The Whole Mama Show’s Aisha O’Reilly Meets Parent + Baby Brunch

Watch our Q&A with blogger, momfluencer & podcaster @aishaandlife from the Whole Mama Show and be inspired by the untold stories of motherhood! 

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If we are able to, you know the saying “fill your cup” you know, so that you can fill others. I really, really strongly believe in that and that's why I think women, mothers should love themselves more so that they can give more to the people who need them, to the people who love them, um so if we're happy then that will just flow it will flow out you know onto our children. If we're satisfied if we're fulfilled if we have our own dreams and wishes realized or hobbies or whatever it is that makes us whole you know that will naturally lead, you know it'll just flow onto our children and onto our husbands and our friends and our other family members as well.

First of all, this podcast and video is dedicated to every single mom every parent every mother to be who who's not sure what they really want to do in life and how they can inspire people with their talent. I meet really cool people so I’m going to introduce you to another if you had to meet someone and they had to go okay so who are you what would you tell them.

Ooh wow um what I tell them? I am a young woman who is very, very, very passionate about finding out what it is that I am meant to do here on this earth, um I have been on this journey of finding my purpose for quite a long time and I am also an entrepreneur, I am a creative, um and I am just passionate about making things you know starting something from nothing and I’m also a mama to two beautiful boys and a wife to an amazing husband. I’m a friend I’m a daughter, I am a lot of things.

So, tell me about The Whole Mama Show the podcast because this is like a podcast Baby Brunch meets The Whole Mama Show! Yes it's a great collaboration here, um well okay so in a nutshell The Whole Mama Show is what I call the untold stories of motherhood. So, there's this story of motherhood this narrative of motherhood that for centuries we've been told. We've been sharing maybe um you know on the surface but deep down as mothers we know that there's so much that goes into motherhood preparing for motherhood, being an actual mom that um I think traditionally we just haven't really been feeling safe to share some of the ups and downs, some of the challenges especially when it comes to pregnancy, and uh you know becoming a mom for the first time that's massive and so I really wanted to dig deeper into what it is that makes up this whole story of motherhood. Not just the what we see in in sort of traditional media, so that's what The Whole Mama Show is all about. Every week I interview a mama and ask her to share her most challenging time in motherhood in hopes of giving other women inspiration to find some healing in themselves, so we talk about a lot of things and it's raw and it's real it gets emotional, uh but it's another side of motherhood that I think is just as valid as what we are used to seeing. 

What led you to want to influence people, how did you decide I’m gonna take my Instagram and my Facebook and make it beautiful and support people? Okay, so I’m on YouTube as well by the way, I make videos there on YouTube, um and so my journey in the beginning to be honest before I became a mom was focusing on natural hair so I am very well known by a lot of people as a natural hair blogger initially and the biggest reason why I wanted to share my story and my journey in natural hair was because I wanted to discover my natural hair, so I wanted to document it in one place and just share with people to say hey if you have hair like mine and you're also like struggling to find products and hair tools and things like that come along this journey with me and let's figure this hair thing out together. So that became like much bigger than I expected and just such a great amazing chapter in my life and I being able to see how is inspiring other women and influencing them on my journey .

Then I became a mom in 2016 and very similarly as I was pregnant preparing for this journey of motherhood, I felt quite alone in you know my experience because a lot of things weren't spoken about before pregnancy. I didn't really get much of a heads up as to the whole picture, so that inspired me now to share my story of motherhood, so very, very similarly with my natural hair um just so that maybe there will be a woman out there who's also feeling a bit sort of unsure about herself and um not feeling very confident and you know worried and scared about becoming a mom and so it was just my way of saying you know what I’ve done this with natural hair this is a new chapter in my life and I want to share it as I’m going along with it as well, and so that's what made me really want to it was the intention wasn't to influence necessarily, the intention was to inspire and so obviously with inspiration came the came the influence. 

How did you know that your husband is the right dad for your children?

Oh wow! Um how did I know? Well, I think for me I definitely fell in love with him first. I fell in love with the uh well basically we're high school sweethearts, so we met and fell in love when we were kids you know we were like 18 years old um you know since matric. And so, I fell in love with that boy I just you know, fell head over heels with him, um and I just loved his humility. Until this day I will always say that that's my favourite thing about my husband, um a personality trait that I really, really admire and um then because we were together for a long time I just got that feeling I’m like, I want to have your babies. I want to have kids you know, um I just think he's just such a great person and I mean we say this often and it's the truth he really is my favourite person so um the idea of creating a human with who's like half me and half my favourite person for me it was just like it's a no-brainer you know uh so yeah so that's the that's the reason I just I think he's just so he's awesome yeah.

Why do you think moms should love themselves more?  Oh how much time do you have Elana? It's um you know what, it goes back to the reason why I continue sharing my story and why I continue creating the content that I do and it's to not necessarily say that the old way was wrong but it's just a new way of mothering of parenting that I think that we should try and embrace. The idea of this you know sort of martyr of a mother I think has really put a lot of women in a very difficult position by putting everybody else first and her nowhere on the list, whereas if we are able to you know the saying  fill your cup, you know, so that you can fill others I really, really strongly believe in that and that's why I think women mothers should love themselves more so that they can give more to the people who need them to the people who love them um so if we're happy then that will just flow it will flow out you know onto our children. If we're satisfied, if we're fulfilled if we have our own dreams and wishes realized or hobbies or whatever it is that makes us whole you know that will naturally lead you know it'll just flow onto our children and on to our husbands and our friends and our other family members as well, so I think that's why that's why we should love ourselves more.

If there's a message that will come from you and someone wakes you up and you suddenly speak truth and you give them some motivation what would it be? First time moms? Yeah. First-time moms you will learn you will get better you just need to keep at it and every day is a reset button don't worry if you had a bad day today tomorrow is a new day try again!

You are strong because: I am vulnerable, and I share my heart my feelings my thoughts on my sleeve that's what makes me strong. Give me one secret for hair because at the moment my daughter has decided that she's going to school with her hair untied and she for the first time in three years is embracing her clothes I don't know something happened I know I think she watched your blog or something your video blog or something, oh so give us one bit of advice about our natural hair and rolling with it.

Just one, oh I can give you two. Number one, moisturize, moisturize, moisturize and by moisturize I mean with water uh let's not be scared of water that is a huge, huge game changer if you spray your daughter's hair maybe every other day, I spray my kid’s hair every single day and the second thing is once you put that water in you need to seal that moisture with a light oil or a butter. You might need to play around a little bit with it to just make sure that the texture of the oil isn't too heavy for her curls and that's how you keep her hair nice and bouncy and full of you know like just beautiful, moisturized curls that's if I had to just pick two those would be the two that I give you.

Can you put that in a bottle so that we can drink it, so that we can have that same feeling inside? Aisha it's been a pleasure, you're amazing. Aisha O'Reilly, you can find her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram on YouTube and here on www.babybrunch.co.za