Hilaria Baldwin & Daphne Oz Get Real About Busy & Beautiful Mom Life on New Podcast
October 29, 2018
Hilaria Baldwin and Daphne Oz know what it's like to have their hands full. The good friends both juggle successful careers—Daphne as a chef, TV host, author, and entrepreneur, Hilaria as a yoga teacher, author, and fitness guru—alongside raising their L.O.s. Daphne is mom to Philomena, Jovan, and Domenica Jovanovic with husband John, while Hilaria and her husband Alec have four: Carmen, Rafael, Leonardo, and Romeo. And it's their very full, hectic mom lives that inspired the pair to start a podcast called Mom Brain, which launched on October 8.
"We began talking about this during playdates, and we'd go down this rabbit hole, chatting about things for hours and hours," Hilaria tells Parents.com. "Daphne's so positive, and my message is positivity, as well. We wanted to create some sort of forum for great mom conversation and have it really be about the topics. We're interviewing celebs as well as experts and regular average mamas. And when we talk to people who come from all different walks of life, we want to ask what unites us? And on my part, it's been so fun, because you get to hang out with your friends and chat about something that's so important to us and important to a lot of people."
Oz agrees that simply having the ability to trade notes as a mom is invaluable. "The better prepared I am, the more information I have, the more I've thought about things before I'm in the stressful position of having to put learning into practice, the better off I am," she tells Parents.com. "And that's a lot of what Mom Brain ends up being—us learning from moms who've been there, who are in it with us, asking the difficult or just sort of interesting, need-to-know questions, and living out the recommendations."
Parents.com recently got the highlights from Hilara and Daphne on the conversations they want to start with other moms, as well as their own parenting battles and victories.
On coping with the most stressful moments with their broods
Hilaria: Last night, I put my sons to bed, which is always a nightmare—not all my sons, I'm still trying to get used to the fact that I have three sons, so the middle ones. They sleep in the same room, and they just take advantage of me at bedtime. They jump on me, they want me to sleep with them in their beds. It was two hours of these little tiny adorable demons jumping all over me and kicking me and then hitting each other cuz they’re fighting over me. By the way, they only do this with me; they're like complete angels with Alec. I'm the alpha parent most of the time, but bedtime is a completely different animal. [And] I'm very honest with them about how that was making me feel. I'm exhausted, I just wanted to go to bed, as well. I started to get panicky, like, 'Are they actually going to go to sleep?' It was total chaos, not the most pleasant experience, but at the same time, I try in the moment I’m trying to stay calm. I’m trying to make sure I’m not upsetting them before bed, cuz I know that is going to make the situation way worse. I’m trying to think, like, 'Wow, I know one day, my kids are not going to live with me. They’re gonna be like, 'Oh my god, Mom, leave me alone!' So I try to be grateful for all the little things. Perspective really lets me slow down. And the reason that they're being so difficult is that they're just excited, and they wanna hang out with me. That's what brings me back.
Daphne: I think that, on the one hand, children at some point recognize that their parents are also human. They want to share so much with you. I’m so obsessed with the ages my kids are. My oldest is 4, and the things that come out of her mouth are so astute and intuitive and weirdly clued into things that are so beyond that age of child! ... Almost all tantrums or upsetting experiences are, because they’re having trouble enunciating their own emotions. The best strategy I’ve had has just been to engage my kids in those conversations. Like, 'Are you feeling frustrated right now? Why are you feeling frustrated right now?' And let me see if I can help you.
On the best advice they've given one another
Daphne: It seems very simple, but Hilaria said, 'When I am dealing with anything stressful with my kids, I think about how I would handle it tomorrow, next week, a year from now and giving yourself that mental pause and like, 'How would I respond to this if I wasn't in the heat of the moment?' It gives you such a clear perspective. It's easy to fly off the handle and yell and threaten. It is the hardest task of motherhood to give your kids really strong boundaries and a firm sense of the foundation of your family, and part of that is making the rules and being the boss. It comes easily to some moms and hard for others to have that and to do it in balance. You want to be this unconditional source of love and warm, safe place for your kids, but you're also supposed to be the police. I think that is, to me, a great way to take a breath and still be the enforcer and person in charge, but do it in a very mindful way, which I always appreciate about Hilaria's approach to parenting.
Hilaria: Daphne has this really amazing energy, and she's fun. You go into her house, and you can tell that her kids are really having fun and loving life and experiencing life. ... I went to their house, and they're making this cake, and she's letting the kids put every single kind of frosting and sprinkles and it's falling on the floor and the kids are eating from everywhere, and if it was happening in my house, my husband would like pee his pants, he'd be so stressed out. But at Daphne's house, everyone's like, 'Yeah, let's do this!' And it was such a great experience for my kids that they still talk about. Just having that kind of fun. That being said, Daphne had bought [her daughter] Philomenia a gem, and she'd lost it, and Daphne was really clear, and said, 'We have to be careful with our things.' So, being able to pull back and finding that balance with a completely different vibe, different feel than what I have. It is really fun, but she puts on the brakes. It's interesting to see what everybody's definition of balance is.
On the topics they're most looking forward to covering on Mom Brain
Hilaria: Getting deeper into more controversial stuff. We had this idea that we would just get the information out—we don't have too much of an opinion on things—but we never want to say, 'You have to do it this way.' It's not Mom Brain for a specific kind of mom, other than like happy to learn and be respectful of everybody, but that's the only ground rule. I want to talk about vaccines and punishments in parenting and all of these things where people get so stressed out. Like people get really stressed about the Baby Bjorn. It seems silly, but they do. And we want people to come on who truly believe in whatever it is, and then have someone come in who believes in the opposite thing. Like, 'Let's be respectful and listen to the person who believes in epidurals,' and then listen to someone who believes in something different.
Daphne: We are genuinely curious and asking the questions we want to ask and for our audience. Our audience will send in questions, and we ask them on air. So much of what we miss in life is because we're not having the conversation. I'm really thrilled that we can cover infertility, and not just from the perspective of IVF and here are the things that have worked from a medical standpoint but also from a complementary standpoint. Like, here's the acupuncturist who has had 95% conception rates, here's the Reiki healer, the homeopath. We're trying to put the most holistic recipe together for how to live motherhood in a rewarding and fulfilling way.
