Sophie Power: The Photo That Changed How We See Motherhood

0:00I'm here on a job site with Tim, who owns his own electrical contracting business. Three employees and two work trucks. Tim traded up to Geico Commercial Auto Insurance. We're positively here where he needs us most. They sure are. With step-by-step help on all his insurance needs. All for shockingly low rates. Shockingly low, huh? Just a little bit of electrician humor. Do you get it? I got it. You know, it feels like we have a real connection. All right, I'll stop.

0:25Sophie Power:Get a commercial auto insurance quote today at geico.com and see how much you could say it feels good to Geico. Welcome to this Monday moment of Motherkind. It is a chance for me to share with you a moment from one of our Motherkind episodes that has permanently changed my brain chemistry. And this one is with ultra athlete and mother Sophie Parron. In it, she talks about the viral photograph of her breastfeeding halfway around an ultra marathon. Now for me, I'm not a runner. This isn't that relatable but what is relatable is Sophie talking about how we have to continue to put our wants, our needs, our dreams first in motherhood and actually how much the world is not designed to help us do that.

1:14So if you need a shot of inspiration, if you need a shot of empowerment on this Monday morning to carry you through the week ahead then this is the clip that I think you're going to want to hear. Here it is. The viral photo moment that changed your life on the UTMB, you're breastfeeding mid-race, but what really happened? Tell us the story behind the story. So the UTMB, the Ultra Trode of Mont Blanc is a 106 mile race around Mont Blanc and you climb kind of more than the elevation of Mount Everest from sea level and it's this iconic race that is so hard to get into it's like the world championships of ultra running and i've been running for for many years before that not very seriously um as a real amateur and i was desperate to do this race and you have to get do other races to get points and i'd first had a place um four years before the photo in when i had my first son and i lost that place because i was pregnant and they wouldn't let me defer it they'd let you defer for injury but they wouldn't let you defer for pregnancy and it took me four years to get this place and it was a struggle to to to kind of become pregnant the second time and I assumed that I'd have the place and you know I'd have a year old baby on the start line and you know when we saw those two lines in the pregnancy test we realized he was going to be three months old and I just said to myself I can't do it and my husband said but how can we do this like could you just go and god love him he's amazing he's he helps me reframe these things and said how can we and maybe that was just to do 10k maybe that was just to experience the start line in chamonix that was the plan initially right was that you were just going to do 10k just to be there so you didn't have to defer the place again and i had such difficult pelvic health problems after my first i couldn't take a running step for three months no one told me what a pelvic floor was before i got pregnant and i struggled to return And I didn't think it was a possibility.

3:18But we had it in our minds that having this date in the diary would just be a real kind of reference point to make sure I stay kind of fit and healthy through pregnancy, to make sure I continue to prioritize my health, my mental health through running as well. And I realized, you know, six weeks after I had him, actually my pelvic floor is okay. I can run. I'm healing. Maybe I can be on that start line. The days are longer. the calendar is filling up, and I want to feel as good as this beautiful summer weather. That's why I've been loving Grooms. It's one daily pack of gummies that covers my greens, vitamins, minerals, and even has six grams of prebiotic fiber, so I don't need to juggle a complicated wellness routine on top of everything else.

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4:17Sophie Power:Warning, the following ZipRecruiter radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F-words. When you're hiring, we at ZipRecruiter know you can feel frustrated, forlorn even, like your efforts are futile. And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. F***! Fortunately, ZipRecruiter figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. With ZipRecruiter, you can forget your frustrations. Because we find the right people for your roles fast. Which is our absolute favorite F word.

4:53In fact, 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

5:00Sophie Power:Fantastic! So whether you need to hire 4, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash zip to try ZipRecruiter for free. Don't forget that's ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. Finally, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. And what happened three days before the race was that I had my three-year-old and there were other races going on during the week. and he was seeing these dads run across the line with their children and the kids can run for the first last 100 meters or so and he goes mommy that's gonna be me that's gonna be me and the shock of my system when I realized I had to get myself around that course because you know three year olds do not understand dnfs like the do not finish he wanted and I wanted and I think when I go back to the finish line like I get so emotional because I look down at him and there's this beautiful photo me looking down at him going he must think and women are amazing this is change this is going to change his life but the photo was halfway around and to get around this race was a logistical nightmare because I was only breastfeeding and so to meet Cormac my baby my husband brought him through the Mont Blanc tunnel I had to not I was going to express I was feeding him at start line expressing he must have been running with engorged breasts 16 hours and I was squeezing any breastfeeding mother right now is probably involuntary gone like that just like just like stretched skin they were like watermelons and I was trying to relieve I had no pump with me um I had the actually no I had the the kind of the non the manual ones yeah that I was using all the way around I was squeezing my breasts out behind trees through the night it was good that it started at six o 'clock at night because that meant he was feeding a little bit less through the night so they weren't building up as much but it was 16 hours to get to him and that photo is is just relief it's I'm breastfeeding him one side I'm pumping the other side and there's a guy like asleep with his legs up next to me because I've just run through the night with no sleep and that's what I wanted to do but I had a much more important job so what does that photo really represent for me it's it's not a running photo and I think that's why it went so viral.

7:17It's a metaphor for motherhood. It's all about the physical load that we have as mothers. You know, kind of I'm trying to breastfeed, I'm trying to recover my body at the same time as go after my goal. It's the mental load behind it with the juggling, with the talking to my crew, with the everything, the invisible load that went on behind just trying to get me to that finish line. It's the barriers that I should never ever have been there. I should me allowed to defer my place a year after when I was properly fit and healthy and for me really it's about strength and redefining strength not as something that looks effortless but as a mother's kind of defiance to choose between caring for her child and going after her goals.

8:06That was the episode I hoped you loved it if you did please make sure you subscribe and I will see you next time.