You're Not Just a Mom
For the moms who love motherhood but don't want to lose themselves in it. I see you. I was you. This is the conversation I wish someone had started years ago.
The day I became a mom was both the happiest and loneliest day of my life. I remember my first baby boy coming into the world like a beam of light and a scary thunderstorm all at once. How could I love something so much… yet also feel so isolated and not like… well, me?
There’s a narrative around motherhood. “It’ll change your life for the best.” “You’ll never be the same.” “You lose yourself and find yourself all at the same time.” “It’s the best and happiest thing you’ll ever do!” All things I was constantly told… and every one of those things is true. But no one told me the other half.
When Landon came along, I had just started my company, and for the first time in my life, I felt like everything was clicking. My business was growing. I was growing. Adding a baby to the story was like a wrecking ball and pure happiness at the same time. Beauty and chaos co-existing.
But my story today isn’t about my baby I had 10 years ago. That’s a story for another day. It’s about the second baby I had 19 months ago… and how it brought me to search the deepest part of my soul.
An 8-year age gap. That’s what my boys have. See, I wasn’t the little girl who only dreamed about babies; I dreamed about other dreams and things I wanted to become. Mom was only one of those dreams, not the whole dream. When I found out I was pregnant with Carson, I cried. Not happy tears, but tears of here we go again. I called my sister crying… she was the first person I told. She gets me. She understood my tears without judgment. Ironically enough, I had to drive a car full of teenage girls up to a camp 2 hours after taking 20 pregnancy tests (not joking). That drive with my car full of teenagers was the hardest, because deep down I was freaking out, yet I had to wear a smile on my face and pretend like everything was alright. Which, that’s kinda how being a Mom is... isn’t it?I was happy. We had just moved to Houston for my husband's residency program. My company was scaling, I was working with a trainer and felt my healthiest. I was living my dream life.
That pregnancy test round 2 was an abrupt halt to that life… because my first time around managing both a company and baby brought me to my knees, praying every single night.
You see, no one talks about how hard it is to keep the version of YOU that you love… and the version of Mom, where you give your all to your kids. I wanted both versions the first round, and knew it would be the same with Carson.
I kept my pregnancy a secret from all my clients and employees. No one asks a woman why she’s putting on 10 pounds, so I was safe. I also worked hard to stay small during both pregnancies so I could hide it for most of it. See, I kept it a secret for so many reasons… some I’ve never spoken out loud, but that’s for another story. I think I’m almost ready to tell it.
Part of me was terrified that people would stop seeing me as a founder and start seeing me as "the pregnant CEO." I worried clients would question whether I could still deliver. I worried opportunities would disappear before I even had the chance to prove they wouldn't. You see, no one questions a man on his work ethic when he says his wife is pregnant… but everyone questions the woman.
We don’t get the same congratulations.
But now onto the happiest day. I mean, that’s what we have to say, right?
October 18th. The day my heart grew bigger, and I fell in love all over again. Carson McDown Reber. My second baby boy. He was my heart outside of my body. Nothing compares to that joy; I know that. But with joy comes heartache.
For the next 10 months, my average sleep was under 3 hours a night. I never took maternity leave because when you run your own company… that doesn’t really exist. Trying to balance work and 2 kids with a husband who was literally never home (no really, gone 90% of the time) because of residency about killed me.
I was treading water… doing everything not to drown. But you didn’t see that, did you? You saw happy Bianca, because I’m always happy. I’m an optimist, no matter the situation, and if it wasn’t for my habits ingrained in me… I would have drowned.
The truth is, there were days I questioned if I was failing at everything. If I answered emails, I felt guilty for not being with my boys. If I put my phone down to play with my boys, I felt guilty for the work piling up. No matter where I was, I felt like I was disappointing someone. Most days... that someone was me.
Carson wasn’t the problem. I never use my kids as an excuse for anything. The problem was I was trying to fight for 2 versions of me. The Mom side, and the Bianca side. I wanted to be a present Mom, but also not forget about another very important little girl… me. She had dreams. She had goals. And a baby shouldn’t take that away, right?
I wasn’t fighting motherhood.
I was fighting to keep Bianca alive.
What scared me wasn't motherhood. It was waking up five years later and realizing I had forgotten who Bianca was. That the woman who dreamed big, built companies, loved to travel, spoke on stages, and believed she could change the world had quietly disappeared while everyone applauded me for being "such a good mom."
I felt like every day was a battle: be there for my baby and company, and be judged by everyone while doing it. What surprised me most wasn’t criticism from strangers.
It was how often the loudest expectations came from other women.
“She’ll regret working.”
“She’s choosing her company.”
Eventually, those voices became my own. I listened. So I tried to juggle both for over a year with little help and no sleep. I was the “there for my kids 24/7 Mom” and the badass CEO, Bianca McDown Reber. And it almost broke me.
I’ll never forget one night. Carson had finally fallen asleep after hours of crying. It was nearly 2 AM. My laptop was still open with work I hadn’t finished, there were bottles in the sink, Garrett was on night shift, and I just sat on the kitchen floor and cried.
I stared at the bottles and the messy house and wished, just for a moment, that none of it was mine to clean. I found myself longing for the freedom I had before Carson. How could I possibly think that? I loved my baby more than life itself.
My eyes drifted to my laptop. Emails unanswered. Projects unfinished. I found myself longing for something as simple as one day alone. One day to work on me. To think my own thoughts. To create. To breathe.
And then the guilt came rushing in.
How could I feel this way when I love them so much?
So I wrote.
I wrote about the guilt. I wrote about the pressure of trying to be everything to everyone. I wrote about missing the version of Bianca who existed before motherhood, while simultaneously feeling guilty for even admitting it. I wrote because those pages were the only place I felt like I could tell the truth.
Looking back now, those late nights became my therapy. They reminded me that I still existed underneath the schedules, diapers, client calls, and endless to-do lists. They reminded me that before I was someone’s mom, I was also a little girl with dreams of who she wanted to become.
But you see, as the months went on, I realized something that completely changed me.
It shouldn’t be this hard.
It shouldn’t feel like women have to choose between becoming incredible mothers and becoming the women they were created to be. Somewhere along the way, we’ve accepted this unspoken belief that if you fight for your dreams after having children, you’re somehow taking something away from them. As if ambition and motherhood are competing forces instead of two parts of the same woman.
I don’t believe that anymore.
I believe our children deserve mothers who are present, yes. But I also believe they deserve mothers who are alive. Mothers who are curious. Mothers who create. Mothers who chase purpose. Mothers who show them what it looks like to become everything God created them to be.
Those journal entries slowly turned into chapters. Before I knew it, I wasn’t just documenting my own journey anymore…I was writing the book I wish someone had handed me when I became a mom.
You’re Not Just a Mom was born from those nights.
But somewhere in the middle of writing it, I realized the book alone wasn’t enough.
Women don’t just need another book telling them they’re allowed to dream. They need practical tools. They need community. They need mentors. They need conversations that don’t make them feel guilty for wanting more while loving motherhood with everything they have.
That’s why this has become so much bigger than a book.
I’m building something that I hope changes the conversation around motherhood entirely. A place where women don’t have to spend years trying to reclaim the identity they quietly buried. A place that helps them hold onto it from the very beginning. A place that reminds them that becoming a mom was never meant to erase who they are; it was meant to expand them.
Because I don’t believe becoming a mom was the end of your story. I think it was the beginning of the woman you were always becoming.
Now go chase your potential.
The world needs who you’re becoming, and I’ll be cheering for you every step of the way.