The Moment You Knew | Ep. 2

Episode 2 – The Moment You Knew

Did you always know you wanted to be a mom?

In this episode of Worth the Walk, we dive into the question many women ask themselves at some point in life — when did you know motherhood was part of your story?

We talk about the paths that lead people toward motherhood, the moments that shape that decision, and how different everyone’s journey can be.

Join us as we share personal reflections, explore what influences the desire to become a mother, and discuss how that realization can arrive in ways both subtle and profound.

Sometimes there isn’t one clear moment — and sometimes there is.

Either way, it’s all part of the walk.

Got a story, question, opinion, or just want to say hi? Send it in and it might be featured in a future episode.

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Whether you're listening in the car, at the gym, or out for a walk, we’re glad you’re here.

This is Worth The Walk.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Like if you would ask me when I was eight years old, what do you want to be when you grow up? My first answer was a mom. And mine was to take over the world. Yeah. I mean, look, you still are. Like, I mean, why stop me? Welcome to a space where we talk about the journey. Every twist, every triumph, every moment that shaped who we are today. Here, we explore the paths that women walk on their journey to motherhood, identity, and everything in between. These are the stories that change us, the moments that ground us, the truths we don't talk out loud nearly enough. If you're searching for connection, comfort, conversation, a couple of good laughs, you're in the right place. This is worth the walk. Let's begin. Welcome back, everybody. I'm excited to have episode two to begin with. And it is Claudette sitting here. Beside her is Sherry. Happy to be here. This is us, the two of us once back again. And we're going to start today's episode with the conversation of like why? Did you want to be a mom? Did you always want to be a mom? How did it strike you that you thought that being a mom was one of the best things you were ever going to do? How did we start the journey? So that's today's conversation. And did you always know you wanted to be a mom? No. No, absolutely not. You know, I I I was not even a babysitter. You know how everybody, you know, starts off with the babysitting course and what have you, and and and wants to be a babysitter and loves the little tiny babies and all of that. And you know that there's 13 years between us. Yeah. And who was the sister that took care of you and carried you around? That would have been our oldest sister. That's correct. I was her little mini me. Yes, it was. It wasn't the other sister who was me. Yeah. I I didn't carry you around. Not the time of day. Nope. When I was little. I I was not inclined. No. I was very self-centered. Oh, I can't tell. Like, I mean, it was so one of the things I think we're going to discover as we go through this podcast and we're being honest and we talk about things together and to to the whole world, just so you know that as well. That you change. You are not the same person season over season. Your children change you. So I am not the same person I was when I was 25 and I gave birth for the first time. And I'm not totally different. Then when my children became teenagers, I was a different person. And then when my children grew into adults, I was a totally different person. And then grandchildren came and I'm now another totally different person. It's a discovery about yourself. You have to discover and you grow. I mean, uh hopefully. And now this is a different journey for me too, because my children are not here with me in Nova Scotia. They're back in Ontario. And now I have to find out like who am I? Like who is who's Claudette? Like what like what does she actually do? Do I understand me? Where's my journey? So this walk that I'm on is remarkably different. Yeah, that's a good point. You have had no real separation from your children at all. No, fit like physically and emotionally, and all of those things. Like you've been very, very close to your children. For 35 years, my children have been under my roof or close to my roof. And I have been intimately involved with every bit of their life. Yeah. How how hard is it? Like, like, come on. Really though. I don't know if we've talked about how hard this new transition is for you. I'm I'm just kind of it's this journey for me is remarkably different, right? But that's today's topic, right? I mean, did you always know you want to be a mom? Like my answer was no. Like when I was 16 to 21, the only person Claudette thought about is sitting right here, right? Uh the high heels, you know, the the short dresses, the the fancy walk and talk, and you know, the only thing I thought to spend my money on was uh stilettos and smokes and a couple of good drinks at the bar and party now. That's it. So I mean this this was our whole life. I did not think about having children. Yeah. And then we got married, and it was like some clock blew up in my head. Oh, good old internal. It was really I was just sitting there and I married, and I thought, oh my lord, I I need to have a child now. Now now now I did all this all in order and I'm married. I now need to have a baby. And that was, you know, but I didn't build up to it. And I don't know if that makes you better or worse, right? If you were a babysitter, um, maybe the oldest who took care of a child. Um no, I was the youngest, and I grew up almost like an only child, just because of the age difference between me and my older sisters. So eight years between me and the sister who was just above me, and then 12 and a bit between you and I, and 13 between Lori and I. And I mean, I always like if you would ask me when I was eight years old, what do you want to be when you grow up? My first answer was a mom. I didn't, you know, I didn't think about being anything else. I just wanted to be a mom. I didn't want to, um, I didn't really have a desire to I mean, not that I didn't want to go to school, I guess. I just knew that my ultimate end goal was to be a mom. And mine was to take over the world. Yeah. Yeah. I I was I like. I mean, look, we still are. Like, I mean, why stop now? It's like, I mean, it was like, don't tell me what to do. And if he told me I couldn't do it, I want to do it anyways, right? So I literally my whole life have charged into every room, you know, without a lot of thought, which, you know, there's a lot of stories behind that one too, but we won't even go there. But that that was me. And then I had a child, and it was different, right? It was just different. But I didn't plan my whole life to be a mom. See, and I saw it. I did. And I mean, look, I was pretty selfish too. And I think that's a pretty common theme. I think in adolescence, anyway, you kind of tend to be quite inward and looking inward and being a little selfish on that. But I remember our mother telling us stories about how we'd have company over and they'd have children to come to play with me. I would take everything I owned and I would go high and I would hide it because I wouldn't want them to touch it. I didn't want anybody messing with my stuff. That's right. I literally would hide it all. Only child syndrome, don't touch it. They would come over to play and they'd be like, we're just sitting looking at each other because all the toys were shoved in the closet. I'd leave up the books that I hated on the ground. That was all they would let them touch. And Lori and I had uh so there's only 11 months between Lori and I. That's right. Irish twins. Irish twins. So I I don't know what that gave me. I don't know. What was that? So I mean we had Barbies. I remember Barbies, of course. And but whatever was mine was Lori's, right? So whatever was mine was mine. Yes, right. Ours was just like it didn't matter. If you asked Charles, it's still that way to it's still that way to die. That poor man, I feel so bad sometimes. It's like he would share anything, piece of pie, anything. I'm telling you, if I have a piece of cake in front of me, God help your soul if you take a fork to try and cut a piece of that cake. I know I'm getting better. I think I am, but yeah. Now think about your kids. You would have given them the whole plate, wouldn't you? No. No, I you know what you'd do that. You would you would do that. But I did see my future with a lot of babies, and I did see me being, I really just wanted to be a mom. I wanted everything about it. I wanted to go, I just wanted all of the elements of motherhood and and the family and that unit and like all of the things that come with that. That's what I saw. That's all I saw for me. I didn't see myself working. So this is why like the first gosh, and I've always been a working mom. So that's always been that internal struggle with me is like I'm doing this because I know it's making her life better because I'm bringing an income in, but this is not what I want to be doing. I'd rather just be home with my babies. So yeah, yeah. And I uh Johnny stayed home, right? And I went to work, right? I mean it was the whole thing. But it didn't devalue or lessen the amount of love you felt for your children. Oh, yeah. And I think that would be the same with no, I shouldn't say that, but I I'm guessing it's the same for you know a great deal of mothers out there, if not. If anything, I think working moms um and not that moms who stay home aren't working moms, don't don't miss mission. Don't take my words definitely. It's just I think if you go outside the home and you leave your children with someone else, you place a human a humongous amount of guilt. I think there's a lot of overcompensating that um moms who leave their children with other people they do. Like you overcompensate, are you?

unknown 9:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

And there's there's a lot of that that happens. I think too. And it's different. I mean, life in general is completely different than it was 35 years ago when I had my child, right? My children. Our daycares are different, the quality is different, the amount of other children that they interact with is different. Um and unfortunately, social media is has, you know, it's it's always watching, right? It's always comparing, always watching, it's always measuring how you're caring for your child in comparison to how someone's caring for theirs. Yeah. And that guilt is just absolutely mind-blowing. And it's, you know, somehow in this podcast, we need to slaughter that. That internal guilt has got to go. Yep. Don't measure yourself to anybody at any time, anywhere. Yeah. And judging, everybody has this, everybody has their own walk, their own path, their own journey that they're doing, and the decisions and the reasons why you do what you do. There is a story behind it all. Every single one of them. There's like they're just not the same. I mean, even sisters who sit beside each other, same mom and dad, our lives are totally different. Yeah, not the same. Different um life experiences for sure. Absolutely. We have very different um memories. Like my experiences are different than yours. And my memories of growing up, we have we have different because you would have lived a whole you lived a whole adolescence before I even came along, you know. Yeah, yeah, totally different. And so when I talk about myself um wanting to be a mom, um when I did decide I wanted to be a mom, I became obsessed with it, right? It's all I could think about. And I think this is one of the reasons why my you know getting pregnant for the first time, you know, delusionally, I thought, well, okay, I'm off the pill. Let's start by. I don't want to start buying the diapers because obviously I am going to get pregnant within the next you know week or two. It's just gonna happen because I came off the pill.

unknown 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

And then reality sets in, and you say to yourself, okay, well, that didn't work out the way you want. And then the next month comes along and says, okay, well, well, that that didn't work out the way that I wanted, and then the next month, and so on and so forth. So, you know, we won't dive into it today about you know that actual first uh I'm pregnant moment, but everybody is different in this the sense of how hard you worked, or if it was by accident, or if it was a planned journey, and sometimes you plan it, and oops, there you go, right away. I have that, that's just right there. And sometimes it's an accident, and I never liked the word accident. Oh my gosh. I never liked it. I actually was referred to as an accident. I know you were, I know I'm I'm I'm working my way into that. So I don't like the word accident. It creates a stigma. I know the state, what do I always say? There are no accidents. There are none. There are no. I I totally I'm on board with that. I'm in that camp. Um, just from my perspective of when I was very, very little. I know. And so we grew up in a military family. So our father was in the Air Force, he was in the Navy and then the Air Force, and in that community, in that lifestyle, the Air Force and the military people tend to uh like they socialize together and they spend holidays together, and that becomes your family. So we had uh quite a few couples that we, when we're growing up, were around a lot. They would be around on birthdays and holidays and all those things. And if we were in a social situation and they say Sherry would walk into the room, I'd be little, I'd walk in like, oh, there's Sherry, the unplanned little you were a little you were an accident. There's a little accident. I'd go to school and they'd find out my siblings were so much older than me, 12, 13, 8 years older than me. Oh, you must have been an accident. I know. Yeah, I was um And it's a scary thing. I would imagine being between that very tender age of five to eight, where it doesn't all make sense, but you understand every word, right? You don't need a dictionary to look it up, right? And it's scary. And it's scary. I gotta tell you, so the flip side of this is that our parents um so I'm just gonna describe to you how they would make me feel better about people saying so they would hear people say this, okay? Sherry was an accident, and it didn't matter where we'd be, it'd be in front of those social situations with the military parents, or it could be in front of a school-aged children that would come over to play and be like, oh, Sherry was an accident. Our mother would go into great detail to talk about how I very much was not an accident, how they decided they wanted another baby before it was too late. I have air quotes, before it was too late. And they tried to have me very expeditiously. And then when my mother found out she was expecting me, they put the matrix, dad went out and bought the maternity ward sign and he put it on her door. You remember on the on the outside their bedroom door, maternity ward.

unknown 15:02

Oh God.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

And then it was just like, I was like, I was like, oh, get from God, you know. So then it kind of flipped it. So, you know, they would hear people be like, oh, you know, Sherry was an accident. They're like, I'm not, mm-mm, no, she was not an accident. She was our golden perfect little angel child. And we had to work for her, and we had to have some sex. I was trying not to go with her, but that's kind of what I'm getting at is like the efforts to which they went to have me. Yeah. And then when I came into the world, obviously. And then so then I I you know, you go from it being this complex, it'd be like you're an accident, to be like, no, you're the greatest thing in the world. I was like the best thing ever. So I didn't, I didn't really grow up with any complex of I it didn't really bother me or scar me that people said, Oh, you're an accident. I just thought they were a bunch of butt butt heads. But I, you know, really for me, it was it was more that our parents did an awful lot of of work to make sure and tell me and make me know that I definitely was not an accident. So yeah. But the word itself, I feel, is you know, it it gets used incorrectly, uh, the conceiving of a child, right? It's just not I mean how many words in the last 50 years can now be like taboo, like don't don't say that. Yeah. Even you say, like, if you're just talking and you say, Oh, that's crazy. Oh, you're gonna get slapped. Yeah, like crazy is like, well, you're not allowed to say I might I might be crazy, so don't call it crazy. You've seen our words, right? You've seen our teampool. It's highly plausible that I'm crazy. So I'm leaving that as like I could be some sort of a babbling clause or some medical journal. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's tons of words, and I mean just consideration, and I mean just having a bit of thoughtfulness of of how you um you know you hear somebody's position in their family, their birth order, or however, just be considered. As you walk into considering becoming a mother, it's very it's it's it's your life-changing decision, right? And sometimes you are blessed by getting the reward that you're working hard for. Because if you lose the way this is what I was thinking when you were saying, like, oh, you know, the first month it didn't quite happen. And the second the second month, I'm like, did you start thinking, oh, we need to like twist it up a little, like a stand up? Change it to change up the business. You did some crazy things to make the magic happen. Absolutely. You say Google stuff about standing number back then. I know there was no Google. Yeah, no, 1989, there would have been nothing. No Google. No, there was nothing. It would have been 88, actually, we would have started. You would have had uh Webster's. The dictionary. We bought the encyclopedia, the Britannica Encyclopedia. When they came door to door, we bought one of them from the door-to-door salesman. We did. I had them. I did, Jonathan. Oh, you did. Oh my. I thought you were talking about the set mom and dad had. No, we had we had the encyclopedia one. Yeah, I'm old. That's right. Okay, I get it. I get it. We're old. All right. So, anyways, uh, that's us, me and Sherry, as we talk about how we came to be. Um, now with with Samantha, it was much easier. Right. I mean, I thought about it, and all of a sudden I was pregnant. Okay, so we do have good Newfoundland jeans, and mom used to say, like, so we have our Aunt Audrey and Lillian. No, Lillian only had two. No, no, three. Lillian had more than two. Audrey had 14. Oh, yeah. 13, 14. So the the you know, the saying is that all Uncle Hedley had to do was look at Andre. Or all they had to do was hang up their nightclothes close to each other. And then she was pregnant. Yeah. Yeah. Mom always said too. So that was a dude to had dad look at her and she'd get pregnant. Remember, Lillian said that to mom when she came off the plane. So we had. Oh god, yeah. Is that a story you want to go with? No, that's uh save that one for another day. You did. That was it. That's a good one. That is a good story. And we'll save it. Poor mom coming off the plane. She was so naive. This goes back to the Irish twins. Yeah. Yeah. Mom was so naive. She was, yeah. Too young, didn't have all the history. All the time. No, no, she was alone. She left home. Yeah. You know, like she her and dad left Newfoundland, and she was in Halifax. Didn't have the little baby. Dad was away at sea, and she was alone in that apartment. All by herself. Doris and Dale Noel were their closest friends. Yeah. Mom lent her her wedding dress to get married. And yeah, they were dear friends. And had Lori was just an infant, and she decided to go home to she flew into Gander. We don't have to tell. So she let you know, Dad was out at sea. Mom had Laurie, just I mean, maybe a month old. Six weeks old. No, she couldn't have been six weeks. Couldn't have been six weeks. Because she gets off the plane and her sister, our uh aunt, Audrey, picked her up at the airport. And as soon as she looked at my mom, she said, God damn, I can't I can't keep it any longer. She said, You're pregnant, aren't you? And mom said, Well, I don't, I don't know. I don't I don't know. I I could be, I don't know. And my aunt Audrey had given our mother all kinds of contraceptives. She'd given her a slew. A slew. She'd given her everything. She gave her creams and she gave her a diaphragm. I think she a condom. She gave her lots of things to make sure that she wouldn't be in the same predicament as she was, which was 14 babies deep, you know. So she said, Sam, she's what happened to all the stuff I gave you? And she said, I thought it was gonna cause an infection, so I didn't want to use it so soon after having a baby. And the laundry said, What the baby Jesus said, did you think Willis was gonna do? What did you think he was gonna? Well, that was you. That wasn't me. So the first time it was a dog work. There we go. That's so funny. Yeah, so Anne Audrey, she just didn't want mom to uh to be in the same predicament, I think, and trying to help her out. But uh it was already too late. It was way too late, too late. Too late. Yeah. No, there was uh four and a half years to the almost to the date uh between Matthew and Samantha. Um and that was a choice we made, most of the choice we made. Um there was a you know, it should have been a little bit closer, but again, it you know. I like working on trying to have babies. The process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The steps you have to take to get a baby. Yeah, so I mean, everybody's journey is completely different on on that. Uh, what kind of a background did you have or when did you think about it? It or how did you get there from where you are today? So we'd love to hear from you. Um if you'd send us an email at Worth the Walk Podcast at gmail.com. And I'd love to hear your story of when did you know you wanted to have a baby? When did you start working on having that thought? Um, or did you just like the process of trying to have the baby and said, you know what, I don't think I need the baby at the other end of that journey. You know, was it a one-week thing? Was it six months? Was it two years? Or unfortunately, it just didn't happen the natural way. Or it was your decision to not have children. I'm I'm interested in hearing that story too. Absolutely. Yeah, I know. I've got a couple of friends, right, that you know of, right, that chose that said, no, that that's not where I wanted to be. I I not that they were self-centered or anything different. They've just said, I just don't want to be a mother. Yeah. I don't have it in me. It's not a choice that I want. And I just and they're doing fabulous. They have great lives, doing great things. There's lots of fulfilling things. Um, and everybody has a story and it's different. Come on. Um, yeah. So I'm I'm just interested in hearing those stories too. All of them. Yeah. Send your emails off because we would love to read them. Let me know if we can read them on the air as well, okay? Uh, we would love to be able to share those stories with everybody we know here, there, and everywhere. And once again, share, it's been an absolute blast chit chatting with you again today. So let's try that again next week. Love that. It's always a pleasure being here with you. As usual, everybody, find us at Worth the Walk wherever you get your podcasts. Like and subscribe. Please email us at worth the walkpodcast at gmail.com. Thanks. Be kind. See you next week.