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Did you know that Becca from Becca De La Plants and I delivered our babies 24 hours and 3 minutes apart?! We didn't plan that. We've been friends for almost 10 years now, and the first time we hung out, she was planning her wedding. Since then, we've gotten married, moved, built businesses, and now she's had her second baby, and I've had my first! For some reason, we keep landing in the same season of life at the same time. So I asked her to come talk with me about it. About two hard pregnancies, about the identity shift nobody warns you about properly, and about what plants have been quietly teaching us the whole time. Come join our conversation!

 

In this episode, we learn:

• [02:14] Meet Becca De La Plants
• [04:32] What made Becca’s second pregnancy hard?
• [06:53] The TikTok comment that flagged her cholestasis!
• [08:22] Where social media saves you, and where it wrecks you
• [10:22] Running my business from bed through a sick first trimester
• [11:43] What prenatal depression took from Becca’s toddler's first years
• [13:41] The beliefs we absorb about how pregnancy is supposed to feel
• [14:51] Learn how plants push through our concrete world with Joey Santore’s Concrete Botany!
• [15:55] Set your plants up right with potting mix, compost, and fertilizer from Espoma Organic!
• [17:57] Why I wouldn't let myself attach to this pregnancy after two losses
• [20:42] How one Five Guys order sent me to the ER with gallstones
• [24:22] How a hard pregnancy made the newborn phase feel blissful!
• [25:53] Becca's HG lifting the day she delivered and finally being able to eat
• [28:47] Why snap-back culture makes no sense when you barely gained weight
• [29:49] The identity shift of becoming a mom!
• [32:38] Why she walked away from the girlboss mode
• [35:46] How thinking in seasons gives you permission to be fully present
• [37:37] Is “don't lose yourself” actually good advice?
• [38:21] My HOT take: why you should have your kids later
• [42:01] What slow-germinating seeds taught me about timing
• [42:59] What it's like being last to have a kid when you've always gone first
• [46:19] Second-baby calm vs. logging every single diaper in the app
• [47:53] Sibling age gaps, and watching your own sister dynamic play out in your kids
• [49:49] Childcare, pumping, and holding the next year with an open hand
• [51:50] Why first-time moms should be allowed to be weird (the mammal side of postpartum)
• [54:18] Do I let Growing Joy expand beyond plants?
• [57:22] Why evolving your content is the only way to keep it honest
• [58:50] A six-month check-in with Becca!

 

 

 

Order my book!

Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness (and Plants) by Maria Failla, Illustrated by Samantha Leung

 

 

What “Seasons of Life” Actually Means

Plants root, grow, flower, rest, die back, go dormant, and grow again. So do we.

In fall, we drink the pumpkin spice lattes and put pumpkins on the porch, and we let ourselves be in the season we're actually in. Turns out it's much harder to do with motherhood than with a front porch.

 

 

Two Hard Pregnancies, and the ‘Only Way Out Is Through’

Neither of us had an easy time.

Mine was rough. IVF, sick through about 22 weeks, working from bed for the first 3 months. I genuinely thought my business was going to go under.

Then came the gallstones, which are a side effect of IVF that nobody talks about. So one night I ate French fries, aka my favorite food on earth, and ended up in the hospital thinking I was having a heart attack. After that, I was banned from eating fats (which was tough because we’re a whole-ingredient household!)

Becca had it harder, though. She had hyperemesis gravidarum (morning sickness taken to an extreme) in both pregnancies, and the second one put her in bed with IVs twice a week.

Note: She shared that HG cannot be cured with ginger chews. It's everybody's favorite suggestion. And it did not work.

She also caught cholestasis because of a TikTok. She'd seen videos about itchy palms and feet during pregnancy, mentioned it to her midwife almost as an afterthought, and got tested. TikTok basically saved her life.

Just like what Becca said: the only way out is through.

 

 

The “Don't Lose Yourself” Trap

Becca said the advice not to lose yourself in motherhood actually made things worse for her the first time. She was so hyper-aware of the risk that she never let herself fully sink into it.

So she fought it. And so she felt guilty at work, then guilty with her daughter, then guilty about the guilt. She was trying to have it all at the same time.

What changed the second time is that she stopped fighting. She let motherhood be the thing she thinks about right now because she has small children.

I've been bracing for my own identity crisis. I just had my first at 37, and I have had a lot of life and a lot of therapy. What I'm finding instead is expansion.

I'm my old version plus.

The trap is thinking you have to stay tethered to who you were before. But you can let your past self grow with your current self instead.

 

 

Let Moms Be Weird

People online love to be mean about first-time parents. The schedules, the apps, the logging of every single diaper. You don't need to do all that!

Becca disagrees, and so do I. She did all of it with her first, and it was what she needed to feel grounded when her whole life had been shaken up.

Let them be mammals, she shared.

She used to bathe her oldest after daycare because she came home smelling different. Is that weird? Sure. But let moms be weird.

I am fully in my new mom era right now:

• The Huckleberry app
• The typed-out schedule I handed my mom for my first day back at work
• The contact naps I waited three years for
• The newborn scrunch, which I know is fleeting

My sister told me I'll look back and laugh at myself. I'm cool with that. I'm laughing at myself now. But this is what I need to feel okay in this moment.

 

 

There's Fertile Soil in Not Going First

My whole life I've been first. First child, first daughter, first grandkid on both sides.

This time I was last. All my closest friends had babies in 2024 and 2025, and for a while I felt behind and wistful about it.

Now I think it's a gift. I have a whole group of women who can tell me, “No, that's normal, we do that too.”

It's like the seeds that take years to germinate. Or the peony that gives you nothing for the first couple of seasons.

 

 

Letting the Work Unfurl Too

Growing Joy started as a houseplant podcast because houseplants were all I had. Then I got into gardening, so we shifted. Then sustainability, so we shifted again. Every time, the show followed where I actually was.

So the honest question I'm sitting with is whether I let it keep unfurling into this season too.

Becca’s advice is to evolve your work to match who you are, because people can feel when your heart isn't in it. I'm holding an open hand to all of it like Becca is!

 

 

 

Mentioned in our conversation:

• Growing Joy 240: How to Move with Houseplants with Becca De La Plants, Ep 240
• Huckleberry App: Baby Tracker & Sleep Experts
• Understanding Natural Light
• Green Up Your Workspace

 

 

 

 

Thank you to our episode sponsors:

Quarto: Concrete Botany by Joey Santore

If you're looking for a plant book that's not a how-to, Joey Santore's Concrete Botany just might be what you're looking for! This book explores the resiliency of plants in an ever-evolving world that deprioritizes nature. Joey takes you to the tough places where native plants fight to survive and shows how understanding their ecology can help us restore biodiversity right where we live. This book is a raw look at the damage that humans have caused, but an inspiring reminder that healing starts small in our yards, in our neighborhoods, and in the choices we make every day.

Grab your copy of Concrete Botany at quarto.com, wherever books are sold or through your local bookstore.

Espoma Organic

No matter what season of plant parenthood you're in, Espoma Organic has your back with their organic soil, fertilizers, and compost! Espoma Organic is dedicated to making safe indoor and outdoor gardening products for people, pets, and the planet. They have an amazing variety of high-quality, organic potting mixes, garden soil, fertilizers, and pest control products that are organic and eco-friendly. To top it all off, they have a huge sustainability commitment with a 100% solar-powered plant, zero waste manufacturing, and eco-friendly packaging.

Visit espoma.com to find your local Espoma dealer or check my Amazon storefront.

 

 

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