[00:00:00] Susanna Hunter: My husband and I have a weekly house meeting. It has been so incredibly helpful. We have a shared note that we populate the note throughout the week with whatever we wanna talk about.
We can check things off. We kind of go through it every day on our own, just kind of keeping track of things that need to happen. And the thing that that has done is it has reduced the amount that we have to talk about all the things that have to happen to make our lives run. All the mundane stuff that was just dragging us down and frankly kind of like tanking our marriage, just the harmony in our marriage, 'cause all we were doing is throughout the week, "Oh, did you remember that?
Did you remember that? Did you do this? Who's supposed to do that?" The energy of that was not sexy.
[00:00:33] Mallory Lee: This is Full Stack Moms.
[00:00:36] Shannon Curran: This is not a parenting podcast nor a business podcast, but a place where we talk building careers in tech, raising kids at home, and making it work in public. . thank you so, so much for coming to talk to us. I wanna say you're reporting live from your maternity leave. Is that right?
[00:00:55] Susanna Hunter: Oh yeah. Yeah, I am. I'm four months into the six months. Yeah[00:01:00]
[00:01:00] Shannon Curran: Wow. 'Cause you're at Salesforce, yes?
[00:01:03] Susanna Hunter: Mm-hmm. Yeah
[00:01:04] Shannon Curran: Great. Love
[00:01:05] Mallory Lee: Awesome. Well, we love to start out by just learning about you. So what you do for work, what your family's like. but we can kind of do the fast facts for all the listeners
[00:01:18] Susanna Hunter: Great. Yeah. Well, I'm Susanna Hunter. I'm based in Sebastopol, California, so about 90 minutes north of the Salesforce Tower. And, um, I've been there for... I passed 10 years in June, which is just wild to think about who I was when I joined the company and what the company was like when I joined. It's just a li- I mean, it's the longest relationship I've ever been in.
in that time, I met my husband, fell in love. We got married. We had twins. We got pregnant with twins a couple months after the wedding. Woo. And our, our, our twins are four now. They just turned four last week. And we have a [00:02:00] four-month-old baby girl. So we have fraternal twin boys and a little baby girl.
We're done. I'm done. I mean, the whole time I was in labor, I just kept saying, "I'm never doing this again. I'm never doing this again." And so it is. We're done. But, you know, love, love the, the family that we've grown and that we continue to grow. And, um, my job at Salesforce, I'm vice president of HR supporting the customer success organization, so that's about 10,000 people located in 35 countries.
A lot's changing about the role and the org, but that's what I've been doing, and I've been supporting that org for a really, really long time, mostly 'cause I just had such a good thing going with the leadership team, and the role changed every, you know, few months, and it kept me on my toes, which I really liked.
and, uh, have a, a big team reporting into me, and I am on maternity leave, so I don't know, like, do I say it in past tense? But anyway, that's what I was doing before I went on mat leave. And, um, [00:03:00] outside of work, there's always so much going on. Life is very full. We manage a intergenerational community compound here that we have in Sebastopol that's really sweet.
We got a bunch of kids on the property. Six kids, ages six and under, all just running around and pounding
around and playing with each other's toys and having fun. And, um, I also do, uh... I, I'm a singer-songwriter. I do stand-up comedy, and I'm pretty obsessed with LinkedIn, which happened. It just ended up happening sort of, uh, unexpectedly, but I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn.
It's the only social media that I'm on. So yeah, I think, I think that's it. We don't have any pets. I can't... We have a chicken coop with no chickens 'cause I just cannot feed any more beings. I'll try to keep the plants alive.
[00:03:49] Mallory Lee: Totally see. Totally see that. I would say that the four-year-olds can feed the chickens, but they'd probably overfeed them and then you'd have a different problem.[00:04:00]
[00:04:00] Susanna Hunter: We're starting to, we're starting to get to this place where we're realizing that they actually can and should have more responsibilities. You know, did you ever watch that, that show, um, it's like a Japanese documentary show called Old Enough, where they send two-year-olds out to do these incredible errands, um, by themselves with a camera crew kind of hanging back.
And I'm like, oh, and here I am trying to get my four-year-olds to put their dishes in the sink at the end of the meal , you know? But yeah, we'll get to, we'll get to feeding chickens, and then we'll stock the coop for sure.
[00:04:33] Shannon Curran: Love that. And y- can you explain a little bit more about your intergenerational compound? I feel like I would love to understand.
[00:04:40] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this has been... So in Sebastopol, it's-- I post about it on LinkedIn a lot. It's a... And people who live around here have seen my posts. I di- I don't name the town. People have sent me DMs and said, they've said, "You're talking about Sebastopol, aren't you?" And then I've met up with them in person.
I'm like, "Well, if you're here, let's go to the one coffee shop that [00:05:00] everybody goes to and have like a little LinkedIn meetup." So that's been fun. It's a little hippie town, and everybody's dream here, like if you like throw a rock, you're gonna hit somebody who's like, "I dream of the compound." Um, and so we, we did it.
We had to do some, you know, we had to beg, borrow, and steal to kind of make this happen and, and really decide to prioritize our lives around this. But we bought this beautiful three-acre, five-unit family compound, and we filled it with friends and new friends and old friends. Um, my baby's godfather lives in a unit that's attached to our house.
So like right through that wall is my daughter's godfather. It's so special. And my kid's music teacher lives in one of the units. And, um, yeah, so we have a bunch of kids and families and dogs that I get to love but don't have to clean up after, which is lovely. And they get to hang out with my kids, but get to give them back to me when my kids are crying.
And it kind of works out for everybody. It's really sweet. So it's-- [00:06:00] I wouldn't say it's like full village. That's sort of the dream. We are working towards that. I want my parents to move here, you know? They live 30 minutes away. Move on to the property. But they're f- they're fun. They're like fun grandparents, and they wanna be in a more happening town.
We're at the end of a quiet lane with, with trees, and they're sort of like, "Your home is too sleepy for us. Thank you." Um, but yeah, that's what we've got going on. So it's full on. I mean, before 8:00 AM, one of the kids in the, one of the other units locked, essentially locked, uh, locked the bedroom door. And I ran over there with a bunch of keys like, "We gotta figure this out."
I'm still in my pajamas. I have to hand the baby monitor off. You know, it's like my, the baby's sleeping. My husband climbs in the second story window with a ladder. This is all before 8:00 AM.
This is all this morning.
[00:06:55] Mallory Lee: Oh gosh.
[00:06:56] Susanna Hunter: So it's just... I'm like, yeah, yeah. Mm.
[00:06:58] Shannon Curran: And are you guys like the [00:07:00] main owner and then everyone else is like a...
[00:07:02] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, they just rent the units from us.
[00:07:03] Shannon Curran: yeah, I'm not gonna say landlord. That feels like the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Like the, the town
mayor.
[00:07:09] Susanna Hunter: Yes, totally.
[00:07:10] Mallory Lee: mayor.
[00:07:11] Susanna Hunter: Well, as we say at Sebastian Pole, we are the stewards of this land and, uh, of the no's. And so yeah, it's our responsibility to unlock the doors and get the well working again. On Friday it was a, we thought there was a gas leak. I mean, there's always just so much, so much happening and I keep thinking, "How did I do this when I was working like 60 hours a week?"
You know? But you just, it just ... Time is very mushy and amorphous, and it just sort of expands and contracts and somehow it all gets done Yeah
[00:07:44] Shannon Curran: this when I look back at any time in my life. I'm like, "How did I do that?" You just don't know. You just... Humans are very resilient. They do the thing in front of them, you know? Like, it's very
[00:07:52] Susanna Hunter: that's really true. You just, you just have to do it. You just find a way. Also, I'm really big on what we call in-between-sies life, which [00:08:00] is how much can you get done in the in-between moments where you don't even really realize you're unloading the dishwasher, but somehow it happened. Or you don't even realize you threw in a load of laundry, but somehow it happened rather than now is the time that I'm going to do dishes and laundry, which somehow feels impossible and takes way more time.
So we're always trying to sneak little things in, you know? It's like sometimes I feel like I have a million arms. You know that feeling where you're just like, "I don't know how I'm doing this, but I'm ordering Instacart on my phone while I'm putting the laundry in, while I'm texting the plumber, while I'm getting the baby up from her nap."
And I don't know, somehow the arms also seem to expand and contract based on what's going on.
[00:08:40] Mallory Lee: 100%. I am always having three conversations at once with the boys. It's like they totally don't understand that I'm speaking to someone already, so they just jump in and start having a conversation with me. And so, you know, literally all three of them at the same time [00:09:00] are, like, having conversations and I'm like, "Yep.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm." Like, and it's, it's wild, but somehow my brain handles it and does it. I don't know how
[00:09:09] Susanna Hunter: Yeah. It's mother brain. My brain totally changed. This baby changed my brain more than my twins did, which I was kind of surprised. I really feel that, which I was really surprised about. You think it's sort of binary. You go from being not a mother to being a mother, and that's the biggest change. And something about having this baby, I feel like a lot got rewired, and I'm kind of working with that.
And there's no unitasking. We don't unitask anymore. You know? We can't have one... Can we ever have one conversation? This doesn't
[00:09:38] Mallory Lee: Pretty much right now. That's it.
[00:09:39] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, right. Yep.
[00:09:41] Shannon Curran: Yeah, I felt that way after my second too, um, that it, I felt way more, radicalized a little . And then also, like, just like, uh, I, yeah, I felt a lot more change. But I think I was also, like, because I was also learning to parent the older one at the same time, like, you, [00:10:00] so now you're just, like, new to two things.
And so it's just like, I still don't know what I'm doing with the other one, and now I have this, like, new one that I thought I would know how to deal with, and now somehow she's completely different than the other one. So it's, like, a very, uh... Yeah, I definitely felt like a parent for the, f- for real with the second one.
Like, I feel as, I was like, "Oh, this is parenting with a capital P." Like, I am, like, I, oh, what was I doing before? That's what-
[00:10:27] Susanna Hunter: phrase parenting with a capital P. I know exactly what you mean. Also, you kind of know what you're doing, so there's a little bit less of that, you're, it's sort of like, oh, I've done a lot of these things before, so now I kind of need to know better for some of them. I mean, it's always, you know, we're always learning all the time.
I've started to tell my kids recently, "Hey, I'm, I'm always learning to be a better mom." So basically, what I've started saying to them is essentially, "I'm available for feedback." Well, no, I'm [00:11:00] like, yes, give me it. But like, I, I'm not perfect. I'm not getting this all perfect all the time. And also, um, yeah, I'm available for feedback.
I actually asked my kids, they get so philosophical at night, and I asked them, uh, recently, I mean, I don't wanna do, I don't wanna ask this too much, but I said, "Is there anything I can do to make your life better? Like, is there anything, what, you know, what could I be doing?" And they said... They, they have separate rooms.
They sleep better with separate rooms. And, uh, one of them said, we had just gotten the bounce house for their, for their birthday party, and he said, Be with me all the time and leave the bounce house up until I'm a grownup." And the other one, when I asked him, he said, "Invite more people over." And I was like, that's them in a nutshell.
You know?
[00:11:46] Shannon Curran: That is
[00:11:47] Susanna Hunter: more people over. He's so social. He just wants a party all the time.
[00:11:50] Shannon Curran: Good thing it wasn't a com- on a compound. This
[00:11:53] Susanna Hunter: Totally, yeah, he, he can't get enough. Yeah. So
[00:11:55] Mallory Lee: That's amazing. I talk about that a lot, just the [00:12:00] concept of making sure that you remind your kids that you're not perfect either. And, you know, 'cause they look up to you, they see you as like their world, and they think you can do no wrong. And then when something does go wrong, it's chaos and confusion.
And so sometimes I just have to say like, "Mommy doesn't know how to do this either. Mommy is not perfect. We have to figure these things out together." And, it makes them put a lot of pressure on themselves when they think they're trying to live up to your parents' level of like perfection as they see it.
So I've, I've always talked about that. I'd say like in the past year I'm seeing it more where I need to pay attention to that.
[00:12:43] Susanna Hunter: Yeah,
[00:12:44] Shannon Curran: I think that's very generational too. Like, I think it's our parents were told that they had to seem like they had it all under control, that they're the flight attendant, right?
Like, that like everything is fine, everything is good. I never make a mistake. I keep you safe, [00:13:00] right? And I remember having this fear before becoming a mother, um, or thinking about becoming a mother, that I was like, I remember I was with a therapist being like, "I can't do this," like, "I'm gonna mess it all up."
And she's like, "The most important thing is the repair." And that's something that like just wasn't a part of culture, and it wasn't ... I feel really bad actually for generations before us that they had to pretend like they were perfect at everything, right? And she's like, "What actually matters more is like they see you make a mistake or they see you do something you wish you hadn't done or whatever, and that you repair in real time, which teaches them that it's okay for them to make mistakes and as long as they repair," right?
And I think that was such an amazing reframe for me of like, okay, so like I can do this. I'm going to mess things up, but because I understand that the important part is the repair, then like I can just keep practicing doing that, right? Like, I'm sure our kids will be saying, "Remember when our parents thought it was so important to just do this thing?"
You know what I mean? They'll, like there'll be something. [00:14:00] But I like, they'll look back at this clip and be like, "Mom, you knew nothing." Um, but I think there's a ... But that meant a lot to me. I remember hearing that and being like, "Okay, I can see. I, I think we can do this." Maybe.
[00:14:12] Susanna Hunter: our parents' generation just wasn't big on, I think, you know, coming to, like it wasn't part of their practice to come and apologize to us and admit they were wrong. And I mean, and you know, that's how like, yes, we're totally messing things up for our kids. Absolutely they are gonna
be on whatever, whatever version the podcast is.
But, yeah, in my, in my family growing up, there was We didn't really, there wasn't anger, there wasn't fighting ever,
cause there wasn't talking. It was just hold your stuff inside please, you know? Um, my mom watches everything that, that I do. So hi Mom, I love you and you're a great mom.
but yeah, I mean, and that's been a big part of my kind of healing work as an adult is just, is being okay with the full, expressing the [00:15:00] full range of emotions.
And isn't that such a huge part? You know, we get to, we get to re-parent ourselves as we parent our kids. And I've been talking a lot more openly recently about mom rage. 'Cause for a while I felt like, okay, this is just me and I'm a monster, and I'm a bad person, and I'm a bad mother. And then I started talking about it with people and they were like, "Oh, you lose it on your kids too?
And you become just this like rage machine to your tiny, adorable, precious children?" And it was so cathartic to just talk about it. And, you know, talking about it helped me feel so much less alone, which actually sort of helped it stop hap- helped it, you know, reduce the number of times that I just got so filled with rage.
You know, there were moments when my twins were really little and they'd both be crying, and I was just alone with them, and I would just like, just like scream into a pillow, you [00:16:00] know? 'Cause I was just so, it was rage and it was like all the anger that I never let myself feel as a child, as a, you know, as a teenager, as an adult, that I'm really kind of working with now.
It's like anger. And then my kids get super angry and I think, "Okay, how can I be with them through this, and how can I be with myself through my own anger?" And it's just been this huge evolution for both of us, and I'd say it has gotten a lot better. And honestly, I think most of it is just 'cause my kids are four now, and they're not two, and they're much more reasonable, and I can talk to them more.
I wouldn't say they're fully reasonable or logical, but they're, you know, four is really different than two or three. And, you know, and now we can talk about it. And if I ever do find myself speaking to them in a way that when I look back on it is not optimal, then I can, you know, I can go to them and I can apologize, and we have a whole conversation about it, and there is that repair.
So that's been a really, I mean, it's like such a spiritual [00:17:00] process if you're, if you show up and engage with it, and it's so hard.
[00:17:05] Shannon Curran: so hard. It's funny, I s- literally was saying this today. I've never had access to rage until I was a mom I
[00:17:13] Mallory Lee: too had the rage
[00:17:17] Shannon Curran: Where'd it come from? Where is it? I don't, I had never, I don't even think I'd ever been mad. Yeah
[00:17:23] Mallory Lee: It's DNA,
[00:17:24] Susanna Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. I don't think... Oh my gosh, Shannon, "I don't think I'd ever been mad,"
I think that's such a powerful statement. And then you become a mother and there's, I mean, rage is the only way to put it. It's not anger.
It's like this fire. It's like, yeah, like,
[00:17:40] Mallory Lee: Ja
[00:17:40] Susanna Hunter: ah. You know? And it's, it's, I mean, and it's, I feel like it's just right there. Like, okay, new emotion just
entered the chat. So accessible. Mm-hmm. Yeah
[00:17:51] Mallory Lee: Åh.
[00:17:51] Shannon Curran: You had it too, Mal?
[00:17:53] Mallory Lee: I did. Yeah, and I remember the exact moment where it really sunk in, and I really thought, like, [00:18:00] "Okay, this is so different than usual." And I was in my office bathroom, right on the other side of this wall, and, um, I don't know, I was, like, in there crying for some reason, and I just remember how mad I was.
And I thought, "This is not, like, a normal upsetness that I usually would be able to handle." And so it stood out to me as something that was way different. Um, you know, and I ended up getting some help with it and figuring it out. But even prior to that, I think there were, like, elements of it that I hadn't fully identified before.
But I remember when Grayson was probably three-ish, you know. I would've probably had all f- all three boys by then. I, I don't remember for sure. Oh, Penny. Sweet Penny, look at her.
anyway, he would say, like, "Mommy, are you happy?" Like, he, he was so concerned if I was happy. And looking back at that now, like, totally breaks my heart into, like, [00:19:00] 8 million pieces, because he could tell when I was upset. And even if I wasn't, like, yelling at him, he could see, you know, like, Mommy's not happy, and that was impacting him.
And anyway, it's... I, I don't, I don't remember that fondly. I'm glad that I'm, you know, pretty much past that. Now I just rage clean,
[00:19:21] Shannon Curran: Yeah. How do we get some of that?
I think our kids need to be older. I think we need to get to the next echelon. Uh, yeah.
[00:19:28] Susanna Hunter: Great. Signing up for rage cleaning. That sounds great
[00:19:32] Shannon Curran: Sebastian the other set, other day... So, um, Susanna for context, I have an almost three-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old. And then Mallory's kids are older. What? 10, 10, eight, and six? Am I making that up?
I think that's right. Am I right?
[00:19:46] Mallory Lee: We are now 10, nine and seven
[00:19:50] Shannon Curran: I miss the... Oh, Penny. Wow. Wow, Penny is really making herself at home
[00:19:56] Mallory Lee: It had to happen at some point. Um, Penny's joined the [00:20:00] podcast today
[00:20:01] Susanna Hunter: Beautiful
[00:20:01] Shannon Curran: what a girl. but Sebastian said the other day, I said, "Hey, can I have a kiss?" And he goes, "No, I'm just mad today." And I said, "All right, dude, like, feel your feelings. Like anything I can do to help?" "No, I'm just mad today."
And I
[00:20:18] Susanna Hunter: Good for you, kid.
[00:20:20] Shannon Curran: I was like ...I know. I had a moment of
like ... And, and I didn't need to fi- I was like, "Don't f- don't fix it." Like this is not a moment for me to like fix it and make him happy. It's like clearly he's sitting with that feeling and he is sitting in discomfort in a way that I even don't have the capability to do.
Because he, he wasn't acting rage-y, you know what I mean? It's like he was acting mad. He was just like, "No, I'm just mad today."
[00:20:41] Susanna Hunter: It sounds like an enlightened being. He's witnessing his own, you know, experience from the outside and not letting it overtake him. You know? It's like, could we all, could we do that? You know? "
[00:20:54] Shannon Curran: Children are perfect. Don't let the world break them." Like, I'm like literally like, you know everything you ever needed [00:21:00] to know right now. Learn nothing else. Like literally I'm like, learn nothing else.
[00:21:04] Susanna Hunter: Wow. Yeah, I used to sing, you know, you know the Miss Rachel, uh, "Big feelings are okay. It's okay to have big feelings." So I'd sing that to them, and then I'd think, "Oh, I really need to sing this to myself." Yeah. I need, I need to turn Miss Rachel inward and shine the light of Miss Rachel into my soul, you know?
And it's, it's just hard. It's so hard, yeah. So I, I will say that, uh, being on maternity leave, it's been... Like, my mental health has been so good, so much better than I thought it would be. I was so afraid of having postpartum depression. I was bracing for impact. I was getting, like, pre-postpartum depression anxiety
[00:21:48] Shannon Curran: Anxiety
[00:21:49] Mallory Lee: Oh my. That's not surprising to me
[00:21:51] Susanna Hunter: PPPD-A is what I had. I was just... And then I thought, "I'm so anxious about getting postpartum depression that I am, [00:22:00] like, putting myself into this bad mental state." And
[00:22:04] Shannon Curran: It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like that
[00:22:07] Susanna Hunter: Totally. Uh, I just thought, you know, I, I had a history of depression earlier in my life, and I just felt like, okay, well, somehow I didn't get it with the twins, and it was like this boogeyman. And, you know, everyone in my family's on antidepressants, and I just thought, "It, it's my time," you know? I ha- somehow, like, hid from the evil eye of PPD for this long and I'm gonna get it. And I will say, you know, it hasn't been, like, every minute the most joyful time of my life, but it's actually been really sweet and easy, and I strangely feel like my mental health is better than it's been in a really long time, which I was not anticipating.
And so, the other thing I really feel like I've been talking about is, hey, it's possible to have it. Like, I have my third kid, I've got twins, and I'm actually kind of really feel like I'm thriving. I'm very tired. I'm very, very, very, very, very, very tired. like, I would try to bake cakes [00:23:00] for my kid's birthday, and following a recipe felt like I was reading in another language, and I kept feeling like I was like, "Do I need to flip this upside down?
What are, what does four tablespoons mean?" You know, put in too many eggs, and I was like, "I don't know what to do." But that's just fatigue. But I feel like deep down things are really good, and the postpartum phase has been, like, es- especially fresh postpartum was really easy and blissful. And so, yes, there's the rage, which I always feel like I wanna talk about and kind of normalize, and also, I-- we did IVF to have our daughter.
I found IVF to be easy, and I found postpartum to be easy, and I'm finding having three kids to be relatively easy. And I feel like I wish I heard more people talk about that too, because I thought this is gonna be impossible, because having two felt impossible, but somehow having three feels easier than having two in a way that I can't fully understand.
[00:23:56] Mallory Lee: I
love that for you though
[00:23:58] Shannon Curran: I know, and [00:24:00] everyone's experience is so valid and important,
but I do think it's like it doesn't mean that everyone then has a bad experience, right? Just because people are now feeling like they have a platform to talk about this stuff, right? So all of these things are possible.
I remember saying the same thing about, like, I'm actually healthier, and my body is in, like, a s- better place, like physically, than I was before I had kids, and I'm only one year postpartum with my second of 202.
I know so many people that are like, "I'll never be able to run again. I'll never be able to work out again.
I'll never be able to do anything again," right? And, or like, "My body's gone for the rest of my life," right? Like, and that's what I thought. That was my, so I was like, "I have to get every, every, like, physical thing I ever wanna do, I have to do before I have children." Like, and that was, like, what my mind told me.
It was like, uh, and I just felt like I hadn't, you know, that made me wanna put it off longer and, like, all this stuff. And it's like, oh, that's so interesting. Like, one of my friends, she has a 20-month-old, just ran a sub 3:30 marathon on Sunday, and savage. It, faster than she ever was before kids. [00:25:00] And she was like, "It doesn't mean you have to do it."
Like, bounce back culture is also t- incredibly toxic and terrible, but it means that you can. You know, you can. Like, it, it doesn't, like your life is not necessarily gonna, it, your life won't end. You know? Like, you can
[00:25:13] Susanna Hunter: Oh my gosh, absolutely. I started running after having my twins and also got into the best shape of my entire life in between my two pregnancies. I haven't gotten back into it yet, but I'm starting to feel like, ooh, I think it's time. And yeah, I mean, I picked up all these new hobbies and I really started writing songs in earnest after, having kids.
Yeah, totally. I also thought, I mean, in the early days I felt like, oh, my life is over. There's nothing except this. And then, you know, like they were able to be with childcare providers and family members, nannies and daycare and then preschool and there's t- there was so- some, a, a little time, not a lot of time.
You know, there's a long list of stuff that I wanna do, and some of it I may never do, and that's okay. But [00:26:00] totally you don't have to completely lose yourself. And it's like, I think it's so hopeful to just have, even if the hobby is like, my thing is I listen to true crime podcasts.
You know? Whatever it is, like just, just making sure there's something. And that's sort of also that in between these life of, okay, well maybe you used to read a lot and you used to sit down and read, and maybe now your thing is that you do audiobooks on the go, you know? But I think there's still ways to fit in some form of, of staying connected to self.
I'm in a songwriting class. It's a 10-week songwriting class, and it's really light touch because every week you have to submit a song, but it can be a 10-second voice note. It does not have to be sit down with an instrument, write, you know, choruses and verses and a bridge. It can literally be, I thought of it, it doesn't even have to have words, you know?
It can be a 10-second melody inspired by the prompt of the week, you know? So like that fits into my life. I can totally do that
[00:26:59] Mallory Lee: [00:27:00] That's so fun. The, the thing that I also noticed about you, Susanna, even though we haven't known each other very well, but through the magic of LinkedIn we're, we're kind of friends, right? Um, one thing I noticed is that you were pretty open that after your little girl came along, you did a good job of getting yourself out and about relatively quickly.
And that is also something that I've really believed in in all of my pregnancies and, and postpartums. so I'm wondering if you could tell us about that because it, it wasn't just going out with a newborn, but you also had like your twins that were at home or sometimes with you, and how did you pull that off?
[00:27:41] Susanna Hunter: So this is kind of connected to the question I get a lot, which is, uh, I get a lot of moms, um, sliding into my DMs on LinkedIn saying basically, "How do you do it?" I never want to put out that sort of, like, Instagram versus reality sort of thing of like, "Oh, it's so easy to just have it [00:28:00] all."
Like, it's not, and there are things that I do to make it work, so I'm, I love this question. The other thing is, I'll answer the sort of like difference in, in fresh postpartum with the twins versus the baby and why I was so committed to going out and living my life. After the twins were born, so I was a first-time mom, I had no idea what I was doing, and there was two of them, and they were so small.
They weren't, like, medically fragile, but they were five pounds, you know? They were tiny. And I had a cr- I've posted about this a lot too, but I've, I had a crazy, nearly unmanageable oversupply, like severe hyperlactation syndrome like I have never heard of in another human being.
And all my lactation consultants had never, uh, seen it that bad. It was really gnarly. It was a nightmare, which also I feel weird talking about because I know so many mothers, friends of mine and people all over who have really struggled with, with their supply. But I, produced enough milk to feed... I was feeding seven babies.
It was like 120 ounces a day [00:29:00] plus nursing, uh, around the clock. It was, like, bonkers.
[00:29:04] Shannon Curran: I just got the chills thinking about that. I just finished nursing. I just finished. And it's like toward the end I was like, "Make this stop." I was like, "I'm so grateful I got to do it, but make it stop."
[00:29:14] Susanna Hunter: Totally. So grateful, so grateful, and it was almost unbearable. So we didn't go anywhere. You know, we didn't leave the house. I mean, we really didn't leave the house. Like I l- I remember going outside when they were six weeks old. It was the first time I went outside, other than I guess a couple doctor's appointments, and I just burst into tears.
And my husband put his arm around me and led me back inside because it was like a psychedelic, like intensity of the trees were talking to... I mean, I was like losing my mind, you know? Too much, overwhelming being outside. and then we lived and died by their sleep schedule. If it was, if we were five minutes off, I took it as a personal failure.
If I was five minutes off my pumping schedule, I took it as a personal failure. I didn't, you know, get diagnosed with PPD, but the, it was like stuff, you know, was going on. I wasn't, it wasn't great, and I wasn't [00:30:00] sleeping. So we didn't leave the house. We just didn't leave the house for like, did we leave the house for a year?
Probably not. So when this one was born, I said, "You know what? We are doing this differently." And I did my good, you know, uh, five days in the bed, five days on the bed, five days around the bed, whatever. I tried to stick to that. and recovery was pretty gnarly, so I kind of needed to do that. then I said, "Okay, let's go."
And I was not able to really wear my twins 'cause there was two of them. I tried, but this baby fit so nicely in a little carrier and I thought, "Wait a minute. I don't need to bring all the pump stuff and I don't need to think about pumping. So I have her food. I can wear her in a carrier and she sleeps 24 hours a day, so let's go."
So we went to a festival when she was four weeks old. That post got a lot of traction. And I did like a half-joking post about how easy it is to take your baby to a festival and it was like a laundry list of all of the things we had to do to make it happen, including modify the [00:31:00] approach. This festival is only 20 minutes from my home.
I went from 4:00 PM to 8:30 PM and then went home. And my husband stayed till 2:00 o'clock in the morning just like having a great time.
and we kept the twins home for the first part, the first day of the festival and then the second day we brought them in the morning.
And we bring nannies with us places and we funnel a lot of our budget towards childcare and wraparound. We have a lot of support. We pay for a lot of support. and that really, really helps and that's just a decision that we've made financially to like, we're like, "This is a season and we wanna make this work and we wanna live our lives."
And also a lot of the time my husband, we sort of split division of labor. My husband is sort of raising the boys right now and I'm kind of 100% with the baby. It's already shifting a little bit. Now she goes to sleep a little earlier. I can do bedtime with them again. But if there's going to be a split, that's the split.
He puts them to bed every night and if I can join, how lovely, and if I can't, that's fine. And I sleep in the room with the baby so I can get more sleep in the [00:32:00] morning. So that's kind of how we've done it, but I've been just very dedicated. I mean, tonight's, our family's Jewish, so tonight's a great example.
I am gonna take the baby with me to the pre-Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year event. And he's gonna bring the boys later 'cause I don't wanna miss a moment of it. And then, um, tomorrow for actual Rosh Hashanah I'm gonna be there with her all day and he may bring the boys. So that's kind of how we're doing it, where we've really divided the labor and I'm very dedicated to...
She has come with me to so many things. I just take her with me. I feel very European. My baby just comes
with
[00:32:34] Shannon Curran: did the same thing with my second one. Same thing. She was co-pilot for all
[00:32:39] Susanna Hunter: Totally, go toilet. You know, and sometimes, like, sometimes her sleep gets janky and I pay for it. Oh my gosh, right on cue.
[00:32:47] Mallory Lee: She knows we're talking about her.
[00:32:50] Susanna Hunter: She told us. I'll give her another second, see if she can tell. you know, sometimes, like, I'll, I'll kind of, I'll take her to an event. I took her to a friend's, like, bridal shower, [00:33:00] and we stayed late, and I put her to sleep in the carrier, but it wasn't great. And then she was kind of up in the night, but it was fine and worth it for me.
So it's just a, it's been a very healing, corrective experience for me to be able to do what my husband and I always jealously called vibe parenting, and we're not obsessing over everything. We're like, "How nice for the people who can just do vibe parenting." And now I'm like, "I'm vibe parenting, and it feels so good, and I hated
pumping,
[00:33:25] Mallory Lee: the phrase.
[00:33:26] Susanna Hunter: and I don't have to do it anymore."
You know? I'm like, I just bring food and make the food that she needs and no more and no less. It's a miracle. It's a revelation. So that's been, like, ecstatic joy for me to not be pumping and not have to be home for all baby sleep, basically
[00:33:43] Shannon Curran: Yeah
I was a vibe parent, no question about it. I just vibe par- But to be fair, I had babies that allowed for vibing, so that
is a big part of it. if we screwed up their sleep during the day, it was like if they were not sleeping at night, it didn't matter if we messed their day. It, [00:34:00] it never impacted the night.
It was always gonna be what it was anyway. Like, that's how it was for us. So either it was already gonna be amazing or already gonna be bad. It didn't actually matter, right? Like, it was this weird, like, it was, we've, we tried it a few t- I was like, "All right. Whatever. I guess he's just coming along for the ride."
yeah. And then we had another one, and I was like, "Well, she's just coming along for the ride." Like, we just were very, uh, yeah, all vibes all the time, which bit us in the ass a few times, but otherwise, I was like, I just can't be, I can't be strapped to a schedule. I don't even have my own schedule. Like, I can't even manage myself, never mind me putting someone else on a schedule.
Um, and I had a lot of, I had a lot of shame about it, to be honest, 'cause I w- felt like I was a bad mom 'cause I didn't follow, like, Moms On Call or any of those things. I was like, 'cause I physically wasn't, I c- I couldn't do it. I was like, "I don't have this kind of discipline." I can't do it. Mallory, I feel like you'd be very good at those things.
I just, I, I didn't have it.
[00:34:51] Mallory Lee: Somewhere in the middle, honestly. Um, I tried just to follow a couple things, but Grayson was such a horrible napper. He had, like, [00:35:00] 30-minute crap naps, if you've heard that term before. I would spend, like, 45 minutes trying to get him to sleep. He'll sleep for a half hour, and then he wakes up and wants to eat.
And so it was a big battle with him. And then I had the, the boys all pretty close in age, so when Bennett came along, Grayson was still, you know, 17 months old and still had, you know, multiple naps a day. And so it's like the napping, I could just never figure it all out for everybody to, like, nap at the same time.
I think there might have been a very short span of time where they all three would nap at the same time, but it, it would've been, like, a week. You know?
[00:35:43] Shannon Curran: It's happened to us twice. It's happened twice. I remember
[00:35:47] Mallory Lee: it's hard. Yeah. Write it down.
[00:35:52] Shannon Curran: I was like, "Wait, so everyone's asleep?" Like I remember being like,
"So what do
I
do?
Because I actually can't leave. Uh, [00:36:00] my, my nature would be like, I wanna leave, but I can't leave, so I have to stay here and do something.
Susannah, do you go in person to work? Like, do you have to ever make it all the way to SF, or are you just like,
do you work remotely?
[00:36:13] Susanna Hunter: yeah, not often. like maybe once a, once or twice, maybe three times a quarter. Not often. and then there's like week-long off-sites. There, there's been a decent amount of travel. There've been seasons of quite a lot of travel, which was hard. there was a year, there was like a fall where I feel like I was gone, I'd be gone for a week and then home for a week, and then gone for a week and then home for a week, and that was definitely really tough. I did my first week away when the boys were a year old. but you know, we made it work and they're fine.
And there were also things I really liked about the travel. There were things I really liked about just being alone in a hotel room and getting to sleep in a little tiny bit more and,
all three of my kids just always wanna pull my hair.
I'm like, "Okay, [00:37:00] I'm in a hotel room. I've got Netflix and room service and no one's trying to touch me. This is the
[00:37:04] Shannon Curran: bed.
[00:37:05] Susanna Hunter: My husband now goes into the city once or twice a week, and so I'm solo with the kids. That is hard.
[00:37:16] Mallory Lee: Yeah, that's a
[00:37:17] Susanna Hunter: We're gonna bring in some help in, like maybe get some childcare to come for 90 minutes or get a grandmother to come.
But yeah, that's, that's tricky, but, you know, doable. It's m- somewhat manageable. Make it work.
a work-ish question for you, Susanna. So I also way back in the day worked at Salesforce, and I remember at the time, we joined by acquisition, so they bought ExactTarget and Pardot, and that's like how I got into
Oh my gosh. I
[00:37:50] Mallory Lee: world
[00:37:51] Susanna Hunter: loved all the Exact Target and Pardot people so much.
[00:37:55] Mallory Lee: I know, me too. I...
Truly the best time of my life. Yeah. Amazing [00:38:00] people. but, you know, at the time we're getting all of this, like, employment paperwork, and it's very scary. Like, oh, your ideas are our ideas, and all the different sort of, you know, conditions that, that they have in the fine print. and I think that, you know, for people who are kind of scared of, like, corporate, Salesforce is honestly probably one of the first places that comes to mind where you're like, "Okay, yeah, this is, like, corporate life."
and I think some people love it and some people don't, so either way can work. Um, but what I'm curious about is, you know, being at Salesforce and being there with such a long, successful career, do you ever get weirded out, or does anyone ever get weirded out that you have this LinkedIn personality?
Has it ever become, like, a conflict of interest before?
[00:38:46] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, there's a lot that I don't say on LinkedIn. Lots of thoughts that I have, not about Salesforce or about work, just, I mean, I post, like if I really did a deep Claude analysis of my post history, it would probably tell you that [00:39:00] it's over time trended towards 70% snarky parenting satire and a little bit less on the helpful parenting systems, although I try to keep those in there, 'cause that's important for me to share.
there's plenty of the snarky, jokey, whatever, that I don't, that I choose not to post. 'Cause every time I post I think, "Okay, I'm a VP of HR." HR of all functions, you know what I mean? And I'm representing... It's like a professional platform. It's a prof- professional platform, so I'm representing the company in some way.
You know, my, I've got the Salesforce logo on, on there and everything, so I'm conscious of that. I know my wonderful manager reads my posts, and I don't know what he thinks of them. I know what he said. I read all your posts." You know, kind of like that. Like, okay, are we, am I good?
Are we good?
so I'm like, yeah, totally. So sometimes I think I live to post another day. Today is not the day that someone has called me to say, "Hey, knock it off, girl. You gotta knock that off." No one has said that so far. I am trying to [00:40:00] show up. I'm like, I'm on LinkedIn for the moms, you know?
That's what I'm doing. I'm, I've found mom LinkedIn, the, the moms have found me. So I'm there for the moms, and I'm just trying to do a combination of things, share a glimpse in the life of a vice president of a large tech company who has three kids and a very full life, and is actually making it work, and all the things that are required for that.
It's not that so easy breezy. There's a lot of money and time and effort and energy and systems that we've found over the years. My husband is very systems oriented, and so am I, so we have like a crazy number of systems that, automations and things that make our life work, and a whole bunch of childcare providers, and I want to be very honest about that.
And it's expensive, and for, for us right now, it's really worth it. We're kind of starting to wind it down, but it's been worth it. and you know, I want to share the systems, and I want to share how I do it. And also, I come from a family of comedians. It's in my blood. It's a huge passion of mine, and I post a lot of the things, you know, that I find entertaining, and it seems like [00:41:00] maybe not all my jokes land.
That's life. That's show business, baby. But, um, you know, that's what I'm there for, and yes, I'm also conscious of who I am and what I'm representing. And, I think maybe that's a long way of saying they haven't come for me yet, so I hope it's okay. And hopefully, you know, whoever's reading it may be from Salesforce, and I'm sure people have judgments, right?
And it's like, that's just part of being authentic in the world. I'm sure people have judgments about what I'm putting on LinkedIn, but I'm really trying to show up with heart, and I'm really trying to educate, support, and entertain the moms of LinkedIn. That's what I'm there to do. So far it seems like it's working.
[00:41:38] Shannon Curran: Love
that.
[00:41:39] Mallory Lee: so.
[00:41:40] Shannon Curran: Yeah. I have two questions now. Um, so one, what are your top three systems that you all have in your house that make it easiest for you to, or like the ones that have made the biggest impact?
[00:41:53] Susanna Hunter: posted about this once, and we have a woman who comes in the morning, this wonderful nanny named Erika, who [00:42:00] is my sun, moon, and stars. She comes from 7:30 to 9:00 every day, and it does not break the bank for us. She makes the kids breakfast, packs their bags, and takes them to school.
Ninety minutes. We cut a little bit of nanny care at the end of the day that I have taken over. And I know, like, plenty of people who pay for childcare afternoons, evenings, and who would actually really benefit from cutting a little bit of that time towards the end of the day and funneling it to mornings, even if it wasn't every day.
And it has been the biggest game-changer because I could sleep in a little bit. I can tend to the baby. I can let her take her nice, long, deep nap in the morning, which sets her up for a good rest of the day. Sometimes I do still opt to take the kids to school, and then she can s- like, she could even stay here with the baby sometimes if it works with the schedule.
So, that has been an unbelievable... And my husband is-- he has to get to work early, so [00:43:00] it's like it was really-- mornings were complete and total utter chaos. That has been amazing. the other one is that my husband and I have a weekly house meeting. I've also posted about this a lot. I've posted the agenda.
I've posted the template for how we do that. Um, I was really resistant in the beginning to having another meeting, you know? Oh my God, I can't do another fricking meeting at the end of the day on a Wednesday when I've had 10 hours of meetings. But it has been so incredibly helpful. We have a shared note that we populate the note throughout the week with whatever we wanna talk about.
We can check things off. We kind of go through it every day, um, on our own, just kind of keeping track of things that need to happen. And the thing that that has done is it has reduced the amount that we have to talk about all the things that have to happen to make our lives run. All the mundane stuff that was just dragging us down and frankly kind of like tanking our marriage, just the harmony in our marriage, 'cause all we were doing is throughout the week, "Oh, did you remember that?
Did you remember that? Did you do this? Who's supposed to do that?" You know, just like, ugh, that's awf- you know, the energy of that was not sexy. You know what, you know what I mean? It was just [00:44:00] like, "Oh my God, I don't wanna talk about this with you anymore." and like, "I don't like you right now 'cause all we ever do is talk about this."
So it's just time boxed it. So that's been really great. And then I think I'll just say the, the last one for, for anybody that's postpartum who might be having a lot of people in your house helping with dishes or putting things away. This is a small one, but it's staring at me. Every single cabinet face in the entire kitchen has a label of what is inside that cabinet.
It seems like a small thing. People come into the house and they're like, "Are you trying to lear- It's like, it's like, looks like someone's trying to learn a language." That's what, for some
reason, that's what people ... Um,
[00:44:40] Shannon Curran: It's like classrooms have everything labeled so that
[00:44:42] Susanna Hunter: yeah. Like every, I mean everything, like, like really specific. And that way anyone that's helping us out, putting, to help, helping to put dishes away, they know exactly where it goes.
Because you know that prolif- proliferation of something ends up in the wrong place, and then something else, and then something else, and then you can't find anything, and everything's chaos in your kitchen. [00:45:00] It has kept everything like so tidy, and we don't have to have conversations about it, and that has been a really great postpartum hack.
And I keep thinking, it's not cute, but I keep thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna take that off 'cause now I'm four months postpartum." But it's been so helpful. We had family in town for the kids' birthday, you know, and they were helping to unload dishes. And that's been another... It's like a small one, but that's just been so incredibly valuable
[00:45:22] Mallory Lee: I love
that.
[00:45:23] Shannon Curran: good.
[00:45:24] Mallory Lee: I always like that when I go to Airbnbs and it just tells you where things are or like where they're supposed to be. It's like, man, this is, this is really convenient to not have to
[00:45:35] Susanna Hunter: Yeah.
[00:45:36] Mallory Lee: and wonder
[00:45:37] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, we're big on just signs and labels in the house in general. Just has really helped. Yeah, maybe not the most Pinterest, Pinterest vibes kind of thing of all time, but it's, um,
[00:45:47] Shannon Curran: Function over fashion, you know? And that's
really
[00:45:50] Mallory Lee: Yeah,
definitely. Uh, I'm laughing about how you said you and your husband, you know, have to, like, ask each other, "Did you do this? Did you do that?" [00:46:00] Something I find myself doing all the time is saying, like, to Brian, like, "Remind me to blah, blah, blah," you know, for anything. I'm like, "Don't let me forget to do this."
And when you said that, it made me think, like, okay, do I really need to say that to him? Like, do I really need to put that on him and make him, like, my mental, you know, whiteboard? I mean, probably not. So maybe I'll try to copy your shared note idea, see how that goes
[00:46:28] Susanna Hunter: We did-- Something I recommend is we did an audit of all the things that we were saying over and over and over again, including little choreography of the day that happened a lot of times. Like which one of us put which kid in which side of the car in the car seats? You know? Like that's something that happens multiple times a day, and we'd just be like, "Oh, you put him over there.
You do this." who's getting the kids out of the car? Like what are those things that we just go through over and over and over again? And we just sort of went through the choreography of those things and said, "Okay, [00:47:00] well, you're always gonna put this kid on on this side, and you're always gonna..." You know what I mean?
It's like he gets the kids out of the car, and I get the baby out. So we just don't have to talk about it. And then you know what we get to do instead? Have a conversation about something else and continue our conversation. And so it's like not only does it reduce the friction, it actually creates so much space for us to connect with each other throughout the day.
and we've just, you know, we really kind of did a deep scrubbing of all the things like that that happen in a day, and it's been so helpful. And you know what? Every so often we have to redo them because, you know, then someday the kids won't be in car seats, and there'll be something else. And it's That's what the house meeting is for, that we can, we can, um, reassess and see where we need to, you know, maybe tighten things up or change things.
[00:47:40] Shannon Curran: Susanna, what we do at the end of every episode is we have what we call our save of the week. So it is a person, product, process, any of those, that makes it, that made it better, easier for you to be a working parent or non-working, just parent this week, uh, for you.
But I guess you're kind of working right now.
[00:47:56] Susanna Hunter: Alright. Well, I, I already mentioned Erika, so we'll, we'll say thank you, [00:48:00] Erika. Bless you, Erika. Okay, the product. Okay, I have a running list on my phone of if I ever did, like, brand partnerships,
I mean, there are so many, but I'll do the one that has been, I'm like, "Why didn't I do this before?" The SlumberPod. The SlumberPod. Are you familiar with the SlumberPod? It is a
little baby sleep tent. It is a little black blackout tent. It's actually not that small, but it fits over...
It doesn't fit over the crib. It fits over... She's in a, like, a pack and play. She sleeps in, like, a little travel bassinet right now, 'cause that's just what's, what works for us. C- m- mainly 'cause it fits under the... Like, anything that works with the SlumberPod. It's a complete blackout. I can take it with me anywhere.
It's pretty easy to set up. And the difference in her sleep quality is, like, do I want her to take a 45-minute nap or a two-and-a-half-hour nap, really deep restorative nap? And if I forget to zip it or if I put her in her crib instead, the difference is so noticeable, even just from the little LEDs and the little bit of light that gets in from [00:49:00] underneath the blackout.
It's a full blackout. I- it packs up into this little thing. Okay, I'm just a walking advertisement for this product, but that's totally my save of the week. Every, every day I go into her room and I think, "Bless this SlumberPod," 'cause it is amazing, amazing. And I don't know why. I had... We used it with the twins a little, but I'm like, she only sleeps in that thing, only.
And that's part of how I can go anywhere and she can sleep other places.
Love it.
[00:49:28] Mallory Lee: For
[00:49:28] Shannon Curran: All right, Mal. What's yours?
[00:49:30] Mallory Lee: I think I'm gonna go for this little clear whiteboard. It's not a whiteboard, it's a clear board, but you get my drift. Um, we use it for the boys for homework and, like, spelling tests and little things here and there. You can, like, write stuff on it if you need to just leave a note or something. But we have that, and it's magnetic, and it just hangs on the inside of one of the cabinets.
But then I can pull it down and just write things out with the boys, and it's come in handy a couple times this [00:50:00] week. So that one was on my mind
[00:50:02] Shannon Curran: Love that. I'm actually gonna say, I actually have been to a few concerts lately, which is something I really didn't do for, like, probably, like a year and a half, uh, because I was the way Willa fell asleep, um, while I was nursing. And so I feel like nighttime things that were, like, really past bedtime, like actual, like, concerts were hard.
Um, and so they were something I didn't do. But, my best friends, uh, got tickets to see Sara Bareilles last night and we went and saw the first, like ... I was sh- I, Susanna, I was gonna say, I bet you love her. I was like, I could feel it in my bo- So I've seen her four times. This is the fourth time I've seen her, and I sobbed from beginning to end.
It was like catharsis like I have not experienced in a really long time. And she's just, like ... And I was there with all my best friends. I was like, my husband came, which is so unusual that the two of us go somewhere together, and my mom came over and Nana came over and babysat and, at our house, so the kids got to go to sleep in their own cr- like, their own rooms.
And I know, what a [00:51:00] goat that woman is. Um, she'll be my save next week. I'll explain to you what she's doing for me next week, which is absurdity, um, is what she's doing. Um, coming over at 6:00 AM every day to watch my children. but I, uh, but yeah, it's just like, I think as someone that's, uh, you know, I'm, I still teach dance.
I have, like, musical theater's a big part of my life. Music's a big part of my life. It kind of went away for a little while, um, while I was ... Like, live music went away for a little while, I think, for me. And, it was so, like, healing and wonderful and fun and, like, all of these things that just felt, like, very important.
So major save for my, uh, for Mom's, Mom's brain and heart for this week. It was so wonderful.
[00:51:38] Susanna Hunter: Oh, that's awesome
[00:51:40] Shannon Curran: So
[00:51:40] Mallory Lee: I have had so much fun talking about our feelings, and I'm dead
inside.
[00:51:46] Shannon Curran: don't like
[00:51:46] Mallory Lee: talk about feelings
[00:51:49] Shannon Curran: We're gonna c- I was like, "Susannah and I are gonna crack Mal in this one." I was like, "We're really
gonna
[00:51:53] Mallory Lee: know. I know. That, that was... Good job, ladies. Um,[00:52:00]
[00:52:00] Shannon Curran: Rage, sadness, like, you know, sleepy. Like we have all the things, every feeling.
Oh.
[00:52:08] Mallory Lee: let you get to your little ones, Susanna. Thank you so much for
[00:52:11] Susanna Hunter: It was great. Thank you for having me. This was-- I've been wanting to come on this podcast
[00:52:16] Shannon Curran: Oh, it was our pleasure. Thanks for being here
[00:52:19] Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Full Stack Moms,
[00:52:21] Speaker: We'll be back with more episodes that help you see you're not crazy and you're not alone. If we might be your people, please make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:52:31] Shannon Curran: My husband is going to come home during this time. My dogs are going to bark about it. I think it should be fine. Like, you guys will probably be able to hear it, but we think that somehow it gets canceled out. Uh, just a warning though, it's 'cause
[00:52:43] Susanna Hunter: Okay. Well, I'll do,
[00:52:44] Shannon Curran: home around 2:30.
[00:52:46] Susanna Hunter: I'll do mine, just the warnings. Um, I have a sick kid upstairs and the baby's sleeping with a baby monitor. Like, there's an 100% chance that I'm gonna need to go tend to some child or that I'll bring my baby down and she'll, she'll [00:53:00] join us 'cause she will probably wake up.
[00:53:02] Mallory Lee: my disclaimers are that Penny is outside. I'm gonna have to let her in at some point, and I am
[00:53:08] Shannon Curran: That's a dog
We can check things off. We kind of go through it every day on our own, just kind of keeping track of things that need to happen. And the thing that that has done is it has reduced the amount that we have to talk about all the things that have to happen to make our lives run. All the mundane stuff that was just dragging us down and frankly kind of like tanking our marriage, just the harmony in our marriage, 'cause all we were doing is throughout the week, "Oh, did you remember that?
Did you remember that? Did you do this? Who's supposed to do that?" The energy of that was not sexy.
[00:00:33] Mallory Lee: This is Full Stack Moms.
[00:00:36] Shannon Curran: This is not a parenting podcast nor a business podcast, but a place where we talk building careers in tech, raising kids at home, and making it work in public. . thank you so, so much for coming to talk to us. I wanna say you're reporting live from your maternity leave. Is that right?
[00:00:55] Susanna Hunter: Oh yeah. Yeah, I am. I'm four months into the six months. Yeah[00:01:00]
[00:01:00] Shannon Curran: Wow. 'Cause you're at Salesforce, yes?
[00:01:03] Susanna Hunter: Mm-hmm. Yeah
[00:01:04] Shannon Curran: Great. Love
[00:01:05] Mallory Lee: Awesome. Well, we love to start out by just learning about you. So what you do for work, what your family's like. but we can kind of do the fast facts for all the listeners
[00:01:18] Susanna Hunter: Great. Yeah. Well, I'm Susanna Hunter. I'm based in Sebastopol, California, so about 90 minutes north of the Salesforce Tower. And, um, I've been there for... I passed 10 years in June, which is just wild to think about who I was when I joined the company and what the company was like when I joined. It's just a li- I mean, it's the longest relationship I've ever been in.
in that time, I met my husband, fell in love. We got married. We had twins. We got pregnant with twins a couple months after the wedding. Woo. And our, our, our twins are four now. They just turned four last week. And we have a [00:02:00] four-month-old baby girl. So we have fraternal twin boys and a little baby girl.
We're done. I'm done. I mean, the whole time I was in labor, I just kept saying, "I'm never doing this again. I'm never doing this again." And so it is. We're done. But, you know, love, love the, the family that we've grown and that we continue to grow. And, um, my job at Salesforce, I'm vice president of HR supporting the customer success organization, so that's about 10,000 people located in 35 countries.
A lot's changing about the role and the org, but that's what I've been doing, and I've been supporting that org for a really, really long time, mostly 'cause I just had such a good thing going with the leadership team, and the role changed every, you know, few months, and it kept me on my toes, which I really liked.
and, uh, have a, a big team reporting into me, and I am on maternity leave, so I don't know, like, do I say it in past tense? But anyway, that's what I was doing before I went on mat leave. And, um, [00:03:00] outside of work, there's always so much going on. Life is very full. We manage a intergenerational community compound here that we have in Sebastopol that's really sweet.
We got a bunch of kids on the property. Six kids, ages six and under, all just running around and pounding
around and playing with each other's toys and having fun. And, um, I also do, uh... I, I'm a singer-songwriter. I do stand-up comedy, and I'm pretty obsessed with LinkedIn, which happened. It just ended up happening sort of, uh, unexpectedly, but I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn.
It's the only social media that I'm on. So yeah, I think, I think that's it. We don't have any pets. I can't... We have a chicken coop with no chickens 'cause I just cannot feed any more beings. I'll try to keep the plants alive.
[00:03:49] Mallory Lee: Totally see. Totally see that. I would say that the four-year-olds can feed the chickens, but they'd probably overfeed them and then you'd have a different problem.[00:04:00]
[00:04:00] Susanna Hunter: We're starting to, we're starting to get to this place where we're realizing that they actually can and should have more responsibilities. You know, did you ever watch that, that show, um, it's like a Japanese documentary show called Old Enough, where they send two-year-olds out to do these incredible errands, um, by themselves with a camera crew kind of hanging back.
And I'm like, oh, and here I am trying to get my four-year-olds to put their dishes in the sink at the end of the meal , you know? But yeah, we'll get to, we'll get to feeding chickens, and then we'll stock the coop for sure.
[00:04:33] Shannon Curran: Love that. And y- can you explain a little bit more about your intergenerational compound? I feel like I would love to understand.
[00:04:40] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this has been... So in Sebastopol, it's-- I post about it on LinkedIn a lot. It's a... And people who live around here have seen my posts. I di- I don't name the town. People have sent me DMs and said, they've said, "You're talking about Sebastopol, aren't you?" And then I've met up with them in person.
I'm like, "Well, if you're here, let's go to the one coffee shop that [00:05:00] everybody goes to and have like a little LinkedIn meetup." So that's been fun. It's a little hippie town, and everybody's dream here, like if you like throw a rock, you're gonna hit somebody who's like, "I dream of the compound." Um, and so we, we did it.
We had to do some, you know, we had to beg, borrow, and steal to kind of make this happen and, and really decide to prioritize our lives around this. But we bought this beautiful three-acre, five-unit family compound, and we filled it with friends and new friends and old friends. Um, my baby's godfather lives in a unit that's attached to our house.
So like right through that wall is my daughter's godfather. It's so special. And my kid's music teacher lives in one of the units. And, um, yeah, so we have a bunch of kids and families and dogs that I get to love but don't have to clean up after, which is lovely. And they get to hang out with my kids, but get to give them back to me when my kids are crying.
And it kind of works out for everybody. It's really sweet. So it's-- [00:06:00] I wouldn't say it's like full village. That's sort of the dream. We are working towards that. I want my parents to move here, you know? They live 30 minutes away. Move on to the property. But they're f- they're fun. They're like fun grandparents, and they wanna be in a more happening town.
We're at the end of a quiet lane with, with trees, and they're sort of like, "Your home is too sleepy for us. Thank you." Um, but yeah, that's what we've got going on. So it's full on. I mean, before 8:00 AM, one of the kids in the, one of the other units locked, essentially locked, uh, locked the bedroom door. And I ran over there with a bunch of keys like, "We gotta figure this out."
I'm still in my pajamas. I have to hand the baby monitor off. You know, it's like my, the baby's sleeping. My husband climbs in the second story window with a ladder. This is all before 8:00 AM.
This is all this morning.
[00:06:55] Mallory Lee: Oh gosh.
[00:06:56] Susanna Hunter: So it's just... I'm like, yeah, yeah. Mm.
[00:06:58] Shannon Curran: And are you guys like the [00:07:00] main owner and then everyone else is like a...
[00:07:02] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, they just rent the units from us.
[00:07:03] Shannon Curran: yeah, I'm not gonna say landlord. That feels like the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Like the, the town
mayor.
[00:07:09] Susanna Hunter: Yes, totally.
[00:07:10] Mallory Lee: mayor.
[00:07:11] Susanna Hunter: Well, as we say at Sebastian Pole, we are the stewards of this land and, uh, of the no's. And so yeah, it's our responsibility to unlock the doors and get the well working again. On Friday it was a, we thought there was a gas leak. I mean, there's always just so much, so much happening and I keep thinking, "How did I do this when I was working like 60 hours a week?"
You know? But you just, it just ... Time is very mushy and amorphous, and it just sort of expands and contracts and somehow it all gets done Yeah
[00:07:44] Shannon Curran: this when I look back at any time in my life. I'm like, "How did I do that?" You just don't know. You just... Humans are very resilient. They do the thing in front of them, you know? Like, it's very
[00:07:52] Susanna Hunter: that's really true. You just, you just have to do it. You just find a way. Also, I'm really big on what we call in-between-sies life, which [00:08:00] is how much can you get done in the in-between moments where you don't even really realize you're unloading the dishwasher, but somehow it happened. Or you don't even realize you threw in a load of laundry, but somehow it happened rather than now is the time that I'm going to do dishes and laundry, which somehow feels impossible and takes way more time.
So we're always trying to sneak little things in, you know? It's like sometimes I feel like I have a million arms. You know that feeling where you're just like, "I don't know how I'm doing this, but I'm ordering Instacart on my phone while I'm putting the laundry in, while I'm texting the plumber, while I'm getting the baby up from her nap."
And I don't know, somehow the arms also seem to expand and contract based on what's going on.
[00:08:40] Mallory Lee: 100%. I am always having three conversations at once with the boys. It's like they totally don't understand that I'm speaking to someone already, so they just jump in and start having a conversation with me. And so, you know, literally all three of them at the same time [00:09:00] are, like, having conversations and I'm like, "Yep.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm." Like, and it's, it's wild, but somehow my brain handles it and does it. I don't know how
[00:09:09] Susanna Hunter: Yeah. It's mother brain. My brain totally changed. This baby changed my brain more than my twins did, which I was kind of surprised. I really feel that, which I was really surprised about. You think it's sort of binary. You go from being not a mother to being a mother, and that's the biggest change. And something about having this baby, I feel like a lot got rewired, and I'm kind of working with that.
And there's no unitasking. We don't unitask anymore. You know? We can't have one... Can we ever have one conversation? This doesn't
[00:09:38] Mallory Lee: Pretty much right now. That's it.
[00:09:39] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, right. Yep.
[00:09:41] Shannon Curran: Yeah, I felt that way after my second too, um, that it, I felt way more, radicalized a little . And then also, like, just like, uh, I, yeah, I felt a lot more change. But I think I was also, like, because I was also learning to parent the older one at the same time, like, you, [00:10:00] so now you're just, like, new to two things.
And so it's just like, I still don't know what I'm doing with the other one, and now I have this, like, new one that I thought I would know how to deal with, and now somehow she's completely different than the other one. So it's, like, a very, uh... Yeah, I definitely felt like a parent for the, f- for real with the second one.
Like, I feel as, I was like, "Oh, this is parenting with a capital P." Like, I am, like, I, oh, what was I doing before? That's what-
[00:10:27] Susanna Hunter: phrase parenting with a capital P. I know exactly what you mean. Also, you kind of know what you're doing, so there's a little bit less of that, you're, it's sort of like, oh, I've done a lot of these things before, so now I kind of need to know better for some of them. I mean, it's always, you know, we're always learning all the time.
I've started to tell my kids recently, "Hey, I'm, I'm always learning to be a better mom." So basically, what I've started saying to them is essentially, "I'm available for feedback." Well, no, I'm [00:11:00] like, yes, give me it. But like, I, I'm not perfect. I'm not getting this all perfect all the time. And also, um, yeah, I'm available for feedback.
I actually asked my kids, they get so philosophical at night, and I asked them, uh, recently, I mean, I don't wanna do, I don't wanna ask this too much, but I said, "Is there anything I can do to make your life better? Like, is there anything, what, you know, what could I be doing?" And they said... They, they have separate rooms.
They sleep better with separate rooms. And, uh, one of them said, we had just gotten the bounce house for their, for their birthday party, and he said, Be with me all the time and leave the bounce house up until I'm a grownup." And the other one, when I asked him, he said, "Invite more people over." And I was like, that's them in a nutshell.
You know?
[00:11:46] Shannon Curran: That is
[00:11:47] Susanna Hunter: more people over. He's so social. He just wants a party all the time.
[00:11:50] Shannon Curran: Good thing it wasn't a com- on a compound. This
[00:11:53] Susanna Hunter: Totally, yeah, he, he can't get enough. Yeah. So
[00:11:55] Mallory Lee: That's amazing. I talk about that a lot, just the [00:12:00] concept of making sure that you remind your kids that you're not perfect either. And, you know, 'cause they look up to you, they see you as like their world, and they think you can do no wrong. And then when something does go wrong, it's chaos and confusion.
And so sometimes I just have to say like, "Mommy doesn't know how to do this either. Mommy is not perfect. We have to figure these things out together." And, it makes them put a lot of pressure on themselves when they think they're trying to live up to your parents' level of like perfection as they see it.
So I've, I've always talked about that. I'd say like in the past year I'm seeing it more where I need to pay attention to that.
[00:12:43] Susanna Hunter: Yeah,
[00:12:44] Shannon Curran: I think that's very generational too. Like, I think it's our parents were told that they had to seem like they had it all under control, that they're the flight attendant, right?
Like, that like everything is fine, everything is good. I never make a mistake. I keep you safe, [00:13:00] right? And I remember having this fear before becoming a mother, um, or thinking about becoming a mother, that I was like, I remember I was with a therapist being like, "I can't do this," like, "I'm gonna mess it all up."
And she's like, "The most important thing is the repair." And that's something that like just wasn't a part of culture, and it wasn't ... I feel really bad actually for generations before us that they had to pretend like they were perfect at everything, right? And she's like, "What actually matters more is like they see you make a mistake or they see you do something you wish you hadn't done or whatever, and that you repair in real time, which teaches them that it's okay for them to make mistakes and as long as they repair," right?
And I think that was such an amazing reframe for me of like, okay, so like I can do this. I'm going to mess things up, but because I understand that the important part is the repair, then like I can just keep practicing doing that, right? Like, I'm sure our kids will be saying, "Remember when our parents thought it was so important to just do this thing?"
You know what I mean? They'll, like there'll be something. [00:14:00] But I like, they'll look back at this clip and be like, "Mom, you knew nothing." Um, but I think there's a ... But that meant a lot to me. I remember hearing that and being like, "Okay, I can see. I, I think we can do this." Maybe.
[00:14:12] Susanna Hunter: our parents' generation just wasn't big on, I think, you know, coming to, like it wasn't part of their practice to come and apologize to us and admit they were wrong. And I mean, and you know, that's how like, yes, we're totally messing things up for our kids. Absolutely they are gonna
be on whatever, whatever version the podcast is.
But, yeah, in my, in my family growing up, there was We didn't really, there wasn't anger, there wasn't fighting ever,
cause there wasn't talking. It was just hold your stuff inside please, you know? Um, my mom watches everything that, that I do. So hi Mom, I love you and you're a great mom.
but yeah, I mean, and that's been a big part of my kind of healing work as an adult is just, is being okay with the full, expressing the [00:15:00] full range of emotions.
And isn't that such a huge part? You know, we get to, we get to re-parent ourselves as we parent our kids. And I've been talking a lot more openly recently about mom rage. 'Cause for a while I felt like, okay, this is just me and I'm a monster, and I'm a bad person, and I'm a bad mother. And then I started talking about it with people and they were like, "Oh, you lose it on your kids too?
And you become just this like rage machine to your tiny, adorable, precious children?" And it was so cathartic to just talk about it. And, you know, talking about it helped me feel so much less alone, which actually sort of helped it stop hap- helped it, you know, reduce the number of times that I just got so filled with rage.
You know, there were moments when my twins were really little and they'd both be crying, and I was just alone with them, and I would just like, just like scream into a pillow, you [00:16:00] know? 'Cause I was just so, it was rage and it was like all the anger that I never let myself feel as a child, as a, you know, as a teenager, as an adult, that I'm really kind of working with now.
It's like anger. And then my kids get super angry and I think, "Okay, how can I be with them through this, and how can I be with myself through my own anger?" And it's just been this huge evolution for both of us, and I'd say it has gotten a lot better. And honestly, I think most of it is just 'cause my kids are four now, and they're not two, and they're much more reasonable, and I can talk to them more.
I wouldn't say they're fully reasonable or logical, but they're, you know, four is really different than two or three. And, you know, and now we can talk about it. And if I ever do find myself speaking to them in a way that when I look back on it is not optimal, then I can, you know, I can go to them and I can apologize, and we have a whole conversation about it, and there is that repair.
So that's been a really, I mean, it's like such a spiritual [00:17:00] process if you're, if you show up and engage with it, and it's so hard.
[00:17:05] Shannon Curran: so hard. It's funny, I s- literally was saying this today. I've never had access to rage until I was a mom I
[00:17:13] Mallory Lee: too had the rage
[00:17:17] Shannon Curran: Where'd it come from? Where is it? I don't, I had never, I don't even think I'd ever been mad. Yeah
[00:17:23] Mallory Lee: It's DNA,
[00:17:24] Susanna Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. I don't think... Oh my gosh, Shannon, "I don't think I'd ever been mad,"
I think that's such a powerful statement. And then you become a mother and there's, I mean, rage is the only way to put it. It's not anger.
It's like this fire. It's like, yeah, like,
[00:17:40] Mallory Lee: Ja
[00:17:40] Susanna Hunter: ah. You know? And it's, it's, I mean, and it's, I feel like it's just right there. Like, okay, new emotion just
entered the chat. So accessible. Mm-hmm. Yeah
[00:17:51] Mallory Lee: Åh.
[00:17:51] Shannon Curran: You had it too, Mal?
[00:17:53] Mallory Lee: I did. Yeah, and I remember the exact moment where it really sunk in, and I really thought, like, [00:18:00] "Okay, this is so different than usual." And I was in my office bathroom, right on the other side of this wall, and, um, I don't know, I was, like, in there crying for some reason, and I just remember how mad I was.
And I thought, "This is not, like, a normal upsetness that I usually would be able to handle." And so it stood out to me as something that was way different. Um, you know, and I ended up getting some help with it and figuring it out. But even prior to that, I think there were, like, elements of it that I hadn't fully identified before.
But I remember when Grayson was probably three-ish, you know. I would've probably had all f- all three boys by then. I, I don't remember for sure. Oh, Penny. Sweet Penny, look at her.
anyway, he would say, like, "Mommy, are you happy?" Like, he, he was so concerned if I was happy. And looking back at that now, like, totally breaks my heart into, like, [00:19:00] 8 million pieces, because he could tell when I was upset. And even if I wasn't, like, yelling at him, he could see, you know, like, Mommy's not happy, and that was impacting him.
And anyway, it's... I, I don't, I don't remember that fondly. I'm glad that I'm, you know, pretty much past that. Now I just rage clean,
[00:19:21] Shannon Curran: Yeah. How do we get some of that?
I think our kids need to be older. I think we need to get to the next echelon. Uh, yeah.
[00:19:28] Susanna Hunter: Great. Signing up for rage cleaning. That sounds great
[00:19:32] Shannon Curran: Sebastian the other set, other day... So, um, Susanna for context, I have an almost three-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old. And then Mallory's kids are older. What? 10, 10, eight, and six? Am I making that up?
I think that's right. Am I right?
[00:19:46] Mallory Lee: We are now 10, nine and seven
[00:19:50] Shannon Curran: I miss the... Oh, Penny. Wow. Wow, Penny is really making herself at home
[00:19:56] Mallory Lee: It had to happen at some point. Um, Penny's joined the [00:20:00] podcast today
[00:20:01] Susanna Hunter: Beautiful
[00:20:01] Shannon Curran: what a girl. but Sebastian said the other day, I said, "Hey, can I have a kiss?" And he goes, "No, I'm just mad today." And I said, "All right, dude, like, feel your feelings. Like anything I can do to help?" "No, I'm just mad today."
And I
[00:20:18] Susanna Hunter: Good for you, kid.
[00:20:20] Shannon Curran: I was like ...I know. I had a moment of
like ... And, and I didn't need to fi- I was like, "Don't f- don't fix it." Like this is not a moment for me to like fix it and make him happy. It's like clearly he's sitting with that feeling and he is sitting in discomfort in a way that I even don't have the capability to do.
Because he, he wasn't acting rage-y, you know what I mean? It's like he was acting mad. He was just like, "No, I'm just mad today."
[00:20:41] Susanna Hunter: It sounds like an enlightened being. He's witnessing his own, you know, experience from the outside and not letting it overtake him. You know? It's like, could we all, could we do that? You know? "
[00:20:54] Shannon Curran: Children are perfect. Don't let the world break them." Like, I'm like literally like, you know everything you ever needed [00:21:00] to know right now. Learn nothing else. Like literally I'm like, learn nothing else.
[00:21:04] Susanna Hunter: Wow. Yeah, I used to sing, you know, you know the Miss Rachel, uh, "Big feelings are okay. It's okay to have big feelings." So I'd sing that to them, and then I'd think, "Oh, I really need to sing this to myself." Yeah. I need, I need to turn Miss Rachel inward and shine the light of Miss Rachel into my soul, you know?
And it's, it's just hard. It's so hard, yeah. So I, I will say that, uh, being on maternity leave, it's been... Like, my mental health has been so good, so much better than I thought it would be. I was so afraid of having postpartum depression. I was bracing for impact. I was getting, like, pre-postpartum depression anxiety
[00:21:48] Shannon Curran: Anxiety
[00:21:49] Mallory Lee: Oh my. That's not surprising to me
[00:21:51] Susanna Hunter: PPPD-A is what I had. I was just... And then I thought, "I'm so anxious about getting postpartum depression that I am, [00:22:00] like, putting myself into this bad mental state." And
[00:22:04] Shannon Curran: It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like that
[00:22:07] Susanna Hunter: Totally. Uh, I just thought, you know, I, I had a history of depression earlier in my life, and I just felt like, okay, well, somehow I didn't get it with the twins, and it was like this boogeyman. And, you know, everyone in my family's on antidepressants, and I just thought, "It, it's my time," you know? I ha- somehow, like, hid from the evil eye of PPD for this long and I'm gonna get it. And I will say, you know, it hasn't been, like, every minute the most joyful time of my life, but it's actually been really sweet and easy, and I strangely feel like my mental health is better than it's been in a really long time, which I was not anticipating.
And so, the other thing I really feel like I've been talking about is, hey, it's possible to have it. Like, I have my third kid, I've got twins, and I'm actually kind of really feel like I'm thriving. I'm very tired. I'm very, very, very, very, very, very tired. like, I would try to bake cakes [00:23:00] for my kid's birthday, and following a recipe felt like I was reading in another language, and I kept feeling like I was like, "Do I need to flip this upside down?
What are, what does four tablespoons mean?" You know, put in too many eggs, and I was like, "I don't know what to do." But that's just fatigue. But I feel like deep down things are really good, and the postpartum phase has been, like, es- especially fresh postpartum was really easy and blissful. And so, yes, there's the rage, which I always feel like I wanna talk about and kind of normalize, and also, I-- we did IVF to have our daughter.
I found IVF to be easy, and I found postpartum to be easy, and I'm finding having three kids to be relatively easy. And I feel like I wish I heard more people talk about that too, because I thought this is gonna be impossible, because having two felt impossible, but somehow having three feels easier than having two in a way that I can't fully understand.
[00:23:56] Mallory Lee: I
love that for you though
[00:23:58] Shannon Curran: I know, and [00:24:00] everyone's experience is so valid and important,
but I do think it's like it doesn't mean that everyone then has a bad experience, right? Just because people are now feeling like they have a platform to talk about this stuff, right? So all of these things are possible.
I remember saying the same thing about, like, I'm actually healthier, and my body is in, like, a s- better place, like physically, than I was before I had kids, and I'm only one year postpartum with my second of 202.
I know so many people that are like, "I'll never be able to run again. I'll never be able to work out again.
I'll never be able to do anything again," right? And, or like, "My body's gone for the rest of my life," right? Like, and that's what I thought. That was my, so I was like, "I have to get every, every, like, physical thing I ever wanna do, I have to do before I have children." Like, and that was, like, what my mind told me.
It was like, uh, and I just felt like I hadn't, you know, that made me wanna put it off longer and, like, all this stuff. And it's like, oh, that's so interesting. Like, one of my friends, she has a 20-month-old, just ran a sub 3:30 marathon on Sunday, and savage. It, faster than she ever was before kids. [00:25:00] And she was like, "It doesn't mean you have to do it."
Like, bounce back culture is also t- incredibly toxic and terrible, but it means that you can. You know, you can. Like, it, it doesn't, like your life is not necessarily gonna, it, your life won't end. You know? Like, you can
[00:25:13] Susanna Hunter: Oh my gosh, absolutely. I started running after having my twins and also got into the best shape of my entire life in between my two pregnancies. I haven't gotten back into it yet, but I'm starting to feel like, ooh, I think it's time. And yeah, I mean, I picked up all these new hobbies and I really started writing songs in earnest after, having kids.
Yeah, totally. I also thought, I mean, in the early days I felt like, oh, my life is over. There's nothing except this. And then, you know, like they were able to be with childcare providers and family members, nannies and daycare and then preschool and there's t- there was so- some, a, a little time, not a lot of time.
You know, there's a long list of stuff that I wanna do, and some of it I may never do, and that's okay. But [00:26:00] totally you don't have to completely lose yourself. And it's like, I think it's so hopeful to just have, even if the hobby is like, my thing is I listen to true crime podcasts.
You know? Whatever it is, like just, just making sure there's something. And that's sort of also that in between these life of, okay, well maybe you used to read a lot and you used to sit down and read, and maybe now your thing is that you do audiobooks on the go, you know? But I think there's still ways to fit in some form of, of staying connected to self.
I'm in a songwriting class. It's a 10-week songwriting class, and it's really light touch because every week you have to submit a song, but it can be a 10-second voice note. It does not have to be sit down with an instrument, write, you know, choruses and verses and a bridge. It can literally be, I thought of it, it doesn't even have to have words, you know?
It can be a 10-second melody inspired by the prompt of the week, you know? So like that fits into my life. I can totally do that
[00:26:59] Mallory Lee: [00:27:00] That's so fun. The, the thing that I also noticed about you, Susanna, even though we haven't known each other very well, but through the magic of LinkedIn we're, we're kind of friends, right? Um, one thing I noticed is that you were pretty open that after your little girl came along, you did a good job of getting yourself out and about relatively quickly.
And that is also something that I've really believed in in all of my pregnancies and, and postpartums. so I'm wondering if you could tell us about that because it, it wasn't just going out with a newborn, but you also had like your twins that were at home or sometimes with you, and how did you pull that off?
[00:27:41] Susanna Hunter: So this is kind of connected to the question I get a lot, which is, uh, I get a lot of moms, um, sliding into my DMs on LinkedIn saying basically, "How do you do it?" I never want to put out that sort of, like, Instagram versus reality sort of thing of like, "Oh, it's so easy to just have it [00:28:00] all."
Like, it's not, and there are things that I do to make it work, so I'm, I love this question. The other thing is, I'll answer the sort of like difference in, in fresh postpartum with the twins versus the baby and why I was so committed to going out and living my life. After the twins were born, so I was a first-time mom, I had no idea what I was doing, and there was two of them, and they were so small.
They weren't, like, medically fragile, but they were five pounds, you know? They were tiny. And I had a cr- I've posted about this a lot too, but I've, I had a crazy, nearly unmanageable oversupply, like severe hyperlactation syndrome like I have never heard of in another human being.
And all my lactation consultants had never, uh, seen it that bad. It was really gnarly. It was a nightmare, which also I feel weird talking about because I know so many mothers, friends of mine and people all over who have really struggled with, with their supply. But I, produced enough milk to feed... I was feeding seven babies.
It was like 120 ounces a day [00:29:00] plus nursing, uh, around the clock. It was, like, bonkers.
[00:29:04] Shannon Curran: I just got the chills thinking about that. I just finished nursing. I just finished. And it's like toward the end I was like, "Make this stop." I was like, "I'm so grateful I got to do it, but make it stop."
[00:29:14] Susanna Hunter: Totally. So grateful, so grateful, and it was almost unbearable. So we didn't go anywhere. You know, we didn't leave the house. I mean, we really didn't leave the house. Like I l- I remember going outside when they were six weeks old. It was the first time I went outside, other than I guess a couple doctor's appointments, and I just burst into tears.
And my husband put his arm around me and led me back inside because it was like a psychedelic, like intensity of the trees were talking to... I mean, I was like losing my mind, you know? Too much, overwhelming being outside. and then we lived and died by their sleep schedule. If it was, if we were five minutes off, I took it as a personal failure.
If I was five minutes off my pumping schedule, I took it as a personal failure. I didn't, you know, get diagnosed with PPD, but the, it was like stuff, you know, was going on. I wasn't, it wasn't great, and I wasn't [00:30:00] sleeping. So we didn't leave the house. We just didn't leave the house for like, did we leave the house for a year?
Probably not. So when this one was born, I said, "You know what? We are doing this differently." And I did my good, you know, uh, five days in the bed, five days on the bed, five days around the bed, whatever. I tried to stick to that. and recovery was pretty gnarly, so I kind of needed to do that. then I said, "Okay, let's go."
And I was not able to really wear my twins 'cause there was two of them. I tried, but this baby fit so nicely in a little carrier and I thought, "Wait a minute. I don't need to bring all the pump stuff and I don't need to think about pumping. So I have her food. I can wear her in a carrier and she sleeps 24 hours a day, so let's go."
So we went to a festival when she was four weeks old. That post got a lot of traction. And I did like a half-joking post about how easy it is to take your baby to a festival and it was like a laundry list of all of the things we had to do to make it happen, including modify the [00:31:00] approach. This festival is only 20 minutes from my home.
I went from 4:00 PM to 8:30 PM and then went home. And my husband stayed till 2:00 o'clock in the morning just like having a great time.
and we kept the twins home for the first part, the first day of the festival and then the second day we brought them in the morning.
And we bring nannies with us places and we funnel a lot of our budget towards childcare and wraparound. We have a lot of support. We pay for a lot of support. and that really, really helps and that's just a decision that we've made financially to like, we're like, "This is a season and we wanna make this work and we wanna live our lives."
And also a lot of the time my husband, we sort of split division of labor. My husband is sort of raising the boys right now and I'm kind of 100% with the baby. It's already shifting a little bit. Now she goes to sleep a little earlier. I can do bedtime with them again. But if there's going to be a split, that's the split.
He puts them to bed every night and if I can join, how lovely, and if I can't, that's fine. And I sleep in the room with the baby so I can get more sleep in the [00:32:00] morning. So that's kind of how we've done it, but I've been just very dedicated. I mean, tonight's, our family's Jewish, so tonight's a great example.
I am gonna take the baby with me to the pre-Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year event. And he's gonna bring the boys later 'cause I don't wanna miss a moment of it. And then, um, tomorrow for actual Rosh Hashanah I'm gonna be there with her all day and he may bring the boys. So that's kind of how we're doing it, where we've really divided the labor and I'm very dedicated to...
She has come with me to so many things. I just take her with me. I feel very European. My baby just comes
with
[00:32:34] Shannon Curran: did the same thing with my second one. Same thing. She was co-pilot for all
[00:32:39] Susanna Hunter: Totally, go toilet. You know, and sometimes, like, sometimes her sleep gets janky and I pay for it. Oh my gosh, right on cue.
[00:32:47] Mallory Lee: She knows we're talking about her.
[00:32:50] Susanna Hunter: She told us. I'll give her another second, see if she can tell. you know, sometimes, like, I'll, I'll kind of, I'll take her to an event. I took her to a friend's, like, bridal shower, [00:33:00] and we stayed late, and I put her to sleep in the carrier, but it wasn't great. And then she was kind of up in the night, but it was fine and worth it for me.
So it's just a, it's been a very healing, corrective experience for me to be able to do what my husband and I always jealously called vibe parenting, and we're not obsessing over everything. We're like, "How nice for the people who can just do vibe parenting." And now I'm like, "I'm vibe parenting, and it feels so good, and I hated
pumping,
[00:33:25] Mallory Lee: the phrase.
[00:33:26] Susanna Hunter: and I don't have to do it anymore."
You know? I'm like, I just bring food and make the food that she needs and no more and no less. It's a miracle. It's a revelation. So that's been, like, ecstatic joy for me to not be pumping and not have to be home for all baby sleep, basically
[00:33:43] Shannon Curran: Yeah
I was a vibe parent, no question about it. I just vibe par- But to be fair, I had babies that allowed for vibing, so that
is a big part of it. if we screwed up their sleep during the day, it was like if they were not sleeping at night, it didn't matter if we messed their day. It, [00:34:00] it never impacted the night.
It was always gonna be what it was anyway. Like, that's how it was for us. So either it was already gonna be amazing or already gonna be bad. It didn't actually matter, right? Like, it was this weird, like, it was, we've, we tried it a few t- I was like, "All right. Whatever. I guess he's just coming along for the ride."
yeah. And then we had another one, and I was like, "Well, she's just coming along for the ride." Like, we just were very, uh, yeah, all vibes all the time, which bit us in the ass a few times, but otherwise, I was like, I just can't be, I can't be strapped to a schedule. I don't even have my own schedule. Like, I can't even manage myself, never mind me putting someone else on a schedule.
Um, and I had a lot of, I had a lot of shame about it, to be honest, 'cause I w- felt like I was a bad mom 'cause I didn't follow, like, Moms On Call or any of those things. I was like, 'cause I physically wasn't, I c- I couldn't do it. I was like, "I don't have this kind of discipline." I can't do it. Mallory, I feel like you'd be very good at those things.
I just, I, I didn't have it.
[00:34:51] Mallory Lee: Somewhere in the middle, honestly. Um, I tried just to follow a couple things, but Grayson was such a horrible napper. He had, like, [00:35:00] 30-minute crap naps, if you've heard that term before. I would spend, like, 45 minutes trying to get him to sleep. He'll sleep for a half hour, and then he wakes up and wants to eat.
And so it was a big battle with him. And then I had the, the boys all pretty close in age, so when Bennett came along, Grayson was still, you know, 17 months old and still had, you know, multiple naps a day. And so it's like the napping, I could just never figure it all out for everybody to, like, nap at the same time.
I think there might have been a very short span of time where they all three would nap at the same time, but it, it would've been, like, a week. You know?
[00:35:43] Shannon Curran: It's happened to us twice. It's happened twice. I remember
[00:35:47] Mallory Lee: it's hard. Yeah. Write it down.
[00:35:52] Shannon Curran: I was like, "Wait, so everyone's asleep?" Like I remember being like,
"So what do
I
do?
Because I actually can't leave. Uh, [00:36:00] my, my nature would be like, I wanna leave, but I can't leave, so I have to stay here and do something.
Susannah, do you go in person to work? Like, do you have to ever make it all the way to SF, or are you just like,
do you work remotely?
[00:36:13] Susanna Hunter: yeah, not often. like maybe once a, once or twice, maybe three times a quarter. Not often. and then there's like week-long off-sites. There, there's been a decent amount of travel. There've been seasons of quite a lot of travel, which was hard. there was a year, there was like a fall where I feel like I was gone, I'd be gone for a week and then home for a week, and then gone for a week and then home for a week, and that was definitely really tough. I did my first week away when the boys were a year old. but you know, we made it work and they're fine.
And there were also things I really liked about the travel. There were things I really liked about just being alone in a hotel room and getting to sleep in a little tiny bit more and,
all three of my kids just always wanna pull my hair.
I'm like, "Okay, [00:37:00] I'm in a hotel room. I've got Netflix and room service and no one's trying to touch me. This is the
[00:37:04] Shannon Curran: bed.
[00:37:05] Susanna Hunter: My husband now goes into the city once or twice a week, and so I'm solo with the kids. That is hard.
[00:37:16] Mallory Lee: Yeah, that's a
[00:37:17] Susanna Hunter: We're gonna bring in some help in, like maybe get some childcare to come for 90 minutes or get a grandmother to come.
But yeah, that's, that's tricky, but, you know, doable. It's m- somewhat manageable. Make it work.
a work-ish question for you, Susanna. So I also way back in the day worked at Salesforce, and I remember at the time, we joined by acquisition, so they bought ExactTarget and Pardot, and that's like how I got into
Oh my gosh. I
[00:37:50] Mallory Lee: world
[00:37:51] Susanna Hunter: loved all the Exact Target and Pardot people so much.
[00:37:55] Mallory Lee: I know, me too. I...
Truly the best time of my life. Yeah. Amazing [00:38:00] people. but, you know, at the time we're getting all of this, like, employment paperwork, and it's very scary. Like, oh, your ideas are our ideas, and all the different sort of, you know, conditions that, that they have in the fine print. and I think that, you know, for people who are kind of scared of, like, corporate, Salesforce is honestly probably one of the first places that comes to mind where you're like, "Okay, yeah, this is, like, corporate life."
and I think some people love it and some people don't, so either way can work. Um, but what I'm curious about is, you know, being at Salesforce and being there with such a long, successful career, do you ever get weirded out, or does anyone ever get weirded out that you have this LinkedIn personality?
Has it ever become, like, a conflict of interest before?
[00:38:46] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, there's a lot that I don't say on LinkedIn. Lots of thoughts that I have, not about Salesforce or about work, just, I mean, I post, like if I really did a deep Claude analysis of my post history, it would probably tell you that [00:39:00] it's over time trended towards 70% snarky parenting satire and a little bit less on the helpful parenting systems, although I try to keep those in there, 'cause that's important for me to share.
there's plenty of the snarky, jokey, whatever, that I don't, that I choose not to post. 'Cause every time I post I think, "Okay, I'm a VP of HR." HR of all functions, you know what I mean? And I'm representing... It's like a professional platform. It's a prof- professional platform, so I'm representing the company in some way.
You know, my, I've got the Salesforce logo on, on there and everything, so I'm conscious of that. I know my wonderful manager reads my posts, and I don't know what he thinks of them. I know what he said. I read all your posts." You know, kind of like that. Like, okay, are we, am I good?
Are we good?
so I'm like, yeah, totally. So sometimes I think I live to post another day. Today is not the day that someone has called me to say, "Hey, knock it off, girl. You gotta knock that off." No one has said that so far. I am trying to [00:40:00] show up. I'm like, I'm on LinkedIn for the moms, you know?
That's what I'm doing. I'm, I've found mom LinkedIn, the, the moms have found me. So I'm there for the moms, and I'm just trying to do a combination of things, share a glimpse in the life of a vice president of a large tech company who has three kids and a very full life, and is actually making it work, and all the things that are required for that.
It's not that so easy breezy. There's a lot of money and time and effort and energy and systems that we've found over the years. My husband is very systems oriented, and so am I, so we have like a crazy number of systems that, automations and things that make our life work, and a whole bunch of childcare providers, and I want to be very honest about that.
And it's expensive, and for, for us right now, it's really worth it. We're kind of starting to wind it down, but it's been worth it. and you know, I want to share the systems, and I want to share how I do it. And also, I come from a family of comedians. It's in my blood. It's a huge passion of mine, and I post a lot of the things, you know, that I find entertaining, and it seems like [00:41:00] maybe not all my jokes land.
That's life. That's show business, baby. But, um, you know, that's what I'm there for, and yes, I'm also conscious of who I am and what I'm representing. And, I think maybe that's a long way of saying they haven't come for me yet, so I hope it's okay. And hopefully, you know, whoever's reading it may be from Salesforce, and I'm sure people have judgments, right?
And it's like, that's just part of being authentic in the world. I'm sure people have judgments about what I'm putting on LinkedIn, but I'm really trying to show up with heart, and I'm really trying to educate, support, and entertain the moms of LinkedIn. That's what I'm there to do. So far it seems like it's working.
[00:41:38] Shannon Curran: Love
that.
[00:41:39] Mallory Lee: so.
[00:41:40] Shannon Curran: Yeah. I have two questions now. Um, so one, what are your top three systems that you all have in your house that make it easiest for you to, or like the ones that have made the biggest impact?
[00:41:53] Susanna Hunter: posted about this once, and we have a woman who comes in the morning, this wonderful nanny named Erika, who [00:42:00] is my sun, moon, and stars. She comes from 7:30 to 9:00 every day, and it does not break the bank for us. She makes the kids breakfast, packs their bags, and takes them to school.
Ninety minutes. We cut a little bit of nanny care at the end of the day that I have taken over. And I know, like, plenty of people who pay for childcare afternoons, evenings, and who would actually really benefit from cutting a little bit of that time towards the end of the day and funneling it to mornings, even if it wasn't every day.
And it has been the biggest game-changer because I could sleep in a little bit. I can tend to the baby. I can let her take her nice, long, deep nap in the morning, which sets her up for a good rest of the day. Sometimes I do still opt to take the kids to school, and then she can s- like, she could even stay here with the baby sometimes if it works with the schedule.
So, that has been an unbelievable... And my husband is-- he has to get to work early, so [00:43:00] it's like it was really-- mornings were complete and total utter chaos. That has been amazing. the other one is that my husband and I have a weekly house meeting. I've also posted about this a lot. I've posted the agenda.
I've posted the template for how we do that. Um, I was really resistant in the beginning to having another meeting, you know? Oh my God, I can't do another fricking meeting at the end of the day on a Wednesday when I've had 10 hours of meetings. But it has been so incredibly helpful. We have a shared note that we populate the note throughout the week with whatever we wanna talk about.
We can check things off. We kind of go through it every day, um, on our own, just kind of keeping track of things that need to happen. And the thing that that has done is it has reduced the amount that we have to talk about all the things that have to happen to make our lives run. All the mundane stuff that was just dragging us down and frankly kind of like tanking our marriage, just the harmony in our marriage, 'cause all we were doing is throughout the week, "Oh, did you remember that?
Did you remember that? Did you do this? Who's supposed to do that?" You know, just like, ugh, that's awf- you know, the energy of that was not sexy. You know what, you know what I mean? It was just [00:44:00] like, "Oh my God, I don't wanna talk about this with you anymore." and like, "I don't like you right now 'cause all we ever do is talk about this."
So it's just time boxed it. So that's been really great. And then I think I'll just say the, the last one for, for anybody that's postpartum who might be having a lot of people in your house helping with dishes or putting things away. This is a small one, but it's staring at me. Every single cabinet face in the entire kitchen has a label of what is inside that cabinet.
It seems like a small thing. People come into the house and they're like, "Are you trying to lear- It's like, it's like, looks like someone's trying to learn a language." That's what, for some
reason, that's what people ... Um,
[00:44:40] Shannon Curran: It's like classrooms have everything labeled so that
[00:44:42] Susanna Hunter: yeah. Like every, I mean everything, like, like really specific. And that way anyone that's helping us out, putting, to help, helping to put dishes away, they know exactly where it goes.
Because you know that prolif- proliferation of something ends up in the wrong place, and then something else, and then something else, and then you can't find anything, and everything's chaos in your kitchen. [00:45:00] It has kept everything like so tidy, and we don't have to have conversations about it, and that has been a really great postpartum hack.
And I keep thinking, it's not cute, but I keep thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna take that off 'cause now I'm four months postpartum." But it's been so helpful. We had family in town for the kids' birthday, you know, and they were helping to unload dishes. And that's been another... It's like a small one, but that's just been so incredibly valuable
[00:45:22] Mallory Lee: I love
that.
[00:45:23] Shannon Curran: good.
[00:45:24] Mallory Lee: I always like that when I go to Airbnbs and it just tells you where things are or like where they're supposed to be. It's like, man, this is, this is really convenient to not have to
[00:45:35] Susanna Hunter: Yeah.
[00:45:36] Mallory Lee: and wonder
[00:45:37] Susanna Hunter: Yeah, we're big on just signs and labels in the house in general. Just has really helped. Yeah, maybe not the most Pinterest, Pinterest vibes kind of thing of all time, but it's, um,
[00:45:47] Shannon Curran: Function over fashion, you know? And that's
really
[00:45:50] Mallory Lee: Yeah,
definitely. Uh, I'm laughing about how you said you and your husband, you know, have to, like, ask each other, "Did you do this? Did you do that?" [00:46:00] Something I find myself doing all the time is saying, like, to Brian, like, "Remind me to blah, blah, blah," you know, for anything. I'm like, "Don't let me forget to do this."
And when you said that, it made me think, like, okay, do I really need to say that to him? Like, do I really need to put that on him and make him, like, my mental, you know, whiteboard? I mean, probably not. So maybe I'll try to copy your shared note idea, see how that goes
[00:46:28] Susanna Hunter: We did-- Something I recommend is we did an audit of all the things that we were saying over and over and over again, including little choreography of the day that happened a lot of times. Like which one of us put which kid in which side of the car in the car seats? You know? Like that's something that happens multiple times a day, and we'd just be like, "Oh, you put him over there.
You do this." who's getting the kids out of the car? Like what are those things that we just go through over and over and over again? And we just sort of went through the choreography of those things and said, "Okay, [00:47:00] well, you're always gonna put this kid on on this side, and you're always gonna..." You know what I mean?
It's like he gets the kids out of the car, and I get the baby out. So we just don't have to talk about it. And then you know what we get to do instead? Have a conversation about something else and continue our conversation. And so it's like not only does it reduce the friction, it actually creates so much space for us to connect with each other throughout the day.
and we've just, you know, we really kind of did a deep scrubbing of all the things like that that happen in a day, and it's been so helpful. And you know what? Every so often we have to redo them because, you know, then someday the kids won't be in car seats, and there'll be something else. And it's That's what the house meeting is for, that we can, we can, um, reassess and see where we need to, you know, maybe tighten things up or change things.
[00:47:40] Shannon Curran: Susanna, what we do at the end of every episode is we have what we call our save of the week. So it is a person, product, process, any of those, that makes it, that made it better, easier for you to be a working parent or non-working, just parent this week, uh, for you.
But I guess you're kind of working right now.
[00:47:56] Susanna Hunter: Alright. Well, I, I already mentioned Erika, so we'll, we'll say thank you, [00:48:00] Erika. Bless you, Erika. Okay, the product. Okay, I have a running list on my phone of if I ever did, like, brand partnerships,
I mean, there are so many, but I'll do the one that has been, I'm like, "Why didn't I do this before?" The SlumberPod. The SlumberPod. Are you familiar with the SlumberPod? It is a
little baby sleep tent. It is a little black blackout tent. It's actually not that small, but it fits over...
It doesn't fit over the crib. It fits over... She's in a, like, a pack and play. She sleeps in, like, a little travel bassinet right now, 'cause that's just what's, what works for us. C- m- mainly 'cause it fits under the... Like, anything that works with the SlumberPod. It's a complete blackout. I can take it with me anywhere.
It's pretty easy to set up. And the difference in her sleep quality is, like, do I want her to take a 45-minute nap or a two-and-a-half-hour nap, really deep restorative nap? And if I forget to zip it or if I put her in her crib instead, the difference is so noticeable, even just from the little LEDs and the little bit of light that gets in from [00:49:00] underneath the blackout.
It's a full blackout. I- it packs up into this little thing. Okay, I'm just a walking advertisement for this product, but that's totally my save of the week. Every, every day I go into her room and I think, "Bless this SlumberPod," 'cause it is amazing, amazing. And I don't know why. I had... We used it with the twins a little, but I'm like, she only sleeps in that thing, only.
And that's part of how I can go anywhere and she can sleep other places.
Love it.
[00:49:28] Mallory Lee: For
[00:49:28] Shannon Curran: All right, Mal. What's yours?
[00:49:30] Mallory Lee: I think I'm gonna go for this little clear whiteboard. It's not a whiteboard, it's a clear board, but you get my drift. Um, we use it for the boys for homework and, like, spelling tests and little things here and there. You can, like, write stuff on it if you need to just leave a note or something. But we have that, and it's magnetic, and it just hangs on the inside of one of the cabinets.
But then I can pull it down and just write things out with the boys, and it's come in handy a couple times this [00:50:00] week. So that one was on my mind
[00:50:02] Shannon Curran: Love that. I'm actually gonna say, I actually have been to a few concerts lately, which is something I really didn't do for, like, probably, like a year and a half, uh, because I was the way Willa fell asleep, um, while I was nursing. And so I feel like nighttime things that were, like, really past bedtime, like actual, like, concerts were hard.
Um, and so they were something I didn't do. But, my best friends, uh, got tickets to see Sara Bareilles last night and we went and saw the first, like ... I was sh- I, Susanna, I was gonna say, I bet you love her. I was like, I could feel it in my bo- So I've seen her four times. This is the fourth time I've seen her, and I sobbed from beginning to end.
It was like catharsis like I have not experienced in a really long time. And she's just, like ... And I was there with all my best friends. I was like, my husband came, which is so unusual that the two of us go somewhere together, and my mom came over and Nana came over and babysat and, at our house, so the kids got to go to sleep in their own cr- like, their own rooms.
And I know, what a [00:51:00] goat that woman is. Um, she'll be my save next week. I'll explain to you what she's doing for me next week, which is absurdity, um, is what she's doing. Um, coming over at 6:00 AM every day to watch my children. but I, uh, but yeah, it's just like, I think as someone that's, uh, you know, I'm, I still teach dance.
I have, like, musical theater's a big part of my life. Music's a big part of my life. It kind of went away for a little while, um, while I was ... Like, live music went away for a little while, I think, for me. And, it was so, like, healing and wonderful and fun and, like, all of these things that just felt, like, very important.
So major save for my, uh, for Mom's, Mom's brain and heart for this week. It was so wonderful.
[00:51:38] Susanna Hunter: Oh, that's awesome
[00:51:40] Shannon Curran: So
[00:51:40] Mallory Lee: I have had so much fun talking about our feelings, and I'm dead
inside.
[00:51:46] Shannon Curran: don't like
[00:51:46] Mallory Lee: talk about feelings
[00:51:49] Shannon Curran: We're gonna c- I was like, "Susannah and I are gonna crack Mal in this one." I was like, "We're really
gonna
[00:51:53] Mallory Lee: know. I know. That, that was... Good job, ladies. Um,[00:52:00]
[00:52:00] Shannon Curran: Rage, sadness, like, you know, sleepy. Like we have all the things, every feeling.
Oh.
[00:52:08] Mallory Lee: let you get to your little ones, Susanna. Thank you so much for
[00:52:11] Susanna Hunter: It was great. Thank you for having me. This was-- I've been wanting to come on this podcast
[00:52:16] Shannon Curran: Oh, it was our pleasure. Thanks for being here
[00:52:19] Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Full Stack Moms,
[00:52:21] Speaker: We'll be back with more episodes that help you see you're not crazy and you're not alone. If we might be your people, please make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:52:31] Shannon Curran: My husband is going to come home during this time. My dogs are going to bark about it. I think it should be fine. Like, you guys will probably be able to hear it, but we think that somehow it gets canceled out. Uh, just a warning though, it's 'cause
[00:52:43] Susanna Hunter: Okay. Well, I'll do,
[00:52:44] Shannon Curran: home around 2:30.
[00:52:46] Susanna Hunter: I'll do mine, just the warnings. Um, I have a sick kid upstairs and the baby's sleeping with a baby monitor. Like, there's an 100% chance that I'm gonna need to go tend to some child or that I'll bring my baby down and she'll, she'll [00:53:00] join us 'cause she will probably wake up.
[00:53:02] Mallory Lee: my disclaimers are that Penny is outside. I'm gonna have to let her in at some point, and I am
[00:53:08] Shannon Curran: That's a dog
