EP45 Grace Under Pressure with my Amazing wife Amy Callahan

BOL 45

Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

EPISODE 45

[00:00:13] KC: Welcome to The Business of Life Podcast. My name is Keith Callahan, your host and as always grateful to be here with you. And today we have an amazing guest, my beautiful, talented, just amazing wife, Amy Callahan. And before we bring her on I just wanna really let you know, you know you’re listening to this and all the beauty in all the things that have come into my life, yeah sure I’ve played, I’ve done the work to create this life.

But absolutely couldn’t have done it without my wife and it’s been something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, getting her on the show. And today’s gonna be the first of either two or three parts. We’ll see how long it takes to get the information out that she wants to share or not even that she wanted to share, like she was really reluctant to do this. She’s a very humble person, doesn’t really need, want or desire the spotlight but really has so much to offer the people and so much to offer the world. And it was a beautiful time.

We were just sitting at the kitchen table and I’m interviewing her for this episode and she’s nursing one of our babies, Addie, a new born. And Wyatt’s in and out of the room, and Daphne’s in and out of the room. We titled this “Grace Under Pressure” and it’s really just such a suiting title, thank you Jacqui Bonwell, she’s the one that actually mentioned this title, but such a suiting title for how Amy walks about this Earth and the presence she has with raising kids and just really how she walks her walk.

So excited to get her on and excited for you guys to be able to learn who I’ve been able to build a life with and just I really believe that when two people come together like this we really become one. We become the — we either lift each other up or bring each other down. I was fortunate enough to get a woman that lifts me up and helps me to become a better husband, father, mentor, brother, all of those things. Community member, friend, and just forever grateful for her and love her so much.

So she is coming on in one second. Before we bring her on I just wanted to let you know that today’s episode is brought to you by our sister podcast, All About Beachbody Coaching. So it’s another podcast that I have. It’s 11 stand alone episodes, just really describing the Beachbody

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business opportunity. It’s an opportunity that totally transformed, totally changed my life and our family’s life and deeper than that, one of the things that I’m most proud of is that I’ve literally mentored 100’s of people to have their lives changed through this opportunity that I’ve gone on and become really financially free, financially independent and creating a life they love to live.

So if you’re interested in learning a little bit more about that, just in the search bar of your podcast app, just search “Beachbody Coaching” or “Keith Callahan” or any of that, it’ll pop up. But again, the main title is All About Beachbody Coaching.

Alright, let’s go ahead and get Amy on. [INTERVIEW]

[00:03:56] KC: Alright so this is a podcast I’ve been waiting to do for a long time. Sitting at the kitchen table with my beautiful wife, Amy. She’s holding our newborn daughter Adeline, Addie who’s not even two weeks old yet. So awesome time to record a podcast episode with Amy.

So darling, honey, [laughter] welcome to the show.

[00:04:28] AC: Thank you.

[00:04:29] KC: So prior to getting in it, there’s obviously so much value you can offer and so many questions that I wanna try to get to, but before we get into that I just wanted to say that one of the reasons that I’m excited to do this is because I wouldn’t be able to be the man that I am today without having you in my life, without having you as a partner. When we got married we made that commitment to each other that we were going to do this 100% and we were gonna do it with putting the family first, putting the wants, needs, and desires of the family first.

And it’s just been an amazing journey and excited for everybody listening to be able to hear your take on things and hear your side. And yeah just wanted to say thank you, and I love you, and grateful for you.

[00:05:34] AC: Love you too, and excited to be able to tell a little bit of our story.
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[00:05:40] KC: Cool. So I think the first thing that I was thinking that we could jump into, you’ve been a stay at home mom with the kids — probably the hardest job in the world — with our four kids for six years now since Dakota was born. And when we made the decision together, I would actually say that you made the decision. Like you really wanted to stay at home with the kids and prior to that you were working at Reebok and then you went back and you got your Master’s and you were teaching. So what was it like making that decision? And how did it feel? And your reasons for wanting to do it? That’s a lot of questions.

[00:06:25] AC: Yeah. So when we were, when I was pregnant with Dakota, I actually never even really questioned it. Just had this really strong feeling and desire to be able to stay at home and raise her, sort of looking at it as it’s five years until, sort of five years at home until she would start school full time. And there was just something in me that knew that those five years, if we could financially figure it out, just it would be really powerful to be able to raise her the way that you and I both wanted to do it, as opposed to having to send her to a daycare or hire a full time babysitter or something like that.

So I think that that feeling and that desire sort of trumped any feeling of like, “Oh I’m gonna give up my career at this point, or I’m gonna, you know, will I ever be able to go back to the classroom after this many years off?” It didn’t really have — those thoughts didn’t have that much power compared to wanting to raise her the way that I sort of envisioned it. And at first it’s definitely a huge adjustment going from sort of worked right up until I had her and going from being around adults and having adult conversation and the women I taught with were some of my best friends at the time, to being in our condo 24 hours a day, just me and her cause you were working outside of the house at the time.

It definitely took some adjusting and there was definitely a loss of identity. In the beginning it was sort of like, “What am I doing now? How do you do this?” And it was just definitely missing adult connection and she was a really difficult baby so it made the days super challenging. But I think the peace that sort of carried me through that was that desire to raise her even though there were a lot of days that it would’ve been really easy to drop her at a daycare and go back to work.

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And then after probably about a good year of transitions, sort of figuring out the mom role and being comfortable with not being around adults and not being done with work at 4 o’clock and sort of having your own life at night, then it just became normal. And with each additional child that we’ve added, it’s actually been easier because I feel like I’ve gotten just clearer and more confident and more sure of like what my role is with the kids at home.

[00:10:05] KC: So when Dakota was born and we were going through not the easiest financial times, right? Wyatt has now joined as at the table. [Laughs]

[00:10:22] AC: The bear is over? Okay you can finish it.

[00:10:26] KC: This is like so perfect for this episode. Alright so we had to take a little break there with Wyatt coming in, but we’re back. I think the piece that I wanted to dive into a little bit deeper when, I guess there was two huge things going on when Dakota was born. Like you had made the decision to stay at home, which was also like an identity thing, she wasn’t an easy baby. And then there was also another reality, like we weren’t doing good financially then. We weren’t really, from an outsider looking in, we weren’t in a place to say we’re gonna turn into a one income family and you’re gonna stay home.

But I feel like if I was to explain it from my end, I feel like we had a plan and we had a vision for how we wanted to do it and what we wanted to do. But from your end, what pulled you through that first year until things kind of stabilized? How did you do that when everything kind of looked like we shouldn’t be doing that?

[00:11:47] AC: I think the financial piece we sort of when we made the decision for me to be able to stay home with her, we sort of new we could swing it, but it would mean that we would have to sort of adjust our lifestyle a bit. But I don’t think it was ever at a point of… [Baby sounds]. You don’t wanna watch it? Go ahead.

[00:12:24] KC: Alright, so we’r back recording. Wyatt is now at a table with us, and I’m gonna give like a little warning. If you don’t have kids or you’re not used to kids, this rest of the episode may not be for you. Cause Wyatt’s gonna be here, and I think it’s perfect because it totally is going to give you a glimpse into Amy’s life and the grace that she walks with and how she’s

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always handling this, because she’s probably going to be able to answer these questions while she has one baby that she’s nursing, another one who’s at the table.

So yeah, we were talking about the transition financially, that’s where you had started, where we could swing it. But we were gonna have to make some changes to our lifestyle.

[00:13:15] AC: Yeah. It was, I mean we could swing it, we definitely knew we were gonna have to sort of make some adjustments in terms of just extra expenses would have to be sort of eliminated if I was gonna be staying home. So I think financially I didn’t really put much worry into it. I just kind of knew this is something that we wanna do, we’ll sort of make whatever adjustments we need to make in order for it to happen. And then sort of in the back of both of our minds I think was like, “Is there something that,” you know I had thought about tutoring on the side like in the afternoons or something…

[00:14:10] KC: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

[00:14:11] AC: …with me having her home. If I could find someone to watch her for like a couple hours that was an option. Or yeah, like I sort of just put it, I kind of just put it out there that something would come along that we’d be able to use to supplement the income that I wasn’t going to be making anymore that would make it more feasible to be able to stay home. But it never, I never sort of went back on the decision to stay home regardless of what we would have to do financially to make it happen.

[00:14:52] KC: Yeah I forgot all about that. So your side of the — and that was when Beachbody came along like from your side of things, huh?

[00:15:00] AC: Yeah that’s when Beachbody popped in from Shiva gave me Shakeology to try as like a tired new mom, she was like, “Just try this,” and I was totally skeptical and loved it. And then we actually went into the sort of business of it without even having looked at the business plan or any of that, but just sort of sharing shakes with the plan that I would do that…

[00:15:28] KC: Yeah you started it.

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BOL 45 Transcript [00:15:30] AC: …from home cause I could do it with Dakota at home.

[00:15:34] KC: Yeah I remember that.
[00:15:34] AC: And then a couple months later you looked at the business plan with Bob and

then we made a big change.

[00:15:42] KC: And I remember you at first, when you at first brought Skakeology I had told you that it was an overpriced protein shake.

[00:15:51] AC: Yeah, no you were like — I was like, “I wanna get this. I just tried a sample of it, I really like it,” and you were like, “Fine, you can get it. I know you’re not gonna drink it.” But you were like, “I’m not gonna argue with an exhausted, sleep deprived mom who’s home with our very exhausting baby at this point.” So we ordered a bag and basically started at that point with just sharing it with sort of no big plan on where it would go. We hadn’t even really talked much about it, it was just like, “Oh I can do this from home for a little bit.”

[00:16:29] KC: Yeah. So sort of switching gears, trying to think of — this could turn into like a five hour podcast. You have so much value to offer. The birthing of the three kids, you’ve had four kids — geez, four kids! Sorry Addie.

[00:16:51] AC: It’s only been a week and a half!

[00:16:53] KC: It’s like when the year changes and you’re still writing 2015 instead of 2016.

[00:17:00] AC: Still writing three kids.

[00:17:04] KC: Oh four kids, sorry. So that’s like one thing you don’t wanna tell a mother, that she didn’t do the work for…

[00:17:12] AC: For the last kid!

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[00:17:12] KC: You did the work for three, not four. So we had, you had Dakota who was a natural birth in the hospital. Then Daphne — I’m saying natural birth, like without any…

[00:17:27] AC: Drugs.

[00:17:29] KC: Drugs, yeah. Simple, right? So that’s how Dakota was born. Then Daphne you had preeclampsia so had to be induced, all drugged up. I remember after that you were like, “That was awesome! That was so much easier!”

[00:17:43] AC: I was like, “Why didn’t I do that the first time?”

[00:17:46] KC: And then Wyatt, the biggest one, at home. And then Addie, the last one, in the hospital. So what was the experience with doing it without drugs, versus doing it with drugs? And I just wanna make a disclaimer here for both of us that we’re not, like we totally support however someone does something.

[00:18:15] AC: Totally.
[00:18:15] KC: But from your standpoint, what was the pro’s and the cons of doing it both

ways?

[00:18:22] AC: I guess for me, I’ll sort of back track a little bit. When I was like in my mid to late 20’s I sort of decided to, or I guess the universe sort of put it there too. I got to spend a good amount of time with two women and moms and sort of be a babysitter and a part time nanny for Taylor and Shiva. And I really, from spending a lot of time with both of them, they both had — Taylor at the time had three kids and Shiva had just had two, just had her second.

And I really got to kind of watch the mother role and kind of get a really, I sort of got a chance to kind of studied and learned just so much from the two of them that to this day I still think about sort of both of their ways as moms and use them as examples for my own way of being a mom. So sort of leading up to actually having our own family I kind of was able to, from both of them, learn just kind of a different way than I had ever been exposed to with just the attachment parenting piece and the like natural mothering and natural birth.

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Stuff that wouldn’t have ever been on my radar if it weren’t for both of them. So I just wanna say…

[00:20:16] KC: Can I interrupt really quick?
[00:20:17] AC: Yeah.
[00:20:18] KC: When you say “attachment parenting”, like how would you define that?

[00:20:21] AC: Sort of the best way I think to describe it is that you can’t spoil a baby. That the, I guess within the first — for the first year of life breastfeeding and sort of meeting the baby’s needs as opposed to looking at the baby as like sort of a separate entity. They’re almost still a part of you for like that first year, and just the connection. Not just a physical connection but a heart connection, a bond. A few examples of things that are attachment parenting, if you give a label, would be like co-sleeping. So the babies, all our kids have been in our beds for almost a year and nursing for about a year for all of them and yeah. Just kind of, I guess it’s kind of — I mean there’s all sorts of books and what not. But I look at it as like, they’re attached.

[00:21:34] KC: And it’s kind of simple that way, right?

[00:21:35] AC: Securely attached, and they know you’re not going anywhere and you’re sort of there to bring them into this like world. So yeah, so prior to having kids I really was and still so grateful for the time that I spent with Shiva and Taylor and getting the chance to watch them be moms really. And that probably had the biggest impact on my decision on how I wanted to raise our family really came from those two women. So then yeah, going into the birth I decided to do natural with Dakota. For sort of the main reason, like it’s kind of simple, just didn’t want her coming in with any drugs in her system. I just wanted her to come into the world exactly who she was.

And it was the hardest thing I had ever done up to that point in my life but there’s this huge sense of empowerment that came from doing it that way. Then Daphne, I actually wanted to have her at home because I had another good friend, Rachael, actually she kind of introduce

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me to home birth. She had Rosalie around the same time as Dakota and I was like — I remember saying to her, “People have babies at home?” Like it wasn’t even on my radar. And she like laughed and I was like, “I don’t think they do that in Massachusetts.” They lived out in Ohio.

I was like, “I don’t think they do that around here,” and she laughed and she was like, “Yeah they actually do,” and she kind of started me on a research track of like finding a midwife and home birth. And I did a ton of reading about it and it just felt like it fit with sort of my, like how I wanted to have our children. So I planned to do that with Daphne and it didn’t, at the last minute it didn’t work so she was induced. And I do remember after having the epidural with her because she was induced and being like, “I can’t believe I didn’t do this the first time. Like what was I thinking?”

So then we had Wyatt and I still wanted to have a baby at home, so I planned to have him at home and it worked. And he was enormous and a really long, long, long day in labor with him, but it was very, very empowering doing it at home. I had a great midwife and there was definitely something about having your baby and being in your own space after that. That was really magical. It didn’t have a medical feel at all, and it was just sort of like, yeah kind of I guess exactly how birth can go if everything sort of is lined up. Just had him at home and that was it. We were just in our room and it was really, we set up an altar and it was just, it felt really sacred not being in hospital for him.

And then the biggest reason to have Addie back in the hospital was that I just couldn’t figure out how we were gonna get three kids covered while we’re having the fourth upstairs in our room. So it just felt too overwhelming to try to figure out what to do with everybody else that it was easier to go to a hospital to have her. And she actually almost didn’t even get born in the hospital. She was almost born at home anyway, or the car.

[00:25:52] KC: Or the car! [00:25:53] AC: Or in the elevator.

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[00:25:55] KC: So for everybody listening, it was literally six minutes from the time that we got to the maternity ward till the time she was born.

[00:26:05] AC: Yeah. So I had already made the decision that I wanted to do it natural again and kind of knew what to expect. And hers was hands down the easiest birth, I think for a few reasons. I knew what to expect, I knew I could do it, I didn’t question myself at all, I didn’t question if my body could handle it. It was just like, “Of course I can do this.”

And because she was the fourth it was also much faster than anybody else but I think the biggest difference between her birth or even Wyatt’s and the girls was just like a knowing, like, “I know what to expect. I know it’s gonna be painful, but I know I can do it.” And again, that’s how I wanted to do it, that’s how I like set my mind like I wasn’t gonna — there wasn’t a part of me that was sort of wavering until like the last minute.

[00:27:12] KC: Yeah so for the, with all — well I guess not with Daphne, but with Dakota, Wyatt, and now Addie, I always know when the baby’s coming because right when the baby’s about to come Amy’s like, “I can’t take this anymore, I need the epidural.” That’s how I know the baby’s coming.

[00:27:32] AC: So yeah, sort of very similar to making the decision to be able to raise Dakota at home and all our other children was sort of the same mindset going into having all of them born. Like I kind of just decided this is how I want to do it.

[00:27:54] KC: So for, say a woman or a man listening, and the idea of having a baby at home is kind of insane to me. Like what was the, deeper than — like what was the deeper meaning and reason for wanting to do that? And maybe share a little bit about your views on, like how you see how the births go with a midwife versus how they go with doctor?

[00:28:33] AC: Yeah, I think again, it’s such a — birth is such a personal decision for a woman and her husband to make, like how they want to do. For me and you were on board sort of whatever I decided, which I’m grateful for. For me I didn’t, like I believed that, and I still do, that a woman’s body is capable of and made to birth a baby completely on it’s own, if everything is sort of — if it’s a normal, within the limits, pregnancy.

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And I had three very normal, easy pregnancies, and I think the biggest thing with having, making the decision to have Wyatt at home versus in the hospital was that I didn’t think that you needed, that having a baby, that a birth is a medical procedure. It’s more of a “the body knows how to do it.” And the midwife, I guess the biggest difference between a midwife and a doctor that I found was the midwife fully just supports what a woman’s body’s supposed to do, without looking at like, “Oh this is taking a long time.” Or, “Oh, this should be happening now.”

There’s no fear in a midwife, they kind of are fully trusting that this is how the process goes and if there were something that sort of wasn’t lining up, they would see that and then make the decision to make the trip to the hospital and whatnot. But in most cases, birth follows a certain course and it doesn’t need an intervention. And I found with the midwife, like she was very, very, very hands off actually. She kind of left it up to you and I to sort of figure out what we needed to do to have Wyatt at home.

Whereas you go to a hospital and they sort of tell you like, “You need to lay here, you need to try this, or you need to do this now.” And there was no direction from the midwife. It was very much like, “Do what your body needs.” So yeah. And with having Addie basically laboring at home the whole time and then just going to the hospital to deliver her, it was a very similar experience to, I kind of knew what to do for labor and got there and she popped out. So kind of my whole purpose, like I wanted to stay home with her as long as I could to not labor in the hospital and not sort of get into the medical side of it.

[00:31:46] KC: So we’re at like the half hour of recording right now, and I think that the best thing — we should make this into a two part series because kids being calm for about a half hour or so, it’s about to get chaotic in here any minute. So we’ll pick it back up, but I wanna fire a couple questions at you, like rapid fire type questions and you can just answer like the first things that come to the top of your head.

So favorite books for attachment parenting?

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[00:32:18] AC: Favorite book, Connection Parenting is the title, Beyond the Rainbow Bridge, and one that I just started right now that I’m really enjoying, it’s not necessarily so much about attachment parenting, parenting in general is Permission to Parent.

[00:32:38] KC: Alright. Favorite books or resources or whatever for home birth? [00:32:42] AC: Anything by Ina May Gaskin.
[00:32:48] KC: That’s Ina May…

[00:32:51] AC: Gaskin. She’s like sort of the mother of home birth. She’s got several books out and they’re really easy to read and basically I had no idea that home birth was even anything people did. And I read several of her books and was fully on board.

[00:33:13] KC: Alright favorite resources, I don’t know if you’ll be able to come up with any of these, but for like the value of breastfeeding?

[00:33:24] AC: I don’t — I never did much reading about it. It was just sort of a no-brainer for me.

[00:33:32] KC: Okay. One final question cause I wanna end on a fun note. Your obsession with Amazon and Diapers.com? [Laughter]

[00:33:47] AC: Yes. Sign up for a prime membership! No once we moved out to the Berkshires, the nearest Target — that was probably my biggest adjustment. The nearest Target’s an hour away and that’s just not possible to go to Target with the time, three kids, when it’s an hour away. So I became a huge online auto-delivery fan. Diapers.com, awesome site. Keeps all your information so you can just set everything up on, I set everything up on monthly auto-ship from dog food, to paper towels, to diapers so I don’t have to worry about it.

[00:34:29] KC: Soap, is that where that comes from?

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[00:34:30] AC: Well Diapers.com owns all those others. Soap.com, Wag.com. So I set everything up on there and Amazon Prime is probably my best friend out here. It’s just, there’s just — there’s a major convenience to not having to pack everybody up to go and run out and grab whatever it is we’re needing. So order it up on Amazon and it’s here in two days and that’s the end of it.

[00:35:03] KC: Awesome. Well we’ll cut off right here and pick back up next week. But I’m excited. I’m excited for — I’m excited to hear the feedback for this episode because I get to live and experience this life with you and I know that there’s so much value that you have for people out there. So again, thank you so much and obviously love you, grateful, and honor you, and cherish you. Yeah, looking forward to hearing feedback, I’m looking forward to recording another one for next week.

[00:35:40] AC: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:35:42] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to the Business of Life Podcast. Apply what you learn today and you’ll be one step closer to creating the life you love to live.

[END]

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