You Don’t Have to Lose Yourself to Become a Mom with Kylee Noorlander

Kylee Noorlander (0:00)

I had my first kid when I was 21, and it wasn't something that I was really planning for, trying to work through feeling like I am missing out on a really important period of my life that I was excited about. I dealt with serious guilt of I had to be with my daughter all the time. I had a hard time having her be babysat for anything at all.

My son was born premature, and we spent two months in the NICU, so we had to be away from our daughter. I had to literally just break that anxiety. I had to face it head on, and it actually made me realize it's not good for my kids to only be with me.

Olivia Burnett (0:48)

My life has to look exactly what I thought it was gonna look like when I was 15, or when I was 20, the goals, like, honestly, how boring. What if your life turned out exactly like you thought it was going to at 20? Like, there are pieces of that where it's like, oh, yeah, man, that might have been kind of nice. But there are pieces where it's like, that's what makes life what it is. That's actually what makes you a better person.

Wait, are we recording?

Kylee, there are so many reasons why I was so excited to bring you on today. But one is I feel like this is a conversation that every woman thinks about. I would argue daily, whether you are a mom or you're not a mom yet, or you want to be a mom someday, it's just like as a woman who is getting older, entering your twenties, thirties, if you're not already a mom, you're just thinking about it. Like even in terms of that's something you want for your life or how you would balance that with a career or what that looks like, you know, if you're in a marriage and you're wanting to have kids, or maybe it's something you're wanting to do on your own as a woman. Each path, I think, is so unique and beautiful, but it's so universal. And that's why one of the reasons I'm like, man, I'm so grateful for what you're doing. The knowledge and like science based facts you're presenting in such a calm and clear and concise way. We all need that as women. So give listeners a bit of a background on Come Home Collective and how, you know, why you started it and what the mission and goal behind it is.

Kylee Noorlander (2:26)

Long story short, I had my first kid when I was 21, and it wasn't something that I was really planning for. We were, me and my husband planned to have our travel years and have some fun before we started the serious responsibility of being parents. But life happens, and we had our daughter really young for me. And so it took me through four years now of having to navigate feelings of being the best mom I can be, but also trying to work through feeling like I am missing out on a really important period of my life, that I was excited about. I love self-discovery. I love personal growth, and identity is one of my biggest core values, right? So it's something that maybe hit me a little harder than it would an average person. But for me, it caused me to go through some mental health struggles. But then my son was born premature, and we spent two months in the NICU. So we had to be away from our daughter and be with our son or away from each other. Basically, the entire two months, I was not with my entire family. I was either with my son, helping him.

You have to be in the NICU to survive. If you're in the NICU, it's so that you can actually live. And so it's like, it's not this easy process. Obviously, anyone who's going through, if you're in the NICU for two days or two months, or there was some people I knew that were in there for like six months, it's awful. And it can be hard. And the thing that really sparked Come Home Collective, that sparked all of this for me, there was a lot of young moms, well, not even young moms, there were just a lot of moms who would sit around this table at lunchtime because you couldn't be in the room with your baby all the time. And you have to take breaks, right? You have to go and take care of yourself too. But we would spend a lot of time with each other. And it was all women who, you know, we had just gone through a traumatic thing because giving birth is traumatic.