You Can't Do It All: Five Years Straight of Breastfeeding and the Reckoning at Home | Victoria Tice

The ManFlu | Exploring Gender Dynamics, Partnerships & Raising Boys Who Care

Some women carry the mental load in marriage so quietly that even their own husbands don't see it happening.

Host Lucy McAfee sits down with Victoria Tice, a copywriter and birth doula. Victoria has spent five years breastfeeding her two sons on demand, no pumps, no bottles, straight from the source. And that choice opened up a much bigger conversation about partnership, recovery, and who carries what at home.

Victoria compares her husband's five days of paternity leave with their first son to the nearly four months he took with their second, and why that difference changed her postpartum recovery completely. She and Lucy get into the list Victoria and her husband built together, naming every task that keeps a home running, and the exact language she uses now when dividing household responsibilities without becoming the house manager who reminds him of everything.

They also take on the maternal instinct myth, the idea that mothers are simply born knowing what to do while fathers get room to learn as they go. It is another face of the mental load in marriage, deciding everything so no one else has to. Press play to hear Victoria's simple weekly habit for protecting her own time and why she says letting your partner fail is part of learning to actually share it.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Welcome And Meeting Victoria Tice

02:13 Five Years Of Exclusive Breastfeeding Explained

04:18 The Plan That Wasn't Really A Plan

08:27 Doing It All Alone With Baby One

12:31 Five Days Leave Versus Four Months

15:58 The Pressure Fathers Feel Taking Leave

20:43 When Travel Broke Their Family Rhythm

25:43 Building A Fairness List With Fair Play

30:17 Naming The Mental Load In Marriage

38:21 The One Small Shift To Try This Week

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