How would you feel if you moved to a new town when your precious babies were only eleven weeks old? A place where you knew no one, you’ve given up your prestigious anchor job, had baby weight to lose, to get your hormones to adjust back to normal, and your husband had a new job?
How do you deal with the transition period of going from a married couple to married…with children and beyond?
What do you do to get through fatigue and overwhelming feelings of motherhood that no one seems to discuss?
If you’re ABC anchorwoman Heather Cabot, you start an online newsletter to help mother mommies in the same position.
“I had every intension to keep going as an anchor,” explained Heather. “I was all gun-ho about returning to work. I said ‘we’ll hire two nannies’ then someone told me not to make any plans about work until after I got the babies home. It was the best advice I ever got.”
After being home with the children for a short time, her husband got a job offer in LA. “We lived in this tiny apartment in Manhattan and I’m originally from Phoenix, so the idea of being outside more was appealing.”
With eleven week old twins, Heather and her husband packed up and moved to the West Coast. That’s when the she started to realize “I underestimated the time, effort, energy it would take to move and take care of the babies.”
But that wasn’t the only the move and her precious ones that had her mind occupied. “I obviously missed working, loved being home with the kids, but I did miss work.” Although she missed her anchor job, she wanted to stress she “probably would not have the appreciation of staying home with them if I had gone back to work.”
Still, Heather was dealing with many other factors that so many mommies go through after the children arrive and change your life. “I had all this weight to lose, I had lost my identity and taken an unexpected extended maternity leave,” plus she was in a new city and knew no one.
Then a lunch meeting with a visiting friend helped Heather start a new path in life.
“I was having lunch with a friend of mine who owns a PR agency in Boston. I started talking to her about this transition when you are totally transformed into this new person of mother. I kept thinking of well baby appointments, but there are no ‘well mom appointments.’ You’re kind of left out there.” She remarked how we’re inundated with information on pre-natal care, breastfeeding and what happens immediately after the baby arrives, but what about everything that follows?
Her friend encouraged Heather to use her journalist skills and start a newsletter.
“I loved the research, the journalist aspect of things,” added Heather. “It was a job that was flexible where I could stay with the kids and help other moms.”
Soon after, The Well Mom was born.
Starting out with the idea of a newsletter was “very organic process”.
“I hooked up with fabulous web designer and a great woman who did our logo.” Heather thought the website would take a bit to get going, but people wanted to be involved. “It was all word of mouth. I’ve met some amazing people who wanted to be part of this.”
Heather didn’t just want to it to be another mommy website. She wanted to get solid and helpful information out there to moms. “It can be very lonely time after your baby arrives. Some women are afraid, reluctant to talk about the negative feelings they have because they don’t want to take away from the joy of the miracle you’ve brought into this world.” She hopes to help mothers understand, “It’s not fun all the time.”
After anchoring the ABC news desk for World News Overnight and reporting multiple assignments for Good Morning America, Heather, like so many of us, felt a bit lost during her maternity leave. “I think most of us are trying to figure out who we are (after the babies arrived). You find yourself saying ‘I miss me.’ And you feel bad about saying it, because you love you kids, but I think people need to acknowledge it.”
Heather doesn’t deny she misses working outside the home, but there are aspects of being a reporter she doesn’t miss at all. “I don’t miss getting a phone call at three in the morning to be on plane in the next few hours to cover a story. I don’t miss not knowing when I’m coming home. I can make plans with my family, where as before, I didn’t see my husband for weeks at a time.”
“Listen, it was an amazing experience working at ABC. I worked with Peter Jennings. He helped me with my first big script when we were both covering same story at the obesity summit at Williamsburg, VA. He was anchoring World News Tonight and I covered the live shots for local stations (affiliates).” Sadly, she worked the night his death was announced and had to report it on the air. “It was hard.”
She continued to say, “I had some life changing experiences, covered national news stories of our time, but now I’m a mom and I know I can’t do it all.” Understanding her limits was one of the things I found so great about Heather as well as her appreciation of her job as a mommy.
“It’s a luxury to have this time with them, I love the fact I get to be with them, I get to be the person raising them.”
As her website states, understanding being a well mom is just as important as a well child. “Give yourself that time to take care of you. It’s important for kids to see mommies using their brains.”
Using her brain power and her journalistic skills, Heather developed a website that covers the entire aspect of being a mother from her physical (well-nourished and well-toned) to mental (well-centered and well-pampered) to social (well-connected) health issues. It gives ideas on books, to how to better organize your life and home, and even how to be well-humored. “I don’t have all the answers.” Heather smiled. “I find good information and put it out there and try to help people.”
And isn’t it always interesting when you help others, good always gives back to you?
After her website took off, she found her television reporting days weren’t over. “Yahoo was looking for a national consumer spokesperson,” explained Heather. “A person at the main site knew me or knew of me from ABC. They reached out for me and now, I work for them as a consumer advocate. It allows me to work from home and my work schedule helps me work around my kids.”
One way she’s helping is her newest article on how to better organize your time when it comes to the internet and your computer. With the leap year here, she asked people (with an online survey set up through Yahoo) what they would do if they had that extra day off (February 29th). “We found that half of all Americans feel they don’t have enough time in a given day, women 18-34 really felt a time squeeze. Forty percent said they would use the time to use this online clean up.”
Feeling there was a better way to help people out, her article Make the Most of Leap Day offers advice about how to decrease spam, sort your email, and decrease the amount of email you get in a day.
With the best of both worlds, a career and being a stay-at-home mommy, Heather feels more appreciative than ever, especially when thinking of her mom. “I didn’t appreciate how much my mom sacrificed a career, staying at home, until my children came along.”
As a journalist, wife, and mother she keeps it all straight with “having the little windows of time you can get things done, but you have to pick and choose what is important.”
Heather wants to stress that she’s not Supermom either. “Listen, just because you’re a caregiver, doesn’t mean you want to give back. Some days you just want to make it to the end of the day.” She encouraged moms to make time for themselves and not to get lost in being “just a mom”. “I had a hard time figuring out my new identity, but I’m so glad I had that time to figure it out myself.
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