Moms After Bedtime

Moms After Bedtime is a talk show about the early years of motherhood, and it puts friendship first and advice second. Megan and Mandy are the steady voices. When nobody else is in the room, they joke about the echo. Episodes open with a round called 'wine and cheese', where each person names a frustration and a bright spot. The cheese can be small and specific, like a baby crawling for the first time and then belly-flopping, or a child's second birthday. The wine can be heavier, like the scramble of going back to work, which cost the show a week off. That return to work sets up 'Burnout'. In it, one host admits that turning negative is her go-to coping mechanism, and the two talk about how easy it is to become bitter and judgmental. They push back with empathy: the person who is short with you is probably stressed too. The episode closes by offering a village to anyone who needs one. Practical episodes sit alongside the emotional ones. 'Structure, Routines, and Mom Hacks' goes back and forth on planners and to-do lists and makes room for opinions gathered from the audience. The fitness episode moves from the mind to the body, since the hosts note how much of their talk usually goes to mental health. One host remembers strength training, yoga classes and aerial yoga, and doubts she could go back to aerial yoga after a C-section. They settle on a kind of permission: keep your body healthy however that looks, and stop apologizing for being proud of it. Birth stories form their own thread. Victoria, a friend who was interviewed on an earlier episode about her work as a child sleep consultant, returns to describe her water breaking, a test to confirm it, and being admitted at four centimeters with no real birth plan. The hosts have also asked listeners to come forward with birth stories of their own. The guests do the most work on mental health. Paige Bruce, a licensed therapist and parenting educator, talks about how her own upbringing shows up in her parenting, and about telling her daughter what she wished an adult had told her at six: that she would never hurt her on purpose. She says openly that even a therapist still has healing work to do. Kristen Gingrich, a licensed clinical social worker and certified alcohol and drug counselor, joins an episode that opens with the hosts arguing over which Golden Girl each of them is. The humor is teasing and self-deprecating, and the language sometimes turns salty.