Preparing for the Unpreparable

20:10Chelsea Hirschhorn:We were doing probably about a million,$2 million. I mean, now hundreds of millions later, it's, it's, it's incredulous to me, honestly. On that one product? One product. Wow. Amazing. We had two, we had two at the time we had started to promote the same pediatric group had, had developed the Windy, which is a little tube that you stick up the baby's tush to relieve gas instantly. But again, like really anchored in building efficiency into parenthood, right? Like before that product arrived, it was gripe water, you know, and it was a hope and a prayer that it works. And the nose freedom, the Windy, and all these early products that we had started to launch were built around instant relief, instant results.

20:58Chelsea Hirschhorn:And as parents, like there's just no more heroic moment when you can see that result materializing. And so, you know, I had worked with her for a few years and eventually bought the business. And so many ways, the Frida brand is still predicated on that neighborly like word of mom is what we call it. Right. Be the best friend that no one has. And she was that for me, honestly. Right. She knew I would need it at some point.

21:30Gwyneth Paltrow:So you find this neighbor relevant product for your stage of life. You end up acquiring it and it becomes like the foundational product that Frida then comes out of. So tell me for the next phase, was it where you really focused on those two products? Or when did you realize that there was a whole suite of products missing that you would go back to prenatal, that you would, you know, focus on fertility? Like, when did that idea start to form?

22:06Chelsea Hirschhorn:So I was really heads down growing the baby care business after we'd bought the first two products and was kind of mapping the innovation plan to the experiences that I was having as a mom on the front lines. Brushing my oldest son's teeth was as hard as brushing my dog's teeth. Like, you know, I had to jam his jaw open and get in there as quick as possible. And so I was really like tackling these one by one, giving him medicine. I mean, the pediatrician sent me home with a syringe. I put it in. It took three people, first of all. One was holding his arms down. One was jabbing the medicine into the corner of his cheek.

22:48Chelsea Hirschhorn:And I still ended up covered in pink. And so as a new mom, like the anxiety was suffocating. And so I would start to tackle these one by one. And then I gave birth to my second son. and at that point I thought I had most of it figured out you know the second time around

23:11Gwyneth Paltrow:you kind of know what to expect but I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night

23:16Chelsea Hirschhorn:I want to say it was like three or four days after I had been released from the hospital and home with him it was a totally normal labor and delivery I had prepared perfectly my hospital bag was packed and I woke up in the middle of the night. I went to the bathroom just to pee. And I mean, this is going to be gross, but it's goop. So, you know, here we go.

23:42Gwyneth Paltrow:Exactly. Here we go.

23:43Chelsea Hirschhorn:I passed a clot the size of a jellyfish, like right into the toilet. Like it was so loud. I was like, what was that? And I looked and I had a really great relationship with my OB. I still do to this day. And I texted her, you know, Eric's of course fast asleep, the baby's sleeping. Like I should have just gone right back to bed. This was like a normal trip to pee. And you know, of course did not sleep the whole night. Thought I was hemorrhaging, just petrified. And I woke up to this text, totally fine, totally normal. I was like, what do you mean? It was, let me show you a picture of how big it was, right?

24:28Chelsea Hirschhorn:Like with my hands. And it was that moment coupled with a few others reflecting on sort of my in-hospital experience that second time where I realized that there were a lot of things and experiences in this shift from labor and delivery and pregnancy care to baby care that were being minimized medically and totally sanitized or not even shared culturally, right? Like no one was talking about this at all. Not a single person. Couple that with the fact that we had developed some momentum on the baby care side of the business, especially in retail. Like I had gotten us into Target. I had gotten us into Walmart, but the experience preparing for the hospital was so broken and so fragmented.

25:24Chelsea Hirschhorn:I was up even from the hospital when I should have been sleeping. Amazon Prime, when that was a thing, you know, sending my dad out to Walgreens where he's like FaceTiming me with wings, without wings. I'm like, I don't know, dad, just get whatever is there. And then, you know, before I even left the hospital, this nurse came in right after I'd given birth. I'll never forget this. And she comes in with a newborn diaper. And I thought it was odd because the baby was in the nursery, right? It wasn't in my room. And she rips open the middle of the diaper. She pours from the little pink hospital picture that hospital ice machine ice into the middle of the diaper.

26:10Chelsea Hirschhorn:She closed the diaper back up and she said, here, sit on it. And I was like, oh, I guess the baby is not the only one leaving in a diaper. And that was really it. And I had developed really great relationships with our suppliers, manufacturers, our retailers, even though that was a journey in and of itself, because there was no mother care category at the time. And so worked really closely with Target to create eight feet of space on the shelf specifically dedicated to what we eventually called mother care. And it was, that was a battle genuinely just to get it there.

26:53Gwyneth Paltrow:But do other brands sit next to you there now? Yes. I'm very proud of that actually.

26:59Chelsea Hirschhorn:A lot of other brands. are. I, you know, some people think like, oh, there's so much competition. There's so much noise. You know, I'm so proud to have created a category where none existed. I mean, to the point where when we first walked into the target offices with this beautifully curated line of much better products for postpartum recovery. The team proposed we put them in the feminine care aisle next to the tampons. And we were like, that's kind of broken. She hasn't shopped for tampons in nine months and she's not going back anytime soon. Right. Let's put them by the diapers. Let's make it a little bit easier.

27:47Chelsea Hirschhorn:They're like, we don't have any space. This is feminine care. That's where it belongs. And that's when you really have to, you know, start to unpack who's making the decisions. Where can we layer in some intuition here and not just lead with data? Right. OK, I get it. Women go to the feminine care aisle. But ultimately, they were they were good partners.

28:15Gwyneth Paltrow:I recently took a trip that reminded me how much a place can shape the way you experience travel. There's something about staying somewhere with character, a beautiful kitchen, great light, a calm outdoor space that makes everything feel more immersive and grounded. it. I'm always drawn to homes that feel thoughtful and intentional, where you can really settle in and live a little, not just drop your bags. Trips like that always make me appreciate my own space even more. When you're away, you could host your home on Airbnb, which means someone else gets to enjoy that same feeling of being at home while you're away.

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29:17Gwyneth Paltrow:I want to go back to something you talked about in terms of this total lack of transparency around sharing information and normalizing, you know, these things that we go through when we give birth, you know, like I was so shocked by what happened to me. I, of course, had my perfect plan of my natural birth. I ended up like with a seizure and a cesarean, emergency cesarean, like just, you know, kind of one nightmare after the other. And I imagine that in earlier generations that there was much more information sharing between women, sisters, mothers, friends. When do you think that broke down culturally and why?

30:03Chelsea Hirschhorn:I actually am not sure it ever broke down because I think that there still very much exists that word of mom. I think if you have the best friend or the sister, which not everyone does, right? I think you're still hearing bits and pieces. And what I mean by that is I think that we're a little scared to tell women the truth because we're nervous that it will scare them. So we sanitize a little of it and share what we think women can tolerate. But I think the reality is being blindsided is what's scary, right? I think we prepare women, whether it's from our moms or from our friends who just went through it, we prepare them for this milestone labor, delivery.

30:52Chelsea Hirschhorn:Here you go. Here's exactly what to expect. Maybe she didn't have the same experience. There's a whole range of outcomes that you have to prepare for. And it's possible that the one person or two people who you heard it from didn't experience it exactly as you did. Right. And so I think where I've approached it from is trying to prepare women for the marathon of experiences, not just the moment. Right. And I think. For people like me who try to control all the outcomes, it's very hard. Right. Because, you know, preparing for a single outcome is ultimately preparing to fail. You have to prepare for a host of uncertainty.

31:37Chelsea Hirschhorn:And I think that that's where some of it breaks down and unravels. And I think there's also different sources in this day and age where women consume their education and their information. You know, over 90 % of women who start their breastfeeding journey started on social media. They're not asking their mom. First of all, my mom formula fed. Like I got nowhere near her nipple, right? She looked at me like I was crazy. She looked at me like I was crazy when I wanted a breastfeed. That was just their generation's approach. And so when you think about social media, you know, those platforms are systematically and algorithmically not designed to educate women honestly and authentically, which is so sad because it's in such stark contrast to the way that men's health gets promoted and shown.

32:32Chelsea Hirschhorn:I mean, really, like we've faced so much rejection in a variety of capacities, online, on linear television advertising, social media advertising. So women really don't have a single source of truth or a repository of information. And so that's why, you know, when I look at, I mean, this goes beyond postpartum, right? Like I get excited when you talk about new vibrators or, you know, I'm sure there are women who get excited when you're talking about divorce or, you know, co-parenting, whatever the topic is, that's, you can become sort of known for this unabashed truth telling. And that's where, you know, we're trying to step in.

33:18Yeah.

33:19Gwyneth Paltrow:And I love how it touches, you know, it's like in the copy of every product. I think It's just it's very refreshing. And there was obviously nothing remotely like this when I was having my kids, unfortunately. And there was an Instagram and there was barely anything on the Internet.

33:35Chelsea Hirschhorn:You have to have the best friend or a mom.

33:39Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah, but still there, you know, there are certain areas like I love your the Frida uncensored part of the site where you have, you know, age protected videos of what a perennial massage looks like to prepare for birth. Like, luckily, I was in London at the time and I had not that it mattered, I ended up in an emergency C-section. But, you know, I had a doula who explained to me, you know, how to start to prepare for vaginal birth. It was really incredible to see that on the site. Yeah. Did you watch the full video? Yes, I watched everything. I sat there watching all of them.

34:18Chelsea Hirschhorn:That one was the farthest I've ever taken it to the line. And I think what we're excellent at is really knowing what's gratuitous and what's not and really stopping well short of that line. And really that entire platform, I get so emotional when I think about it because I think about all of the different major life experiences and physically transformative transitions, whether it's becoming a mother, whether it's getting your period for the first time. You know, I think about my mom shoving me into a bathroom with a box of tampons and unfolding the instruction manual and trying to figure out which hole it goes in as if that's even a question, right?

35:03Chelsea Hirschhorn:But I was 14 and that felt, you know, I guess like a natural way to tackle that experience for her. And so I get excited when I think about our daughters one day having a place to go that is not, you know, limited, whether it's in the visuals or the language or the stories that we tell, that is rooted in science, right? That is portraying a range of outcomes, especially for those who like to control for one. That's not really scalable. But yeah, Uncensored and that website was really built because the systems had totally failed us, from the beginning, honestly. When we launched the first five-step postpartum recovery regimen, we shot the most beautiful 30-second commercial.

36:01Chelsea Hirschhorn:We had never done that before, ever. And it was something as simple and mundane as following a woman who was getting up in the middle of the night to feed her baby and trying to pee for the first time, not so dissimilar to the experience that I just shared. And okay, so we had this beautiful 30-second spot. We're like, when do we put it on air? And so my husband, who runs a commercial side of the business with me now, said, let's do it during the Oscars. It's the women's Super Bowl, right? We'll get the most eyeballs. This is great. And we all sort of like rallying around this idea. We submit it.

36:39Chelsea Hirschhorn:No question. We allocated the budget for it, everything. We're locked and loaded. Inbox email comes in. Unfortunately, your commercial has been rejected. We don't allow looter and decent content to be shown on this network. There was no nudity. There was nothing inappropriate whatsoever. And we were so upset and disheartened that Eric said, let's just put it on YouTube, right? And let's see what happens. And we added this opening super that explained to the audience that we had greater ambitions than this. And we really wanted to show it on a much broader platform. And we were rejected. But it was censored, essentially.

37:23Chelsea Hirschhorn:Yeah, correct. We were censored and we were rejected. And that lit a fire in our community that I cannot overstate how much it has triggered as far as progress, like true progress. We worked for the center. we worked with the Center for Intimacy Justice to really advocate for changes in the algorithms that allow things like the Girls Gone Wild Instagram feed, but filter us showing what a perineum is. It's the same body part. There's just like a thin strip of fabric covering in one. And I think, yeah, no, it's, I, and I mean, listen, like fast forward a few years later, we're clearly moving in the right direction.

38:07Chelsea Hirschhorn:We showed the first ever breastfeeding woman on national television during the Golden Globes a few years ago. So that was exciting progress. We're just not quite there yet. And so that's where Uncensored comes in. And I think, you know, I get asked a lot, are you burnt out? Are you tired? Like, how do you keep going a decade in? And I really think that it's experiences like that that continue to motivate me to keep going.

38:36Gwyneth Paltrow:So what let's talk about the sort of addressable roadmap that you could have, because, you know, there's, as you were touching on before, there's a whole postpartum, I mean, I think it's like years personally, of regaining, rebalancing your hormones, you know, for some women psychologically, certainly sexually, and on and on. I mean, there are so many, so many areas you could go into. So how do you how do you think about that? Or do you think about having discipline around product focus? Or do you think like, no, we could really go more laterally into these other categories?

39:16Chelsea Hirschhorn:We're very disciplined in how we think about innovation. But at this stage, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Forever, this product line has traced my own personal experiences as a mother. And I would have kept going for a fifth, sixth and seventh child, but I would have had to have found a new husband. And Eric, like the joke, you know, either you're going to have to have more kids or we're going to have to move on to Frida tween and teen. And here we are on the precipice of launching a big kid line that is really rooted in my lived experiences every single day as a mom of four. So what is in that?

39:53Gwyneth Paltrow:What is in that product line?

39:54Chelsea Hirschhorn:Well, more to come soon. We're launching it actually probably in Avaganza later this year. But yeah, so I think it's really rooted in, I'll give you sort of a hint or a teaser, but I think it's rooted in the same insight is that, you know, parents need to resource themselves for every stage of parenthood, whether it's emotional resources or the physical tools. And my toolbox that I created for myself, really at Frida is just not aging with me, right? So it's the same categorical types of problems. Did you brush your teeth? Did you put shampoo and conditioner? Did you put the shampoo more than just in the front two inches of your head, right?

40:40Chelsea Hirschhorn:How about can we wash your neck, right? It's not just like the shoulders. So it's all of those same types of health, wellness, hygiene, grooming, but what does the toolkit need to look like when your kid is 13 and only wants sort of like the llama hair fluff, right? Like, I don't know, you're going to get all of this acne around your hairline. And that's where I feel very grateful for my dad and my sister's contribution to this line that's coming up. But yeah, it just, it really is. Listen, necessity is the motherhood invention. And it's a saying that's as old as time, but it's so true. And if I never have to go back into my kid's bathroom and check if the sink is wet to see if they brush their teeth, it will be too soon.

41:33Chelsea Hirschhorn:I'm just done with that. I don't know why it's such a problem. Just brush your teeth. So yes, we are aging up, but also really at the same time, very intentionally expanding even earlier. So when prospective parents think about conception, that was actually the catalyst for uncensored. Yeah, I saw the sperm squeezing syringe. Yes, at home insemination. Believe it or not, women were using turkey basters at home. I mean, it was the biggest hack all over the internet. And so we felt like we really needed to, or we had an opportunity to really, one, just like we did on the baby side, make it more efficient and more thoughtful.

42:22Chelsea Hirschhorn:But two, to educate both men and women, by the way, on how to properly prime your body for conception. I mean, the only education I ever got to that end was in sixth grade health class where I was taught basically how not to get pregnant. After that, it kind of clipped. And I was left Googling, you know, what's the best sex position? How many times in my fertile window? You know, over 70 % of girls think that they can get pregnant any time of the month. I mean, we're failing them, really. That's so sad. And waiting is traumatic in and of itself. And conception and that whole period of time, as you think about the excitement of becoming a parent, and then it's like, hurry up, hurry up and wait.

43:19Chelsea Hirschhorn:It's traumatic. And no one names it. No one tells you about that middle part of that transition. They think, oh, go get pregnant. And then you'll be pregnant. and then just you'll have this glorious glowing pregnancy and then you'll prepare for the labor and delivery and you prepare for that milestone and then it's on to the next. And so, you know, the hope is to really like step in and cushion the fall or the transition really sort of first and foremost explaining that it's not a moment in time, you know, it's really a season, a chapter, whatever it is. And, and you need the tools.

43:55Gwyneth Paltrow:It certainly is a chapter. And that I think it's like for each kid, in that sense, it's an 18 year chapter. I mean, with that has like, subsets, you know, in every in everyone. It's I really I love how you are thinking about that, like the because we are in such a results oriented culture and society. And I think you're right, that there's this public facing image of, you know, pregnancy and childbirth that's very sanitized and very unattainable in a way. And so like the more, and obviously that's, you know, what we try to do at Goop as well as sort of dispel this idea that things go exactly as planned and will be perfect.

44:44Gwyneth Paltrow:And, you know, life is incredibly messy and, and nothing highlights that mess more, I think, than when you give birth to your first child. And as you said, right in the beginning, you know, it's like, you have this idea of how it's going to go and the depth of letting go that needs to happen and the depth of self-forgiveness that needs to happen. And it's like, it's in a way, it's almost like, you know, I, I said this once to my friends, it's almost Like at that point, you're birthing into your own real womanhood because not because you're a mother, but because you have to start framing things like to be gentle with yourself and to listen to yourself and to, you know, put down these mantles of like, should I should be doing this?

45:30Gwyneth Paltrow:Nothing does that faster than having a kid.

45:32Chelsea Hirschhorn:It's so true. And I think to the greatest extent, the ability to abandon this concept of being ahead or behind or on track, right? And just finding yourself in whatever chapter that you're in that's so independent and free from comparison, it's so much easier said than done, right? But these timelines are not linear, right? Like they're just really not, especially when it comes to trying for a baby and all of that. How about bounce back culture, whatever that means, right? Like physically, emotionally, right? Like I should be thinner. I should be back in my jeans by now. I should feel fine, right?

46:16Gwyneth Paltrow:And I think - It's so dangerous. I remember thinking that and then somebody said to me at some point, You know, you had that baby in your body for nine months. The fact that you could even think it would take less than nine months to go back to normal is totally unrealistic. You know, I'm thinking, oh, in eight weeks, I should be back in my jeans.

46:37Chelsea Hirschhorn:Yeah, I think it's especially true for super ambitious women, right? Who were so fucked up. It's really debilitating because in every other walk of life up until that point, you were the most capable person, maybe second to my mom only, right? And I think that the biggest disservice that we do to ourselves is we expect this to just happen as opposed to mourning the loss of who we were. And it sounds morbid. And I don't mean you'll never be back to yourself, right? But it's a new version of yourself. And I think that to the greatest extent possible, and this is not just becoming a mother, right?

47:28Chelsea Hirschhorn:I felt this when I got married, right? I sometimes just wanted alone time, right? And I think for all of life's big transitions, giving yourself the freedom to kind of mourn and grieve who you were is really powerful. And it doesn't mean, because I know, you know, people think I'm supposed to be grateful. I have a healthy baby and I have a great marriage. And I don't think the gratitude has to cancel out the grief. The If you don't give yourself the time and the space to grieve the version of you that was and prepare to receive the new you, I think it sets you up for disappointment down the line.

48:23Gwyneth Paltrow:I think that's absolutely.

48:31Gwyneth Paltrow:I always say we have this idea that you know life is about crossing finish lines or about doing things certain way or ways or to keep adding on but life is you know it's like the buddhists say right like there's a lot of suffering alongside of growth and expansion and joy and it really is being able to hold all those things at once, I think, that make life the most beautiful and interesting, like acknowledging that the pain is okay. The pain of losing, you know, the incarnation of who you were in your 20s, that's, it's okay to acknowledge that. Like that's, it is sad to lose that. Yeah.

49:12Chelsea Hirschhorn:I think also about our mother's generation where competency was their armor, but the armor is very heavy to wear, right? Like they did not have the tools or the language or the permission to be vulnerable. It wasn't seen as a resource. Like we try and sort of explain that it is now it was seen as a weakness, you know, and, and you're taught not necessarily even explicitly just by absorbing what you're seeing. Competence is the only way to survive, right and you have to work through it and if you're capable enough you won't need anything like I I vividly remember coming home from the hospital with my third son I think it was now I have four it's hard to keep track you four sons no I have three boys and a girl but okay the distinct labor and and recovery experiences kind of all meld together but it was a third it definitely was my third because he was born in September and that's when Rosh Hashanah was but he was born in September, actually on Eric's birthday, September 7th on Eric's birthday, because Eric thought it would be great to get one last birthday sex in.

50:24Chelsea Hirschhorn:And I said, that is what you get. And forever you will have to share your birthday with your son because you couldn't wait a few months until after I recovered. And I had come home and it was around the time of Rosh Hashanah. and I typically host all of those holidays. And I was so driven by this obsession with competence and can do and I can do it that I decided to host Rosh Hashanah dinner for my whole extended family, my sister, my brother, my in-laws. And it was three days home and I sent Eric out to services and I was getting everything ready in the house. we were living in a house with a lot of stairs at the time.

51:13Chelsea Hirschhorn:And I remember like walking upstairs every time I forgot something to get something. And it was so painful, like really different type of pain than my previous two recoveries. And my sister came over and I said, Alex, you have to look at what's going on down there because something is not right. something's rubbing it burns I can't describe the sensation but when you know you know and we went upstairs to my bedroom like to the point where I can't even move one foot in front of the other anymore and she said oh one of your stitches is a little too long and it's rubbing against your incision wound I had an episiotomy and so I was like what do I do it's roshana like I know that my OB is not in.

52:02Chelsea Hirschhorn:She went out to her car. She's a Mohs surgeon. She got her doctor kit, whatever it was she got. I don't know what she keeps in there. And she, in the middle of Rosh Shana dinner, trimmed my stitches. I mean, I can't even believe I'm sharing this right now because I want to put everyone, and not everyone has a sister for a surgeon, right? So what do you do? Right. And, and, and so I think it's, my mom used to call it the curse of competency. Why did I have to host Rosh Hashanah dinner? I didn't. Nothing would have happened. I could have been vulnerable for a fleeting moment. I mean, that's insane that you did that.

52:37Gwyneth Paltrow:And I'm glad you learned the lesson from it.

52:39Chelsea Hirschhorn:It was dumb. It was not, there's no metal one for how many holiday dinners I host. And that has been, that is a hard lesson to learn. This balance between complacency and just this like super unrealistic chase for perfection. and competence. Yeah.

53:00Gwyneth Paltrow:And I've completely tried to like turn that upside down now. Cause I was just, I was always there, like how much can I do and how lovely can it be? And, you know, on and on and on. And now I, and I'm still learning how to do it because it's like a lifetime of deprogramming, but stopping to think about like, okay, my, my, my impulse is to host this holiday meal, let me really check in with myself and see, like, do I have the bandwidth to do this, you know, and to make a really self-honoring choice. I am still honing those

53:36Chelsea Hirschhorn:skills. I do. And I think the greatest misunderstanding is that you're born with that ability and, and that it's not a learned behavior. It is such a skill that you have to practice like any other skill to be good at. And I'm like not one for self-help. I hate it. I can't, I really just try to avoid investing in myself in that way at all costs. But, you know, experiences like that really demonstrate and have kind of honed this approach that I've gotten better at, I will say, where I'm kind of, I don't know, I'm delegating more. And I don't mean delegating because delegating is still, you know, in Eve Rodsky's definition, doing, right?

54:29Chelsea Hirschhorn:I'm delegating ownership holistically. Right.

54:33Gwyneth Paltrow:You're letting somebody else really make decisions.

54:36Chelsea Hirschhorn:Yes. Or I'm dropping it altogether. Or I'm extending my own internal deadlines, right? I'm doing one of those three, at least, to try and be better. And I think there's just this emotional liquidity that you need during that phase. You know, you've got to be flexible and forgiving with yourself.

54:57Gwyneth Paltrow:Definitely. Okay. With our last few minutes, I want to move into a rapid fire round. Great. Okay. Let's do it.

55:05Chelsea Hirschhorn:One thing that belongs in every hospital bag. The upside down Perry bottle, without a doubt. I mean, there is nothing less dignifying than sticking your hand in the toilet with that ketchup squirt bottle that they give you in the hospital and trying to wash instead of wipe.

55:25Gwyneth Paltrow:I was personally very interested in your icy maxi pads. I was maxi pads.

55:30Chelsea Hirschhorn:They're great, but, you know, there's just nothing like a cool rinse after a burning tea. what is a fertility myth that you wish we would stop repeating that it all happens on the same timeline for everyone and really like the non-linear nature of preparing for parenthood You know, it's just the impulse to compare has to be abandoned.

56:08Gwyneth Paltrow:Something women need from their partner without having to ask. Oh, this is so good.

56:16Chelsea Hirschhorn:Shared ownership, right? And not just delegation, right? I think that is the greatest resource that women can arm themselves with from their partner. And actually asking for it in advance of when you need it. Not waiting until you send the text like I did even three days ago. Why are you at work and I am playing camp counselor to the kids? This wasn't how I envisioned starting the year. That's too late. It's just too late at that point. You have to share, you have to talk about dividing and conquering before you need to divide and conquer.

56:59Gwyneth Paltrow:What's one thing you wish someone told you before becoming a mother? What is one thing I wish someone, definitely that being ready is a mirage.

57:11Chelsea Hirschhorn:And you have to, I think, arm yourself for a range of outcomes and uncertainty. because for people who like to control the outcome in life, motherhood will turn you upside down and inside out.

57:29Gwyneth Paltrow:Well, you talked about this, but a product you created out of personal necessity. Oh, there are 200. Where should I start?

57:37Chelsea Hirschhorn:Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about what I haven't spoken about yet. Really? All of them, which is like top of mind right now. That's okay. You can say all of them because you did. All of them have been born out of, like, I can share. What's amazing is I can share a moment in time story for each of them. And that's why we don't have 3 ,000 products, right? And that's where the discipline comes in. But, you know, like the Medifrito is my favorite, probably one of my favorites, because I think the anxiety that comes with knowing how much medicine to give a new baby. It's hard. It's slippery. It's really hard.

58:16Chelsea Hirschhorn:And so making sure that you can accurately dose without being covered in amoxicillin. Yeah, which hopefully we can avoid anyway.

58:30Gwyneth Paltrow:But yes. It'll happen. What do you think that the biggest misconception or the biggest lie women are told about postpartum? Not lie, you know what I mean? Like led to misperceive. I think, you know, I think that sort of what I was referring to earlier, that these transformational life stages are somewhat stable if you prepare.

59:00Chelsea Hirschhorn:And I think that that is a really big misconception. I think women have to prepare to be shaken and destabilized, right? I think there is an understanding that, okay, I read the book, bought the products. I am set. We kind of optimize and plan for the checklist moments, but not the in-between. And so I think, you know, we're better off if we prepare to be destabilized during these

59:31Gwyneth Paltrow:transitions. Brilliant. One word to describe sex during pregnancy. Oh, during pregnancy? Yeah.

59:42Chelsea Hirschhorn:Depends on which stage. Let's break it down. First trimester and second trimester, exhilarating, especially second trimester. Really fun, optimal hormonal flow to every possible organ, including your brain and your body. Third trimester, no. I just want to not be touched. And the inevitable like fourth trimester. And again, this is not just six weeks and I'm back to me, right? Sandpaper, lubricate, practice, be forgiving, talk about it, prepare for it to take longer. I actually analogize the postpartum amount of lubrication to the perimenopausal and menopausal amount of lubrication. I think it's the same exact hormone highs and lows that are emulated in your body.

1:00:50Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah. It certainly is confounding. I'll put it that way.

1:00:55Chelsea Hirschhorn:And I would say really like it's a joint effort, right? This is not just about tap me when you're ready, right? This is about why don't you get some lube and have it on hand And just in case I'm in the mood to try, be prepared for me to say, nope, I'm done. I don't want to try anymore. Yeah. Oh, man.

1:01:15Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah. Gosh, you're giving me flashback to those days.

1:01:18Chelsea Hirschhorn:By the way, that's why people have a hard time preparing other women, right? You don't want to think about it. It's true. You've compartmentalized like the best of them.

1:01:30Gwyneth Paltrow:Okay, last one. And this might be going back to the first thing you said, which was that compartmentalization is your superpower. But is that a superpower that motherhood unlocked for you? Or what is a superpower that motherhood has unlocked for you?

1:01:50Chelsea Hirschhorn:I feel like there are a few.

1:01:52Gwyneth Paltrow:Okay, great.

1:01:53Chelsea Hirschhorn:I've become much more efficient as a mother. Your frustration tolerance thins, I think, as a mother. And so you really strive to find and eliminate all of the inefficiency in your life. And that has become a superpower. You know, like that family therapist that my mom brought us to who diagnosed me with frustration and tolerance really nailed it. Right. I just think that that has become sort of a very valuable resource for me is just find the efficiency, whether it's time management or, you know, planning and organizing and optimizing for the tools that we have or don't have.

1:02:38Gwyneth Paltrow:Well, Chelsea, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Goop podcast. I really, really, really love talking to you. And I honestly, I'm just so in awe of your business. And it's so beautiful to see a woman, a mother go into the world, you know, and have this level of success because you are committed to solving the problems of women, you know, pre, postnatal, and now into preteen.

1:03:12Chelsea Hirschhorn:Yeah, onward. Well, we couldn't do it without and alongside the goop truth tellers. So right back at you. Thank you. You're so sweet.

1:03:26Gwyneth Paltrow:Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.