                               
Yeah, because nobody learns in a crisis moment, right?

Melissa:
Right.

Avery:
What if you give yourself permission to have your crisis moment? Our job as a parent is to do the homework so that our kids' triggers and our kids' crisis moments don't become ours too.

Melissa:
Right.

Avery:
Because if they're having a hard time and then our emotions respond to their emotions, then we're really asking our kids, our babies, our toddlers, to help us regulate our own emotions. We're asking them to hold space for us instead of the other way around. Our job as a parent is really to learn how to separate our emotions from our kids' behaviors because it's not really about us. That's about them. I can't help them in that moment if I'm already there, if I'm in the pool with them, everything's falling apart, right?

Melissa:
Right, and I've read that in the context of when you're older as far as childhood trauma in the context of parents who put too much of the parental role on the kids. "Oh my God, you're making me ..." And it's like, well, you're putting the impetus on the kid, and it's like a kid. A kid's not going to know how to regulate during this. It's up to you as the parent. You're not supposed to flip the script. I think that's really important. What we try to do, what I try to do is one thing I ... One of the scripts I've been able to hold true in my memory is when then, so when you take off your shoes, then we can go play. Versus starting with a negative, it's just showing them there's steps to move along and versus, "If you just put your shoes away," you know what I mean?

There's a way that you can kind of phrase it, but I think the other thing about emotional regulation, the first month was definitely the hardest. That was when you and I definitely worked more together from a breastfeeding perspective, and it was just like the cluster feeding. I had never heard of really was familiar with that before. I think that was the hardest part for me the first month 'cause I was so physically exhausted, they cluster Fred from two to four, and it was both of them. It's like you go from one baby to the other, and I thought that was the cliche you read about or you hear your friends say, "Are you watching movies where you're like, 'Oh, you're a parent and you're so exhausted.'" I was like, "Wow, I am truly the most exhausted I've ever been," but now that I'm out of that, this is the most exhausting part because that is only temporary.

That's one month. During that month I kept telling myself, "Dude, it's just one month. It's literally in the blip of life. It is nothing. Do not worry about this. You just need to power through and everything will be fine," but emotional regulation for your kids is not limited to the month that they were born. It is literally from birth until you're gone. They could be 40 years old and you might still have to emotionally regulate your kid and yourself. That's the part that has been exhausting. When I'm like, I have a long day at work and my husband had a long day at work, and they come home and you're like, every day you've been like, "Hey, when you get home, take off your shoes, put your socks in the hamper," and every day they do it. And then one day they walk in and they're like, just throw themselves on the floor, and I'm just like, "What happened?"

Just making sure they're like, "I don't want to eat." I'm not going to force them to eat, and I feel like there was a different approach generationally speaking, where there was more like, "You're not going to get off this table until you eat your food," and that's not how I want to parent. That's not how I was parented either. To be fair, I wasn't raised like that. I think I had a great childhood and my parents were awesome and we had a great relationship, but those are the moments where it's like, that's the exhaustion that I think is not spoken about versus the cliche of the baby vomit on you and all that for the first few months.

09:59
Avery:
Yeah, there's a lot of really, I think powerful and important things that you said in there. I think one of them too is this idea that perfection versus achievable, that's apparent, right? We're humans, and so our parents weren't perfect people because we're humans. We also don't have to be perfect humans to be really good parents. We all are humans, and so our children, they're tiny humans too. There are days where there are days where the best I can do is get out a couch maybe, or maybe not take off my pajamas and go sit on my couch with a blanket and watch TV. When I was a grownup and I didn't have children, I could choose those days. When I am a grownup and now that I have children, I can't choose those days. I might still feel that way, and then that might involve my children sitting on top of me.

The work of self-regulation, the work of emotional regulation is a work of a lifetime. That's not a checkbox to make. That's a process to teach. How can I learn how to regulate my own body? What works for me? How can I learn how to give myself grace when it doesn't work? How can I figure out what does work? How can I find my warning signals ahead of time to know that my teapot is just about to boil even when I haven't figured it out yet? Those are those keys for emotional regulation, and it's your commitment to learning those that actually is what helps your children learn them and helps you be the best parent that you can be. It's not about doing them perfectly, right?

Melissa:
I wholeheartedly believe in giving yourself grace, and that's one thing that I, in no way, I'm trying to be a perfect parent. I read this thing where it was like, it doesn't matter how hard you try, your kid will have traumas. Your goal is to just minimize it. There's no way anyone's going to grow up with zero trauma. I go back to that and think to myself, again, it's just about tools and tools that I've been trying to work on myself. For example, the other day, my husband went out with a friend for drinks. I put the babies to bed and we don't do this often and my husband didn't want to do it, and I'm at the point where I'm trying to encourage us as individuals and as a couple to see the value in your personal space.

Go out with your friend. You are still an individual. You cannot, especially, right, when we don't have our parents to help us, he's like, "But you're going to put the babies alone." I'm like, "That's okay," and it might be stressful, but it's fine. He leaves, one of the babies wakes up in the middle of the night. She's like, "I want daddy," and I was like, "Everything's fine." She was screaming, but it's the room, so it's pitch dark. I can't see anything. I'm holding her, and she just stops, and she goes, "Mommy, can we do breathing exercises?" I don't think she said exercises 'cause she's not that advanced, but something to that effect. I told my husband, I was like, "I have never been prouder in that moment." I was like, "Absolutely," and she went and she took in her three breaths and she calmed down.

She said, "Can I put my head on your shoulder?" I said, "Sure." I was like, "Oh my God, [inaudible 00:13:32], it's working. Everything we teach them, they're learning, seeing to apply it." Not to say it's always like that. There's definitely times where I'm like, "Oh my God, you're driving me bananas," and afterwards they'll be like, "Hey, I just want you to know I'm really sorry. I was just really frustrated." Frustrated is a new word in their vocabulary, and one of them especially, she'll come up to and go, "Mommy, are you frustrated?" I'll say, "Yeah, I'm trying to get us to go for a walk. You wanted to go for a walk and no one will put on their shoes." She'll go, "Okay, mom, listen, I'll put on my shoes," or again, something to that effect. It's not a perfect speech.

In those moments, again, teaching them that we all make mistakes and that's okay. Two, own up to your mistakes. If you were out of line, say you're sorry, and three explaining why there's frustration versus just like, "You're not listening." It's like, "Well, I want you to put on your shoes," a tangible task that she knows will help relieve that frustration, so she'll go and put on her shoes. I try to make things as tangible as possible for them, so it's less of an emotional vomiting. Do you know what I mean?

Avery:
Yeah.

15:04
Melissa:
I think so far we're doing so good, but this is definitely the result of reading, and for every cliché following the parenting TikToks and Instagram, and I don't hold too wholeheartedly for all of those. I know it's like they're recording. It's not like that all the time, basically. There's some accounts, I think there's a guy called Mr. Chaz. Teacher Chaz or something. He's great, and just try to take those learnings and apply it to my kids. I don't know everything.

Avery:
Right. And we don't have to, right? Because if you didn't make mistakes, then it's our mistakes that we teach, we model how to recover from that. If we're perfect and our kids think we're perfect and they're terrified of making mistake, right?

Melissa:
Totally.

Avery:
They become afraid of that instead of giving them permission to be human too, saying, you know what? My body doesn't want to be touched right now. That's the modeling for our children. I get to define boundaries for my body, even though you're my child and I love you, I get to say right now my body doesn't feel good being touched, or my body doesn't need that or want that, and so that we can teach our kids to do that. Because I think what you were saying too is that kids are so much more emotionally intelligent and have the capacity for more emotional intelligence than we give them credit for, but they're also immature and their brains can't, they can't be held responsible to hold emotional space for us too.

19:16
Melissa:
Yeah, and I think it's funny because I feel like people will use these scripts to try to emotionally regulate their kids. When it comes to sleep training, I feel like there's this belief specific to sleep training where you're like, "Well, that's how they learn. They have to learn to regulate their emotions," but in that context, I feel like the parent is saying that because in their best interest.

In the daytime when a kid is acting out, they'll turn on the TV because the parent cannot emotionally regulate the kid because it's their best interest. It's funny to me how we sometimes put the weight on the kid, to your point, and it's like the kid doesn't have the capacity for that. Me personally, I wouldn't say with sleep training, I think the most we got was we stepped away for 10 minutes when they were crying when we came back. There's certain things where I'm like, we expect them to emotionally regulate, but they're not capable of that. They're so young. You know what I mean? Having to remember that, I think your partnership is also so important. I remember listening to Brene Brown say she has this approach with her husband that says, she's like, "If I'm having a bad day, I'll come up to my husband and I'll say, 'I have 20% in me. That's all I can give.' He's like, 'Well, I can carry your 20% and I'll give one twin.' He'll carry the weight."

I feel like my husband and I try to do that where it's like, normally we're both in it and he's great. He's a 100% dedicated partner just like me, but in those days where I'm like, "Dude, I am going to break. I need to take a 10 minute lap. I need to go outside and get some fresh air," He's like, "I got you." I think having that partnership where you set yourself up for success each other up instead of the kind of partner who that cliche man, there's that cliche who he won't change a diaper and she can't do anything. It's like, oh man, she is really going to break because no one's allowing her the space to break in private. You know what I mean?

Avery:
Yeah.

Melissa:
You can still break. Just don't have to do it in front of the kid, go in the other room, cry, scream, do whatever you need to do and then just come back out. If no one gives you that grace to do that, you know what I mean? I think it's just a lot more challenging. I just feel really grateful that my husband, we both compliment each other like that.

Avery:
Yeah. I think everybody, doesn't matter whether you're just born or whether you are 100 years old, we're always all doing the best we can with the resources that we have. When you have a parent, like a partnership where you're working together, then the goal is that you're both not on zero at the same time. Doing things like you said, he went out for dinner is part of what helps him recharge his battery. That might cause yours to get down a little bit more, but that's what causes his to go way up so that then you can have a chance to reset your battery in the way that you need to. I think that that sort of, you're right, that sort of message, the traditional message that we have given to new moms and women is that we're supposed to have a battery charged at 100% all the time because we're women.

Our battery is supposed to be somehow miraculously rechargeable innately. We don't give ourselves grace and permission that actually that is not at all how it works. Nobody has a battery that innately recharges. It takes intention and self-care to both monitor how quickly it's depleting and also, figure out how to fill it back up. A good partnership is one where both partners are aware of that, and they want to make sure that it never has to be 50/50 all of the time, but that it shouldn't be 80/20 all of the time either.

Melissa:
Right. Yeah, I agree. I think my next goal is hobbies.

Avery:
Oh, yeah.

Melissa:
I say that because I didn't come from a household of hobbies really. My parents loved to garden, but that was kind of the extent of it. My mom was the mom who on Saturday, she went to Marshall's. She was like a, what do you call that? Retail therapy. That was her approach.

I tell my husband, "I want our kids to see us have a life outside of them," not because obviously I love them and when I'm not with them, I miss them, but I want them to model that in their own life. I don't want them to be the kind of person who everything's about the partner and they kind of lose themselves or the kids. For my mom, my parents were divorced, and I respect and understand where she was coming from. We were middle-class, but we were middle-class where all that money was being funneled into the kids. It wasn't like middle-class and taking vacations type of thing.

Because of that, I felt, and some backstory there is my family moved from Puerto Rico to New York in the 1940s, 1950s. My parents, my mom had enrolled in college, didn't go to college, dropped out to help her mom financially. My grandmother is a single mom who worked in a factory, and my dad has a similar story. Me and my brother and my cousins were the first generation to go to college, and our parents grew up with this, we're Puerto Rican, but we want to show the world that we are cool, we're important too, versus this skewed stereotype of us being lazy or whatever. The consequence of that was I felt too much pressure. There was too much betting on me and my brother, and I don't want to do that to my kids. I want them to be like, "Oh, mom's going to go, she's going to take a stained glass or a woodworking class, and that's why she's gone." You know what I mean?

Avery:
Yeah.

Melissa:
Then I feel like you come back home and you have those stories. You tell your partner, you tell your kids, and I want them to be able to grow up and also feel like I didn't put all weight on them because I kind of distributed it. That they'll learn that when they have a partnership, not all the weight is going to be put on the partnership either, and that they can have their own thing, be their own person, but we're not quite there yet. Daycare is expensive. That's a whole other thing. I'm looking like, "[inaudible 00:23:33] class is $350, damn," and I'm like, but I think that's all part of-

Avery:
But it's even giving yourself permission to go out to dinner, right?

Melissa:
For sure.

Avery:
It doesn't just have to, I think doing hobbies are amazing because they help fill up that battery and they give us more purpose, and that life is more than just a relationship. Life is meant to be experienced fully, and those things are what life experience, life more fully and showing modeling to our children that I do these things because they bring me joy and I need them because I need them, because they make me feel better. Helps our children learn that it's okay to prioritize themselves first to you. As a woman and as a Puerto Rican woman, we're definitely not taught that it's okay to, and you have twin daughters, we're definitely not taught that it's okay to prioritize ourself. In fact, our societies told us the exact opposite, right?

24:32
Melissa:
Yeah. I actually, I took a mental health week last week, and I got my nails done. I went to [inaudible 00:24:41]. I got my favorite food, I got my massage. I'm trying to take advantage of that a little more because just be good to yourself. I feel like we talk about mental health in society at least, especially among progressive groups, but then we don't apply it to ourselves. I'm like, "Oh," to my friend, "You should really take a break. You're burnt out," but then I don't take a break because I'm burnt out, and I'm like, well, I need to start treating myself the way I would talk to a friend. The same advice I would give a friend.

You're right. Last week my husband and I got a babysitter and we went out to a comedy show with some friends, and it was just so nice to just go out. I had lived in New York prior to living in Atlanta, and we used to go to comedy shows two to four times a month. That's one thing with pandemic and just having kids that we haven't been able to do. I think that helps you regulate your emotions in that you have downtime, right? You're not always going, going, going, going. Then also for my kids, trying to incorporate tools that encourage emotional regulation, but not at face value. We'll do yoga. They don't know that that's good for your nervous system. Do you know what I mean? They just know that they're doing yoga. Mom's doing it, so they love it.

Avery:
I mean, that's the point of activities is that activities that you do them, if they don't bring you joy and they don't make you feel good, then it becomes a chore and it becomes something else hard to do, right? Finding those activities, the whole point of them is to help our nervous system calm down, to help us develop a skill in a way that is fun so that we can learn, oh, there's a way to live a more fulfilled life without it feeling like everything is climbing a mountain. This is easy because it feels fun, right?

Melissa:
Yeah, and we also try to teach them, a big thing we use is use your words. I say this especially in the context of I think women have been maybe innately, but also in part due to just the way society has put people in boxes where women are more in tune "with your emotions", but men will keep it all inside. My husband and I talk about that a lot. We'll tell them, "Use your words. Why are you frustrated? Why are you mad?" It's like, "Well, she didn't give me the toy." It's like, "Well, you can tell her, 'Hey, I'm mad and I'm sad,' And use your words." Let her know it's okay to be mad. It's okay to be sad. There's nothing wrong with that, but screaming isn't going to get your message across. Start by explaining the situation and then follow it up with, "What's the next step? What is it that you want?"

"Well, share the toy with me," and I'm like, "Okay, but she also doesn't have to share the toy with you. She just started playing with it." She's like ... I'm like, "But that's okay. When it's your turn to have a toy, you don't want her to take it away from you." I'm just trying to make sure that they use their words. Part of that, hopefully, and also as an aside, but related, if my husband and I get into an argument or a discussion, and we've literally talked about this one, I had a boyfriend tell me many years ago that he's like, "I never saw my parents argue, so I don't feel like I know how to argue. They always did it behind closed door," and I never thought about that before. My parents were the opposite. They would just yell at each other in front of me, which is not healthy.

It's why, one of the reasons, I don't know how to emotionally regulate, 'cause they didn't do it. They just like everything came out full volume. I want my kids to see me and my husband been walk through, discuss whatever conflict we have in a way that's healthy, and I can see them, they're looking. You know what I mean? My husband will be like, "Well, I didn't like that you blah, blah, blah." I'll say, "Okay, I understand where you're coming from. I didn't like that you blah, blah, blah," and then we'll come to conclusion. We're very mindful of keeping our voices. It's not going to be a perfect volume, but as low as we can so that they see what they're going to expect in a partnership, and then themselves as siblings. I didn't have a sister growing up. I had a brother and he was 11 years older.

I think our dynamic is going to be very different than theirs, but I want them to be able to resolve conflicts between themselves because it's only natural that's going to happen, right? They're going to be the same age. You're just going to, whether it's, I don't know, fighting for clothes, that's a cliche, but I want them to be able to learn to have those difficult conversations with themselves without it being a screaming match. Also, trying to actively have those difficult conversations in front of them so that they can see how we've emotionally regulated ourselves during times of conflict.

29:55
Avery:
They can see the process, right? Because what I hear you saying is that what you want is that for your children to grow up with a level of emotional intelligence that our generation didn't have because it wasn't modeled for us, right? Our children don't learn by what we say. They learn by what we do.

Melissa:
For sure.

Avery:
The more we practice that, the more we learn that then we're learning. We can give them a heads up, we can give them a lift because they don't have to start from the same scratch that we did. They can start from what we've learned and then go from there. So much of that is giving ourselves the grace when we don't know this either. It's okay when we screw this up, it's okay if you're having a discussion and your voice goes up and you can come back and catch it and be like, oh, wow, I must've felt really upset about that. Hey, everybody. Mom was really mad. You said, when you lose it and you go behind a door and scream, you can, or you can just pick up a pillow and be like, I had such big emotions right now. I didn't know what to do with them. I knew it would hurt your ears, so I grabbed this pillow and screamed into it, and I feel so much better. How do we help our, because emotional bursts, those are normal parts of life. We can't get around those, but we can learn some less destructive ways to cope in those moments, right?

Melissa:
Yeah.

Avery:
I think that that idea of giving yourself, you said you did all these amazing things. You went for lunch and you had a manicure and all those things. It's so easy to give ourselves logical permission to do that and not fully and completely embrace that permission to do that without guilt. I remember when my babies were little and I would leave them with my husband and I would go off. I spent the whole time out worried, feeling guilty, worried if he was okay. I couldn't authentically enjoy that because I was so, my feelings of what I should be doing as a woman were completely overshadowing my experience.

Melissa:
Yeah, I definitely see that. I don't think ... I spoke with a friend about this recently as part of ... My husband's really good about logical things, like, "This is the perfect time to refinance our house." I'm not that person. I'm just never going to be that person. I'm more the person. I'm like, "Dude, you spend so much time caring for this family and you don't care for yourself, and you need to self care." I've been trying to institute this thing where once a year we have a friend trip, and I forced him this year. He was like, "Well, everyone's broke." I'm like, "You can just go back to New York and see your friends." Not everything has to be like, I went to Rome or Vietnam. It can just be like you went and you chilled on the couch with your friends and ate the food that you liked in New York.

The first time I did that was June of 2021, and I can promise you, I told this to my husband. I did not think of anyone but myself the whole weekend. I was there with my childhood friends from Puerto Rico, and as soon as I got back, I told my husband, I was like, "You need to go." I was like, "It's so nice to have a weekend of not wiping butts and puke and just caring for someone else," but they were already a year and a half. I don't know that I would've been able to do that under one. I think there's an age where you're not blobs anymore. Everyone's cool to know how to navigate. Not even as a reflection of my husband, just worst-case scenario, I went to New York to help a friend of mine. She gave birth. I went up her weekend last December to help her with her newborn.

As soon as I left, one of my kids got 103 degree fever, and so I'm away and I'm helping my friend and my friend's house was the opposite of my house postpartum. Things were chill. Everything was super chill. My postpartum experience that first week after I gave birth was like sleep deprived, exhausted, just like I have the dog and who's going to walk the dog now? Everything like that. That's when I felt guilty. I was like, "Why am I here helping my friend who's fine, and meanwhile, my husband's at home with these two sick kids?" I cut my trip short and I went home and I was like, "No offense, Addie. I love you, but I think you got it." She's like, "It's cool," and I left because at that point I was like, worst-case scenario. I want to make sure if they end up in the hospital, I don't want to be like, "Oh, I was in New York with a friend." I want to be there for them.

Avery:
That was giving yourself permission to do it either way. That's where that empowered place comes in, and I think it's so important that we step into that and give ourselves authentic permission to take the space that we need, whether our baby is two weeks old and our space is a shower, or whether our baby is six weeks old and our space is getting our haircut again for the first time in a while.

35:09
Melissa:
Those two things you said are very real. Taking a shower that first few months, oh my God, what a luxury.

Avery:
Without feeling guilty. That's the caveat. You really embrace that it's okay. You deserve that. You get to do those things because it's actually those things, those moments of self-care that they maybe become a weekend later that actually lets us show up for our family and our babies in the most authentic way and robust way that we can.

Melissa:
Yeah.

Avery:
Well, it sounds like you're doing amazing with your family now.

Melissa:
I mean, I'm not going to lie. There's plenty of things in life I don't think I'm good at, but I think I'm a pretty good parent.

Avery:
I love that.

Melissa:
That's the one thing that I'm pretty arrogant about, and not to say I'm perfect, right? I'm not pretending I am, but I think I'm doing a good job and ...

Avery:
I love that.

Melissa:
Now I try to also get the books that complement it for them. You know what I mean? Books on biting, Ramona went through a biting phase, and then Nico went through a hitting phase. I got a book I'm biting and hitting, and they taught in the books. They show you how to emotionally regulate. You can pump your fist, you can hug yourself, all those things, and the kids don't know. It's like a kid book meant to give them tools. They just see graphics and they're like, "Cool, we're reading a new book," and so it's like, got you. I feel like they've learned through, and then I try to balance it, have books that are just fun books. Not everything's a teaching moment, but I also recognize that man, the resources, the access, the resources we have now in modern times and what that affords us from an access standpoint cannot compare to what our parents had, which was literally nothing, right?

Because even if you had a library near you, it's like someone might have checked out the book. There's just so many different components, whereas now you can go online. If you need to see a therapist, you can do that over Zoom too, just all these things that if they were fried, I know they weren't going to take out a book on how to regulate your kid or see a therapist for them to learn how to emotionally regulate. Now we have these tools, and I just feel really lucky that we have access to them because I don't know how you did this in 1960 or 1950.

Avery:
They did the best they could with the resources they had too, and their upbringing. That's the thing is we all get to, our parents did exactly, like they did the best they could because everybody loves their children the same, really. They loved us as much as we love our children, and they were working just as hard in the best way that they could. As we wrap up, if you had anything you would share with a brand new parent who's pregnant and about to enter into the world of having a baby for the first time, what would you tell them?

Melissa:
I think just that it's okay to be selfish and give yourself permission for that. Like I said, I think it's easier when you have community. I think that's one thing that we don't really have in society anymore, because people move, right, before everyone stayed in the same town. Not everyone, obviously, but not as prevalent nowadays. It's a little harder when you don't have that community or maybe your partner, you don't have a partner, but find a way to give yourself that space. It can literally just be like, I found that I wasn't reading books anymore, and I really love that. I used to love to read, and so I tried to read for 15 minutes. I was like, "I just need to read for 15 minutes. I don't need to read it an hour like I did before kids," and that wasn't really working out.

Now, I do audio books when I walk the dogs and just find a way to make it work for you. It's still selfish in that it's for you, but you can find different ways to make it work, and that's okay. Communicate that to your partner and make sure that your partner communicates that to you as well, so that they don't have too much on them and you don't have too much on yourselves. I think just that it's okay to be selfish, and I think your kids will be better off for it. You'll be more emotionally regulated, and so you can be there for your kids in the way that they need.

Avery:
Well, that is amazing words of wisdom. Thank you, Melissa, so much for joining me today.

Melissa:
Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Avery:
And sharing your struggles and your wisdom and all of those. I appreciate it.

Melissa:
I appreciate it too. Thank you so much.

Avery:
All right. Bye-bye.

Melissa:
Bye.

40:01
Do you have a story to tell? If your feeding experience has been transformative for you and you'd like to share it with others, then please let us know. We're always looking for new stories to let other people know what's possible. Just send your name in a short overview of your journey or even just your words of wisdom for new parents to stories at nourishedyoung.com. If you need support or want to connect with other parents who understand what you're going through, then make sure you head over to nourishedyoung.com and check out The Nourished Young community so we can help support you in your journey too.