Nursing Bras, Mom Guilt and Are Kids Really Baggage?

What do you do when you are three months postpartum and the product you need does not exist? Can you build a company and raise two little girls at the same time without losing pieces of both? And when another woman tells you dating will be harder because your kids are baggage, is she being cruel or just honest?

Party's Over is back at the TCL Chinese Theater with a guest who built her business at home with a baby in her arms. Laura Berens is the founder of Love and Fit, activewear built around movement, confidence and making fitness feel approachable. She is also a longtime friend of Veida's, and that history shows. Sandra Lena Silverman and Veida Horn ask how she did it, what it cost her, and whether she ever wishes she had just stayed home.

It started nine years ago in her living room. Laura was three months postpartum and really into fitness, trying to get through a workout while her daughter cried to be fed. She was peeling a tight, sweaty sports bra up to nurse, then trying to get back to it. She went to the computer and searched for a nursing sports bra and found exactly two, one in Australia and one on Amazon. Her reaction was the whole business plan: this is insane, I think I am going to make one.

The second product came from a problem every woman who has ever gone for a run knows. Leggings slide down. Laura put grips on the inside so they stay put and pull you in. Veida, who has an almost eight year old, says she rocks them, and Laura says the age of the woman wearing them has nothing to do with it.

What makes her story land is that she had no background in fashion at all. She came from the music industry, business development and sales, which she calls completely opposite. What she did have was a clear sense that she wanted to run her own schedule once she had kids, and a clear sense that moms needed this.

Sandra asks whether raising a family while building the company was really as hard as it sounds. Laura answers with a memory. Her second daughter was born when the company was about three years old, and she remembers sitting at the computer tapping her leg to rock the baby, then picking her up to nurse and feed her. She admits there are parts of those early months she cannot fully remember because she was working so much. Her daughters are ten and five now, and they have helped with packaging and shipping since day one. She says she is raising two little entrepreneurs.

Veida asks the question she always wants answered, which is what behavior was modeled at home. Her own mother worked and pushed financial independence, and Veida jokes that it blew up in her mother's face, because Veida would be perfectly happy sitting on her laurels. She also knows women whose mothers worked so much that they decided to be the one at every PTA meeting. Laura's mother worked part time and her father owned his own business, and she says she took after him. He raised his daughters to be hardworking women and pushed them to make their own money. Sandra shares that her mother worked full time by choice and her father instilled one rule: never depend on a man financially. Laura says it is something she has always told herself. She wants her own money, and she does not want to have to ask.

Veida calls them both great role models for their daughters, and then asks the honest question. Are there moments when you think you should have just stayed home? Laura says yes, and also moments when she thinks she should have stayed in corporate America, and moments when she feels like she is not enough. She describes messaging her factory late at night while the kids need her, telling them to hold on one second. There is never a balance, she says. It is a back and forth, pulling toward the business and then pulling back toward the kids.

She was recently away for three weeks filming a show. Her husband took care of the kids the whole time, and her team ran the business off a plan she had mapped out a month in advance. Veida's position is simple: you cannot do this without a supportive husband.

Veida closes as a friend who has watched Laura for years and is proud of her, and offers her advice to anyone watching. If you want something, do not give up on it because it is difficult, and do not give up at every little hiccup. Laura adds her own. She has felt like she failed thousands of times, and every time she ended up at a new level. We only have one life, so go for it.

Finally, Spill It. A viewer thinking about dating again was told by another woman that it will be harder for her because she has baggage, and she cannot stop thinking about it. Veida says kids do make dating harder, not because they are baggage but because you have to be more careful about who you bring into their lives. Then she goes further. Plenty of men will not date a woman with children, and she thinks kids at home are baggage to a certain extent at any age, herself included. Sandra disagrees completely. She thinks plenty of men would be happy and welcoming, especially an older man who never had children and wants that, and she thinks a blended family could be lovely. Veida's response is that Sandra is clearly in love right now and would have said something very different a week ago. Sandra admits she does live in a bit of a fantasy. They agree to disagree, and Veida gets the last word: she will be fine, with her roller bag.

Listen to the full episode, then tell Sandra and Veida where you land. Is balance real or a myth? Did you follow the example your parents set, or go the opposite way? And are kids baggage when you date?

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