The idea for Mommy Moxie came in June of 2009. Being married to an ICU nurse, I had waddled up onto the unit to bring my husband lunch while eight months pregnant and happened to catch something going on in one of the rooms; let’s just say it wasn’t pretty and involved a large amount of bodily fluids. I asked him what happened to the gown after patients were done wearing them and he informed me they went to be washed by the housekeeping department. Of course, my next question was, “do they have separate gowns for the labor and delivery unit?”, to which he answered “no”. Ewww! I was not wearing a gown that someone had bled all over, vomited, urintated/defacated or died in! Not on one of the biggest days of my life! I went home and promptly hopped online to see if there were maternity hospital gowns out there, but the prices scared me. I then asked my husband if I could borrow one of the hospital gowns for a pattern, and after a couple of drafts, designed my own gown, based on one approved by the hospital in a pattern that was definitely “me” and that no one had ever worn.
When I was forty weeks and two days, my OB decided to induce. I went in at 6:30 am to the labor and delivery unit, and when the nurse handed me a standard hospital gown, I informed her I had brought my own. I received an uplifted eyebrow, but she said okay and walked out of the room to let me dress. Once I was dressed, the nurse re-entered the room and gasped! She then proceeded to pull all the other nurses on the unit into the room to check out my gown. They asked a lot of questions and a couple suggested that I make more of them. When my OB came in to check on me, she complimented my gown and told me if I ever decided to start a business making them to let her know. During labor, the gown was a dream and the pictures afterwards look great. I couldn’t have been happier-that’s my husband, me in my gown, and our son below.
Fast forward to December of 2009. My son was then four and a half months old and I had been taking him to work with me every day when I was laid off due to the economic downturn. Not wanting to put him in day care, I thought back to when it had been suggested that I start a business making gowns. After a few months of research and development, Mommy Moxie opened on June 7th, 2010 and has been going strong ever since.
Fast forward to 2017…our family had grown with another son, and we were excited to be back in Phoenix. Two days after our boys started back to school, I was in the shower and felt a lump in my right breast, which hadn’t been there the month before. I immediately called my gynecologist, who had me come in for an exam. Although she thought it was nothing, she sent me to the Honor Health Breast Health and Research Center where I had my last mammogram for an ultrasound. I knew by the look on the tech’s face that what she saw on the screen was not good. After much testing, I was diagnosed with hormone positive (ER+ 95%, PR+ 98%) breast cancer on August 22, 2017. In the months following, I underwent a double mastectomy with direct implants, and when the pathology came back as stage 3c (the last stage before you hit stage IV/metastatic), I opted to undergo chemotherapy and radiation. Due to the fact we had been living a lifestyle that had ditched many harmful chemicals and had replaced them with essential oils, clean bath/beauty products and had focused on a healthy diet, I fared better than most throughout treatment.
After my active treatment was finished, I knew I wanted to do something to give back to the cancer community. If I could make it through treatment, anyone can! Here I share not only the products from the Mommy Moxie shop, but also current research, tricks and tips to get you through treatment, my musings and also information about essential oils, supplements, clean bath and beauty products and of course, nutrition.
Thank you for stopping by!