Peas in a pod: the friends sharing love and acceptance
Aussie mums Kate Jones and Mandy Hose have turned their adorable families into a podcasting sensation that’s spreading friendship, acceptance and laughter around the world.
Best friends Kate Jones and Mandy Hose crossed their fingers, took a deep breath and did what comes naturally – they poured their hearts out. It was 2019 and the self-described “mediocre mums” boldly took to the airwaves from a humble studio set-up in Kate’s den, chatting, laughing and at times crying over the vagaries of daily life experienced by families with additional needs kids. It was their first podcast.
“We know you’re only listening because you know us,” Kate joked at the time. “But soon we’ll be huge.” Little did she know. The pilot episode was cathartic for the mums who’d both endured a roller-coaster ride since the premature arrival of their respective twins in 2005, but neither imagined the vein they’d tap into, sharing their emotional and at times blisteringly funny tales of everyday life parenting their “amazing” kids.
Today, more than 1.5 million listeners regularly download their
Too Peas in a Podcast, with a fan club spreading to every corner of the globe.
“We hoped we’d appeal to our community because no one ever really speaks about families likes ours,” Mandy says. “But we’ve ended up tapping into a much bigger world.”
In fact, such has been the success of their podcast that in 2020, pre-COVID, they staged a sell-out live show, and now Mandy and Kate have taken their story from podcast to page with the book The Invisible Life of Us.
“We are middle-aged mums; we are not famous. Our lives are far from the perfect celebrity images you see on social media,” Kate says. “We are the women at the supermarket excited that Domestos is on sale!”
“But we are not lonely anymore,” Mandy adds. “We’ve found our people.”
Little rays of sunshine
Kate and Mandy have been aptly described as “human sunshine”, and it’s impossible not to feel the warmth and charm they radiate when you chat with them. The vivacious blondes, who met through an online forum for parents of multiple-birth children, cry and laugh (often at the same time) and have forged such a strong friendship over the years of their mirrored parenting journey that they finish each other’s sentences without even realising it. They joke that they bonded through a haze of sleep deprivation, nappies, very early mornings and middle-of-the-night ear infections, and their support has now changed more lives than their own.
“When Mandy and I shook up that can of Diet Coke and let the lid off, we had no idea how much was fizzing under the surface just waiting to get out,” Kate writes in the book.
“We are mediocre mums,” she adds. “We love our kids 100 per cent but we are not perfect. Mandy and I found a connection with one another and now, more and more, we are connecting with people just like us.”
Mandy and Kate’s stars were destined to align when they each fell pregnant and gave birth to twins prematurely in 2005. The pregnancies were gruelling and grief-stricken, and often touch
and-go as they battled day by day to keep their bubs alive.
It was Mandy’s first pregnancy and she went into labour with her girls, fraternal twins ‘Milly’ and ‘Molly’, as they are affectionately referred to in the book, at 31 weeks.
Early in Kate’s pregnancy, her boys were diagnosed with the life-threatening Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, where the twins have unequal amounts of the placenta’s blood supply, resulting in the babies growing at different rates. Kate, who has three older children (then aged
11, nine and four), safely delivered ‘Buzz’ and ‘Woody’ at
33 weeks. After their babies were born, life was full of ups and downs as both families faced the ongoing challenges of children with additional needs.
Mandy and Kate searched for a ‘tribe’ of voices sharing similar experiences to their own, but the void was breathtaking – so they took matters into their own hands.
“No one wanted to talk about us [carers of kids with disabilities] and no one wanted to be us,” Kate says.
“I felt so alone,” Mandy adds. “I was at the school gate every day thinking, ‘Where are my people?’ I’d walk past the perfect mums, who are still my friends, but I’d want to cry the whole way home because I couldn’t join their conversations – my life wasn’t like theirs. I’m running from therapy to hospital visits to surgeries. I can’t talk about what holiday we’re booking next week because that isn’t my reality. I knew there’d be other lonely women out there – I was searching for them.”
Finding their tribe
One in six Australians lives with a disability, and it’s estimated that one in 20 Australian kids lives with ADHD. As soon as the podcast was available, messages flowed in from listeners sharing a myriad of experiences, from parents of kids with Down Syndrome, ADHD and other complex needs, to parents of kids who’d been bullied or were struggling with their sexuality.
“We feel mildly outraged that the majority of media coverage about kids today focuses on celebrity or influencer parents with ‘perfect’ families,” Kate says. “We say that all families are perfect, and this book is a celebration of the different meanings that word can and should represent when it comes to kids. When we started the podcast, we wanted to create a space where women in similar positions to us could come to feel seen and heard and acknowledged, so we could all then go on to do a better job. When women (and men) living diverse parenting experiences feel supported and seen and understood, they are better able to understand their children’s needs and do the best job they possibly can. Our kids need us to do better than the average parent.”
Too Peas in a Podcast has now aired for four seasons, and each episode gives Kate and Mandy time and space to dig into a wide range of parenting issues, covering everything from breast-feeding in the neonatal intensive care unit to navigating the National Disability Insurance Scheme, all served up with lashings of positivity and their sunny humour.
“We never strive to be more than we are,” says Mandy, who gave birth to another daughter in 2011. “At the end of the day, we’re just like everyone else – in our homes cooking, cleaning, making 50 thousand meals, washing, washing and more washing, walking the dog [while] juggling appointments, the NDIS and endless bureaucracy.”
“We are honest,” Kate adds. “We are really proud of our families and we talk about the positive things in our children’s lives. We speak about serious issues, but we also embrace the other side of life. We’re two loud, middleaged women passionately talking about how funny it is when your kid poos in a pot outside, or any one of the million funny things our kids do.”
“It’s like a weight is lifted off your shoulders when you can share things honestly,” says Mandy. “And we are very honest, there’s lots of swearing and no glossing over our lives. I feel like I’ve got a worldwide group of friends. I don’t feel alone anymore.”
The Invisible Life of Us by Kate Jones and Mandy Hose, Penguin Life, is on sale from July 20.