Mum's The Word! The Parenting Podcast - The Power of Sharing Your Truth with Shanice and Brenda from Orbit

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

Sometimes motherhood can feel like a competition, we put so much pressure on ourselves during this monumental change in our lives that we don't give ourselves enough credit. Shanice and Brenda founded Orbit when they were going through matresence to create a place for women to talk and share their truths about motherhood and womanhood - as talking about it makes us stronger. Get in touch and share your truth over at [e-mail]---A Create Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to Mum's the Word, the parenting podcast. I'm Kat Shube and I'm going to be covering for Ashley while she's on maternity leave after the birth of a beautiful little girl. Now this week we have the wonderful Shanice and Brenda from Orbea. Hello ladies. Hi. It is a pleasure to have you here. How are you doing? Good. Hungry but... Hungry? Well, no, we didn't get any snacks in for them. That's the first rule of parent class. Get the snacks in. Now, you ladies are on a mission, aren't you?

For women to feel seen, heard, valued, empowered and share their truths. All things that are music to my ears. We should start by, I mean, give us an overview of what Orbit's all about. And then we'll get into how you met and what you guys do. Where did this idea come from? Oh, well, being a first time mum, when I was asking people questions about what to expect from motherhood, I was given a very different version of like what I experienced. Everyone lied. Yes.

Every single person. Everyone lied. Every single person. I've gone back to all those mum friends and i've gone you are done you should have said something so like i was like i was it was a shock like i was just like this is not also to me this is not what i expected there's no way i'm the only one feeling this way no and so what was the biggest shot what was the one moment was there a moment where you went okay yeah it was a weird it was a weird one I don't know where you're gonna go with this it was okay so I someone told me that like breast milk like the milk only comes out when you feed right and i find out that that

didn't happen oh what about leaking and like no so just like um we were doing the do and like it just squirted everywhere and i was like whoa hold on a second this isn't this isn't what i was like it was like a movie because it just was projectile i'm like he's like i'm like it was just so short and i was like i don't know how to turn it off like i just i just i don't know what to do and i had to turn it off and we'll just we just waited until the last drop and i said yeah people lie to me yeah and that was when i was like okay if that's been the lie like what else have people lied to me about and it was just like it was little things where it was like um obviously when the baby comes and like i was expecting to cry because i saw like one born every minute i was just so exhausted and hungry like I didn't

realize that like other things would be happening right yes um same with like just the autopilot like no one really explained that to me so once they placed her on my chest it was like okay she's yours and it was just this like whoa yeah who told you I'm ready yeah I don't know absolutely like there was just so many like different tiny moments where it's like no one's spoken about this and then being a first-time mom in the pandemic um trying to meet other moms so lockdown happened in March my daughter was born in January I was trying to meet other moms like in the baby classes that I was going to and every time I would ask like a new mom oh my god how is it and she's like yeah it's going really well I'm like why why are you lying to me like just tell me the truth blink twice yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean and so I just

started going on like Twitter just talking about my experience um some of the mum guilt that I was like feeling and not understanding why I was feeling it. The pressure I was getting from family, like breastfeeding, bottle feeding, just everything was kind of coming at me. And there wasn't like, no one told me just how different life would be. And just how instant my identity would change as well. Oh, it's wiped away. And there's been so many things that I have grieved.

Holidays holidays the first holiday we went on I sobbed for like three days because I I'd forgotten to say goodbye to the old holidays we went on and I'd forgotten to grieve like just all the things I knew before yeah I didn't realize how much of a monumental change it was going to be but then I don't know would I have would I have believed it if someone had told me that I don't know I don't know how it would have got through to me see that's kind of like how I was feeling because I was like oh man people probably didn't tell me to like to not scare me off but then it it started to frustrate me because I was noticing actually this is like a theme with everything to do with womanhood people don't really talk about what periods look like

so they don't talk about what different symptoms are normal and what's not normal so you end up finding out things like no one's talking about menopause like we just end up finding out this when you actually experience it yeah and it's such an isolating thing that seems to happen to almost all of us um and motherhood i was like there's just no way no one's talking about how difficult this is yeah and just how much of a sacrifice you're making not just like for your lifetime but on a daily basis from decisions you're making on like whether you can call your friend or you can't because now the baby's screaming yeah too can i have a shower for 15 minutes or five minutes can i be in the bathroom on my own feeling bad about shutting the door?

And like the bathroom was my sanctuary. I'm just, I'm in the toilet. I don't want anyone to disturb me. But like there was so many different things. And so when I started talking about it online and especially during the pandemic and loads of women were like, oh my God, I'm feeling the same way.

I was like, oh, this feels good. It feels good that like we're able to talk so openly about it and I think the more stories we started to hear it was just like we've done such a disservice to ourselves like I would have believed it if everyone was telling me the same thing yeah I would have believed it if I could if I had the opportunity to hear all the different stories and just interpret that and say, OK, this might happen. This might not. But if it does, it's totally normal. Yeah. And here's the tools to deal with it. Yeah, this is what happened. This is how someone dealt with it. This is how another person dealt with it.

Yeah, there was there's so many. I feel like as well. I mean, we're lucky that we live in an age where we can go and look online and look things up. I don't know how mums did it before. I'm constantly saying to my own mother, what did you do without this? How did you do it? How did you get through? Because you're right, nothing gets talked about and you find out when you're in the moment

and then obviously sometimes it's a little bit too late because you're already going through it and you're like, I wish I'd handled that a little bit differently. So you guys offer a service where there's a place where people can go and find out information, is that right tell us a little bit more about yeah so it started off as like um just tweets and then it ended up being

like story-based tweets because like i didn't want to keep sharing just what i was going for i wanted to hear other people's stuff so um like one of our most viral ones was like how did your parents react when they found out that you're pregnant and we got like thousands of people just saying oh my mum was at church and she just never left church it was hilarious it was so funny so many different stories i'm like oh my god this is insane and then it was like how did your parent react there was some beautiful stories or some shocking ones and we just kept having like these uh theme-based tweets where people just kept coming to share their stories because there wasn't really a place to do that and then that went from it being online to um when clubhouse was like i guess a thing and popping us doing like live audio sessions before clubhouse was really about like i

guess professional sharing expertise it was a better way of networking than like linkedin at the time um but i was like no let's bring the human element to it let's talk about motherhood like openly um and at that time there was a lot going on about uh black women being five times more likely to die during childbirth yeah this was such a shocking because that that fact came out just as I was going into hospital as well and it's hard enough as it is without things being against you as well that are for no fault of your own and it's just I can't imagine how how black women must have felt hearing that as well but finally being acknowledged that that is happening definitely and so we did a room about that and there was

over a thousand women in there who just all wanted to share their story and to be heard and to have a community of people who weren't looking to judge them but were just looking to hold them in that moment and what we found was like through all our conversations that's what was like the most powerful part of it it wasn't I feel like sometimes like motherhood feels like a competition especially online is my kid crawling the same time your kid is crawling am I doing this the same way you're doing this am I always happy like what's going on but with these conversations it was just the opportunity to be vulnerable to be real to take that cape off and to just say look I'm struggling or I'm I'm alone or I don't have friends I don't know how to navigate that and there are other women that

are saying you know what I'm facing the same thing and that's kind of how our community was built and then off the back of that we've just been doing like workshops and events to yeah kind of bring to light all the different things that we are facing and giving people the tools to be able to navigate them properly yeah because we shouldn't have to be going through things alone no it surprised me the loneliness thing surprised me as well because I thought to myself going in I was like I got loads of mates this is fine and then like but it's your mates didn't understand and actually there's times when I never knew the nap thing was going to be such a big deal I didn't know how much that would ruin my day every day every day whether he has nap whether he hasn't whether he's had long enough or uh you know the right atmosphere and you know

you find yourself in the beginning as well don't you like i remember a babysitter came to look after him and i went yeah all you have to do is you tap him on the tummy three times you'd crawl out backwards and then you close the door and you don't let it click and then you wait outside for 10 minutes and like the madness of all of that but if I want him it still happens now and I haven't conquered it but the the nap thing if I want to have a good day and if he needs to have a good day if we're gonna have a good afternoon I have to get that nap in so sometimes I'm tied to the house because he won't now sleep in the pram and so the loneliness of that is unless someone can come and see you and comfort

which a lot of my friends and I've been more honest about this with them recently and just saying would you come to me and I've not minded asking saying could you come to me it's a little bit further I know we can't just meet in town and some friends have understood some friends haven't and in the beginning I felt all like oh no it's okay I'll come into town it's absolutely fine and then we've both had a shit day because of it like he's in a mess i'm in a mess no one's having fun like i think it's that need to like you know when you have a child and it's like you don't want to feel like everything's changed i'm still the same i can still do this i can still do that it's fine and meanwhile well this disaster yeah i think that's why it's so important that conversations

are hard to be like actually no it's okay to have a bad day it's okay to ask for help and I feel like asking for help that is where I think like a lot of women always struggle because we want to seem like we've got everything together and that you know everything's fine I'm smashing motherhood when actually that's not the case you're gonna have great days but you're also gonna have really bad days and on those bad days you need to lean on the community and the village that you have like it it's, I know everyone talks about village and village and village, but genuinely it's so important because they are the people that, you know, when you're feeling lonely or when you're having those bad days,

you'll be able to lean on them and they'll be able to lift you up and pick you back up. Like my, I always post when I'm having bad days on my story, just so that the women who do follow me, that our mothers can see that. And all the time, they're always the ones when I'm questioning, should i post this am i being a bit too vulnerable

they're always the ones that get the most responses like thank you oh my gosh this is me i'm having a day like this or they'll be quick to be like oh you've got this whether it's them resonating be like you know what i'm having a day like this too or oh my gosh you've got this tomorrow we go again and it's that's what is needed it's like you're, you know, filling up your battery again. When people are coming and going, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Okay, yeah, it's okay.

It's okay. It's really needed. It's bizarre that this hasn't been there before. It's taken, I mean, it took a lockdown, I guess, for you guys to get together. How did you meet? How did you guys meet? Twitter. Twitter.

Who slid into whose DMs? What? I think you slid into mine. I did, I did. But then I called you, so. But yeah, it was, so we, it was just like, yeah, at the time, Orbit wasn't Orbit, Orbit was, it was like a, it was a skincare brand

because like a lot of the mom guilt I felt was actually due to my daughter having eczema by the time I had no idea that she had eczema I thought it was baby acne so I was like I spent so much money on different products and because I was exclusively breastfeeding I was also blaming myself like oh maybe it's because I had coca-cola that one time oh no maybe it's because of this this I just started cutting loads of stuff out of my diet and trying to be super strict and drinking loads of water but then it's getting worse I'm like okay I saw something on YouTube they said liquid gold I should put on their skin and then that made it worse I'm like oh my god this is not liquid gold what's going on I just felt so bad um so I just I started tweeting about it at first it was more like okay maybe there are other

moms that are feeling this way because i finally found something that works something that i made myself so i was like oh okay i want to put that out there but it was the the product was more of like a topical solution to like the underbelly and the problem that i was facing as a mom which was just a judgment like i felt judged because she was six weeks old and she went from having like this perfect skin to all of a sudden she's broken out in this sore rash and I don't want people looking at me thinking I've done something wrong because like you've neglected it yeah because moms don't know that's the other thing like when you see a baby or you see a mom with a baby you don't feel that but why do you think we put so much why are

we so quick to blame ourselves where does that come from why is it you know there's a skin condition and suddenly you're like well it's definitely something i did this morning yeah it's not you wouldn't see anyone else and think that would you like as you get older i feel like it's like there is this expectation i think for moms not so much dads to just know everything yeah the child is born yeah yeah yeah and like i made it clear to my family i do not know this person she is a stranger to me i don't know her she don't know me i have no clue about who she is i'm getting to know her the same way she's getting to know me so don't ask me what this crime means i don't know yeah we will figure that out yeah don't ask me you know is she hungry right now i don't know i'll put my bo out yeah don't ask me you know is she hungry right now I

don't know I'll put my boob in her mouth and if she wants it she wants it I just don't know I don't know who she is and she doesn't know who I am yeah and we're just we're learning each other but there is this expectation to just instinctively know every single tiny little thing that they need at a moment's notice and for me it was like I don't even know how to fix this so how am i being a good mom and there was just so much pressure that i was putting on myself um and it like my partner wasn't understanding because at the time it was like oh maybe it's acne then we finally got to a doctor who said oh no it's eczema so i was like okay this is your fault because it's hereditary i've had eight weeks of feeling really bad this is you like you sort this out you you look into different products um but just being able to talk about it and then i thought like okay because of

the amount of women that keep coming and keep uh sharing their stories like this is so much bigger than like skincare i don't even want to focus on that i want to focus on the community but i don't want to do it alone and so i just put out a tweet saying does anybody want to basically do this with me and she was like yeah I want to do this and so we spoke on the phone and it was just so eerie like first of all we were talking like we knew each other for ages um then like our due date was a day apart our kids are like a couple days apart um we were having like the similar experiences of like motherhood i'm like oh my god you're drawn to each other yeah because you were in the same place at the same time going through same life experiences yeah it's incredible when stuff like that happens i know and

it's so funny because i remember seeing the tweet and i'd scrolled past it because she was looking for like a co-founder so i scrolled past i'm like what can i do as a co-founder like that's not me scrolled past and i said but i really love like I'd loved the tweets she was doing engagement and what she was talking about so yeah I just messaged her I said the worst she can say is no I'm in no different position than I am now so I reached out and I was like I'm so glad I did because this is is so much bigger than us and what we're going through I think it's just necessary for all women to have access to somewhere where they can feel validated in their experiences I mean early on I found sort of six to nine months really hard and I remember I went to see a friend and also another thing I've never regretted going to a group of and meeting up or getting on an

online class or something like that there's been times I've tried to talk myself out of it. And then I've got there and I'm like, thank God I did that. Why did I not think to do that? Because it's just seeing other people. But I remember about six to nine month mark, I was like, I'm not doing very well here. I don't really know what I'm doing. And I remember I went to see a friend and I kept cancelling on her.

She made me meet her and I got there. I got in her garden and I went, I just bet she went, are you okay? And I went, oh shit, mom. She burst into tears. And she was just like, I got in the garden. I went, I just bet she went, are you okay? And I went, I'm a shit mom. I just burst into tears. And she was just like, are you okay? Like, it's okay. And I was just sobbing.

And I was like, I don't know why I'm a shit mom, but I'm a shit mom. And she was like, you're not a shit mom. And I was like, but I don't think I'm good at it. I don't think I like it. And she was like, you don't have to like it right now. Like there's bits that you do like. And that's, I felt so guilty for not enjoying that bit.

And now I love it. And like, but there are going to be times when it's shit but it's not it's not easy it's not easy like at times it's horrible too and then you find yourself going god what i don't know who i am like i feel so lost in all of this it's so normal because it's it is all consuming like it's not normal to have someone attached to you 24 7 and they can't even leave you to pee or poop in peace like I just swept my space it's not normal it's just not normal like some days like I'm like I just want to dash myself out the window just so I could be free for a good five minutes and then when I hit the surface I can be mum again but like, I just want to dash myself out the window just so I can be free for a good five minutes. And then when I hit the surface, I can be mum again. But like, it's just not normal for someone to constantly need something from me all the time.

And then for you to not have an outlet to just want to pour into yourself and to feel like it's okay to be selfish. It's okay for me to go and get my nails done and not worry for 20 minutes or whatever. That's weird, that bit. And then constantly throw out text and go, is everything okay?

Is everything all right? Just get your nails. And like the porn's trying to do your nails worrying for 20 minutes or whatever and then constantly throughout texting going is everything okay is everything alright just get your nails and like the porn's trying to do your nails and like hang on I just need to send a pointless text I won't be a minute

but I remember watching very early on as well I remember watching Squid Game and like when he was having a nap he wasn't in the room

obviously and you know when the workers did you see it when the workers go into the cells and they're locked in and the food's pushed through the gap and i remember i went out like god that looks fucking amazing i would love to be trapped in a room guy that had been put in by gunpoint and trapped and i was like god that looks good that looks so good right now it's so amazing that people have a space then to go.

And what's the topic that comes up most for you guys? Do you know what? There's so many different ones. Sex after having a baby is a big one. Yeah. When you can, when you should. Yeah. And because the baby's in the room as well with you sleeping.

It's uncomfortable. You're like, is this okay? Is this not okay? It's such a weird time isn't it and like but no one talks about like the messiness of it like no one talks about it um so that's usually a good one that comes up um mum guilt is quite a big umbrella because there's so many different topics yeah literally there's so many different topics that fall under it so i feel like mum guilt as an umbrella is a huge one a very very one. I'd say another one that has been like really big

is like birth plan disappointment. Yes. And having to mourn that. Like I had to mourn not having a water birth. Oh my God, I got a new bikini from ASOS. And I was like, and then, because I got rushed in for C-section. They got the scissors out and I was like,

whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a new bikini, new bikini, new bikini. I still like in all the madness that was going on was like really sad that I was going to get cut out of my new bikini because I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a new bikini, new bikini, new bikini. I still, in all the madness that was going on, was really sad that I was gonna get cut out of my new bikini because I'd got ready for it. I get it. So I had an emergency C-section as well. And when they were doing the epidural and stuff,

I mean, I was high on whatever drug they gave me. But as soon as they were about to cut, I said, please, I have a very pretty vagina do not mess it up and he was like it's just you're gonna put this bad boy back together yeah

he's like it'll be the bikini line I said okay it's not gonna scar is it oh it might I said okay but it's very pretty so don't mess it up

like I was like you're not like this child will not take my vagina from me like that's hilarious yeah it was just the little things it's like I feel like it's all the little things Like, you're not like, this child will not take my vagina from me. Oh my God, that's hilarious. For me. Good enough. Yeah.

It was just the little things. It's like, I feel like it's all the little things, but like birth plan disappointment. Birth trauma. Yeah, birth trauma as well. Oh yeah, birth trauma. But the main thing with mums and the disappointment of the birth plan, what are they saying? That they wish it had gone a different way? They wish they'd done something different? They'd wish they had listened to something?

What's coming up? What comes up a lot is like self-blame so oh maybe if i didn't scream that loud yeah then they wouldn't have done a c-section or maybe if i handled the pain differently then i would have got what i wanted or maybe if i held out long enough and yeah that's it that's the one that i and i like if i'd done breathing if i'd done some different breathing techniques if i had remained calm if i hadn't panicked if i had i hadn't had an induction would that would you know if i just said no let's wait a little bit longer it's all the stuff that comes up and i blame myself so much for all of that is that what moms are finding definitely like i have like so there's this one lady on youtube that

if i find her we are gonna fight she promised me that I could just breathe this baby out. No, because she was like, you could just breathe the baby out. And I walked in. What a stupid sentence. It walked in my labor. I'm like, I am breathing. And this baby is just not coming out. Why am I screaming then if I can breathe this thing out?

Do you know what I mean? baby is just not coming out like why am i screaming then if i can be just saying that but it's just it's like it's i don't know if it's like a it's just an unfair expectation that like birthing an entire human being like we as women have so much control over what that looks like and we don't like birth we have zero control over anything that happens like you can have a straightforward pregnancy and something just goes wrong during labor and delivery like we have zero control over it but we are made to believe that we have all the control that that comes with birthing a child and we don't and that we're gonna know what to do like you said like where's this come from and you think like the

longer that you are a mom that you know i'm smashing it now i know what i'm doing but it's like each stage is a new stage i have a three-year-old now and it's like hang on she's crazy yeah she's crazy like this is a whole new stage and i'm learning all new things it's different to the newborn stage it's different to when they're learning to walk on all these different stages so it's like i still don't know what the hell i'm doing and in 10 years time i probably still won't know what i'm doing but you shouldn't be expected to know what to do exactly where's it come from like I make so many mistakes and I think oh god good job you don't expect that you're gonna do this but it happens and so many people do it's just it's utterly bizarre um it's been incredible to speak to you ladies thank you so much for

coming in and being on the podcast today uh where can everyone find you uh become orbit on instagram we're not really on twitter like that anymore but instagram yeah um and then i guess our website which is just www.becomeorbit.com um and then on linkedin i don't know what linkedin that is right we've got a listener message it comes from kim on whatsapp for those who want to get in touch our whatsapp number is 075-999-27537 so kim says i've just listened to your podcast on the maternal mental load and felt compelled to drop you a message. This is to Ashley, of course. This is as a mum of two, one two-year-old and one four months. Ooh.

Did you hear that sharp intake of breath there? So much of what you and Amy discussed resonated. So much in terms of the mental load. And I love the conversation around resentment and the importance of communication and understanding the pressures on both parents. resentment and the importance of communication and understanding the pressures on both parents. It's also really inspired me to pull the trigger on something I've been pondering on since having my first two years ago. I've been a career coach for 10 years, working with professional athletes, preparing them for the transition out of pro sport, with the top three challenges being a loss of identity, change in priorities and financial implications. It's become more and

more apparent to me since becoming a mum that those three issues are extremely aligned with motherhood too. So what were those three challenges? Loss of identity, change in priorities and financial implications. I mean, that is motherhood in the battle, isn't it? But you see, athletes are getting this help when they're transitioning from that. Where's the ones for mums getting this help in there?

So she said, it dawned on me when listening to the episode that on top of mental load associated with babies children themselves mums are also bearing the mental load of their own life career i felt extremely inspired that i want to do something in this space to support women be able to have it all so thank you funny what inspires you isn't it your podcast wasn't directly about career at all but it really sparked that in me. Keep up the fantastic work. That's from Kim. What do you girls think? Do you get a lot of mums talking about

how their career is maybe sidelined? Oh, wow. Okay. How much time do we have? It's tough because also, so my career in radio, I've worked a long time to get to where I am. And then suddenly you do a weighing up of like whose day is more important.

Like when the baby's ill, do I have to go from my job to go and pick him up? Does my boyfriend have to go and get him? It's such a weird thing that actually the mum is always called first in this situation. And you're the one that immediately goes, well, no, of course I've got to go and get him. But actually it doesn't have to be that way, right? Yeah. What do the mums say what what's coming up on orbit the career one is a big one we've had our own personal experience as well so like mine after I had my daughter um I came back to a completely different world because obviously the pandemic happened so I came back to a world where we're working from home no one's in the office. And very quickly it was shown that actually they were making me decide between my daughter and work.

But it was fine for the higher ups and the men who were in the, who had children. But for me, it was like, you know, you're prioritizing your child. And so it just got to a stage for me where it was like, I'm going to actually have to choose. Do I be a mom to my child or do I work and be an employee and for me my child is always going to win but people shouldn't have to feel forced out of work and unfortunately that is the reality for so many women like I can't think of one story I haven't heard for months because it's just happened to so many women and another thing um when we're talking about you know why can't we call dads i remember my partner he was in a morning meeting at work um and at the time we worked at the same place and um he was with

our daughter he was doing that morning shift um and i remember hearing his manager on the meeting saying well why can't she needs to do it oh and i was like what like Let me give you a few reasons. Why do you think? It's one thing to think it, but to actually say it out loud as well. It's like, why do you think because I'm the mum that I should be the sole carer? I work as well. You know that I work here. We literally have the same job.

Do you know what I mean? So it's like for you to think that actually that load should be put on me and not him when he's a dad just says so much about what people's mentality are and the way that they believe that actually the mum should be doing everything. They are responsible to do X, Y, Z. And actually the dad just sits in the background and has the fun. Well, actually, no, that's not the case. And it shouldn't be the case. We've got a long way to go, haven't we, for people understanding and being educated into a new way of thinking and unfortunately there's a lot of that still there and we're I feel like we're the generation that are battling it because we're having our careers we are trying to raise our children and there is a breaking point and you

found it we all find it where you just have to go I just can't do this but I wonder how it's going to go in the future like how how can we make people more aware how can we make people in the workplace more aware of how they can behave or how they can act with this sort of stuff like your boss saying that like it's bizarre isn't it and a lot of it comes from a place of not having their own children but you shouldn't have to have children to be able to have that empathy and understanding to be actually, do you know what? Let him do the morning or X, Y, Z. And even yourself, you had an experience with a manager that was a woman, right?

Yeah. So, I mean, I've had several experiences. Pick your favourite. I'd say for my partner, he kind of experienced the same thing where it was like they wanted him to go into the office um five days a week and if he didn't go in then he needs to basically look for new employment um so when he said well I can't go in anyway like I work full-time my partner works full-time like who's gonna look after the child uh it was like well why do you want to be there for all that time like coming in when they're asleep is the best part of fatherhood and his manager was a dad what so like there is this expectation like i feel like

for some managers who maybe aren't as involved yeah as fathers they don't see the need for other dads who want to be involved to be involved like that's not your job maybe the new generation of men coming up underneath that who are involved more who are you know yeah part of the everyday wake-ups the night feeds and everything maybe they will understand a little i mean i hope they will i hope you can please come on guys for me i feel like the change will come when um like when men it tends to come anyway when men are directly affected when there are enough men that are like no this is not the image of fatherhood that I had like this isn't what I want to do I want something different I don't want to just be seen or viewed as like the provider I want to be an involved parent um but work isn't allowing me

to do that I think then like adjustments really will be made because we we've been facing this problem for since the beginning of time and I feel like now that yeah it is really starting to impact I guess like the new age dads um and we're starting to get more of that and people are more aware of uh what life could look like you don't have to just do the nine to five and that be your life like life can look so different your personal life is just as important yeah look hey you can be happy if you want to you can be there's a choice now there's a choice there's no like now it's not like okay well if i if i don't do this i'll get fired like people will leave people have

no problem leaving i think before people were very committed and loyal to their workplace. Whereas now it's like, if this isn't serving me, I have no problem leaving now. And they don't want that. And so I do feel like it will change, but I don't know how quickly it will happen. And especially because not everyone's in the situation

where that's okay for them, you know, single parents. And, you know, there's some situations where it's just not possible and they've just got to get through that do you get a lot of dads coming on orbit do you see that much do you see people getting in touch or is that not is it more a mum they're also listeners they'll just kind of be there listening in and i thought but i feel like that's a good thing because i think men should be a part of the conversation so that they can help be at the front line to make that change. Have it on loud so they can hear it at least. So that you can have the understanding because like you were saying earlier, whether you had an experience that Troy didn't understand.

I've had the same thing with my partner where I will say something and he just doesn't understand it from my perspective. So it's like being in those conversations and hearing the experiences that we're going through for all these different things can just open their eyes to be like, oh, I don't actually think about that. Or, oh, now that you've said it, okay. So that they can actually have the understanding to be like, okay, yes. Yeah, even if they don't agree with it, even if it's not something they've thought about before,

just the awareness of it is so important. And a lot of the times, I think the problems that we face, it's not like a singular issue. It's, I'd say systematic but like it is a problem that the majority of moms are facing so when you hear several other women saying the same thing and expressing the same feelings okay this isn't personal to me this is just like this is the experience and so I have to be understanding towards it um this isn't an attack on how I am as a partner or how I am as a father this is this is just the experience so I have to be understanding towards it. This isn't an attack on how I am as a partner

or how I am as a father. This is just the experience. And so I have to be understanding. And I think like one thing that definitely came up was like identity is definitely a big issue with like within motherhood, but fatherhood too. Because if there is like, I know for my partner, he thought it would be, you know, baby comes home, I feed, he changes,

but she was waking up every hour on the hour. So if I've really got her on me, then let me change her. But it got to a point where he was like, okay, she doesn't want the bottle, she just wants the boob. You can change her. I feel useless. That's exactly how my partner felt. He didn't know his place.

What do I do now like this isn't no one told me this I mean on a much smaller scale but I guess men are feeling maybe a little bit lied to as well

that they thought it was going to be you know my boy gets here I kick a ball around with him straight away and then it's like

god what's all this before it what's all this nonsense that goes on yeah it's brilliant ladies thank you so much and thank you for doing, you know, making women feel heard,

making them feel seen and loved. And there's a place that they can all go to, you know, make them realise that it's not just them going through it. It's an important job. It's brilliant. Would you remind us

where they can find it again, please? Do you want to do the honors? Become Orbit on Instagram and www.becomeorbit.com. Shanice and Brenda Brenda thank you so much thank you so much we've had so much fun yeah

so much fun you're right love thank you very much for listening to Mum's The Word the parenting podcast make sure you hit the subscribe

or follow button so you never miss an episode we love to hear from you get in touch on WhatsApp where you can send us a voice message for free even anonymously if you want to, at 075 999 275 37. Or you can email us at

askmumsthewordpod at gmail.com. askmumsthewordpod at gmail.com. Or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It all helps. We're going to be back with another episode, same time, same place, next week.