Life Uncut - FERTILITY, FOOTY AND MOTHERHOOD - Uncut with Moana Hope and Bella Carlstrom

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

We're back from a little 2 week break and today we are kicking things off by getting a raw and real, Britt opens up about where she is at in life post breakup, and we talk about how overcoming heartbreak isn't linear, nor does it conform to a set timeframe.The two week break did us some wonders so we figured we would come back with a bang in the form of Moana Hope and Bella Carlstrom!In this chat we talk about all kinds of things like parenthood, how those decisions were made in their same sex relationship and what the process was like, we chat about Moana's AFLW career and the insane pay gap between the AFL and the AFLW.We speak about both of their families and their relationship, as well as their relationship with Moana's sister Vinnie who has moebius syndrome.If you'd like to join the family, you can jump into our facebook group; it's 'life uncut discussion group' on facebook. Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because we love love! xxThis episode is sponsored by THE ICONIC. Mother's Day is around the corner and if you're needing a present for the special mum in your life - you can shop THE ICONIC for seriously fast delivery, they also have free delivery for orders over $50 and free return if you change your mind. You can shop everything from beauty, sport, fashion, homewares and so much more, only at THE ICONICSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode is recorded on Gadigal land of the Aurora Nation. Not like us to have a mental breakdown two minutes prior to the record. Every record we do. Well, it's going to be fine.

Everything is fine. If only people knew. Everything is fucked. hi guys and welcome back after a long dry desert of a holiday wasn't that long and dry and we added two episodes. It wasn't that dry. But we're back, baby. Here we are. Two weeks off. I'm Brittany. I feel like we should introduce ourselves, Laura. Just in case you've forgotten it, it has been a long, dry desert. I'm Laura. And this is Life Uncut. No, we did. We had a two-week holiday and we dropped some sporadic episodes, but we had a two-week holiday and it was so nice.

Brittany went to Thailand. I went to Thailand. She also took her fantastic eyebrows to Thailand. Can we just have one moment to talk about the laminate that is happening on your face? Okay. So I've had quite a few compliments on my eyebrows lately, which I've never had in my life, probably because they've always been like a 12 year old girl. I've never done anything to them. I barely, I didn't even really, to be honest, I'm probably lucky, but I never really even plucked them. I didn't do anything. They were just a little bit crazy. And I just left it. I was never very good at being like a look after myself girl. Like the eyebrows are what changes the whole face. Totally. So I got them laminated. I was like, someone had told me about lamination. Actually,

I think it was Kira McGuire from The Bachelor. I ran into her and had a drink with her like a month or so ago and her eyebrows looked really good and she's like, babe, you need to get them laminated. So I was going to Thailand. I thought, you know what, I'll try it. And they're so good. They just sort of stick there and they constantly look good.

They actually look like you've gotten a bit of glue and you've stuck them down to your face right now. But like in perfectly proportion and where they should be, but like a little bit glued to your face. Maybe you should try it for the wedding. Do you know, I once went and got my eyebrows waxed. like i was like oh that's what people do they go and get i have my eyebrows never recovered from the 90s mind you like they are pretty fucked but they're great they're drawn on every time you see

i do not leave the house without my eyebrows drawn onto my face okay go get them dyed and laminated so i went once to get them waxed and the woman said i'm sorry there's not enough eyebrows to wax so she plucked out four hairs on each side and then sent me on my way just so she just so you felt like she did something and then she charged me 38 dollars for it but anyway guys we are back and before we get too far into this episode, we want to take a hot second to say a very big thank you to our sponsor, which is The Iconic. And The Iconic, as you guys know, I mean, I'm sure you love them as much as we do. We're obsessed with them. We are obsessed, but it is the place where you can get literally everything from. It is not just the home of fashion anymore. You can get your

homewares, you can get your beauty, you can get your linen, you can get your shoes, everything at The Iconic. And it's actually just how ridiculously easy it is. I lay in bed. My problem is I lay in bed at night I did this last night and I just before I go to sleep I just did a quick shop and it's so ridiculously fast that it's turning up today so delivery turnaround is both amazing and detrimental because I'm like oh well I'll just shop something else again tonight or would you say dangerously good or dangerously good okay use some alliteration in there okay now I want to know how was your holiday Brit yes I went to Thailand I have been to Thailand once before many many moons ago but I went to like a jungle elephant camp so like I because that's what

classic Brittany it was like an elephant orphanage rehabilitation center but this time I decided to go on like a little beach vacay so just my sister and I very wholesome very bonding we went to Phuket then we went over to an island called Koh Samui and I just want to tell people because I feel like people don't realize how easy and nice it is to travel at the moment I think there's still a lot of people that are scared of COVID as well. There were no tourists there. I cannot tell you. No, all the tourists are still stuck in the airports trying to get through lines, trying to get through customs. No, but there was at one resort we're at, cause we moved around a little bit. One resort was huge, but we were the only Westerners there. It was all because it was a

Thailand public holiday too. So a lot of the Thai just travel domestically and internally, but we were the only ones there. And I thought, I said to Sherry, I wonder if people just don't realize that you can travel now. And I mean, COVID is always going to be a thing in the back of people's minds about, of course, you're going to be able to catch it somewhere traveling, but you also might catch it here in your hometown too. So it's a bit of paperwork that you fill out, but it was just really nice to have some sunshine, kick back, have a little relax and just spend some time with my sister because we are so close. She doesn't live here anymore and we haven't seen each other in a while. But I guess there's a, in complete transparency, because that's what we like to

do here at Life Uncut. I cried almost every day on the holiday because I feel like I'm in this constant battle with myself at the moment where I feel like I should be really happy and I should have moved on by now and I should be in a really good place in myself. And I'm talking, you know, post breakup and stuff like that. But like, to be honest, I'm really not in a good place still. and I haven't properly moved on and I'm still dealing with a lot of stuff and I'm trying not to cry now. If you can hear it, I will not leave.

You know, like I'm really trying to fight back the tears here but I was talking to Laura and Keisha about it. Laura, like you're not here. I was talking to you, Laura and Keisha about it. And I just had a big cry. And I said to you guys, I was like, I feel like I shouldn't be up. I'm not allowed to be upset now because it's been months.

Like it's been a long time and I have so many good things in my life. and I feel like I should have moved on by now and I am definitely like I'm doing everything I can to try but I'm in a I'm still in a really sad place and this year probably from the end of last year until now has been a real battle and I just don't think I talk I don't know I don't think I like to share the vulnerable side of me a lot as um you guys know I like to put on a brave face I think that's what it is but I think talking to you guys I thought there really isn't a time limit on healing. And I think it's important people know that, that everyone runs a race differently and

everyone heals differently and deals with things differently. And for me, it's just taking a bit longer than I had hoped. Well, we just had this conversation prior to hitting record because obviously I was bawling my eyes out. Yeah. And I, I've like followed along Britney's amazing holiday and I was like, damn, it looked very bougie and very beautiful. And I think sometimes, you know, we have to like check ourselves about what we see on social media and how amazing something can be and then how someone's feeling behind the scenes and and that things are duplicitous like you can be having a wonderful time and be experiencing wonderful things and you can also feel sad about something like we're not one-dimensional people like we have many many feelings and for anyone

who's been through a breakup a bad life breakup where they're you know sorting out their identity and getting their shit together again it's this reminder that there's not just an end date to it sometimes you think you're over it and then you get fucking sideswiped by that bus of just feeling sad again and it can hit you out of nowhere and I think that I'm so proud of when you share when when you share that Brit like when you talk about the bits that are hard that you're going through because I know that there's so many people who listen to this podcast who look at you or look at us and and think that things are seemingly pretty great and pretty perfect and that it's okay at times to lean into things are wonderful but also I sometimes I feel fucking sad

because this thing I wanted didn't work out. Yeah. And I think for me, everyone's different and everyone uses their profiles for different things. But for me on my, for example, my Instagram, I like to keep that like a happy, positive place. And I don't like to go on there and fake it till you make a baby. Yeah. I'm a fucking fake, but I don't like to like, I don't want, I see it in the last year or two weeks and I used to be more vulnerable on there. But at the moment, I think there's so much going on in the world and there's already so many people that are going through some really horrible things I don't want to add to that I don't want to go on my Instagram and bring everyone else down and cry on there and show people you know because people

have got their own shit so that's and that's how I deal with that's how I approach and I think about it and of course I am I do open up on there but for me the podcast here this is where I would open up I would open up far more here than on my Instagram because I don't want people to feel shit but you know I probably do make them feel shit anyway by pretending everything's great it's probably like I can't win it's probably like a catch-22 everyone's like fuck why is she crying on instagram but i do think it's so important and i mean we try and be so honest with you guys and we sat down to do this record and brit had a moment where she was pretty upset it was like snot bubbles coming out of my nose like how the fuck are we gonna record this not mark on laura's

t-shirt she was like cradling my head and i was like not i am like pretty close i'm pretty i'm pretty familiar with having like other humans bodily functions on me so i'm okay with this this is fine but yeah we want to always be transparent with you guys and vulnerable with you. And we share so many intimate parts of our lives with you. We share the highs, we share the lows. And I think it's also so important to know that sometimes things don't just have an end point. When you say, Brit, I should be over this by now. I shouldn't care anymore. I think a lot of people have felt like that in breakups. A lot of people have gotten to a point months down the track and thought, why do I still feel so sad? Why do I still think about them or think about

the things that we had or the life that we were manifesting together? All of that stuff takes fucking time and I know that there's that whole saying of like you know time heals all but nobody tells you exactly how much time and everybody's amount of time is different yeah and this is what I wanted to really reiterate is and it's because I'm going through it and I've been going through it for six months you know four five six months and heartbreak and healing isn't linear there's not a rule book as much as we hope that there is and I just want people to know that like I for sure have so many amazing days where I doesn't, I don't even think about it anymore. You know, I do have days where I'm happy. I'm back on the dating apps. I'm thinking about the future. And

then I have days that are so, I feel so heavy and like a failure and so upset. And then I'll have another good day. But I think that I probably, and I haven't been ready to talk about that properly on the podcast because I wouldn't have even been able to get the sentence out because I would have been like hysterically crying. I even said to Laura today, I don't know if I'll be able to talk about this yet without like blubbering, but I am. And I just want people to know that if you are going through that, that that's okay. And this is like one of the big reasons why we took two weeks break. We thought, you know, sometimes we get sick of hearing our own voices. I'm so sick of my own voice sometimes. I get so fucking tired of talking. We have created, I actually wrote down

how much content we have created. We've done close to 300 episodes now. Yeah, 300 episodes in nearly three years. Britt went away to Thailand to reconnect with her sister, to have some time to herself to do some just to have a fucking break from life and i spend some time with my kids let's stop talking about me crying let's talk about your little vacay okay let me tell you okay if you follow me on lady in a cat you may have seen that marley recently confused the word barking with the word fucking it was so funny so buster was in her bedroom and she was saying to me mom mom buster is fucking in my bedroom actually do you know what i'm just gonna play this for anybody who missed it excuse me what do you mean what does that word mean what is he doing

he's fucking in my bedroom and he's like oh he's barking barking it's called barking can you say it again? What's he doing in your bedroom? It's called barking. Can you say barking? Barking. No, barking. Very good. Very good. The barking is for woof woof. Yeah, it's barking, not the other word. Woof woof. Okay, back in your bed, please. Good night, Molly. Good so this happened and look i mean we've had a couple of little slip-ups with words like where marley you and matt no as in like where marley has like accidentally said a swear word but she's she's just said the word wrong like you know truck and fuck all that all the fish and bitch like things that have definitely sounded like swear words but were not actually swear words right

uh however we've moved into real swear word territory this week and it's not something that I'm proud of. So we went away on holidays as well. We had a couple of days off. Uh, just, we went to the central coast. We spent some time with Matt's family up there. We did this big cook up and we had all of the cousins and the kids sitting at the table. Cause it was like kids eat first and then adults eat later. And we'd gone and gotten some takeaway from like this chicken shop and roasted vegetables. And annoyingly on the roasted vegetables was like this honey mustard dressing. Delicious. Not for a two-year-old. Delicious for you and me, two-year-olds that of picky eaters didn't like it. And I thought maybe if I got super excited about the carrots,

then I could get her excited about the carrots and she would try them despite the fact that they were like marinated and there was no chance. So I was like, Molly, look, these carrots look so yummy. They've got honey on them. They're going to be really sweet. And she looks at me and she looks at the carrots and I was like, just try the carrots. They're going to be so yummy. And she looks at me again and then waves her hand over the carrots in this nonchalant way and goes, nah mommy fuck it and I was like sorry and she goes the carrots fuck it and I everyone everyone at the table just stopped and she would have known what she's saying the bigger kids just and I was like sorry sweetie what did you just say can you just say that to mommy one more time

and she goes yeah I said fuck it the carrots and I was like cool that I think you're saying the word wrong I think you mean fork it fork the carrots with your fork and she was like anyway it was grammatically incorrect anyway it should be fuck that so so Marley it's fine for you to use the word but like if you're gonna at least use it don't be dumb and use it yeah don't be rude and dumb but it makes it just makes you feel that little bit of guilt you're like am I a bad parent like did I yeah did I do this is this my fault well I think you just forget no you're not a bad parent but I think you just forget that you she might have said that so quietly once to Matt but you didn't even know they were around they she could have been in

a different room but they're just like little vacuums they pick up everything you say and also things that you say that punctuate the air or like all that they they watch you in the way and the mannerisms that you do because it was it was the way she waved her hand over it she was like nah yeah it's it's the hand she's watched who are you and when did you get your own reality tv show like she just just thinks she's this little miss madam and that's what i'm feeling marley may i would watch that to be fair i was gonna say imagine if there was a reality show on toddlers there is isn't that the toddler dancing show no it's there's one called the secret life of a three-year-old and it's also great stop it you watch the place probably where she gets it from

she's probably watching this girl ride around in one of those little hummers you know the little cars i don't think that that's the premise of the show anyway okay well speaking about kids we actually have such a beautiful episode for you guys today and now it is a very it's gonna there's something in it for everyone doesn't matter if you don't have kids or you do have kids but we have interviewed Moana Hope and her beautiful partner Bella Carlstrom now some of you might know who Moana Hope is because you may have watched Survivor but she was also one of the pioneers of AFLW within Australia she played for Collingwood and was an absolute powerhouse and has also had many conversations around the disparity between what men earn in the industry

and what women earn which spoiler is absolutely ludicrous like you know you know in the background it's something that everyone knows not men earn more in sport but when you sit down and really talk specific it's out of control but we speak about a multitude of things their relationship how they met her sporting career and Moana some people might not know but she is pregnant she's heading into her third trimester with their second baby so we speak a lot about that too and it's just a really beautiful episode if you don't follow Moana on Instagram you might not know this but Moana is also the carer for her sister and her sister is named Vinny. She is, they're just, they're honestly, they're an awesome pair on Instagram, but Vinny has

what's called Mobius syndrome. Very, very rare. Yeah. And she talks about what it is to be the carer of her sister who has this disability, but also how much her sister has impacted her life and what that looks like for her and her family. It's a really beautiful interview. I really loved it.

I hope you guys do too. but before we get into that we do have our favorite little segment accidentally unfiltered now i have an actually unfiltered i'm going to come in hot with if you are new to the podcast you don't know what accidentally unfiltered is it is basically just your most embarrassing stories you write them into the dms and we all laugh at you but i have one to share that makes us sound horrible but it's true yeah look there's something very like emotionally binding and healing that comes from laughter okay this one was written in and I'm going to summarize it because it was it was a longy but also a goody now one of our lovely lifers was in labor recently and she had

a baby herself and she went through I hope she had a baby she was in labor she was in labor for eight hours it was a pretty intense labor at the end and a really emotional moment when she had her first baby and she pushed that baby out into the world and her husband was there to help to deliver the baby and also cut the cord. Now, he took a photo of the baby just after the baby was born and sent it around to his family and friends and also to her mom who was supposed to be, her mom was supposed to be in the room with them, but the labor all happened really quickly and she wasn't able to get on a flight and get there in time because the baby was born a little bit premature. So anyway, he sends this photo out to his family. His mom gets the photo

and is so freaking excited by the news, she posts the photo to Facebook. So she takes away their announcement for starters, which is like you do not take away a mother's announcement of their baby. She's waited nine months and she has carried that thing. She wants to announce it. So the mother of the daughter who had the baby posted to Facebook, gets on a plane, flies to Sydney to come and be there with her daughter. Unbeknownst to her that the photo that she's posted on the plane

isn't just of the baby. The vagina. But also of the umbilical cord, the placenta and the vagina because it's still inside her. And it was just a picture of the beautiful baby boy and entire vagina in the aftermath still gaping open in the background. How did she not see that? Because all she saw was just this beautiful baby and she left it. The problem was is that she got on a plane and left it online because she couldn't delete it. It was uncontactable.

And also how did the husband not see that he was sending a vagina around? producer keisha's face is everybody's face right now i am i am shook okay there are multiple people at fault here i wouldn't even want my vagina going to my family group chat well i think he did it by accident because he also was just like oh my god so excited in the moment in the excitement and then the mother didn't look and was just like she wrote this is what she wrote on the post she's like jumping on a plane to meet my very first grandchild post i mean you know what at the end of the day she's probably she's probably just like you know what i'm exhausted this has come out of my vagina i don't even care no you care trust me i'm just

trying to absolutely care especially because it's probably a hot mess down there last thing you want is for people to see that it's worse and what if she'd done a poopy oh they clean that stuff up for you okay so that's not that's not just hanging around i'm just thinking the worst blood and guts and everything else down there. Jesus Christ, Brittany Hockley. Well, you never know. He might have been really quick on the camera. Maybe.

Who knows? Anyway, that happened. Brittany, what is your accident? That is so funny. Okay, mine has nothing. Mine does not even compare. I was just going to say a little personal one. I had a personal mishap.

Mine's not really embarrassing. It's more that I felt mortified. Because I don't have a mean or a rude bone in my body. And I did the rudest thing you could imagine. I'm at a resort in Thailand. and my sister and I got separate rooms which we thought we were in we thought we got two rooms in one unit you know but it wasn't they were separate so she was a few doors down so we were like okay let's go in let's get ready and then we'll meet back come to my unit and then we'll

go out so I was expecting her to come there's a knock on the door and you know when you you know it's a joke like growing up and stuff you know when someone knocks on your door and you know who they are you make a joke you're like you yell out we don't want any oh no britney so there's a knock on the door so i was like we don't want any knowing that i was gonna go open the door to sherry in a second and then there was a knock again and i said i said we don't want any and then there's a few more minutes because i was just doing my makeup i feel disgusting for you there was one more knock and i walked over the door still thinking it was sherry and i opened the door and i was like did you not hear me like this open the door and there's this

beautiful Thai lady standing there and she was like do you want your bed turned down oh my god and she just looked at me but she said like and I just I don't know if she knew what I was saying but she knew the inflection and she absolutely did I was beside myself she looked like she should be I was like I'm so sorry I was like I thought I was trying to explain to her I was like I thought you're my sister I didn't mean to yell at you so she's like I thought you were my sister and I'm a rude bitch to her but didn't know what I was like yeah but then even when I was saying I thought you're my sister she's probably like you're the most horrible human because she wouldn't have got that joke so she wouldn't know anyway she I was just like I feel like there's a few people

listening who didn't as well no yeah if you don't get the joke I was joking with my sister we do it all the time but anyway that was my it's not really like it's not a funny one it's just a it's just like a I've never been more mortified in my life oh anyway that's it I gave her a tip because you know she did she did clean the room and you were really fucking offensive to her so I'm glad. Anyway, that's my externally unfiltered. So my advice is to anyone, don't ever try and play that joke on your family member. Yeah.

All right. Well, let's get into the chat with Bella and also Moana. Mo and Bella, we are so excited to have you today. So thank you so much for joining us in your living room while we're in our living room. Welcome to Life Uncut. thank you for having us technically we're in my office but yeah we'll call it yeah i mean specifics we don't need to get specific we start every episode with accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing story we just love to throw you under a bus do you guys have one that

you can bring today well most embarrassing on mo's behalf because i mean she's a girl that can do many things but one of her talents is not swimming really i want to know how you went on survivor without being able to swim oh i think if you watch survivor you notice that i i sat out in all the water challenges just purely for my own safety because have you ever seen a dog swim really bad i have a three-legged dog who can't swim so yes i know exactly what you're talking about yeah he's probably still swims better than me and every time she comes up from the water she looks like she's drowning like i just like become really worried but anyway we were in byron and we were just down at water goes beach we were going for a swim and she's the kind of person that she's

going down she's taking you with her and we were like waist deep max water very like minimal surf and very safe and you know they were coming in and i was diving out and she kind of just started like grabbing onto me and i was like what are you doing babe like you're safe the waves are here and it got so rough on because of her not because of the water and she ended up elbowing me in the lip and giving me like the fattest lip ever so we're in knee-deep water so it was it was very yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like so manageable and i was like god i'm gonna tell you a different version of that story okay well there's always three versions yeah yeah first of all the waves were like 10 feet high oh my god right not even a pro surfer could stand that way second of all

she doesn't know this it's about time you find out behind her was a shark so my elbow was actually meant for the shark and i was trying to protect her yes right and of course like yeah your legs were tied together so there were a lot of things there that were like so much yeah I also really enjoy that your your embarrassing story isn't about you at all Bella if you just managed to throw under the bus there is a part two we're talking about mouth injuries like I actually have like a dead front tooth that I've had to like put a veneer on top of and it's been multiple times throughout my journey of having one like not so great tooth that it's fallen off at the most uncomfortable awkward places and when i can't get to the

dentist straight away and if anyone's had a veneer your tooth underneath has to get like shaved down in order to have it put on so when it falls off i've just got this like stump of a tooth i've had to like super glue it on multiple times i've just been stuck like the family members have gotten a few photos of me like smiling it's like missing it happens like soon after we met as well but she didn't know so one day she smiled and it's like one one and a half teeth and i was like what happened did you just eat your mouth i'm the kind of person that will just laugh though i just laughed so much that i couldn't didn't have the time to tell her mo let's let's start with you now i was i picked my drop off the ground when i heard this your mom

was a busy woman. You are one of 14. Is that correct? Yeah. We didn't have, we didn't have any TVs growing up clearly. No, you had nothing, nothing. You've definitely, your, your parents were at it. So one of 14, what number are you in that line? I'm in the middle. So I think I'm seventh. Crazy thing is there's 14 of us, but I've got also got like about 50 or 60 nieces and nephews. So I can, I've personally had the only planned hope in the family. The rest have just happened do you say 60 60 yeah between 50 and 60 I stopped counting years ago when you were growing up and you had you're like one of 14 kids did you I mean obviously when you're when you're growing up you think your childhood is completely normal that other people have 14 16 brothers and sisters

around them was there ever a time where you looked at your family and you're like wow this is a really big family and very different to maybe what your friends were experiencing in school or when when was it that you realized that maybe things in your household were a bit different to other households oh to be honest like I didn't think anything was weird about my household until I met Belle right because I just like I we grew up though like we grew up in my mom still lives in the same house she lives in housing commission so we grew up in housing commission I remember growing up we was only a two-bedroom house so mom and dad had one room and all of us had the other room we just had bunks like head to toe would sleep head to toe on like four bunks there

was times where you know mom probably couldn't afford to feed us every meal so the way I grew up was, you know, when I met Belle and spoke to Belle about it and, you know, went through just seeing the way she interacted with her family. I was like, oh my God, this is so different to the way I grew up. And I was just, yeah. So I think it's more about when I, probably when I met Belle that I realized that it was very, very different because you just kind of live in this bubble of love, right? And for me, I'm very grateful.

Like I grew up with a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food on the table. And I think that that made us very rich in that sense. I never had my own room. I shared a room my entire life from the day my sister, my little sister Sherry was born, but there were just two of us. I could not imagine being in a room with 14. How do you sleep? Like don't you just want to play all night together and like hang out?

We did. Yeah, we used to do the craziest things. So our bunks used to be wood slats and mum would come in at night and would have to be asleep by a certain time. So if we wanted to set one of our brothers and sisters up, we would move the wood so when they got into bed, the mattress would fall through. We did that.

I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. And so we would play pranks like that on each other all the time. And it was always play. But my mum also ran, like I always say, she could have ran Apple with how structured she had our household because we used to have like a whiteboard with like all of our names and different chores on different days.

So like in the morning we'd get up at 6 and, you know, my job might be to do all the dishes and prep the breakfast for everyone. And, you know, there was 19 of us living there at once. So imagine prepping 19 bowls of Weebix and then cleaning 19 bowls of Weebix. It was pretty heckers. I think about all the things to juggle when I have two kids and you have your little girl as well. Like, you know how crazy and full on it is even just with one child.

So to think about how you manage to fit enough in, because there's only one of you or two of you as parents and you think, how is there enough of you to go around for 14 kids? did you ever feel in that instance that you like you wished for more or did you feel like even though you're one of such a big family that you were you had enough yeah speaking completely honestly like like real honest like I feel like I missed out on a lot of love like you know I feel like you know it wasn't until got like more recently that I was like I was like like I said this to my mom as well and they'd be meaningful however I said I don't remember getting a cuddle from you or I don't remember you know you telling me that you loved me you know I can't go a minute

without telling Sia how much I love her and that's just because that's how much I I love and I was like I just can't remember those moments with my parents and maybe because it was too many of us and maybe it was because my mum was always working you know every single day night shift or day shift just to put food on a table but I think there were so many things in my childhood I did miss because of that and I guess that that's kind of also shaped me to be the parent that I am now with was fear in our next one and just making sure that I'm always not trying to be loving but just being who I want to be as a parent and not forgetting about those little moments now when we asked you guys to have a chat with us we knew a little bit about Moana's family story and what an interesting

backstory you have to your childhood but Bella we don't know much about yours could you tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up and what your childhood was like I think it's pretty black and white between mo and i i just have the one brother and mom and dad and no relatives in australia because i was born in new zealand so mom's side's over there and dad's side is in sweden so we've been really close the four of us and like i said yeah i was born in new zealand and then we moved to australia when i was about four years old and my childhood was like very hands-on parenting always going on adventures i feel really really lucky to have had the parents that I did and we're all still incredibly close my brother ended up marrying my best friend from

high school so it makes us even closer what was your your first thought your first impression when you've met Mo and you've realized it's not just Mo but it's 14 others 60 other nieces and nephews are you like wow I'm marrying into like a big family an army she should start with how she met me that's probably all right well let's okay so let's start with how you met I just met out in the wild in a bar when i had come back from overseas i was overseas for six years and four of those years were in india and i had been in my own little bubble there and came back and had no idea that women were playing footy no idea who she was i literally just saw her at a bar i thought she was hot i was like yeah i'm gonna have that and went up to her and i think i was

dancing with you and i tried to kiss you and she was like not so soon doll or something like my turn to that story is that I decided long before that I'd be single forever you know like because I just it was really hard to find girls that I was you know I could connect because I'm the kind of girl that wanted to find a girl settle down start a family and when I met Balan she went straight in for the kill I was like I'm like go hard or go home buy me a drink or something like you know when you guys met was this during the height of your professional football career It was after my first season, I think. So the first season was down.

I was kind of shattered by the first season. It didn't go how I wanted it. I went to the Grand Prix and then went out afterwards for a birthday. So I was kind of just being like it was like my first time I was allowed to be out in like six months. So I was just like trying to just like let go and just enjoy a good night out. So I probably had a few vodkas. For me, I knew that Belle was the one for me and it was just one moment

And it was when we have care of my sister, Lavinia, who's special needs. And I had care for Vinny for about nine years. She's lived with me. And it was really hard for me to introduce them because Vinny was the center of my world. And so I didn't introduce them for a little while. I waited a couple of weeks before I introduced them. And when I did, I remember we had dinner, you made dinner. There was a moment where Belle said to Vinny, I'll put your plate in the dishwasher.

And I was just like, no, no, I'll do it because that's just what I do. I'll take care of it. She goes, no, no, no. Vinny's capable of doing that herself. and she went over and showed her and I was just like wow you see her more than just a girl with a disability and that is beautiful and I'll probably marry you one day and that was kind of for me the moment where I knew that she was you know more than just a beautiful person I don't know if I've got too many hormones right now I literally have tears in my eyes I'm like I don't

know what is happening to me I'm so emotional so for those for those of you who don't know though and just to give a bit more of the backstory around like Moana your your younger sister Vinny you have taken quite a predominant carer role in her life can you talk us through a little bit around what is the disability that she has and how has that relationship with her changed you um yeah so Vinny was born with something called mebius syndrome so when she was actually born she was she was like a vegetable she was a vegetable and the doctors didn't think she would live very long they were very honest my parents they said you know she it was maybe a couple years and we had this amazing specialist who you know once he seen that she was not like

she didn't develop very quickly but she was staying around they started creating things like a bike that straps her arms and legs in that we can push her around and blocked it and then eventually she turned out to be something that they never expected but in terms of a disability she's 29 years of age but her mental capacity is like a small child so you know she she doesn't go anywhere by herself she always needs 24 7 care she doesn't cook we cook for her you know we okay yeah yeah i've been i've been toast i've been and so we still like the things that we're teaching her at the moment like we've just officially taught her and it doesn't you know for someone like vinnie you can't just teach them one time like it takes weeks months and sometimes years

like brushing her teeth is something that we've taught her and that's taken probably a year and a half for her to officially to retain that information and remember it it took me about three years to teach her how to dress herself so i was still dressing her when she first came into my care every outfit and eventually was able to teach her and eventually turned over so she's amazing in in the sense that like you know I'm making her sound like she's not able like she's able in so many ways but at the same time she you know needs a lot of time and support and you know having Val help me when once I met Val was was game changer. Why was it that you were the one who took her on as the sole carer? My mum started to get really sick so my mum's got a lot of health

problems she doesn't think she's going to be around much longer but she's quite unwell and I think she just started thinking and I lost my dad when I was 12 so she's just started thinking long term for Vinny like what's going to happen to Vinny and I always grew up just being really close to Vinny I remember going to all of her appointments going to schools with her I'm doing absolutely everything with her and I was the only one I could understand you know what she was saying when she would talk and so for me it was just like you know she's like my best friend of course I'll take her no problem I'll look after her forever but it was mostly because mum was just trying to is just trying to set her up so that she's taken care of and in terms of treadmill

she's pretty amazing she's lost like 50 kilos that's insane phenomenal yeah so when i first got her she was about 150 kilos and for us it's not about how you look it's about your inner health for her for us as well she wouldn't survive yeah you need to have you know your heart needs to be out of pump and and your internal organs need to be out of work so it's constantly teaching her that it's not about teaching her you need to be a certain size you need to look a certain way it's just purely you know you need to be the healthiest you can be so you can live the longest you can yeah obviously like you're a busy woman you're a women's afl player and we're going to get into this because it fucking sucks but you don't get paid enough doing that to to

not have another job and then how are you supposed to be a full-time carer on top of that do you get assistance does the government give you any help no so you know what the crazy thing is people just think that i don't do anything for a job where in fact i've had a full-time job since i was 17 and all through the AFLW had a full-time job still have a full-time job I've never not in my life since I was 17 had a full-time job so with Vinny she goes to a day program it's for people with special needs and it's amazing it's Monday to Friday nine to three so it allows me to be out of work it's always allowed me to be out of work especially before I met Val but while she goes to the program I work home in time for her and I'm not saying it's easy it's bloody hell it's hard

But it's definitely easier having somebody that's there to support me. But we fully support Vinnie in every aspect of life. And the only thing Vinnie does outside of our house is her day service. How did you first get into playing women's AFL? Well, I started playing footy with the boys when I was seven, which I loved playing with the guys. And then when I got to 12, they were just like, you're not allowed anymore because, you know, when apparently girls, well not apparently, but girls go through puberty. So that was the cutoff for girls. back then girls just had to stop and there was no girls teams at all and there was only women's

teams and it was only three of them and the women's teams were women's like adults teams and I was 12 when I finished and I remember I was playing cricket and a lady came up to me and said we have a women's footy team it's just down the road if you want to come and train so I was a 12 year old kid playing against grown women and I loved it like I was so competitive I was a star I've got to beat you. So I played women's footy as a girl from the age of 12, all the way through. So I just kept playing. And then they, you know, they grew the competition. And then I guess the AFL finally seen it and thought, you know what, let's try and finally do something for women. And then they brought out AFLW. When you say you had to stop playing AFL when you're,

because of puberty, is that because, are you saying that's because physically girls develop boobs and they didn't deem it safe? Or what was the reason for like, oh puberty's the cutoff yeah there was never a reason given to us right there was never it was just like you can't play anymore it's now just boys so there was never a and and like back then when i was when i was a young girl i would play footy with the boys at school at the front of my house anywhere i could and like i would play in the streets with no top on zero care factor and it's not until you you become an adult is that kind of stuff condemned not to mention i don't even have any boobs as an adult not even as a kid these things pregnancy not at 30 weeks pregnant

you don't don't worry no I don't even know what these things how I can control these things they're unbelievable yeah so it wasn't really explained to us or told to us it was just like it's you can't play anymore because you're a girl so that was kind of what it was and back then you kind of well you've got no real choice as a kid but you just go okay sweet can't play anymore so I wasn't really sure and I played cricket as well so I played cricket for Victoria up until I was about 19 so I was kind of just playing both sports what's it like playing in a sport and especially when the AFLW was started being in a sport that is still so predominantly male focused and obviously it's growing you're one of the pioneers in this sport for women but at a time where it was still

at the sidestep of the main focus which was the men's AFL it definitely had its hard times I think that was one of you know that side of it can mentally get you down because you feel like you're always having and this is like I'm not sexist at all I'm all about equality but I felt like I was always having to justify myself to men why women should play and always have to justify to them that women can do it and the hardest thing about the AFLW and playing AFLW is that the people that are critiquing you right so people always got something to say about women's footy are always comparing AFLW to AFL men like you know well you know the women are not kicking like the men or the women are not playing hard like the men the women don't want to play like the men you know the men

of huge amazing unbelievable athletes but if you do some research and go rewind on the afl in the men's and go back to when the men's afl first started when it was vfl it's not what it looks like right now you know you'd probably say this is footy you wouldn't watch because it's not what it looks like so how can you expect women to come into a competition who don't get paid first of all you know i and in no disrespect like my mum is on centrelink you get paid more on centrelink than what you do to play aflw and i was the highest paid you want them to perform as full-time athletes but you're paying them less than a casual athlete the commitment is like i was had to train four times a week over four hours a night plus weekends plus having a full-time job yeah so the commitment

was unbelievable and then you know then there's the mental stuff that comes on top where you always feel like no matter what you do as an athlete people are not going to be happy with it and all you want to do is grow this game and help make this an amazing competition so that the generations of girls after us and potentially even my daughter can play that game but so many of you also felt so lucky to be in that situation and like finally be playing professional football that no one wants to speak up and nobody wants to do anything wrong because they're threatened by this thing that they've worked their entire life to get so it was just a hard position to be in the last stats and you'll be able to tell me the last stats we could pull were from 2018 but that was that on average

for the men for the male players was about 362 000 with 31 afl players more than 800 000 and then for that aflw you guys were paid between 13 000 24 000 a season which is like you just said less than center link when you say you were too scared to speak up was there ever times that you were internally fighting to be paid more or was it just this level of like literally if you ask you're out no the one thing about me was i was never too scared to speak up it's probably why i um i had to stop playing footy because i just there were so many things that weren't fair you know it's not that i was asking or anyone was asking to be paid 800 000 even though that's what the lowest paid bfl will get paid or afl person will get paid but just compensate us for our time

you know compensate us so that we can maybe become part-time athletes and maybe not have to have a full-time job and so that we can train and actually prepare our bodies for a season rather than you know everyone coming in after their full-time job and then training until 10 o'clock at night and then going home and being in bed by 11 30 to wake up to your full-time job so you know that was a simple request that we want like you think about even like when we played away i had to take annual leave days from work so they're annual leave days in which i can't get back you know i had to make arrangements for vinnie like pay babysitters and stuff like that and things like that that just weren't like not compensated but thought about within the contract or within women's footy and

and the thing is there were a lot of times where we kind of just got told just be grateful you're playing afl be grateful you're able to pull on a jumper get on with it and that would just didn't fly away and didn't happen all the time like there's some pretty amazing people in there who were trying but it happened 100 that happened one of the reasons and i've heard you speak about this before but you did mention that one of the reasons why you also left football was because of your desire to start a family and be a mum how at that time when you had to make that decision like what was that like weighing those two things up or had you really come to a point in your life where you were like I am ready Bella and I ready to have this family yeah so I guess the reason why I

decided to stop playing footy was was two reasons well first of all I did want to start a family I think that was really important to me and then second of all footy made me sad like it generally I went from playing local footy never missing a training never missing a game paying for my own uniform and just having the best time of my life to I just felt like a product wherever I was just going you go there and do this and you go there and do this and you lost today so it's your fault and it's you know you know the first season my first AFLW season I tore my PCL right before the season started two weeks before I got told I couldn't say a word to anyone I couldn't mention it in interviews I couldn't mention it and I couldn't run I couldn't jump I couldn't sprint

I couldn't do anything that's why I had the worst season of my life but you know I just got the most abuse like the messages I got on social media were just mind-bogglingly horrible so that those things happened just started to take a mental toll on me because it was so many things I couldn't control and I just really wanted to just play football that's all I really wanted was to play football and it turned out to be really mentally draining on me so I was just like I kind of just have to walk away focus on me for a while and worry about starting a family because I don't love it anymore it's not paying me you know I'm not able to be financially secure within playing that I'm actually losing money so I can't support my family so I kind of have to make that I kind

of had to make that decision and it was once I did it I felt like when I made that decision said to my manager I'm not playing like I just felt like so many bricks off my shoulder I was so happy I actually made a decision while I was in Survivor which is so funny and I just was like I can't do it i just need time what people don't realize is they're saying okay well women's sport in general women's sports are not bringing in enough people like you so we can't pay you the same amount but there's no incentive for more women to go and play the sport to grow the sport to bring people in because they're not paying them so if why would anyone do any job full-time that they don't but that they don't make money from so it's this it's a vicious cycle that they have all these

expectations but they don't want to support anyone in getting there anyway like hashtag equality we'll get out of that no no i think i think it's valid points because why would you like why would you go do any job for free it's not that you money makes the world go wrong but it definitely makes you want to go out and thrash your body or prepare your body or you know do all those things and take all that criticism like you know if you take my male equivalent when i was playing and see how much he was paid opposed to how much i was paid yeah sure he will shut up and take that criticism because he's getting paid a million dollars a year like if someone's paying me a million dollars a year i wouldn't care what anyone said about me throw it at me who cares

yeah you're like go go nuts say whatever you want talk about her tooth i don't care i can't swim i don't care talk about that whatever but i don't you know i think you know what is it what 24 grand over six months if you do the breakdown all that on a calculator what are getting paid per week per day. Yeah. Well, I mean, you were spending money to get to those sessions. So it's ridiculous. Bella, I want to ask you a question and it's something you've been sitting there very quietly. It's the question in a same-sex couple, when you get to the point where you think one of you might want to propose, how do you make the decision as to who's going to pull the trigger and do the proposal? And in this case, we know, or I mean, I think we know that it

was you who asked Moana to marry you. How did that all unfold? And how did you come to that decision? i knew that it was really important to mo and i just like making her happy and making her feel special so for me it wasn't a pride thing or an ego thing or something i ever dreamed of happening to me it's something like i very much if i want something and go out and get it yeah just like i love her so much that i wanted to make her happy and i knew how much it would mean to her and i know what she's been through in her life and to have acts like that done for her really meant a lot being around her and how i felt around her for me it was very much an energetic thing i about my energy how it changed and also being with Mo everything just felt easy and I was just

always buzzing and I've been with women but I've never been in a relationship with women with a woman before and Mo was my first relationship and everything felt easy to me and it's just something that it was like breathing so it always just felt right and easy and light and she I knew that we came from very different parts of the world and had very different stories but it's one of the things that makes us the strongest one of the reasons why we wanted to do this episode and talk to you both is because we did want to talk about motherhood and just the idea of how different motherhood can be to so many different people and it's not there's not just one mold of what that looks like when you guys came to the decision that you wanted to have

a baby obviously you have now your little girl Svi and Moana you were pregnant you're 30 weeks pregnant now how did you make the decision first as to who was going to carry the baby who was going to go down that path because i mean for a heterosexual couple it's easy it's like sometimes it's an accident trust me i know you don't have to have the conversation often it is an accident sometimes twice there's so much more planning that has to go into it when you're a same-sex couple and it's not something that you can go into lightly well if there's an accident you're like explain yourself i think there was still the option that mo maybe would go back to footy when we were wanting to get pregnant the first time so it was always just going to be me

first first round up and also why would you not want to reproduce this first for sure she set the bar high like it was kind of wasn't even really a conversation it was like i'll go first and then mo was gonna go second and then we were like yeah we'll have three kids and i'll go third and then we had one kid we were like two sounds good how did you go about picking a sperm donor how did you go about the process of either ivf sperm donation like what did that look like for you guys so we were um went through monash ivf and they were so incredibly helpful and supportful supportful supportive and for us choosing a sperm donor was about who was the healthiest so you basically get a resume of all of their past health issues family like their parents

siblings whatever and for me i went through a lot of the research and then just came to mo with the ones i thought were pretty good and then we narrowed it down from there so you don't you don't see a photo or anything it's literally just like you know what color eyes what you know how tall what color hair how many brothers and sisters it does have like a tall dark handsome kind of thing or short and blonde or whatever yeah yeah yeah definitely definitely and then they also have like questions that they ask the sperm donor which gives you a little bit of a philosophy on their life and who they are which also was really important to me that that lined up with being a healthy person when you made the decision originally because now that you are you

were pregnant weren't i did you use the same sperm for the second pregnancy yeah yeah we were always going to do that so we did use the same sperm as well that we're really intrigued on what you know this one because then it will tell us you know how strong the donor genes are but although sphere looks literally like bell as a baby they look identical so he didn't get a look in there so did you have to okay i have a technical question here knowing in advance that you wanted to have siblings with the same sperm donor do you have to ensure that that person will provide more sperm or is there some that's just like frozen snap frozen away that you know you would have access to like do you buy it in advance like you want i want a couple of them yeah absolutely so

each sperm donor can only reproduce 10 families so once they've hit that limit they can't produce they can't their sperm can't be used anymore so when you use the sperm donor at the start they say are you going to want to have more kids with the sperm donor you say yes so they keep enough on hold for you for that all right keep it on that yeah right and was it always going to be did you ever like was it always going to be straight 180 in terms of okay well the sperm donor i'll carry it it's my egg then you carry it it's your egg was there ever like a gonna be like a lucky dip like let's make the embryo and insert them and not know whose it was no we didn't really talk about so the other thing that some couples do which is which is quite beautiful is they'll

like take my egg and i can put it in her yeah and then she will carry so we both wanted to carry like i really want to experience i think you know being able to grow a tiny human is literally the greatest gift of life can give you and bow wanted to experience it so i thought we just both experience it you know use the same donor both have our own and that way only one person has to go through the crap as well like then she would also have to go through an egg retrieval and we just didn't want to like do all of that when we were just didn't it didn't matter to us like you know who carried what egg yeah and also we wanted to try iuis first which is when basically when you're ovulating you just get inseminated with the sperm which i did twice and it didn't

work and then ended up doing one round of ivf that worked but mo on her first go got pregnant on her iui which is like only 15 chance that it even works so she's bloody amazing in that my mom is my mom was her whole life hyper fertile which is why she had so many kids so i was just like maybe i just took that gene from her 100 but also it means that you don't have to go through the process of having all the hormone injections of IVF and that can be so intensive on your body as well and also I know for a lot of people going through that the feeling of like every month is and every missed opportunity of when your period comes in the month is just such a huge disappointment going through that as well yeah it's also a process that's that can be very

intrusive for someone like myself like I went my whole life being a very private person you know and in the last nine months I've had more people examine my vagina than I have in my whole entire 30 years of life so you know for me the fact that that worked for this guy was pretty you know I was like thank god for me just because those sometimes those moments can be daunting yeah and and also you get through like one round of IVF and you're like oh my god if this doesn't work I have to do it all over again and that is gut-wrenching the idea of that yeah I went like not not that oh I mean it is similar in a way for sure like egg retrieval I froze my eggs last year and even that process to do one I was like please please give me some eggs because I don't want to do this

again I was like and then you hear of these unfortunate circumstances couples that go through like 10 12 15 rounds of that and years like four or five years of it it's not even real like years of it yeah the rounds I guess equate to years because you need to have these months in between and I just I just can't imagine it's definitely for me it was like one hit wonder and then I will not be going back so when you guys first decided that you were going to go second with the pregnancies was there ever a time that you worried about feeling connected from the outset and straight away feeling like you were connected to the pregnancy in terms of like how when you carry a baby there's that instant connection because it's inside you you know

you're experiencing it now versus being like you know at the time were you ever worried about it you mean when bell was pregnant yeah when bella was pregnant yeah no i get it yeah no i think when bell was pregnant i was just so like because i've been around a lot of pregnant women but i'd never ever spent quite literally every day with a pregnant woman so i was just like what are you feeling like you know what does the kicks feel like what like i was so intrigued and hash was feeling and i was so i think more concerned like are you feeling okay are you sick do you need something and just excited like it was like the best time best nine months of my life maybe not to her but just because i knew that that was mine like that's my wife and that's my baby and that is

something that's going to be the rest of my life. And I was so excited for that. There's a two part answer to that. The second part for me is I truly had no idea what she went through. I thought I did. I thought, yes, I know how you felt. I know what morning sickness feels like. I know what you're growing pain. So I had no fucking idea. Excuse my French. I shouldn't swear. You can swear all you want, baby. And I wasn't into like first trimester. I was so sick, right? i was so so sick and i turned to her and i was like i'm so sorry because i remember when she was going through her first trimester it was like week 13 and she was still saying she was sick and i literally i've already told her this story i was like come on it's not that bad

it's like the world's worst hangover it never ends it's like 13 weeks now how's it still going i had no idea and then when i went through it i was like oh my god you eat those words like eat them because the way I describe the first trimester is like my top 12 hangovers combined into one and that's just how it was so I feel like partners of a pregnant person they think that they understand but unless you've gone through pregnancy yourself you have absolutely no idea and like the growing pains and the sickness and then the the sore ribs and the giant boobs there's just so much going on that you just don't know what that feels like unless she go through it so I feel like I thought I had a lot of empathy and I thought I was great but I

just wasn't great enough I don't think so you're 32 weeks now how are you feeling do you feel like you're on the home stretch or are you still feeling really shitty and like what have I done no my second just left the honeymoon the second trimester yeah the second trimester was so good it was so great the only problem I had was I had to stop running because I got like how I had like the worst pelvic pain and so I had to stop running because and they said it's just because the baby You were sitting really low, so it was just hitting too much. So I think that was the only problem I had. Once I stopped running, I was completely fine.

And I was just loving it. I was like, oh, my God, pregnancy, how great is this? And then flip side, as soon as I hit third trimester, I swear that first week is like walk outside and get hit by a bus type thing. Like I was in bed, exhausted, headaches, dizzy, faintish. I almost went to hospital the other day because I was just like, what even is this? It's the third trimester.

Yeah. it's just a different like the third trimester just like kicks kicks straight in and because the baby's grown so much like the kicks also got me just like i've never grunted so much in my life but i still love it i still love the process i think it's really important to say that because i'm not going to say i'm lucky because something that makes other women feel unlucky but i'm very grateful to be in the position that i am to be able to carrying this little one but it is okay to hold space when you're pregnant for both of those emotions to be upset about how you feel and what's happening and also grateful for the fact that you're carrying a life inside you so

and i struggled that heaps during my pregnancy and then a light bulb moment was like i can feel both and it's fine yeah but love how before i get pregnant everyone's like oh my god you're gonna glow i was like the only glow i'm seeing is the bathroom floor so it's actually such a fallacy i feel like that there's like a few like obscure unicorns who actually feel great and are amazing during pregnancy and like I really love that you said that Bella because I think that sometimes we're so fearful even as parents to to talk about or to sound ungrateful but it's so important to also be able to acknowledge and talk about the things that aren't good because otherwise you just keep it to yourself and suffer in silence and the reality is is that you then you that guilt

surmounts you feel even more guilty because you think these things or feel these things that literally every other mum is thinking and feeling how do you both think that motherhood has changed you I feel like it has shown me that there is just an endless pit inside me like that will just never stop giving for my child which like there are things that I would complain about about being tired or you know lazy about some things I'm like it's just from the other day it's like I feel like when I get out of bed my legs do not stop moving until she closes her eyes and she's asleep at night time like I am just constantly going every day I'm amazed at how much i'm actually able to do and keep going and enjoy it like she is my best friend in the whole entire

world i just love spending every second with her like we're together all day every day and motherhood has just it's just shown me like felt i feel like it's shown me what i'm capable of which has been really empowering i feel like for me similar to bells i'll take bells answer but i'll just add to it but um i feel very much complete but at the same time like I've always felt super strong and super driven by making sure that you know somehow one day women will seek equality you know there's going to be equality in the world and women don't have to walk down the street feel a fool of their life or you know the domestic violence might eventually stop but I think once I had a daughter that want and that drive to want

to change that just got so much more because I was just like you know we brought a girl into this into this world you know do you know what i mean like it's a world where even i get scared to run the streets with my headphones on you know and i can hold myself really well i'm worried about her being at a bar like me and bal's been to bars and we walk through crowds and guys grab her on the ass like you know we're raising a daughter into this and that is really scary like for me i'm very protective and like if anyone grabbed her in an inappropriate way i just don't know how i would react but that's the kind of things you have to think about as a parent like you have to think about that you know is she going to be safe when she goes down the road is she going to be okay

when she goes on the bus is she going to be okay when she gets old and goes on her first date like you know so for me it's also like what if she chooses to play football is she actually going to be paid what she deserves like is you know everything that you think about is she going to be a ceo you know is she going to be pat like can she be a ceo like it's so many things you think about for your daughter and i reckon if we ever had a boy i wouldn't think about those things i would i just generally would not be concerned about if we had a boy and he was walking to the bus would he be okay and i think it's just scary like trying to raise a man in this world as well to make sure that they don't go that down that direction makes you re-evaluate absolutely

everything in your life and why you do everything before i went back to work i was like why do i shave why do i feel shame about my body hair like what is that about and would i ever want my daughter to ever change her hair on her body because of what the world is telling her she needs to be and misogyny is telling her she needs to be so i grew absolutely everything out and i will again once i finish work it's why i have to now that i'm back at work oh god damn it i know gotta make a living that well that's because of societal expectations so you've come full circle yeah exactly but you know we have a mortgage now i have to support out my family but it's it's i want her to be able when she's old enough to understand that she will definitely see that

modeled on me and along with many other aspects that i'm really cautious about it not being her problem it's one of those things where even if they choose the opposite like seeing that there is a choice because it's such an insignificant thing body hair right but we've been conditioned since children and I remember the very first time I picked up my mum's razor and cut my leg because I was like seven I was seven in the bath and my mum is bald from the bottom eyelashes down you know and so I was like well that's normal and I can see that I have this so I'm gonna change it and like we do raise girls in a world that is conditioned that is very othering at times that you know there's so many more standards that have to be lived up to and I think like it's something

you've truly hit the nail on the head you don't think about it until you become a mom of girls well it's something I used to do I remember like you know when you're a teenager or 20s probably you know what in complete transparency I probably would still do it now if you're like on a date or something or you're seeing someone and you're like oh my god I forgot to shave my legs I'm so prickly don't touch my legs like that that immediate feeling but then you're like who gives a fuck like why yeah and the standard is so low for men yeah and it's why why do I carry that shame it's just it makes me sick it's just like it's body hair but it comes in so many ways and once you start on that journey of trying to uncondition yourself it's endless like the

misogyny that lives within us as women is so scary yeah the patriarchy is so scary to raise children in it you know i'm just every day working away at as many things as i can to show her that there is another way because i can't block out what the world is telling her but if she can at home see an example of what you know freedom looks like then that's the best start that we can do i think i don't think you're gonna have any problems there i think you're both pretty incredible humans and you're pretty incredible role models to your daughter and any children you have do you know actually in that sense are you having a girl or a boy mo or you don't know it's just find out in about eight to ten weeks yeah surprise when it makes its arrival do you

know the reason why we did that also because was fear everyone was just so what are you having is is it a girl or a boy do i send you pink or do i send you blue and i was like you just send me whatever like who cares if it comes as a boy and i got pink he's gonna wear pink like why does pink have to tell you that it's a boy or a girl like that that stuff is so like for me mind-bogglingly stupid but it literally reinforces that that conditioning starts before kids are even born exactly and that's why capitalism it's everything is just another way to sell shit yeah we put sphere in blue clothes the other day and somebody goes oh lovely boy i was like just say it doesn't matter like you don't have to identify somebody by the gender like just say kid don't look at blue and

just assume it's a boy and it doesn't matter she will be she until she tells us otherwise so it's like you know very temporary she can give her name back she can give you know her gender back whatever she wants. Do you both think that you are the types of parents you expected or has it been surprising for you in any ways? I didn't think I was capable of what I still do now like if you told me that I would be breastfeeding and still at 16 months feeding her four to five times a night in bed I would have said I wouldn't have been out of function there's just no way but like I do it and it's working I think because we co-sleep as well so I do and we go to bed early and I get we've learned to sleep really well in between her feeds so I just do it in her sleep

really that I have been able to manage but there's no way I was such a light sleeper like I would wake up from just anything if I didn't get eight hours it was like don't talk to me and now I can sleep in like a coffin pose with like a child laid across me and I sleep so well I just can't believe it honestly cannot I think for me I just want to love her like I just want to love her and I want her to feel that love so in the mornings when I get a cuddle or a kiss I'm just like my parenting's working because as long as she feels that love and that I guess circle of protection that's all I really care about and that's the kind of parent that I want to be I just want to be a loving parent yeah she just needs to feel supported and loved and she's thriving

so we're not going to see 13 more babies from you guys what do you think oh god no no unless Val goes and has a crazy night out without me and it's a mistake over many years nah i think like i love my big family i love it and and i love that they're all crazy and and you know that's amazing but for me and bell like we kind of care about you know there being room in the world so we want to be mindful mindful of that we don't want to be having kids just because and i grew up like i mentioned earlier like not with a lot so for me it's like i want to make sure that my kid has as much as they need you know they have the money to you know go on school camps or do whatever it is that they want within reason i want to make sure that they have that so

we didn't there's no way i would want to bring in more kids where i can't do that last question how is vinnie with sphere how how is that transition has she been okay bringing somebody else into her home and her family and does she understand what's happening i think the first little while when sphere came it was just a bit she was a bit like she's used to being the number one so i think when sphere first came it was a little bit for she had to get her head around it but she loves it she like she just wants to get the nappy and help change the baby or put a top on the on sphere or do anything finney is so funny like she's just you should see her also with our dogs because our dogs she she talks to the dog like she would a human so if like the dog sits

on and she goes oh my god stop it like you cannot sit here like so she is just like the most caring loving and oh that's all she wants to do she wants to help and she wants to love now she's amazing and she calls sphere her little sister which is very sweet that's very cute guys good luck with the pregnancy thanks for joining us today you've been absolutely dream boats and you're both very very inspirational powerful women i love what you're doing in in the space for feminism for equality for women in sport for just bringing good kids into the world guys thanks so much for joining us have the best afternoon pleasure bye guys you all know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light of each

and every week britney do you want to kick it up maybe after the crying at the start i should kick it off do you want to kick it off my suck uh look my suck i'll do two things one feeling blue feeling a bit down uh a bit sad we know that but my second one is i got like a little bug from thailand like like diarrhea bug that's all we need my sister got it too and but we didn't get it to the very end so I had it like literally on the flight home which is the worst there's nothing like coming back from holidays and being sick like being fine for your entire holidays and then going back to work and just feeling like it's not a hectic bug it's just like a little tummy bug it's just a real punch I did the COVID test don't worry it's not that but they're my two sucks my sweet was that

it's just that I went on holiday I went to Thailand and it was it was great nice to feel some sunshine nice to get away nice to swim the ocean and just have a good time with my sister so That's my suck and my sweet. What about you? I did think the sun was dead for a little while, so it's nice to see that it's come and made a comeback. Totally. My suck and my sweet.

My suck for the week is that Lola has had some cool sleep regressions in the last few weeks. Loved that. I've really fucked myself. I keep giving her bottles at the nighttime because it's just the surefire way to, like, get her back to sleep. But now there's been a few nights recently where, like, the kid will drink five bottles if I give them to her.

Like, she'll just drink all night. She's on the bottles. Like a mama. so uh I've kind of like set myself up for some bad sleeping with her recently and the last couple of nights she's been up like five times a night I think she's a bit sick I don't know exactly know what's going on cutting some teeth life is hard in the in the world of a one and a half year old so really tough yeah you just wait sweetheart you just wait and see what it's really like so that has been my suck just going back to a place of not having much sleep after getting to

a really good place a couple of months ago and for anyone who's a mom like you would get this It's just this like weird, you think you've nailed it and then they kick you in the teeth and then it comes back and goes back down. And it's just this oscillating life between maybe I'm doing a good job and maybe I suck. Okay. Well, in relation to that sleep regression, Delilah is going, every time I tell a story about my children, you tell a story about your girl. She's the closest thing I have.

But Delilah is in something called training regression because she's this, Delilah's the same age as marley no in dog years because like it's different so she's the same age so she's going through something called training regression is she also swearing yeah she says barking instead of fucking lol get it anyway what's your sweet oh my sweet forgot about that my sweet is that we went away for a couple of days to uh the central coast beautiful up there we stayed at north avoca on the beach it was amazing just at a little airbnb and also i have a bit of a second sweet I know I know that it's I know that no one can really say that Anzac Day is this sweet because it's like a real day of like memorial and it's a day of like remembrance and being grateful for

the country that we have and and for everything that has been sacrificed for us but something that you guys might not know is that I come from a long line of army family my dad was in the army for 28 years my granddad was in the army he fought in the war my dad's been over to Papua New Guinea and spent a lot of time in Somalia fighting and for me it was a really great time I would say yesterday to be able to connect with my dad my dad sent us a lot of photos of when he was overseas and fighting so when I was in primary school my dad was in Somalia for eight months of my life crazy you just don't think I mean like I obviously know this about you but you just don't think I don't think when I think of the war you don't realize that it wasn't that long ago that

people in that we know were overseas fighting yeah and I mean even now there are so many people who are over or have been over in the last few years fighting in Afghanistan like people who are from military backgrounds like it still affects them in many different ways it's not just world war one world war two and that's it that's the end of it whereas like yeah I think like my dad and I growing up I found it really hard to connect with him and I didn't understand and it's because he lived such a remarkably different life to what a lot of people live in that he was overseas and he worked in secret services. And I think as I've grown a little bit older, I've had a bit more understanding of the life that he lived and of the things that he did

when he was fighting for our country in many different ways. And I just have a really great respect for him. So it was a moment in a day for us to connect, which is something that in our adult life, I found it challenging over the years. And it's because as a child too, you're a child, there's a level of innocence and naivety that you don't know. You might know, oh, my dad's overseas fighting you don't know what that entails as an adult it's like everything as adult you grow up and you realize what your parents went through more when you are an adult and we're so much more educated now and we're aware of what happened and I mean like thank you to everyone that's ever fought to your dad to everybody but it's it's a really beautiful thing to hear you say now that

you can connect on another level and really understand what he went through well I wonder if other people experience this in their relationships with their parents like things that you maybe felt resentful for or angry about when you were younger or thought you would do it differently if you look at your parents and the way they parented you might think like there might have been at the time a level of judgment you know when you're a kid but then when you become an adult and you have your own children you think about the way that your parents parented and you either go okay I would do things differently or you go yes I may do things differently but I understand why they did the things they did and I understand the person that

they are as an adult and as a human not just as a parent and I think that your relationship can hugely shift in positive and negative ways but for me being a parent myself has really helped my relationship with my both my parents and for that I'm grateful but that was a weird tangent of my sweet for the week yeah but that's a beautiful sweet that's probably one of my favorite sweets you've brought it's the sweet of the sweet anyway guys that is it from us another episode we are back from holidays we are back to regular programming we have Ask Uncut coming up on thursday we have the radio show on saturday please listen live don't listen i mean you can listen to it on the podcast but we'd prefer you to tune in we love those live listens

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