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Join Cara Viana on this episode of the Playful Spirituality Podcast as she returns from a maternity leave hiatus to candidly share her experiences as a new mom.
This episode is a raw and honest reflection on the unexpected challenges, joys, and surprises that come with giving birth and raising a newborn, including sudden vision loss, intense insecurity, social awkwardness, and finding unexpected pleasure in some seemingly mundane (even gross) and intense moments.
Cara gives uncommon insights into the physical and emotional transformations people undergo during pregnancy and in motherhood, and the absolute necessity of learning to receive and care for yourself too.
She also acknowledges the importance of motherhood in society, recognizes societal undervaluation of the role, and shares how her experiences have turned her into something she never thought would be. She demonstrates how she is truly cherishing every moment with her personalized view on parenting.
Tune in for an infusion of playful spirituality that might surprise and comfort you if you're a parent, ever considered becoming one, or know people in your life who have gone through this journey.
00:00 Introduction to the Playful Spirituality Podcast
01:20 Returning from Maternity Leave: A Personal Journey
02:29 The Challenges of Pregnancy and Preparing for Motherhood
04:54 The Unexpected Joys of Motherhood
09:45 The Reality of Motherhood: A Bootcamp Comparison
17:11 The Slow Pace of Motherhood
23:52 The Importance of Support Systems in Motherhood
25:02 Motherhood: The Most Important Job in the World
27:37 The Vulnerability of Motherhood
28:43 The Struggles of Postpartum
29:34 Society's Lack of Support for New Parents
30:25 The Unexpected Joys of Parenthood
33:20 The Reality of Parenting and Time Management
34:44 The Bliss of Being a Parent
35:29 The Insecurity of Motherhood
39:52 The Social Awkwardness of New Parenthood
43:01 The Shock of Losing Vision
45:22 The Unexpected Baby Craze
49:06 Wrapping Up and Looking Forward
Connect with Cara!
Website - https://www.caraviana.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cara_viana/
Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/caraviana
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/caraviana
Transcript
Introduction to the Playful Spirituality Podcast
[00:00:00]
Cara: Welcome to the Playful Spirituality Podcast, a place to reconnect to spirit, to reclaim your unbridled wildness, and to bring you home to you. I'm Cara Viana, and I'm honored to be on this adventure with you. This is a place to discover your magic and your superpowers. And yes, you definitely have them.
It's designed to tap you into the unconditional love and support flowing to you, and to help you access that wild, unbridled joy that we so often lose touch with. You can expect all sorts of resources, from spiritual and practical tools and teachings, to guided meditations and energy healing. We'll have some special guests and even some live readings.
This show is for all of us who are humaning to help you navigate this ride of life. If you are open to a little more support, more ease, [00:01:00] a broader connection to the universe and to yourself, then stay tuned and find out what might be possible with an infusion of playful spirituality.
/
Returning from Maternity Leave: A Personal Journey
Cara: So delighted to be back with you after this maternity leave hiatus that I've been on. It has been such an amazing, fun, consuming, holy shit is it all consuming experience. And so I thought we would kick off this coming back into the podcast with a "top 10 things about motherhood that shocked the hell out of me" episode.
And, and I just want to say quickly, and I know it doesn't fucking [00:02:00] matter, and no one noticed, and no one cared I had this big, beautiful intention. There was several more episodes I had planned on recording before maternity leave, including one where I was going to say, "Hey guys, I'm headed on maternity leave", and talk about...
you know, really vulnerably about some of the things that were so scary for me and that I was wrestling with to go on maternity leave. And I was so excited to share all of that.
The Challenges of Pregnancy and Preparing for Motherhood
Cara: And let me just tell you 3rd trimester of pregnancy. You just shouldn't be doing anything. I had I had so much energy in the second trimester and I got so full of creativity and inspiration and I put all these things on my plate work wise and it was so much fun, but then I got into third trimester and it was like hitting a brick wall.
And I still did a lot, but it was way [00:03:00] too much and I had to start paring back, especially towards the end. A lot, a lot, a lot of things had to get dropped off my plate so that I could lay on the couch and have Braxton Hicks contractions. And I was, I don't want to make it sound like it was a terrible pregnancy, cause I actually thought pregnancy was fucking amazing. And I, and I loved the experience even though there are challenges in it. But there was a lot more rest that needed to happen. So that's why we just sort of abruptly halted in the name of. self care, mandatory self care. Self care makes it sound like I was making a great decision. Really, it was made for me by exhaustion in my body.
So, without further ado, I'm very excited about whatever it is we're doing together today. While I'm chatting away here, I'm so happy that we're playing together, whether you're driving in your car or washing your dishes or out for a jog or, or listening to me [00:04:00] while you fall asleep. Whatever it is, I'm so glad that we're doing this together.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here and for making this podcast happen.
/Alright, so these are in no particular order. These are the top 10 things. Or just 10 things I thought of that have shocked the hell out of me. And, and maybe they are kind of in order because this really is maybe number one, number one thing.
The Unexpected Joys of Motherhood
Cara: It's so much better than I expected. Like so much fucking better than I expected. And I just keep thinking like, oh, my Higher Self was right. My Higher Self was right. She was right. She was right. She's so smart. She's always right. Because I have never been the person who you know, you have those friends that are like, "I've just always wanted to be a mom. I just always wanted to be a mom." That's what I always wanted to do. They have that.
And then you have the friends who have that biological [00:05:00] drive. My one bestie woke up, I think she was like 28, she just woke up one morning and she got this like powerful surge and she was like, I want to have a son.
And it just hit her like a ton of bricks standing over the bathroom sink looking in the mirror and all of a sudden she's like, I want to be a mom. I want a son. And it was this powerful like roar that erupted out of her. And after my first miscarriage, which was seven or eight years ago for maybe six weeks or two months afterwards, I had what I can only describe as this like hormonal biological drive to get pregnant again.
And I, in that moment, I was like, oh, this is why women go nuts and like poke holes in condoms and stuff. And not that I was doing that, but I was like, oh, this is, this biological drive right here is enough to like, it's hijacking my brain. It's so powerful. And then the hormones cycled through and then it was gone.
And that was the only time in my life I've ever felt that biological drive to [00:06:00] procreate was just that tiny little window. Otherwise it's just been this higher self intuition that I've always said, yeah, I'll probably be a mom one day. Yeah, probably one day people would ask me, do you want to have kids?
And I'll be like, yeah, in like 10 years. And I said that all through. my twenties and then I got into my thirties and I was like, Oh shit, I still feel like saying in like 10 years, turns out that was true, but you know, you're supposed to not wait that long and, and all this stuff. So at 35 I was like, I better shit or get off the pot.
My partner at the time and I were like, okay, we're going to try. And then that was my first miscarriage. I had two more in subsequent years. And Brendan and I worked. Very hard to get pregnant. It was a long journey. And someday, I will record an episode talking about miscarriages because there's a really.
There actually is a lot of beauty. So anyway if that's something that would be helpful for you, let me know, that will light a fire for me to do [00:07:00] that. But anyway, I was just going off of this intuition saying, you know, keep going when it was hard and it was expensive and it was all the things and we were struggling and we were having miscarriages.
This drive really was really just my higher self being like. Do this thing. You're gonna do this thing. And of course, because I had met our baby In, in meditation, energetically, in those miscarriages that was the other real, like, thing that kept driving me forward to do this. But truly, it wasn't because I thought, Motherhood's gonna be so fun!
I honestly thought, people make this look not fun at all! Like, nothing about that looks fun! Mostly, spending time with people with kids felt like birth control most of my life. And no offense to everyone I know with kids, you guys are totally my inspiration and you're the people that I learned from and I'm so [00:08:00] grateful I had you as role models.
But on the outside, it doesn't look fun. At least I never thought it did. And now I'm here and it's the fucking greatest thing. And Brendan and I are shocked, both of us, by this. He really is doing this... for me, he was just trusting me and, and killed himself to make this happen also. And it took him a couple of months to get into it. Maybe he'll come on and talk about that one day.
But I would say every day, sometimes multiple times a day, he looks at me and he says, thank you. This is the best fucking thing. Thank you. And we're both just in this awe and reverie that it could possibly be this fun.
/Okay. Second thing about motherhood that shocked the hell out of me.
Second thing about motherhood that shocked the hell out of me.
The Reality of Motherhood: A Bootcamp Comparison
Cara: It's [00:09:00] fucking hard core and I know I know I know we all say that right like we know this I would have told you prior to this experience Yeah, being a mom is the hardest job in the world. Being a parent hardest job there is right. Man We hear about it.
We we we see it maybe but you just can't even fathom how hardcore it is if I said to you, you know, I'm going to go to boot camp. I'm, I'm gonna go to boot camp because I'm going to be like an army ranger or a, or a Navy SEAL or something. And then I started to describe the boot camp to you. And I was like, okay, well, first there's like a pre boot camp that you have to do to be able to get into the boot camp.
And that's like nine or 10 months long. And, you know, it's really grueling. There is like a lot of pain involved and a lot of sleeplessness and your body [00:10:00] has to rapidly gain and then later lose a whole bunch of weight. For me it was 40 pounds and Then you have to grow an extra organ and have massive injections of hormones so much bigger.
In fact, in those nine months, you get injected. Because if this was bootcamp, you'd be injected. You get injected with more hormones than an average person has throughout their entire fucking life. That's true, guys. That's true. So, we do all that, right, and then a bunch of other stuff, and that's pre boot camp.
And then, in order to get into the actual boot camp, you have to go through this grueling physical experience that's unmatched. By anything else any other humans do, it's unmatched. For how fucking difficult and taxing it is on the body and that extra organ you grew, you have to eject that, or get it ripped out of your body.
Oh yeah, and a whole human being's gonna come out of you. [00:11:00] And then, while you're like, thoroughly fucked up afterwards, immediately bootcamp starts. So BAM! Now you don't sleep. It's been seven months so far I've been in this bootcamp, haven't slept through a night. So you don't, you don't sleep in this bootcamp except in tiny little spurts, but they're not actual spurts of like, Normal REM cycle, like a normal human REM cycle of whatever that is, like 90 minutes or two hours.
No, no, no, you're going to get woken up during the deep sleep part of that REM cycle or within the first couple of minutes of when you fell asleep. So, you know, they're coming in and they're like sounding these alarms and when these alarms go off, you get. Dosed, again, with this huge amount of hormones.
The hormones are getting, like, pumped into you every day. Hormones, hormones, hormones. You're getting pumped full of cortisol and adrenaline, and then all this other stuff. And you have to figure out how to create food inside your body to feed another human being. That's part of [00:12:00] the bootcamp. Oh, and you've got all these stitches, and for some people, you had to get sliced all the way open, completely just like right down the middle, cut in half, and then while you're trying to heal from all of that, your body can't do any healing.
No healing is allowed, or very, very little, because all of your energy and resources are going towards running this continuous pace marathon that you're doing. It's about the equivalent of like I forget, it's like a constant marathon, though, that you're running. And then, in all of that, you're getting filled full of these chemicals in your brain.
Your brain actually reshapes. So they're gonna reshape your brain. After this bootcamp, brain scientists could look at your brain and they could say whether or not you've been through this bootcamp before. That's true. Your actual brain, parts of it have to grow and parts of it have to shrink. So it's different than it ever was before.
You'll never be the same in the [00:13:00] brain. That's fucking wild.
So in this bootcamp, are you like, and then would you be like, Cara, why are you fucking doing that bootcamp? And I'm just going to keep going. There's so much more I could talk about how crazy this bootcamp is for forever. Oh, Cara. Well, when is it done?
When do you get to go, you know, be the army ranger? Well, no one actually can give me a clear answer on that. It says at the very minimum it's a couple years, it seems. But some people say maybe it just sort of dwindles, but it never actually stops. I can't really get a clear answer on how long this boot camp is.
Okay, well, Cara, you must make great money doing it, right? Like, how rewarding. I bet there's great money. You don't make a cent. In fact, you lose a lot, a lot, a lot of money. You have to pay a lot of money to do this because you can't, you know, do your normal job usually, or at least very well, or very much.
[00:14:00] So, okay, Cara, well, There must be at least, like, a crazy amount of prestige. I mean, imagine how many people think you're so fucking cool for being a Navy SEAL and an Army Ranger, right? Like, that's a lot of clout. No. People don't give a fuck. There's, like, literally no value in this in society.
In fact, like, whatever value you seem to have had externally before... It's probably gone now. The only people who are gonna actually, like, think what you're doing is cool is people who've done it before. Well, Cara, at least you must have, like, a really, really, really strong found, like, connection now to the people you go through this with, right?
To the other, like, Navy SEALs and Army Rangers. No. That's another part of the bootcamp is you're completely isolated. And at times it's, like, the most lonely thing there ever was.[00:15:00]
And again, you're gonna be like, why would you fucking do this? Because that's what I used to ask people, why would we do this? What on earth is going on? And I can't tell you, it's the best fucking thing I've ever done. It's so much fun. Is that delusional? Maybe? I don't know.
But momming is fucking hardcore. So next time you see a new mom out there, I just want you to think like, that bitch is a hundred times tougher than any Navy SEAL. Truly. Truly.
/Okay. Number three thing to shock the hell out of me. I, this one, I got to tell you a quick story. So years ago, my friend Dana told me her, and her family did like a year where they were kind of traveling around a bit. Her husband is a nurse, and so he did travel nursing, and they would go for like a few months, [00:16:00] three, four months, whatever, and they went to a couple different places, and she homeschooled their kids.
The Slow Pace of Motherhood
Cara: And their kids weren't little, little, but I was asking her what was it like when she came back, and we were hanging out, and she said, you know, it was great, Cara was so great, we, we tried to do one thing a day.
I was like, what do you mean? She's like, well, one thing a day, the kids and I, like, maybe that one thing was that we went to the grocery store or maybe that one thing was that we took my son to a swim lesson, but we tried to do just one thing a day. And I will never forget that moment in the conversation because my brain exploded.
Everything stopped because I couldn't even comprehend this. And there's a person sitting across from me who I know and respect, and I believe her. She's telling me the truth, but I couldn't even fathom it. And I kept trying to ask her questions. I was like, but what does that mean? But like, but you were still doing a lot of things.
You just weren't counting. But like, and she's [00:17:00] like, no, no, no. She's trying to do like one thing a day. I just couldn't get it. I just couldn't get it. Because I'm someone who has always done a billion things in a day. I have always been superwoman. My whole life, people have said to me, Oh my God, Cara, you have this business and this business and you do this and you do that.
And how do you do all this stuff? Wait. And then they'd find out other things that I also did. And they'd be like, what? How do you do all that stuff? I'd be like, I don't know. I'd run my adrenals into the ground and put myself in the ER. It was a great system. So I spent my 30s, after, that's a true story, I put myself in the ER a couple times.
I spent my 30s trying to learn how to slow down and take care of myself. And you know, have some life balance.
And then while I was trying to get ready, you know, we were trying to, call in a baby and, and it was a multi year process for us with several miscarriages, like I said, I kept trying to slow [00:18:00] down and do less.
I kept cutting things out because I kept getting the intuitive hit to do less and do less. And finally, at one point, my higher self said to me, "How slow can you go?" And her words were so specific, and I knew why she was being specific with her words. She was challenging me, and she was recruiting my inner competitiveness.
My inner rebel, that was like, Oh yeah, I'll show you. So I slowed way down. Way down. And if you can imagine, there's the tortoise and the hare, and I was the hare. And so I like, I start slowing down in my pace. And then I look over at her and I'm like, "Look how slow this is" and she's like, "you're still running" And so I'd be like "oh". And then I go a little slower and I'd be like look how slow this is, because to me I've never even imagined going this [00:19:00] slow and she's like, "Cara, you're still running. That's not even fucking slow at all."
So I was trying I was really working on this and then pregnancy came and pregnancy was like, "Slow down, like molasses, slow." And even there was points of like, nothing. There were days, not a lot of days, but there were a few days where I was so sick, or the Braxton Hicks were so intense, that I was mostly stuck on the couch.
There were only a couple of those days, but there were a few of them. So I experienced even a greater slowness than I'd ever experienced.
And then came motherhood. And even seven months in, seven months in, we're doing a lot better with sleep, we're all the things. I still have to catch myself and try really, really, really, really, really hard to only do one thing a day.[00:20:00]
Because I feel myself ramp up, and I want to put more stuff on the schedule, it looks like my calendar, I can fit so many things. But that's because breastfeeding is not listed on the calendar, and holding a baby while he sleeps is not listed on the calendar. And you know, all these things that I'm doing throughout the day.
Changing diapers isn't listed on the calendar. So realistically, one thing a day is like max. The days that we try to do multiple things feel so stressful. And, and overwhelming, and harried, and not fun. And not I'm not I don't feel like I'm... savoring and appreciating and this experience on those days, the way that I want to.
So I go back to slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, and in the weeks, months, let me be real after birth and, and I don't know if people have any interest, but maybe we'll come on here and tell the story of our birth, but it was very challenging [00:21:00] understatement of the decade. Afterwards it ended in a C section which I'm very grateful for because. it's, you know, we probably both would have died otherwise.
And afterwards, it was me in a chair, a chair that reclined, a reclining rocking chair. Well, first a hospital bed, and then a reclining rocking chair. And I just never left the chair. I got up to pee, which was a very slow, halted process. And then I lived in the chair.
I held the baby in the chair. I slept in the chair. I ate in the chair. I breastfed in the chair. I, anything and everything was in this chair. We, we really cocooned and I'm so grateful, because this has helped me to be present with this experience. I know we're doing this one time and one time only.
I'm at a place in my life at [00:22:00] 43 years old where I know how to be fully present with something and I know how to savor. And my goals going into this were like, I want to enjoy the hell out of it. And I can tell you very proudly that I am. There's days where it feels like it broke me. There's days where it feels like so hard, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
And, and I'm very grateful. We are very, very, very blessed to be able to get the help to do that.
The Importance of Support Systems in Motherhood
Cara: I Would not be able to be present and enjoy and savor this nearly as much, if at all, if I didn't have a really loving and very, very, very involved partner. And if we weren't in a place in our lives, thank God, one of the big perks of being old parents where we have, we have a level of financial security and success that we can hire help because we don't have any family living here.[00:23:00]
And so we have hired amazing help. We have the most incredible support system. And we've hired like this just kick ass nanny who's totally now a part of our family and she and I leave the baby with Brendan and go do stuff when she's not working and she basically runs our house so that I can be present with the baby and it's amazing.
/Okay, number four thing that shocked the hell out of me.
Motherhood: The Most Important Job in the World
Cara: This is the most important thing in the world. And I, I don't know, was I the only one who didn't understand this? I don't think so. I really don't think that society, our society, values having children or values motherhood. And I think that might be part of why our population is on such a rapid, sudden decline, you know, [00:24:00] if you look at it, we're on a trajectory to go extinct.
I mean, not for a really long time, but if, if we kept at the level of decline that we're at, humanity will eventually go extinct. And I really think that part of that is because we've lost sight of the importance of children, the importance of another generation. And no, I don't mean this as any criticism to anybody because I didn't get it.
I didn't see the importance of it. I thought maybe I did. If you had asked me, I would have said, "Oh yeah, yeah, that's, that's the most important job", but I didn't really understand it because there isn't in our society, this like connection really to ancestry or to like future generations. And now that I'm standing here, I'm like, "Oh shit, this is the most important thing I've ever done."
And I've done really cool stuff in my life. I've done really, really [00:25:00] important things where I got to help people, where I got to be you know, I hate that phrase, but "of service". I got to do, I got to support a lot of cool, beautiful things and try to uplift in the world the best that I can. And nothing I've ever done holds a candle to the importance of what I'm doing right now.
It doesn't mean everybody should do it. In fact. Lots of people shouldn't do this because it's fucking hard! Like, don't do this unless you really want to do it! And, and, I do want to say, my life was not incomplete. And I would not have missed out if I didn't do this. If I hadn't had a chance to do this, which very much could have happened.
It's not very common to be able to or to do this at such a late stage in life. We were really, really, really, really, really blessed. But I just didn't understand. I think a lot of people don't understand that this is so [00:26:00] important.
The Vulnerability of Motherhood
Cara: /Which leads me into number five, I was on a. panel discussion the other day with some other coaches and Nisha Moodley, who's a coach, was on there and she was saying we were, it was largely about motherhood, and she was saying that as a society, she thinks we need to rally around and take care of our most vulnerable. members of society. The most vulnerable members of society.
And she was talking about mothers, new moms, and my initial response was I wanted to be like, "No, I'm not most vulnerable". And then I thought about it for a second and I was like, "Yes, I fucking am!" Oh my god! Yes! Like, if we were herd animals, in those months after, and I mean, still, any, while there is a small baby attached to you, You are most vulnerable, right?
I would be the easiest one for a lion to take out. I mean, I [00:27:00] couldn't even walk. Or barely.
The Struggles of Postpartum
Cara: It's more than that, though. You are so dangerously, dangerously sleep deprived. Your brain doesn't work. Your body doesn't, work that great. There's just a lot. Emotionally, things are, and I mean, I had like a really pretty beautiful postpartum.
I didn't have a lot of postpartum depression. I didn't have a lot of I mean, it gets way more challenging what I experienced way more challenging. My body was able to heal really, really beautifully. I did have a lot of support for body healing, which was, I'm very thankful for. And yet still I can, having stood in this place and still really kind of standing in it, I can say that's actually true.
Society's Lack of Support for New Parents
Cara: And our society doesn't know. I really didn't know how to support new parents. And I think everyone's just so busy, you know, [00:28:00] we want to, and we're like here's a baby gift and, and maybe here's like a meal train. You know, we're like, we'll drop off a casserole. Which even was like, most people don't even do that.
I did not know. And I'm so sorry to everyone who was in my life who went through this journey. I just didn't fucking know. And now I know, and everyone that I know who has children, hopefully I can be much better support in the future. Because you really are so, so, so vulnerable.
/ Okay.
The Unexpected Joys of Parenthood
Cara: Now, number six, this is bliss and it's the dumbest shit, that's so fun. Okay. A couple of days ago... you'll hear this in a while, whenever. Like it actually comes out, but I'm recording this... oh, it's actually Halloween today that I'm recording. And a couple of days ago, a friend and I [00:29:00] who have babies got a pumpkin. We carved out the pumpkin and then we carved leg holes and then we sat our babies inside this pumpkin, like they were wearing a pumpkin diaper and took photos, and I would have said that was the dumbest thing in the world.
And it was fucking so much fun. I was messaging with a mom friend. She sent me some baby gifts and one of the gifts she sent me was this snot sucker. And she's like, I know this is a weird baby gift, but this is like, you're not even going to believe how much satisfaction you get from sucking snot out of your kid's face.
And I was like, gross. Maybe I didn't say that because maybe I said like, that seems strange when I read the card. But I will tell you, when your baby hasn't been able to breathe because there's a giant booger, stuck up there, and they're like rattling this breath like trying to breathe and like snoring and snorting and it's waking them up at night [00:30:00] and you go get this weird thing you put one end of it in your mouth there's a little filter in the center and then you put the other end of it like up to their nostril and then you suck. And you're using your own breath to like suction and when you get a giant booger out of their nose and all of a sudden they can breathe i know that sounds so gross but you feel like you should be like, Muhammad Ali. like, prancing around the boxing arena holding the, whatever, what do they hold, like a flag or some shit? I don't know. But like, arms in the air doing the like, we are the champions dance. You're like so proud of yourself. The satisfaction is so high.
And it's silly little things like this that you just wouldn't think would be so much fun and so delightful. I mean, watching him sleep, watching him[00:31:00] in the mornings. Like, he'll lay down next to me, we'll be laying next to each other, he'll look over, and he'll just smile, this huge smile to see me. There's just nothing in the world that's more important to me than that.
The Reality of Parenting and Time Management
Cara: Yesterday I had big plans. I was hoping to either go to yoga class or go for a run and try to get an hour of work done.
And already you can see the flaw in this plan because, Cara, that's two things. That's two things. Not gonna fucking happen. Oh, and I tried to go to a little Halloween event. That was three things. So you know, already I'm setting myself up for fucking failure. And so what happened, we made it to the Halloween event for like 30 minutes before it closed.
Because baby time, he had taken a nap and it wound up being a long nap and so we just, we only made it for the last 45 minutes. And then I got nap trapped. He didn't feel like going down [00:32:00] for a nap when his dad was rocking him to sleep earlier. So then when it was time to breastfeed, he fell asleep on the boob and just nursed while he slept and then he just slept on me.
And so I was sitting there for like a long time with him asleep on me and I was thinking, you know, I'm so hungry and I have to pee and looking at my clock and I was like, "Oh, I missed that yoga class". And I missed, when I was thinking I would, if I didn't make it to yoga, that I was going to try and go for a run.
So that's gone. And well, I got like 15 minutes of work done earlier. That was it. Didn't get any of that stuff done. And I don't fucking care.
The Bliss of Being a Parent
Cara: There's nowhere in the world I'd rather be. I'm in full ecstasy right now with this baby asleep in my arms. Nothing matters. And that to do list is just gonna keep getting pushed off.
There are things that have been on my to do list now for seven months, since he was born. Seven months. And I don't care. I don't care. I'm just, it's blissful.
[00:33:00] I can't tell if I'm selling you on how great motherhood is or telling you how awful it is. So we're going to breeze through 7, 8, and 9 real quick. These are things that shocked the hell out of me, but I want you to know they still don't matter.
The Insecurity of Motherhood
Cara: / Number seven, insecurity. up the wazoo. A huge part of this is probably hormonal.
The hormones are insane. So not so crazy pants. And, and like sometimes comically, sometimes difficult, but sometimes just comically, sometimes just crippling insecurity, which you know, if you have had a menstrual cycle in your life, you've experienced those moments of like, "Oh my god, why am I just like, why do I have crippling insecurity for no reason all of a sudden?"
It's just a shift in your hormones and then it passes and, you know, you feel like a human being again, who, who has a little bit of confidence at [00:34:00] least and likes themselves and whatever.
So I have had insecurity in basically every area of my life except motherhood. I feel confident as a mom, but that's about it.
Everything else on and off with weird insecurity including this one really shocked me. I felt very insecure about my own work in the world, about my own gifts, and I've been doing this magical shit for 25 years. I figured that out recently. It was pretty fun and cool. 25 years ago is when I started the study of all this magical stuff.
I started channeling. I started you know, communicating with my higher self and, and all the things that I do. 25 years ago. I started teaching it, I think 17 years ago or something like that. And I [00:35:00] can't remember because it was so long ago, if I had insecurity about my gifts at the beginning about, you know, my abilities and about all these things but I don't remember.
So this feels so foreign to me, in my business. Yes, of course, there's times when I feel insecure about things, but I feel insecure about like, is anyone going to enjoy this thing that I'm about to like put into the world? Or will my business be able to make money and like, stay open or you know, is, is anybody going to attack me for saying this thing online?
Is it safe to say that I'm a psychic? Is it, I've had lots and lots of fears and insecurities, but never have I felt insecure about my own abilities. I'm solid in those. I've just been doing it so long. There's so much evidence, but now all of a sudden I'm like, can I even do this anymore?
And without getting too much into too much detail, part of that is... [00:36:00] yes, the hormones. Part of it is the fact that things got wonky. Having two souls in one body messes with the system.
So I went from, like, if you could imagine, like, the fastest, what would it be? Like, fiber optic or something? I don't even know. But like, the fastest lightning speed internet connection there possibly is. To like, old school dial up, boop, boop, beep, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Maybe it's gonna connect, maybe it's not. You're trying to load a webpage and you would like, open the page, and then you'd go do something and come back, and see if maybe it loaded. Does anyone remember this?
That's what happened to my gifts, so I would be like, "Sure, okay, let me just check that [00:37:00] out."
And normally that's just me closing my eyes and plugging in. So I would do that, and then I would wait. Then I would wait, boop boop beep boop boop boop, pshhhhh, nothing. And it would go on and on and on. So that shocked the hell out of me. And luckily, as I'm gradually coming back and I'm getting a little bit more sleep and a little bit more coherent at times, the gifts are still there. So that's really nice.
The Social Awkwardness of New Parenthood
Cara: / Number 8, I became socially awkward and started triggering my friends. This one fucking sucked. Mostly it's comical, but there have been a couple times when I've triggered people that I love on accident by saying the wrong thing. Which I know happens to all of us, of course.
But I'm usually a pretty eloquent person. I'm usually pretty good with my words. I mean, you guys hear me talk. I'm definitely, I don't sound [00:38:00] highly educated, but, I get my point across pretty good. Well, part of it I think is the sleep deprivation.
Did you know that when you're sleep deprived, your brain absolutely has to sleep? And so it will become like a dolphin and it will just start turning off parts. Well, we haven't had enough sleep, so we're just powering down section B. And I swear to you, I don't know if this is possible, but I swear to you, I have been mid conversation with someone when my brain powered down the communication center.
And that part went to sleep. And I'm chatting, I'm talking, I'm like, Hey, yeah, I mean, hey, yeah. Can't function. Can't talk, can't whatever. Gotta go. And I'm just like speaking hard. Gotta go. Bye. Conversations have actually ended that way, you guys. I'm, like, for real. It's bizarre. [00:39:00] So part of it is that I can't communicate very good.
Talking is hard sometimes. Finding words is hard. You're catching me in an upswing. I'm recording a podcast right now because I'm coherent. But there's a lot of times where I just stare at the wall or people around me have had to get real patient. I don't have any vocabulary. A lot of the time. So you'll ask me a question and I'll be like "It's in the, the, oh, and I forgot to put this on the list", but time and space totally don't exist anymore at all.
So I have no concept of how long I've been standing there trying to think of this word. To me, it seems like just a quick second, but it could have been minutes and I started realizing that when people, even strangers began to say, you mean the cupboard? And, and they would just like jump in and finish my thought for me.
And then the conversation would go ahead without me and I would still be trying to figure out what [00:40:00] happened. So yeah, that socially awkward, I became socially awkward. I have so much more empathy now for people who struggle with this in some way, shape or form, struggle with communication or, or reading social cues or whatever, because it's really challenging.
All right, there's more to that that I'm forgetting right now. I think my brain might be starting to get a little tired, so let's finish up the last two.
/Number nine.
The Shock of Losing Vision
Cara: I lost vision. This was a real freaky one. Apparently it's a thing. I looked it up. I, we were standing in Home Depot one day, which was already overwhelming in itself because going into the world and running errands often felt overwhelming, especially in the early.
months. And this was several months in and I realized I like yawned or covered an eye or something. And I realized one of my [00:41:00] eyes was really blurry. And I was like, that's real bizarre. So I started paying attention to it and it was still blurry the next day. And I got kind of freaked out. And I went to the eye doctor cause it was like really pretty blurry.
And they were like, yeah, huh. Yeah, you're losing your vision. And I'm like, no, something's really wrong. This happened very quickly. What on earth is happening? And they were like, here's a prescription for glasses. And I was like, I don't fucking want glasses. I've always had 20, 20 vision. I don't accept the fact that my vision just got shitty overnight.
Something's not right. And I looked it up online and sure enough. There's so many hormones in your body that actually can mess with your vision, and most of the time, at least according to one website I found, it goes back after you're done breastfeeding. If you have a happy story about this, I would love to hear it.
If your vision went crappy and didn't fix itself, don't tell me. Really trying to stay positive. I actually did. Learn a little [00:42:00] bit about eye training and exercises. I asked the doctor if she would give me some, and she said no. That she said that they don't really help when you're an adult. And I was like, that's dumb.
That doesn't make any sense. So I found someone online who actually is a doctor that teaches about eye exercises. So I now own two, count them, eye patches. Just like a pirate. And when I remember, which is not that frequent, I practice putting them over one eye and making the other eye try to work. And then vice versa.
Cause one of them got blurry up close and the other one got blurry at a distance. I did not fill the glasses prescription. That's just weird. That's just fucking weird. Like I understand a lot of the other things that your body goes through, but that's just weird. Okay.
/Number 10.
The Unexpected Baby Craze
Cara: Number 10 thing that shocked the hell out of me and Brendan.
We are now baby crazy. Some of you who know [00:43:00] me know that I've never been baby crazy. I like babies. I've always liked babies. I mean, who doesn't, but what kind of monster doesn't like babies? Just kidding. If you don't like babies, you're not a monster. They don't talk. They just drool and poop. I get it.
But I did like babies. I also used to babysit when I was I'm a young teenager. I know how to change a cloth diaper. I'm good with babies. Babies like me. I have a really animated face and voice. And so they think I'm funny. But, I've never been baby crazy. People would bring their babies over and I'd be like, "Oh, how cute!"
Okay, I'm gonna go do a thing. Because most of the time, other stuff was more fun than babies. Yeah, I've had a couple of amazing experiences, I will say. I did look into the face of a fairly new baby one time, and look directly in the eyes of God, and I will never forget that moment as long as I live. That actually happened to me twice.
Two different babies. But, never been baby crazy. Never ever been [00:44:00] like you know, I just want to chew their little chubby this and that. And like, I have friends who are super baby crazy. And there's a group of us who have like a video chat thread that we all keep in touch on. And a couple of the women are real baby crazy.
And then there's me and another friend who are dog crazy. So when someone posts a video and there's like a dog and a baby in the video, a couple of the women are like, Oh my God, the baby". And I'm like, "Oh my God, the dog." And now it's, and I, I talked to a lot of people who felt that way and they told me when they had a baby, it was different because it was their baby.
So I knew I was going to be crazy for my own baby, but I figured. It would end there because the friends I had were like, yeah, we don't care about other babies. We still aren't baby crazy. We just only like our own. And I was like, oh, that's probably what's going to happen to me and Brendan. Nope. We are baby crazy [00:45:00] now and we will forever be baby crazy because every baby we ever see will remind us of this amazing time in this amazing experience.
I was shocked when I realized it wasn't just me. It was also Brendan. So... We went with a girlfriend who has a baby, same, almost same age, and we all went on a hike, she and I, and Brendan and the babies, and I said, "do you want me to hold your baby so you can take a dip in this waterfall?" And she said, "oh, that would be amazing!"
And I was holding Bodie, our son she was holding her son, and I turned to hand our baby over to Brendan thinking he's not going to want to hold a strange baby, he's gonna, you know, but he'll hold our baby. And he walked right past me, grabbed her baby, and proceeded to snuggle her baby while she went to swim and then didn't want to give the baby back.
Because he's all, and he's smelling the baby's head, and he's talking about how amazing this baby is also. We are baby crazy. I [00:46:00] still can't get over this one. Totally shocked. Maybe it won't stick. Maybe it's only right now where we've got all the baby hormones in us. Because dads get this huge surge of all these hormones too.
Or maybe it will forever be, I don't know. But it's fun and it's funny.
Wrapping Up and Looking Forward
Cara: / And I'm gonna wrap up because that was my one thing for today. This was my one hour that I got away. And I spent it with you and I'm so glad I did. And now I'm going to go nurse a baby And feed myself, which usually happens, actually most of the time, the food that I eat is something that somebody handed to me while I am breastfeeding.
Although we're, we're, we're getting a little better these days. These days I get a little bit more flexibility to get up and like, get, get myself something [00:47:00] a little bit more. Who am I kidding? Not a lot. But it's great because the truth is what I want to be doing right now is. Snuggling and savoring my baby and I am so, so, so grateful for this experience.
I'm so happy that I got to share a little bit of it with you. I hope it was entertaining And I don't know what's coming next on the podcast, but, I've got a bunch of really exciting episodes planned for you. So stay tuned for those. I just don't know what order they're coming in yet. And honestly, I couldn't remember even if that was already set.
So luckily I don't have to tell you.
All right. Signing off with love over here from the milk cow.
/Deep bow of gratitude to you, my friends, for showing up for [00:48:00] yourself and taking the time for this experience. If you enjoyed this, and I hope you did, it would mean so much to me if you would write a positive review. And please, share this with your friends who you think might enjoy it. My team has set up some free presents for you, including a guided meditation and energy healing and a sneak peek into one of my programs.
So go to Caraviana.com to download those. With the deepest love, cheers to all that you are.
Please let me know your thoughts! Like, Share, and Comment below <3, Cara