PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 108: THE JOYS AND CHALLENGES OF MOTHERING
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 108:- THE JOYS AND CHALLENGES OF MOTHERING
Rocky Barrett: Welcome to the podcast, From our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello ladies, I am so pleased to welcome today to our podcast Allison Hartman from Florida. Allison has shared with me on a number of occasions on the podcast and here she is again today. The family all arrived up yesterday from Florida because they come up every year for the July 4th weekend. We’re looking forward to that together. It’s great to have you again, Allison.
Allison Hartman: Yes, we’re so happy to be here! We’ve been counting down the days. We look forward to this every year.
NC: This time she came with another precious baby. Tell us about this little girl. Last time you were here you were pregnant.
AH: Last time we were here was in January. We were just a few months away. March 17th, I delivered Selah Ra’el. That’s her name and we call her Selah Rae.
She was born March 17th, basically the day after our state shut down public schools, which shut down our business since we do pictures for public schools. She definitely lived up to her name. Selah means: “to take a rest.” She has been quite the needed rest that I’ve needed, and our family has needed even though it’s been in negative circumstances, I would say, with the COVID.
It’s been such an amazing blessing to have her. She’s wonderful.
NC: And she is the prettiest baby you could ever see in your life. If you want to see pictures, go to Allison’s Facebook.
AH: Yes, it’s just Allison Frost Hartman. Go see my little sweet baby doll!
NC: She is beautiful and the eleventh baby for the Hartman’s.
Sometimes young mothers think, “Oh goodness, how could I have enough love to have another baby” or “How could I be able to give another baby enough attention because I want to really be faithful as a mother and give to every child that God gives me.”
Oh precious young moms, if you could only understand! In fact, I don’t think you can understand unless you experience it. But I see little Selah as the eleventh baby of this family and if Allison can get hold of her baby to feed her, well that is miraculous.
She has these ten other siblings just holding her, gooing at her, doting over her, watching her, smiling at her, touching her, and holding her all day long.
AH: It’s so true! The day she was born all the children came to see her at the hospital. We had to set a timer for every five minutes. We had to switch children because they fought over her, I mean fought over her!
Our little six-year-old, Anna Lee, I would say she probably changes the majority of the diapers and she’s six! We have this little Wild Bird Sling and she puts her in it, and she totes her around. We’ve been to Wal-Mart with it and she totes her around like she’s her own.
I always say we’re raising mommies and daddies.
NC: That’s so true! All your children are so capable. They’re all like mothers.
I mean, your older ones and they’re just incredible, but even these little young ones, they are just so amazing!
AH: Yes! Selah’s just a live baby doll.
NC: I mean, I watched little Anna Lee— she had the baby on the table changing the diaper. I looked over and I had to think for a moment, because I thought she had a doll because she is so much like a doll. But yes, she was just changing her diaper and it was just like playing.
AH: She’s just been such a blessing. I don’t even know how much I explained to you but after this baby was born it was just so much all at once with shutting our business down. We were the last birth in the hospital that our midwife allowed visitors. I was the last birth that they allowed anyone to be in my room.
The very next birth that my midwife delivered, they only allowed one other person. Well I had twelve people at my birth.
NC: Oh well, how would you have survived without your family?
AH: It would not have been fun because I had all five of my girls there, my mom there, a friend who did photography for us, several friends. I like a big party for my births. I’m kind of weird in that way.
Right after she was born it was just silence. We had hardly any visitors, no meals brought, which it wasn’t that we needed the food, but we wanted the fellowship.
NC: I know, it is a terrible let down, because when you’ve given birth, especially if you have had a natural birth, you have your oxytocin high. That oxytocin high is one of the most amazing things you can experience in the world.
You’re on a high after you have given birth and you want to tell the world. You want everyone to see your baby.
AH: We didn’t get to show her off at church for three months.
NC: You can just imagine all of these mothers, maybe some of you have birthed in this time and you have been deprived of that blessing in this celebration of birth.
AH: I don’t want to speak this over me or anyone else, but it was very easy to slip into, if I had to label it, it would be postpartum depression, which I actually have never dealt with and never really understood.
There was just so much at once. Literally it was having our business taken away from us because the government shut it down, it was no visitors, no fellowship, not being able to share her with other people.
But God knew I needed, being 45 and having a baby later in life, she was such a nice bonus to have in kind of a depressing time.
NC: When you think of how mothers have missed out on the celebrating with other mothers. This reminds me again of so many older people who have been totally shut away in nursing homes, not allowed to have visitors.
Collin and I just received news last week of a dear, precious friend who passed away down in Australia. We had been together from the beginning of our marriage, 57 years ago. We were in full time work with this couple. Oh, such a precious couple. She is French and he is Irish, and they were just a delight.
We got the news that he had passed away. His dear wife was telling us that he had had a stroke a while back and had to go into a nursing home. But they were a couple who were never separated. They were always together. They were a “together couple.”
Even when he went into the nursing home, she went every day. She would take him out in the car. They spent the whole day together. They were a “together couple.”
Then this crazy COVID happened and they only allowed her half an hour a day. They had never been separated.
They expected him to live for quite a long time because he was doing well. She was just this little wee thing and she wasn’t able to cope with all the things you have to do with a stroke. But he just died because I’m sure it was that loneliness and just being deprived of his wife. It’s not even right.
I think everybody is realizing now that the numbers of these deaths have not been accurate. They have been coined. We have been made to believe through the fake media so much of what is wrong.
But now we are seeing the tragedies of so many people dying of loneliness, people committing suicide, getting depression, and all of these things happen because this is not the way we were meant to live.
We were meant to live as families and then as extended families with people. We are made for interaction, aren’t we? We’re made to share our lives with one another.
AH: Our church, thankfully, didn’t miss many Sundays. But there are a lot of people . . . I was just recently reading yesterday, a friend of mine was writing how this is really, really just taking a toll on her to just not have physical fellowship.
Everything is going virtual and you’re just like, “Why?” I was just reading today, “VBS virtual.” What is that? How can you do a VBS affectively virtually?
I’m not necessarily a VBS fan but that physical touch and that fellowship just are important. Thankfully in our home we really never got bored. There’s nothing boring. Even staying isolated home for three months, there was never, “Oh my goodness, what am I going to do with my day?”
Life pretty much was very hopping. But I did read about several suicides in our town and you wonder if they were COVID related just because of depression.
Some men find their worth in their career. I am a woman and our family business went from doing very well to zero income and it took a toll on me emotionally. Does that make sense? I felt a little bit depressed over the fact that we have no income and I’m not even the breadwinner.
But it affected me, so how much more so did it affect the fathers and the Breadwinners of the mothers and families?
NC: Well, it goes against the Bible, which says that if a man does not provide for his family, he is worse than an infidel (1 Timothy 5:8).
Here they are being mandated not to provide. That is going against who God created them to be. It takes away their worth and their manhood.
AH: I just read that they expect 80%, and Lord willing this won’t happen, but 80% of the restaurants could be shut down because of this second wave of scare that they’re trying to do.
NC: That is only a scare. They put out all these numbers at the beginning and they did not happen. In fact they had to try and make them happen by saying this person died of COVID when they already had other symptoms, which really was the underlying factor.
Talk about that friend of yours who went to do a test and then cancelled. She was going to get a test but cancelled and then two weeks later she got a phone call saying that her test came back positive and she didn’t even have the test. How crazy can you be?
AH: Right, right it’s crazy. How is this possible? Well, we all heard about where the Connecticut governor was exposed by Candace Owens by claiming that a newborn had died of COVID. But they came to find out that this little baby had possibly accidentally smothered the baby in bed. So it wasn’t a COVID death, but the baby was tested somewhat positive.
Any way, you just hear story after story.
NC: Yes, well any way we’re kind of getting on a bandwagon! We’d better get off!
You must tell what you have gone through since this birth. With coming back from Israel you caught a disease.
AH: Yes, so our last podcast we were quite excited. We got back from Israel. I had apparently gotten into contaminated water in Israel and didn’t even realize it until four or five weeks later until my midwife called and said, “You are positive for giardia.”
That is very much a third world country, not something you would normally get in the United States.
NC: Nor usually in Israel, which is a very clean country.
AH: Right and she said, “You could have gotten it from a salad, eating it with contaminated water.” For most healthy people you would just get it, take a round of antibiotics, and you’d be fine. Because I was pregnant, I think it took a toll on me. So now I am six months later and still struggling with giardia.
I have tried everything from natural stuff to taking things that the doctors’ prescribed. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten any relief. So that’s been kind of an added stress to dealing with postpartum. After you have a baby can always be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.
Added to that was the giardia, the COVID, and our business, but anyway it’s definitely been a little bit tough for me the past few months.
NC: But you’re always still on the top, aren’t you?
AH: Yes, you just have to think of the positives. Even with COVID, it was funny because I was thinking, “I wonder if Nancy Campbell had something to do with this COVID because when you think about it, you had families eating together every night. A lot of families that normally weren’t eating dinner together were sitting around the table. Parents and children were spending time together. There were some positives, I’m sure, that came out of it.
I was just talking to somebody in your living room today and she said that her son was on the bandwagon of college. Because of COVID, he really had time to sit back and think, “Is this something I really want to do or do I want to go into business for myself.” It really changed him for the better.
I’m sure there are some positives and that’s what I kept trying to remind myself: You have an amazing, sweet little baby. You have a family that’s all together. We’re debt free.
That’s another thing. When our business shut down, had we not been debt free I don’t know what we would have done. But I didn’t have to worry that we wouldn’t be able to have food for our children. Thankfully our business was going to be able to ride the storm and hopefully it can continue to.
NC: Tell us now, you’re tandem nursing, aren’t you?
AH: I am, I am. When we had gotten back from Israel, I had not nursed my two-year-old for two weeks while we went out of town. We came home, because he stayed here with you and one of my older girls. The day I came home he just started nursing again.
Yes, so I am nursing a newborn and a two-year-old. Sometimes he thinks he’s a newborn.
NC: He nurses the most, doesn’t he?
AH: Oh it’s ridiculous. Last night he nursed three times in the middle of the night. He definitely loves this milk supply. It’s wonderful. I have tandem nursed six times, with six different sets of babies.
NC: So you can do it, ladies!
AH: Oh, I could write a book on the advantages and the benefits of tandem nursing. I get mastitis a lot and one of the advantages for me is if I did not have him nursing, I would have all that extra milk and I would have to be stuck to a pump.
So for me it’s like I’m not wasting this milk. It’s going to one of my other children.
Also that mother bond with your toddler. A lot of times you have a baby and you tend to feel like you’re pushing him away a lot and saying, “Mama’s got the baby.” That’s Ezra’s special time and mine together.
NC: Oh what does he say about it? He’s got these little things that he says.
AH: Yeah, well when I was pregnant, I didn’t have any milk so he would say, “Just a little nurse? Just a little nurse?” Now he’ll say, “I want big nurse!”
He also will say, “Selah Rae need nurse, too?” and I’ll say, “Yeah, she needs to be first.”
Sometimes he will get impatient and say, “Selah Rae’s turn over. Me turn, me turn, me want to nurse!”
NC: Aw, how beautiful.
AH: He knows exactly, and you know, he’s so sweet and innocent. There’s no shame on his face when he’s asking. He doesn’t think he’s asking anything that he shouldn’t and he’s not doing anything wrong.
I just have to make sure I eat enough, and I eat well, and I’m drinking enough to provide for two little ones.
NC: And you know, you’re prone to mastitis. Some mothers are but you have found something that has been helpful.
AH: Yeah. When I had my first baby, Makenna, 21 years ago, I lost count, but I think I got mastitis over 20 times. I got it so much because I would just have so much milk.
A couple years ago I was telling a nurse friend of mine about my constant clogged duct issue, how I would just get clogged ducts all the time.
I had tried from nursing on all fours to even drinking a non-alcoholic beer and I don’t even like beer. I had tried everything that I had heard, and she mentioned lecithin. Obviously, there’s soy lecithin and there’s sunflower lecithin.
Trim Healthy Mama makes a sunflower lecithin, which is non-GMO and a lot better for you.
She said, “You have to be taking lecithin. It thins your milk” because what happens with mastitis is you get a clogged duct.
In fact, Vange (Evangeline Johnson, my daughter) called me the other day because Rashida was getting mastitis. She had the clogged duct and she was already starting to get a fever.
She called me and said, “Serene told me to call Mrs. Hartman because she will know what to do” and it’s honestly because I have had it so much.
But if you have clogged duct issues take lecithin. I take it now daily.
NC: And how do you take it?
AH: You can take a powder, which Trim Healthy Mama sells. I’m not advertising for them necessarily. It’s a great product and its awesome families you’re supporting. You can put a scoop in a smoothie or coffee. It’s not the best tasting stuff.
NC: No, it’s not. I find I can put only a little wee bit in.
AH: If I put a scoop in a smoothie, I find I normally can’t taste it. Now coffee, because it’s hard to stir up, it might be a little bit more challenging. You might just want to throw it into a blender and it’s fine.
I have also ordered some gel capsules of lecithin so that I can take them daily with prenatal vitamins so that I don’t forget. I tend to be a creature of habit and if it’s there on my nightstand I will take it every day.
If you ever have an issue with mastitis or clogged ducts do not hesitate to call me (850 221 1222) because I could most probably write a book on it.
There are ways to not have to do antibiotics, which is something I don’t do. You don’t want to get addicted to that.
NC: Yes. Now you have mentioned that Makenna, your oldest, is now 21 and she is engaged.
AH: Yes, yes, so it’s so neat! A year ago today we were at your house and, I probably even told you this, but I remember being at the volleyball court and I looked at my husband and I said, “Are any of our girls ever going to be pursued?”
You all have gorgeous guys and girls up here at the hilltop. It seemed like everyone had someone who they were interested in, but my girls were interested in none of them.
NC: And your girls are all so beautiful!
AH: I know, I know, I thought, “What’s wrong with our girls? Maybe there’s something we can’t see!”
He laughed at me and said, “Allison, it is going to happen one day and when it does it’s going to be like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom” because we have a 21 year old, an 18, and a 16 year old girls and obviously, in my opinion, they’re gorgeous.
NC: Yes, they’re beautiful.
AH: Maybe the guys are scared of me. That’s what I’m thinking because I’m pretty tough. We’re not an easy mom and dad to deal with because we do have pretty tough rules. We’re not into the way most people view dating. I’m not interested in that.
But that very weekend that we left your house we went and met a family, the Crevier’s, who are from South Dakota. One of their sons was with them and it was love at first sight when they saw each other.
That was a year ago July 8th. They are now engaged and they’re going to be married October 24th. That’s going to be super special.
He proposed to her on February 17th on our new property and I was doing my maternity pictures that day.
He snuck in behind, got on his knee, and proposed to her during my maternity shoot. I thought that was so amazing! Most people would look at it as a negative like, “Oh my goodness, you’re in a million different stages of life!”
But how fun that I have this new precious baby and then I have this newlywed couple to be. They love baby Selah Rae.
Josiah is the name of Makenna’s fiancé. My two-year-old, Ezra, is his best friend and he absolutely loves him.
I mean what’s not to love. He is a wonderful young man. To me, it’s a neat thing to see that they can start marriage and see that this isn’t new to them. They know exactly what to do.
NC: He comes from a family of twelve children?
AH: Yes, he’s number five of twelve. His family is amazing. In fact, their family is going to be at the upcoming Above Rubies family camp.
NC: Yes, so let’s talk about that because last time you were here, we were telling everybody to come to the wonderful annual Panama Above Rubies family retreat. And then it was cancelled.
AH: So I was in the hospital having the baby and I get a phone call from Laguna, which is the retreat center we were having the retreat at, and the young guy said, “I’m so sorry to tell you but we’re going to have to cancel out on y ’all.”
I knew it was inevitable, but I was thinking positive. I was thinking, “This COVID thing is not going to continue on.”
Well as we all know, it has taken over our world and so it did cancel just about everything I was looking forward to this spring.
But that’s okay because he said, “Look I’m going to have to cancel you, but we would love for you to reschedule.”
Several families were like, “Maybe we should just cancel all together.”
I said, “Nope, we’re not going to do it” because these families, especially mine, we look forward to this every year. This is our family vacation. This is our family reunion. There’s already about 40 or 50 families signed up to come.
So many of them, we are looking forward to seeing them because we see them year after year.
There are a lot of new families coming, which is always so much fun.
But what it is. It started out as a Ladies’ Retreat, which I would put on with you years ago and then it got to where my husband said, “Hey if you’re going to keep doing these, I want to be a part of them.”
So it went from a Ladies’ Retreat and then it went to a Family C amp and then the youth got really on fire. Zadok came a couple times and it has turned into this, I don’t even know what to say.
NC: A family celebration!
AH: Yeah, a week-long family celebration. We’re right on the Gulf.
NC: It’s just so amazing. You have to come from anywhere in America because where we are, we’re right opposite the ocean.
The whole thing is August 18th to the 25th. The main part is still the weekend.
AH: August 20th is starting the actual conference, so the 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd.
But the retreat center will give us a little discount, a break, on the weeklong fee. So I would say that 90% of the families that come go ahead and book for the whole week, so they have some family time.
They’re not thinking like, “Man, we just came all this way and all we did was go to meetings” even though that’s the best part.
But after the retreat is over on Sunday you still have Monday and Tuesday to visit with other families that you’ve met. It’s a fun time.
We do have a bigger campus this year. We’re at the same property but they’re giving us the bigger campus because we rescheduled. So we do have a larger facility. However, we have already booked up the majority of it. The last time I checked with one of my friends whose helping me put it on, she said, “We’re almost out of housing.”
If you’re even kind of interested I would get on registering right away. I just talked to the Ruby girls and told them about it.
NC: Yes, so anyway, go to my website, aboverubies.org and you’ll find out all about the information there and you can book.
Although Colin and I speak to the folks over the weekend, we always bring in someone special and different each time. This time it’s, how do you say their last name?
AH: It’s the family that I was just talking about, the Crevier’s.
NC: Crevier! Of course, now Makenna is engaged to Josiah, who is one of the Crevier’s. And tell the people what they do! This is going to be so interesting.
AH: It’s going to be so fun too. We met them about a year and a half ago at the Volleyball Nationals where they were hired to do a show.
You can go on YouTube and type in Crevier family. They were on America’s Got Talent. They go around the country sharing the Gospel while doing the most amazing, exciting, entertaining show. They use basketballs, spin basketballs, they unicycle, they juggle.
NC: They’re on high unicycles. Are they 14 feet high or how high?
AH: Yeah, I think they are 12 feet high and because they have 12 children, they use every single one of their family members, even their little twin babies. They’re ten years old and even they are up on unicycles.
They were the best part of this tournament that we went to. That’s how we met their family. But they’re on NBA halftime shows. They’re in schools and churches. They have a prison ministry. They do their shows overseas. They’re just incredible.
When I met him, I said, “I need to know, how do you get 12 children and your wife all to be on the same page.” Because really, that’s all we want in our families, we want to be a team.
We may not be able to unicycle and we may not be able to spin a basketball but we all, everyone whose listening, you want your family to be a team. You don’t want to be a bunch of individual sports.
I was amazed at how watching their show, he would have to allow zero disobedience. He would have to expect when he says, “Go” they go immediately because if not, you’ll mess up the whole show.
But anyway, I’m not going to give away anything. You’re going to love them. You’re going to love their message and you’re going to love their show. They’re also going to do little break-out sessions and they’re going to teach children how to unicycle and spin basketballs.
It’s going to be so much fun. They’re excited about coming. Sadly for them, their business has gotten shut down because of this COVID thing because there are no large assemblies anymore.
So I’m excited that they’re going to come to our town in Pensacola after the retreat and we’re booking them at a big church to do an event there and try to book them up as many shows as we can.
NC: It sounds so good. By the way, I want one of your figs. Hey, when they arrived yesterday, they came with all these baskets of figs right off of their trees in Florida.
I’ve always been a lover of dried figs. They’re actually one of my favorite foods. But fresh figs are even greater than dried figs!
AH: That was the only reason why we didn’t want to come up here because they were in full bloom. I would send my four-year-old and six-year-old and they picked, just in ten minutes, they would come back with a huge basket full of figs. They were just falling off the trees.
We have about ten fig trees about the size of this room. They are huge fig trees. My husband’s hard gardening work is finally starting to pay off. The harvest is here. It’s nice. So we wanted to share yummy figs with y ‘all.
NC: Thank you! Well ladies, we’ve got more to share so I think we’ll end this session and, can you do another session?
AH: Yeah, definitely, let’s do it!
NC: Of course little Selah is asleep. The older girls have taken all the other little ones over to the Allison’s.
So we’ve got all the little Allison’s and the little Hartman’s and all the middling Allison’s and the middling Hartman’s. We have them all in these various stages.
AH: They all have friends of their ages. It’s so neat.
NC: We have a little bit of quietness here in our lounge at the moment so we’ll make the most of it and actually, although you’ll get the next session the next week, we’re going to do it now. Okay?
Let’s pray.
“Dear Father, We thank You that we can talk about the things of life that we face each day, what we face as mothers and wives. I pray that You would bless every wife and every mother today. Encourage them, Father.
“I pray that You will lead us and I pray that You will lead each one listening into all of Your truth, Lord God, that we will not be women who are tossed around to and fro by what is said and what is going on in this world all around. But I pray that we would be women who are settled and rooted in Your Word and who live by it and who train our children by it. We ask this in the precious and lovely name of Jesus. Amen.”