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Jessica Lamb | Survival Mode, Season Five, and What's Coming Next for the Mama Making Podcast




When Life Doesn't Ask Permission

I had a plan for the last two weeks.


I had episodes scheduled, client work mapped out, and a trip to the Podcasting Moms Conference I had been genuinely looking forward to — the kind of trip that doubles as a work retreat and a reminder of why you do what you do.


And then my son fell in the driveway at nine o'clock on a Thursday night.

Not a dramatic fall. Not the kind of fall that usually stops us in our tracks. He's been jumping off furniture and tumbling in the yard since he could walk — a kid who absolutely needs to be in motion, who learns entirely by doing, who has taken far bigger spills without a second thought. But this one was different. I went to pick him up and his arm was just hanging. A slight bend in his forearm that was completely unnatural. He couldn't move his fingers.


I knew immediately. We were going to the ER.


Survival Mode

What I've learned about myself in moments of crisis is that I go into logistics mode almost instantly. I don't fall apart at the front end — I assess, I plan, I move. It happened when Bode was in the NICU. It happened that night in the driveway.


I sat him down. Put his shoes on. Grabbed my bag. Closed up the house. Got him into his car seat. Called my mom to make sure someone knew where we were. Made the phone call to my husband — who had left for a work trip that same day — keeping my voice calm and the severity well under the radar, if I'm honest.


He slept in my arms in the waiting room for two hours while the ER worked through a busy night. When they finally moved his arm for x-rays without pain meds — something I would absolutely handle differently next time — he was in pain in a way I still feel guilty about. Both bones broke. One clean break, one fracture. He got a soft cast, pain meds, and a popsicle. We were home by 1:30 in the morning.


And then the weekend began.


The Weekend Nobody Warns You About

I had prepared myself for a quiet, movie-on-the-couch kind of recovery. The doctor said to keep him still. We had pain meds. We had popsicles. I thought: manageable.


What I did not account for was that pain meds have the opposite effect on my son.

Within ten minutes of a dose he was bouncing off the walls, talking constantly, stopping mid-sentence to laugh at nothing, completely and entirely high as a kite. Keeping a kid who is physically wired to move — and who is now chemically accelerated — still and calm, alone, for an entire weekend, was one of the most exhausting things I have ever done.


I dropped him with my in-laws for a few hours Sunday just to catch my breath. And even then, I couldn't fully let down. I was sleeping with him to make sure he wasn't rolling onto his arm. I was alert from the second he woke up to the second he went to sleep. My nervous system never got a break.


The Decision I Didn't Want to Make

I had been hoping that by Friday, when we saw the orthopedic doctor, he'd have a hard cast and we'd have a clear path forward. I'd been mentally calculating: hard cast, swelling down, pain managed, he'll be fine with my parents for the weekend.


The swelling hadn't gone down enough. They wanted to wait until Tuesday for the hard cast. Which meant no trip. No conference. No three days of podcast editing and business planning and being in community with women who get exactly what this work is.


I was genuinely devastated. Not in a dramatic way — just in the quiet way you get when you've been really looking forward to something and it disappears. The work stuff I could reschedule. What I couldn't get back was the community piece. The people I only see there. The inspiration that comes from being in a room with other podcasting moms who are building something and believe in what they're doing.


But my gut was clear. I needed to stay. Passing the level of anxiety I was carrying onto my parents for a weekend while my husband was still away didn't feel right. And I've been trying to lean into my gut this year — in business, in the podcast, in life. This was one of those moments where it was actually easy to hear. It just wasn't easy to follow.


One Week Later

We got the hard cast on Tuesday. And then the following Thursday, Bode had dental surgery at Lurie's — full general anesthesia, a root canal, possible extractions on his two front teeth, fillings, and the discovery of an extra tooth that had been quietly causing crowding since he first started teething.


I had known this was coming for months. He cracked his front tooth at two with a wooden sword at the Renaissance fair — a story that is very on-brand for us — and what started as a cosmetic crack became a cavity magnet over the following year. Add in the genetic predisposition I know he has from my side, and we found ourselves scheduling surgery.


He was a trooper. He always is. I was a wreck in the way that only parents understand — holding it together because he needs you to, and falling apart quietly when he can't see.


The Part That Hits After

Here's what I'm still sitting with: the emotional weight of the last two weeks didn't land while it was happening. It hit when it was over.


That's my pattern. Survival mode in the thick of it, then a kind of collapse when the pressure releases. This past weekend I just needed to lay in my bed, watch something, and let my body catch up to everything it had been holding.


I don't know if that's the healthiest rhythm. I'm going to work through some of it with my therapist. But I also wanted to ask — because I genuinely want to know — what do you do? When you've been in survival mode and the crisis has passed, how do you come back down? How do you decompress your nervous system when it's been on high alert for weeks? What does that look like for you?


Drop it in the comments. Send me a message. I'm taking notes.


What's Coming Next

I don't want to end here, because there is genuinely so much I'm excited about.

Season Five is coming, and I could not be more fired up about it. The theme is Moms Making Impact — and I want to be clear about what that means, because impact doesn't have to be global or viral or headline-making. It can be your neighborhood. Your community. Your family. The ripple effect of one woman deciding to build something or fight for something or show up differently.


The guests we have lined up are going to take your breath away. Moms creating safe havens for other mothers. Moms working abroad. Moms in politics fighting for legislation that protects women and children. Moms building communities from the ground up because they looked around and saw a gap and decided to fill it.


I have never been more inspired by the stories we're about to share.

And there's more coming — a newsletter, potentially some private episodes, and continued investment in community building that I've been wanting to do for a long time.


If this podcast has meant something to you — if any episode has landed, made you feel less alone, given you something to think about — the best thing you can do right now is share it. Share it with one person who needs it. Leave a review. Subscribe. Tag us. Every single one of those things helps these stories reach someone who's ready to hear them.


Thank you for sticking with me through the last two weeks. I'll see you next episode.


HOW TO CONNECT WITH JESSICA






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