It’s OK to Change Your Mind
Episode 4: It’s OK to Change your Mind with Bekah Martinez of @bekah
Join Rachael and Bekah Martinez to talk about all things pregnancy, birth, social media pressure, and parenting. In this episode we discuss:
previous birth experiences and plans for her next birth
breastfeeding, cosleeping, & being touched out
newborn sleep struggles
her sleep training experience and thoughts
what she plans to do differently for her third baby
how social media comparisons and misinformation can be triggering
Bekah is a former Bachelor contestant turned mom-of-almost-3, influencer and podcaster. Amongst many things, she's passionate about physiological birth, reconnecting with the earth through homemaking, and authentic parenting. You can find her on Instagram and hear a lot more chatter on patreon.com/bekahandgray. Follow Bekah on Instagram, Youtube & Tiktok.
Listen to the full episode
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Rachael: Bekah Martinez is here with us today. I'm so excited to talk to you, Bekah, because I have followed you personally for such a long time. I love The Bachelor, so I feel like it's been so fun to kind of see your journey after all of that and now becoming a mom. So Bekah Martinez is here with us today. She is a mom of two with another one on the way, and she's a huge social media influencer now, but you might know her from her bachelor fame with Ari's season. How many years ago was that now?
Bekah: Oh my gosh. I think we filmed, I was just doing the math on this the other day. We filmed, it'll be six years ago this summer, which is wild. And yeah, it aired a little over five years ago. During that same year, I got pregnant with my daughter only three months into dating my husband, and it's just been, it's definitely been a journey to use the Bachelor phrasing. It has been a really jam packed action time for years.
Rachael: A dramatic journey.
Bekah: Yes.
Rachael: So tell us a little bit more about what happened when you were just a few months into dating, you find out you're pregnant. How did that all go down?
Bekah: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't recommend it. It was extremely stressful. I did know that I always wanted to be a mom for sure. And before I was on The Bachelor, I had been a nanny pretty much all the way since my freshman year of college and just have been babysitting since-. I just always loved kids. I always knew I loved kids and that I wanted that for myself one day, but I, I think I was 23 when I got pregnant and again, very new relationship, so that was really hard. I think you're already navigating, I mean, I just felt like I was navigating so many identity shifts at once because I was all of a sudden reality TV famous, which now it doesn't really affect my life, but in the few months after, I mean it was wild. I'd be at the airport and people would just be walking with me and sitting next to me to talk about the Bachelor at my terminal. It was just weird. So navigating that whole thing, suddenly gaining hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, hearing all these different things that people are saying about you, that was already a really big identity shift for me. I had left my gigs nannying that I had been doing for so long, so already I was in this whole new life path and then new relationship and then suddenly getting thrust into being pregnant and becoming a mom. It was just quite a whirlwind all at once.
Rachael: Yeah, I bet. It's like your whole life just changed in a matter of months. Everything is different.
Bekah: Six months. It was really wild, but I was really excited and I did feel really confident heading into motherhood despite all of those different things. So it was really exciting. I think honestly, just the most stressful part of it was just navigating relationship stuff because we didn't know if we wanted to be together, but we were both committed to being parents, and so we're like, oh, we moved in together. That was all just a lot to handle.
Rachael: I bet, I mean for most new parents adding a baby, and even in the pregnancy stage, there are so many things that you have to talk about and maybe fight about, and then once baby comes, there's just so much extra tension. Even people who've been together for years and years, I think really struggle. So that must have been extremely intense.
Bekah: We didn't know each other really at all. So I think we got really lucky though I say it a lot now that our values around parenting and how we wanted to raise our children and the kind of lifestyle that we wanted to lead, all of those things just were in alignment, and I think that that made things really easy. I think also I'm just a lot more of the, we're definitely both very opinionated, but I'm a lot more opinionated when it comes to different paths that I want to take in terms of parenting and pregnancy and all of that. And he was just really supportive of like, okay, you do your thing.
Rachael: Yeah. So does he just let you make those big decisions and choices, or does he have anything that he has a really strong opinion on?
Bekah: I mean, definitely he does have strong opinions that do come up. I think as the kids get older, it's really kind of like that kind of stuff. Now we're navigating, are we going to do private? He's really into sports and stuff, so he's like, are we going to do private lessons for gymnastics? It's just kind of funny stuff like that. How are we handling discipline? Are we doing punishment? How are we, I think that stuff we're starting to have a lot more discussion and disagreement and dialogue about, but in the first couple years, he didn't have any strong feelings at all about just in terms of making choices around pregnancy or birth or infancy. I'd say he didn't really know a lot and he kind of didn't really care and let me take the lead on that one, which made things easier to be honest.
Rachael: For sure, I mean, there's part of it, right, where it's this mental burden that we hear about where it's like the mom or the birthing person has to make all of the decisions and do all of the research, but then there's also a nice side of that where you get to make all the decisions.
Bekah: Right? You're right.
Rachael: That’s kind of how it works in my house too, and I like to complain about it, but at the end of the day, I want to be in charge. So it just is what is.
Bekah: Absolutely, I do care more and if he cared just as much, that might actually be kind of difficult. So yeah, I feel the same way.
Rachael: So I know that you've mentioned that you guys have had a little bit of a change of heart with sleep training for this next baby. Are there any other things that you feel like you’ll do differently or what made you decide that you wanted to take a little bit of a different approach with baby 3?
Bekah: Yeah, I'd love to talk about that. I think it's really hard, I do believe, and I'd love to actually hear what you think about this, I do believe that there are babies that are just fundamentally different sleepers and some of the research that you've shared, one of the research things that I read on your page that I think people misquote a lot or misinterpret in terms of cry it out, there's the one study about babies that wake, but basically don't call out for attention versus babies that awake and then they, oh, it's the self-soothe, but the self-soothing is defined as just being able to fall back asleep without calling out for attention.
Rachael: Totally. It's not something we teach them, it's just their temperament.
Bekah: Exactly. And I have to say, it's so funny because my brother and his wife, they have five kids under the age of 10. Oh yeah, they're crazy.
Rachael: Oh my God.
Bekah: I'll say all of their kids from a couple months old were like, they're all, they were 8:00 PM to 7:00 AM sleepers. And I remember telling them, yeah, I'd pop out five of them too if all my kids slept.
Rachael: Exactly. I would just keep going.
Bekah: My kids fall in the other category of they were just not like that as babies. I know now it's so normal, but my children are both breastfeeding, clingy, very, just, yeah. It was just really, really, really, really difficult. And I think going into it, I was like, whatever, I'll wing it. We'll just go with the flow. And it ended up being, especially with my daughter, she totally rejected bottles literally from the first two weeks where you put a nipple, any kind of bottle nipple in her mouth and she'd be like, gagging on it.
Rachael: Oh my gosh, that is so hard. So it was really all on you.
Bekah: It was, and she would literally, because I went back to school to finish my degree when she was seven or eight months old, and she would literally go on strike all day, would not drink out of a cup, straw or bottle for eight hours and would just wait until I got back.
Rachael: And then she'd keep you up all night?
Bekah: Yeah. Oh yeah. And both of them were very much like mom's the pacifier. So we bed shared, which I thought was great in especially the newborn months, but it got really difficult with both kids around five or six months old where I just wouldn't be able to detach them from the breast throughout the night. I would do all of the things to try to separate them, and then their little sleep mouths would be searching for my nipple and would absolutely freak out if they got anything other than it. So that was just
Rachael: So hard.
Bekah: Really exhausting. And I have other friends that bed share and breastfeed, but even if the baby's still waking up four or five times a night to feed, it's just different than the all night nursing.
Rachael: When you don't get a break from being touched, it is enough to make you go insane.
Bekah: And my neck would be all cricked because I'd be in the sideline position. Oh my God. So anyway, it was just really difficult. Or we'd be having friends over and I'd be having a nurse her to sleep and sometimes it'd be taking an hour to finally actually, oh, it was just a lot. And she didn't want dad, and so it was just all on me. So I just, I was just like, all right, I'm over this. And it didn't help that I didn't have very many friends that were going through. I didn't have very many friends at all that had kids, especially living in LA- my husband who was around 30 at the time, even then, none of his friends had kids, none of his friends were married. It's just a different lifestyle that everyone was leading. So that was really difficult. And the couple friends I did have were like, we did cry-it-out sleep training at 12 weeks old. It's four nights of hell or whatever, and then everything's better. And we did actually, actually I will say, even though I don't think this is what it's designed for, we did actually get the Snoo when she was five months old, and that did actually help her. We did not use it according to how you're supposed to use it at all.
Rachael: Oh my gosh, it's so scary. A lot of people don’t, I mean, we didn't either. We had it with my middle and she actually hated being swaddled and hated the shaking or whatever that it does. So it was just a very expensive bassinet for us, we just popped her in there like a regular bassinet. We were like this is pointless.
Bekah: No, we'd zip my daughter in it for her nap. We'd zip her in it and we'd put it on one of the highest settings and she would just be laying there jostling back and forth until she finally fell asleep. And then we'd decrease the setting until, and actually that actually did, I wouldn't recommend it, but that actually did kind of help her. That was actually a way that we helped her kind of start to be able to fall asleep without nursing. And that was actually kind of great.
Rachael: I mean, I was going to say, she sounds like a little sensory seeker wanting to nurse all night liking the movement. She probably needs a lot of sensory input, right?
Bekah: Oh yeah. With her naps, I forgot about this too, when she was four or five months old, it's like I would just be wearing her for two or three hours at a time because that's the only way that she would nap, which again is fine until you're like, okay, but I'm not fine.
Rachael: It's fine until it's not.
Bekah: I can't maintain this. This is crazy. So honestly, now looking back on it, I can't really remember what we did around sleep training with her. I know we did a bit of cry it out. It's all kind of a blur because I did get pregnant at seven months. She was seven months old (with our son).
Rachael: Really she wasn't getting in your way that much.
Bekah: No, no, no. So it was a big year. There was a lot. There was a lot going on. No, I do remember that when we moved to this house, which is right around the time we got pregnant, I do remember that she was going down in the crib, maybe she was coming in bed with us around 2:00 AM so there was a lot.
Rachael: Like a hybrid.
Bekah: There was a lot going on. I don't really remember exactly how we did things, but with my son, I do remember around four or five months old, it was kind of the same thing we were going through with my daughter. And I was like, all right, let's commit. Let's just do the cry it out thing. I believe we did do it with my daughter, but the difference was- is with my daughter, it was just different- with my son, it felt like we were constantly having to retrain him. Anytime we'd go on vacation, anytime anything would disrupt the schedule, we'd have to redo it.
Rachael: Yeah, that's the part that they conveniently leave out.
Bekah: Well, and my friend who first told me about doing cry it out and doing sleep training, they would literally avoid going anywhere or doing anything. Yeah, it would throw everything off, which for us is not realistic.
Rachael: No, you have to live your life.
Bekah: So we just kind of kept hitting this wall and anyway, looking back on it, I think what I really noticed, and you know what, there was always something in my head going, it's interesting, the kind of rhetoric that we put around cry it out and sleep training where're like, well, a crib is a safe space for them. And I was telling a friend recently, I was like, well, it's just putting them, this is really dramatic. But in my head I was just like, well, you are just kind of putting them in a cage and leaving them there until they, and she's like, but it's their crib, it's their safe space. I'm like, no, to a baby, it's just bars. Keeping them in a space alone.
Rachael: And it can become their safe space, it totally can. It's just whatever you associate it with or whatever the baby associates it with. So if they associate it with, this is the place that I cry myself to sleep, then they probably won't love it that much.
Bekah: I was just sort of thinking about it. If you told someone like, oh yeah, I put my child in a cage and they scream for three or four hours and then eventually they get over it, people would be like, is everyone okay? This doesn't sound good, but to a baby, I was just thinking about it. I'm like, well, they can't tell the difference. They don’t know the difference between if you put them in a dog crate or you put 'em in their crib and you let 'em scream for three hours, that to them is totally, they don't know what's going on. I do think, and this is just my personal thing, it's like now when my kids are two or three years old, there are times when we're going to bed and I'm like, I'm going out. I'm not going to lay with you guys. And they're crying and they're screaming, they're pissed about it. But the difference is that they cognitively understand that I am in the other room because they are getting out of their bed and being like, will you come lay with me? You know, stop them crying and come back please and scratch my back for another 30 minutes. There's a different awareness of their surroundings. And I just kept thinking about that and being like, man, that just doesn't, the more I was thinking about it in hindsight, I was like, man, that just doesn't sit right with me because my baby doesn't know what's going on and it's super scary.
Rachael: You’re so right, that so much of it just doesn't make sense. And parents who are so sleep deprived and just want something to work so badly will do all of these mental gymnastics to be like, oh, well, what this person is saying makes sense. This totally makes sense. And then when you step away and you're not so sleep deprived and desperate anymore, you realize it doesn't really make sense. I remember one of the things, we sleep trained, my son, my oldest, we used a popular influencers program, which is pretty much just ferber, so it's not full cry it out extinction where you leave them in the room overnight and never come back until the morning. But he was crying for up to 20 minutes at a time by himself. So to me, that's cry it out too.
Bekah: How old was he at the time?
Rachael: He was, oh my God, we started early. We started at four months, but then it didn't work. You were told to stick to the plan for two weeks. It never worked. He still cried a total of a couple of hours every single night. So then we tried it again at six or something months I think, and then that didn't work. And then stupidly, we tried a third time around nine months, and then it still didn't work. So I just kind of totally gave up at that point. And then he started sleeping through the night at 12 months, just randomly dropped the night feedings by himself. And he's been a great sleeper ever since. I never, it's so funny. I thought I had it so bad with him, but he's my best sleeper by far from the beginning, from the time he was a newborn. I look back now and realize, oh, actually I had it pretty good. And just because he was waking for a few feedings per night and needed to be rocked to sleep doesn't mean that I should have sleep trained him. He was doing amazing. But it's like all of this toxic messaging that we're getting about, oh, they have to be able to sleep through the night. They shouldn't need feedings anymore. They have to go down drowsy, but awake from the beginning or else they'll never learn how to fall asleep on their own. It's like all this fearmongering. And I remember telling my husband, this sleep trainer that we ended up hiring, not hiring, but we bought her program and in it, she said something like, if they're crying, it's really just protesting. Imagine that they're a toddler and they're saying, mommy, I don't like this or I don't want this. And you have to set limits with them. And I remember that made so much sense to me at the time, but it's like what you were just saying, an infant at three or four months is so different than a two or three or a four year old. We can't make that comparison. It's just so crazy. The things that they'll tell you to justify it.
Bekah: In under six months too. You're like, wait, remember how only 16 weeks ago this little human had their every demand met without even having to ask for it, how they had comfort 24/7. That's a real big shift. That's a lot for a baby to go through. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of toxic messaging and also just a lot of pressure and just like with anything with parenting, you're just comparing. You're like, why isn't my baby like that? I'm curious about this though, because with my son, I feel like, and the reason I started thinking about it when he was year and a half or two years old, I felt like he had a lot of anxiety around naps and around bedtime, and that's maybe why he wasn't sleeping as well. But I am curious with your younger ones who you did not do the sleep training with, how do they sleep? How old is your middle?
Rachael: My middle is three.
Bekah: Okay.
Rachael: She sleeps now totally fine. She goes to bed and sleeps in her own bed in her own room all night. And she was my barnacle baby. She was my covid baby. She was literally attached to me for the first year and a half of her life. Didn't have any other caregivers. My husband was an essential worker, so he was not even home. Like yours, she didn't take a bottle. She was literally on me all day every day. She bed shared until she was two, and then we did part-time bed sharing. Actually, we always, from the time she was about seven or eight months, we would put her down at bedtime in the crib and we would do some crib naps. And then over time, that kind of just lengthened as she got just more comfortable and used to it. So she would go down at bedtime in her crib, sleep in there until midnight, one or 2:00 AM on a good night. And then I was lazy, so I brought her to bed. And she would nurse on demand pretty much until morning. And then once she was about two, I was kind of over it and we were starting to think about wanting to have a third. So I was like, let's see if we can shift this. I knew that I didn't really want to tandem feed or breastfeed throughout pregnancy, even though I did end up doing it until my second trimester.
Yeah So we night weaned her and my husband was kind of on duty for her while we did that. And we had to try that three separate times because one time she got sick or something, she got hand foot mouth, which is really, really, disgusting but she really needed the nursing for comfort. And then there was another time we tried it at a really stupid time because we were traveling, but then the third time she was about two and she started sleeping through the night that week. And she's had ups and downs of course, because sleep is not linear. When she's sick, she'll still wake up at night or sometimes she'll have a bad dream and scream out or something and just need a little bit of resettling. But it's so easy now that, it's like you said before too, you kind of forget what you do in the early days. Once they're out of it, it just seems like, oh, well that was tough, but now it's okay. It's just like everything else in parenting, just everything is a phase. And when we attach so much anxiety to one phase because we think it's going to last forever, it just makes it so much harder than it probably needs to be right?
Bekah: 100%. And I'm really interested to see how this time around, I mean, look, I'm going to try to be more intentional about certain things with this third baby.
Rachael: Yeah, so what are you going to do differently? I want to hear about this.
Bekah: So for me, nursing on demand was always just easiest. Once breastfeeding is established, I just felt like it was easiest for any inconvenience, any upset with the baby would be like, oh, put 'em on the boob, whatever.
Rachael: The boob usually works for pretty much any little ailment that they have. But then it does get exhausting and especially when you have two other kids… it's not as easy to just pop them on all the time.
Bekah: Well and I'll say so because I got pregnant when my daughter was seven months old, so she was only 16 months old when my son was born.
Rachael: That's a really close gap.
Bekah: It was really close. So I nursed her throughout pregnancy and luckily I didn't have any, my gosh, TMI. But this pregnancy, I'm having so much more nipple discomfort. I know for a fact, I would not have been able to handle it. But yeah, I was totally comfortable nursing her throughout pregnancy luckily, and then tandem feeding because she was still a baby, it kind of made things easier. I would just flop on the couch and would be like, whatever. Both of you, just nurse for the next hour while I'm on my phone
Rachael: Scrolling. Yeah, exactly.
Bekah: So I kind of felt like that made things a little bit easier for me in a way. And I almost would say I over relied on boob for everything where I was just like, yeah, and traveling, whatever it was. Anyway, this time around, I am trying to be more intentional about incorporating bottles regularly, kind of from the start. Well, we'll see how this breastfeeding journey goes, but with my first two, aside from a couple blips in the road, and I had the help of a lactation consultant, otherwise they were pretty solid nursers, no restrictions or anything like that. So if it's the same this time around, I feel pretty confident that I'm going to immediately start introducing bottles and having it be part of the routine. I'm going to try to have Gray do evening feeds, not night feeds, because to be honest, I feel like that's just more work for me then I'm like, I'm still going to have to be releasing milk at night.
Rachael: I know. And I hate pumping. That's what we always did too. I was like, I'm too lazy. Just give her to me, even though I wanted him to be involved and to help, it's work for you no matter what.
Bekah: It is. So I would do the exact same thing. So this time around, I'm really going to be relying on the Hakkah to catch milk, especially in those first few weeks when it's really just flowing. So I'm trying to be really intentional about saving milk through the Hakkah and having him just do the bedtime. I'd love to have him just do a bedtime bottle and create that association from the get go.
Rachael: Or even just a little dream feed so that you can get a stretch of sleep at the beginning.
Bekah: And I’d kind of like to create an association with dad too around the bedtime hours and kind of establish that from the start. So that's one thing I'm going to be doing. And we'll see. I said I was going to do this with my son, but I guess my daughter was still really little. And this time around with them being three and four, I probably will have a little more space for that intentionality. But I'd really like to practice setting the baby down and not just holding them and nursing them through their whole nap in the first few weeks, but I kind of want to set a little cutoff for myself. Alright, around six or eight weeks, let's start trying to lay the baby down on the bed or in the crib or in the basket or whatever.
Rachael: And it's nice now that you have a little bit of a bigger gap, I think you're going to love it. My first two are nowhere near as close as yours, but they're closer. They're only two years apart. So my two year old still kind of felt like a baby when we brought home my middle. And with this last one, we waited a little bit longer so that the kids were three and five. And it is just a world of difference. It's so nice to have them a little bit more independent with the baby around. They can play on their own, they can grab their own snacks. They don't need me for every single thing all the time, and it's just been so much less stressful. So I'm really excited for you to have that and to see how different it feels.
Bekah: Now the only thing is, I was just saying yesterday we were visiting my family and I'm like, oh man, we're in the phase right now where I go hours without being touched.
Rachael: I know it's hard to start over.
Bekah: I know. I was like, alright, the next year and a half or so, it's back to me being touched every hour a lot. Here we go.
Rachael: That's the only thing when you have them close together, it's like you don't get that break, so you don't know how nice it is. And it's sleeping through the night too. It's like once your kids start sleeping through the night is when you kind of get that baby fever, like, oh, maybe we can do this again. But then you're like, oh…
Bekah: The reality hits, but I think it'll be great. And it does go by so fast now I'm like, holy cow. These two are three and four. And it is a phase. You do have that confidence. I think that was the biggest shift or that's the biggest shift going into this one because there is a bigger gap than just half a year. But I'm like, man, it does. This too shall pass. And I think that that's the most important thing to remember to tell new parents and not in a way to make sure you savor every moment or whatever. Because for me, the infant days are really hard and I don't enjoy them half as much as I do toddlerhood.. So I think just remembering this too shall pass is huge. And I found your account through a friend who had her baby in November and she always reposts a lot of your posts. And I was like, wow, this is so great that you are giving the people reassurance like this too shall pass. This is normal. Don't worry. It won't be forever. Because it does feel like forever, especially with a first baby.
Rachael (27:52):
And it sounds so cliche, and sometimes I feel like I'm a broken record saying that kind of thing. And a lot of people don't like that message. A lot of people are like, I need tips. I need you to tell me exactly what to do. I need a formula. So that message is not for everybody, and I'm not for everybody and my page is definitely not for everybody. But I do think that everybody could benefit from just having really realistic expectations going in. And I think that's one of the biggest problems in our society is that parents are just so unprepared for what, not only what sleep looks like, but what the early days of parenthood looked like. And I don't know if that's a new problem with social media showing unrealistic things. I know I even get incredibly triggered when I see certain things come across my TikTok.
Bekah: I remember watching someone's Instagram story who had their baby not too long after me. And I remember them, their husband having dinner out in the backyard with a baby monitor and baby was sleeping peacefully at 8:30. And I was like, oh. I was like, why is that not me right now? I want that. Why don't I have that? So I just felt alone. I'm like, man, is no one else going through this that I'm experiencing? Am I the only person in the world going through this? Which obviously not, but at the time, not having a community around me, it was like, yeah, I felt like I was the only one. The only one.
Rachael: Yeah. And I feel like that's part of the problem too, is we're not living in these communities anymore. Most of us are so isolated. And I mean, it's sad. I hear from so many moms that really don't even have other mom friends. They really are just so incredibly alone. And so we look to social media to be our village and to show us what it's supposed to be like and to give us advice and to make us feel this sense of community and comradery. But then it can also have the opposite effect. And I actually wanted to ask you about that because you are in the public eye. And so how does that, because a lot of these things are coming from people in the influencer community. They're not necessarily experts in things like sleep or feeding or parenting, but they are out there sharing their experiences, giving their advice, and it can be helpful sometimes and it can be really detrimental at other times. And I think you have such a nice balance on your page where you really show the realities of motherhood and you're very real and you don't exploit your kids. And I think that's so refreshing, but there are a lot of problematic accounts out there. What do you think about the influencer parenting space?
Bekah: I mean, it sucks. I mean, there's obviously just misinformation on the internet all over the place, and most of the time, I just have to remind myself it's usually not coming from any kind of a bad place. It's usually just information. Horrible information is given all the time by experts.
Rachael: So true.
Bekah: Oh my God, it's so true. I remember my pediatrician being like, well, how big is the fat layer on your pumped milk? Well, she's probably not sleeping through the night because you don't have enough fat in your breast milk. And thankfully I kind of crosscheck everything. And so I was able to talk to a person who was actually trained in lactation and be like, no that’s BS– No, just stuff like that. So people are being given bad information from so-called experts
Rachael: Every which way.
Bekah: And as you talk about sleep training experts, people that don't actually have any kind of real, there's no bar for qualification.
Rachael: Yeah, no, exactly. It's such a huge problem.
Bekah: But I just try to remember people are coming from a good place and the only thing you can do is just try to combat that. And yeah, it's hard. I think that a big issue too is that because we live in a super consumeristic society, the end goal is to try for people to try to be able to make money. And unfortunately, because of the way my brother was just telling me the other day, because he's into marketing, he was reading a book about how specifically new mothers, our brains are wired so differently just transitioning from during pregnancy and early motherhood that our brains are super, super susceptible to certain messages. And so it is like we are fodder for marketing to be trying to be sold stuff. And so that makes us perfect targets to be sold messages. I mean, they drive me nuts. I think I posted about it one day. I get the diaper ads of like my baby slept nine hours last night. Oh- whatever you need to do to sell your diaper. It's like, if I had been a first time mom, now I know. I'm like, no freaking diaper is going to get my kid to sleep through the night. If they're not. I think that we're always going to be, or not we, but I think that companies are always going to be trying to create more issues if there is a vulnerable point where people can be sold stuff, whether that's a fancy sleep sack or a pair of overnight diapers or whatever. So I think that we also just have to remember that a lot of these messages are originating from someone trying to make money, unfortunately.
Rachael: Yeah like who's benefiting from this message, right? We have to be super careful consumers, especially on social media where anybody can say anything that they want and it's like, it's really the wild West.
Bekah: And at the end of the day, I think the best thing that you can do for yourself is to, and it's such a cliche phrase, and I know it doesn't work all the time, but if you really can just try to be confident in the intelligence of your baby and your body and your intuition, all those kind of things. I do think at the end of the day, if you can have some confidence in your own judgment in that, it's a little easier to sift through all of that BS because you do know your baby and you do know yourself. So I think sometimes you have to remember, especially as a new parent, to sometimes just pause, maybe delete your social media apps for a little bit and just try to drop back down, touch grass a little bit, go outside, take a deep breath. And I think that also it's just important, especially when people are a little bit further down the road. I think don't beat yourself up too much either, because it's really interesting because when I was posting about, well, I don't think I'm going to sleep train, I don't remember what I posted about sleep training, not doing it before, people are really, really defensive. And I'm like, dude, I'm saying I did this with my first two.
Rachael: Oh, they don't care. I say that all the time and they still say that I'm shaming them and judging them and all of this stuff. It's like, I honestly think sleep is the most contentious thing online.
Bekah: Yeah, I mean people, there's definitely a lot of really, really, really, really strong feelings. Yeah, I'd say feeding is another big one. But yeah, I think that it's just strange. Like no, I'm literally not saying anyone's a bad parent. I did it!
Rachael: Yeah, it's wild that you're judged so harshly for not wanting to do something.
Bekah: It's projections.
Rachael: People think that it means that if they did it, you think they're bad. And it's like, no, it's just not something I care to do or that I want to do again. That doesn't mean that I don't think you should do it or that you can't do it.
Bekah: People are giving me advice, friends, saying you know what? Maybe you should just go stay at the hotel for the night and have Gray train him. And then when you think about it, you're like, wow, if my biological response is so distressing….
Rachael: That I need to leave…..
Bekah: Yeah, that I’d be in distress. Maybe we need to pause and think about what we're suggesting here. If I physically and emotionally can't handle this, maybe that's a message. And again, I did it. I put in my headphones too and ignored it while my baby screamed in the other room. And I think that, again, this just applies to all things on social media. If we're having a really intense emotional reaction to something, then we probably should…. it implies offline too…. I'm still practicing it. I'm not very good at it at times. But what we should do is remove ourselves, take a breath, think about why we're having that emotional reaction.
Rachael: Yep, why are we so triggered by this stranger on the internet and their opinion on something that has nothing to do with my life? What would you say is the most controversial thing as far as parenting that you've gotten the most angry messages about?
Bekah: There's countless things.
Rachael: What was the most recent thing? You added it to your bio and I was cackling. It was too nice to children or something.
Bekah: Too pro kid. Yeah, their sister-in-law or something said she unfollowed me because I was too “pro kids”. That was weird. But no, I mean, definitely the most recent controversy was that we are raising animals in our backyard and we're raising rabbits for meat. And so when I posted it, I love to poke a little bit, but there's times where I don't expect that things are going to get taken so far. So anyway, people were really upset about that. The kids were playing with the rabbits.
Rachael: It's so cool that you're doing all this homesteading though. I'm reading your tincture journey and it's just very cool. Are you just self-taught with all of this or where are you learning about everything?
Bekah: Yeah, I mean, honestly, most, it's funny. I get messages and this is just kind of something, I mean, I've always been into this so thing and my mom was growing up too, but I live in the middle of the city. I live in the middle of LA County next to apartment buildings and all that kind of thing. But I think in the last year and a half or so, I've just started Googling, I'll be like, oh, I'll just be laying in bed at night and be like, how do you make apple cider vinegar? And then I'll just Google it. But what I've started realizing as I started doing this probably a year ago is you don't realize how many things are actually so easy. And actually once you get into a groove, it's actually shockingly easy to incorporate into your everyday life. So I've really had fun just learning more about how things are made and how I can incorporate those processes into my home. And it just helps me slow down and be more present- I think in my house and with my family and with my consumption and all those sorts of things. And I think that's kind of the important message of parenting that is so much easier said than done is, can you just slow down? And the days are long, but the months and years are short, as they said, and just pause and try to drink it all in. Which is again, much easier said than done for me, the first year was very much survival. For some people it's the toddler years. There's always going to be phases where you're like, I can't wait for this to be over. And you don't have to feel guilty about that, right? No, totally times where you're like, I can't wait for this chapter to be done. And guess what? You never look back at that chapter and be like, oh, I miss it. There are times where you're like, yep, I'm still glad that’s over.
Rachael: And also, it's so funny too because it can be different with each kid. With my first, I was so overwhelmed, I had such bad postpartum anxiety, I could not wait for the newborn phase to be over. And then with my last two babies, I loved the newborn phase so much. So also just don't be afraid to let one experience, just be one experience and be open to your next one being a little bit different, either for better or for worse, you don't know. But not every postpartum is going to look exactly the same. It rarely does actually.
Bekah: Oh, a hundred percent. I was so prepared going in for my second because with my first, I just was not counting on how crazy I would feel emotionally and just how wild my hormones would be and recovery and all that stuff. So for my second it was like, here's my plan. I'm hiring a postpartum doula. I'm stacking all the family and friends over the course of these days and I'm telling everyone that you need to cook.
Rachael: Yes, I love that. You don't have to tell me your whole birth plan, but what are some birth related things that you feel like you're going to do differently this time around?
Bekah: Well, so I had my first in birth center, and even though that was with a midwife, it was pretty run of the mill. I'd say just medical wise. I did the whole glucose test thing. I got cervical checks, blah, blah, blah. I mean, nothing crazy. But with my second, we had him at home and it was a different midwife and she was just a lot more hands off. And during the birth with my second, I mean obviously subsequent births are generally more smooth too, but I didn't do any cervical checks with my second throughout the birth. And I really, that was actually my one goal with that birth is I was like, I'm just going to wait to push until I feel like I have to because it was just again, really exhausting.
Rachael: Oh yeah. With my first, I pushed for three and a half hours and I felt like a bus had hit me for the whole week after that.
Bekah: Yeah, sitting peeing, everything was just horrific. It was not fun. So with my second, I really focused on that, so that was cool because it felt really different the second time. Again, second babies. With my third, I have the same plan to keep things really hands off during the actual birth. And I'm really excited about having the kids there. My hope, I'm trying to manifest out there, is I would really like a day birth- like it’s in my control at all Unfortunately.
Rachael: You want to have the kids awake and there for it.
Bekah: And also with my last, I just remember with him, for me, I always, labor really hit when the sun would go down and when those contractions would stop, it's like, I need the primal cover of nights. I just remember with my last, I remember it being 11 or midnight or something, he was born around 3:00 AM and I remember just being like, this is my bedtime. I want to be sleeping.
Rachael: Right? Oh my gosh, that's so hard. You're physically exhausted, but you're also like, my body should be asleep right now
Bekah: Way past my bedtime. So that's just a wish that I have.
Rachael: Well, we'll put it out there. We'll manifest a day birth. Yeah. My last one was nighttime. She was born at 10:00 PM and I actually loved that because I put my kids to bed. I started contracting while reading their bedtime stories, and so I knew, sorry…
Bekah: That's quick.
Rachael: It was very quick. Yeah. Third was very, very quick. I also had a membrane sweep that day, which is a whole other story. I was like 41 and two. First was born on his due date. And I mean, due dates are meaningless, but my second was two days late, so both were pretty on time. So this one I was much later, I was very anxious ready to get her out, but so I had gone in that day, they wanted to induce me. I didn't want to be induced, but I was like, I'll settle for a membrane sweep. Started contracting a few hours later while I was putting them to bed. So I was able to kind of tell them, hey, I might not be here when you wake up. Baby might be coming tonight. So anyway, I called my mother-in-law. She came over, but it was kind of perfect. We got to put the kids to bed the way we always do, left for the hospital once they were down and baby was born an hour later.
Bekah: Oh my gosh.
Rachael: Yeah, it was only 10 o'clock at night, so I was like, this is perfect. We can hang out for a little bit and then go to sleep. And of course you're not doing much sleeping on nights one or two. But yeah, that was very nice because my other ones I went in, like you said, I went into labor more in the middle of the night. So by the time they were actually born, I had felt just exhausted because I hadn't slept.
Bekah: Oh, also another thing I'm trying to prepare for the third time around is I had the worst afterbirth contractions with my second.
Rachael: Yeah, those are another thing nobody tells you about. Nobody tells you about those or the shaking. It's intense.
Bekah: It was in bed after being like, I thought this was over.
Rachael: And actually I think they say that with subsequent births, it can get worse. So this one maybe just prepare yourself a little bit more.
Bekah: I'm like, alright, I'm going to have medications, strong ibuprofen or whatever ready to go. I'm going to try to experiment with some herbal stuff, to see if I can get some relief, because that was gnarly the second time. And I just remember handing him off to Gray and being like, hold him. I'm not okay right now.
Bekah: Wait, that's wild though that's a precipitous labor.
Rachael: Yeah. My second was precipitous too, and she ended up being born in our bathroom. Yeah, not planned. We just didn't make it in time. By the time my husband had got our car packed and had called his mom and we were waiting for her to come over for my son, I was in transition. So I told my two year old to bring me my phone and I called the ambulance and they did not arrive on time. So my husband actually delivered her. He pulled her out while my two year old was standing there like what is happening?
Bekah: Oh my God. That's not ideal.
Rachael: No, it was not. But you know what's so funny, is that I had such a hard hospital birth with my first, that having that happen, and I mean, it was quick. So obviously a quick labor is easier no matter where you are.
Bekah: Kind of but so much more intense!
Rachael: But it was intense. Yeah, I was scared just because I was alone and she came out and she was kind of gray and in shock and she didn't cry right away. So that was very scary. But overall it was fine. And so I actually really considered a home birth for my third, and it didn't work out. Our house was under construction and we were in transition. Not sure where we'd be living when she was born, otherwise I would've loved to do a home birth. There is something, I don't know, there's just something nice about not being medicalized. So I don't know.
Bekah: Just getting to go get in your bed after. I think that's pretty nice.
Rachael: Totally. Yeah. And if you want to have your kids there, that's so special too. And we ended up having a great hospital birth, and I actually, my daughter had RSV at the time, so it was actually nice to be in the hospital and away from that with the newborn. So it all worked out for the best/
Bekah: But so you must have known when you started getting contractions, you're like, okay, so we need to go right now.
Rachael: Oh yeah. I texted my husband, he was laying with my son and I was laying with my daughter in a different room and I was like, I'm feeling contractions. Call your mom. And luckily she only lived five minutes away and I was like, we got to go. And so my daughter, thank God, fell asleep quickly that night because she was sick. We left within an hour. And then like I said, we got to the hospital and she was born an hour later, so we really made it in the nick of time. I really did not want a car birth. That was one thing I was trying to avoid.
Rachael: Oh my gosh. Well, Bekah, it's been so fun to talk to you about all things, kids and birth. You are just so cool and such a wealth of knowledge on so many different topics. So people can follow you at Bekah, b e k a h on Instagram. And then your YouTube channel is also really cool. You do more long form stuff over there. And that's Bekah Martinez. Your home tour was so cool!
Bekah: Oh my gosh, thank you.
Rachael: I love a real home tour. That's what we need more on the internet really.
Bekah: You can watch my whole meltdown on keeping my house clean and then watch the tour of our house. You're always seeing someone's same corner of their house on Instagram that looks the best. So I do it. Everyone does it.
Rachael: Everyone does it. It's true. And yeah, people just need to be aware of it, right? Nobody is perfect. Nobody has it all together. And if they do, they're probably driving themselves absolutely insane to maintain that because it's just not normal. Thank you so, so much. It was so fun to chat with you. Is there anywhere else that you want people to come find you?
Bekah: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, but my main things on Instagram @bekah. Thank you so much.
