Marnie Madras is a mother of four and the founder of Rumbly, a modern pregnancy box subscription curated for the woman you are and the mom you’re becoming.

What started as an idea in her third pregnancy when she felt nothing more than a vessel, launched in 2022 to help women navigate the transition to motherhood by prioritizing themselves throughout the whole journey.

The health and development of the baby is always the number one priority for doctors, family, and friends—and mama, of course. But Marnie found that 83 percent of women reported not feeling sufficiently supported during pregnancy—a statistic and narrative she set out to change with Rumbly.

We love Marnie’s mission behind Rumbly because we share in her passion to support the mother throughout the entire perinatal journey—not just the baby.

Read on for all the dish on motherhood, the perinatal journey, and all things Rumbly.

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Q: What does the “immense responsibility of motherhood” mean to you? And, how was that shift for you when you were a first-time mom?

A: Hard. It’s still hard. I didn’t start having kids until my early thirties. But, growing up, I don’t think you really even feel a responsibility for yourself. You’re in such a kind of selfish stage, almost just trying to figure out who you are. And it feels like, once you become a mother, you kind of stop that figuring out who you are and move to figuring out who you are as a mom—and, with that, the responsibility. For the first time, you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t even realize it was about me before, because it’s not about me now—it’s all about the kids.” I think that’s what I felt, which I don’t think is right—because it definitely needs to be about me, too. That’s part of the core of Rumbly and why it was created. You just feel this twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, heavy load. It’s like wearing a backpack of being responsible for other humans—and loving that responsibility but, at the same time, feeling drowned in it.

Q: Did you always know you wanted to be a mom?

A: There’s a trend now among millennial and Gen Z generations that don’t want to become moms—because people are more open to talking about their experiences on social meda, but focusing on the negative experience in motherhood. For me, I always wanted to be a mom, but I was just never in a rush. I was so happy living my life and exploring but, at the same time, there was nothing more I wanted than to be a mom. It just wasn’t a rush for me to get there. It’s really sad because I felt my universe—all my girl friends and even my male friends—everyone wanted to be a parent. Now, there is a shift where people aren’t sure they want to be parents because they see all these negative experiences of everything that parenthood takes away from you.

Q: What was the trajectory of having now four kids? How did you know you wanted more?

A: I think everyone lays out their futures in their minds, forgetting that things don’t always go as planned. Things are complicated. Things are hard. In my perfect mind, I had three children. Why? I grew up in a big family and I loved it. I loved that I always had friends around, and I wanted to raise a family where I could give my children siblings and someone that could always be there for them too, because I have found a lot of solace in that in my family. So, I kind of knew that before becoming a mom and, when I did become a mom, I never paused to think whether I wanted more. It was just in my life plan. It was like, okay, I have one, I’m absolutely obsessed with you, and I forget any hardships. When is the next one? I just kept going. I would absolutely not change a thing. It’s just something that I would say I had this plan before, I stuck to it, and I never spent time wondering if it was something I really wanted—maybe that’s just because I really truly did. So now I have four and I feel like the luckiest woman in the world and adore them through all those hardships.

Q: Did you question your career? Did you always want to start a company?

A: Before having kids, I was working corporate and incredibly career-driven. I wanted to climb the corporate ladder and be on an executive team and work my way as hard as I could to get there. Having kids—a total shift. It seemed a lot less important than it did at one point in my life. But then, as my first baby was nearing one-year-old, that drive came back—that drive to want to rise to that executive level within a corporation was still inside me and I still felt driven, but I didn’t know how to go about it and I didn’t think it was possible. There was a lot I wasn’t willing to give up to get there. So, as much as I had that, I kind of silenced that part of me. So, I went back to corporate. I had my evenings, my weekends, and I shut down and didn’t care or have to care because I didn’t have the weight of the company on me—and I did my job to the best I could, and that was it. And that was okay. When I came to start my own business, part of me still wanted to get to that executive level and have control and call the shots and have vision and put that vision into the market and see that. I asked myself, “How do I fast track that without going through corporate, but still have the lifestyle that now means so much to me?”

Q: When did you decide you were going to start Rumbly? What was the ah-ha and what was the first step?

A: I had dabbled in entrepreneurship throughout my whole life, so I always had that spark in me. After my first pregnancy, I couldn’t have been happier to be a mom—but something still just felt off. I had a very positive pregnancy experience. I was very fortunate with very little complications—and I just couldn’t figure it out. I spent a lot of time through self-discovery to understand what felt off if I was really so happy, and what I discovered was that I lost myself in that process of becoming a mother. Multi-passionate, career-driven, I loved traveling—all of that went away, and I started to identify myself as only a mother. And, the universe and people around me saw me as mom first and Marnie second. Even when I was in the corporate world, people would constantly be going for drinks after and there was a division because I was a mom and needed to go home to my kids after work. It just felt like this mom title was slapped on me.

As I finally realized how I kind of lost myself in the process, I didn’t want other women to experience the same. I started speaking to other women about their experiences. I ran a study and found that 83 percent of women report that they are not the priority in their pregnancies—it’s all about the baby. Doctors care about the baby. Your extended family. You, yourself. You have to watch what you eat, watch what you do, products you use, financial planning, where you live.

I wanted to give women something that could help focus more on them. I learned about pregnancy subscription boxes and fell in love. That’s something that can show up monthly for women to be there for the triumphs and those little moments of celebration and help them celebrate more. Pregnancy is really hard, but there are these great moments and we need to celebrate those harder. And, to also be there through the lows, because there is a lot and pregnancy can feel very lonely and very hard and you’re very lost.

So, I wanted to create a business and a brand that could be there for both that 100 percent focused on mom. When we talk about how you lose yourself in the process of becoming a mother—when you come out of your fourth trimester, your first years of motherhood, and the rest of your life—you start identifying as mom first and don’t put your priorities first. It’s really hard to go back to figuring out how to take care of you. I thought if I could put more attention into that moment the second you find out you’re pregnant, let’s prioritize self-care for the woman you are and the mom you’re becoming—and hope that carries through to your post-pregnancy life.

Q: How do you encourage women to be more present during pregnancy?

A: In every Rumbly box, there are items for inspiration and mementos to help you stay present. One thing you hear so many women say is that when they are in it, it feels like a lifetime and they just want it to be over, they just want to have their baby. You hear them say it was all a blur or they don’t remember it. As time goes on, they blur even more. It’s such a magical period in a woman’s life. I want to help make it more memorable. She deserves it.

Q: What was step one for you? What was the feeling like?

A: It depends how you define step one. For me, step one was letting it out in the universe—telling everyone I was going to do it. That scared me so much more than putting any of my savings into the business. It was terrifying. Because I wasn’t even sure myself. I joined an entrepreneurship community. That gave me shivers. But step one was admitting it. After admission, for me, it was that first payment made towards creating the business. Everyone’s step one will be different. But admission is the hardest thing to publicly admit that this is what you’re doing.

Q: How do you stay in your lane or do you look to other companies for wisdom on your journey?

A: I definitely look at other companies. The first thing to note is that pregnancy subscription boxes aren’t a “thing.” You may have heard about it, you may have not. A baby registry is a “thing.” A pregnancy subscription box is not at that level. I hope it is, because I hope that women want to invest in themselves or they want to ask someone to gift it for them because they want something to show up to light up their pregnancy every month and make it a better experience.

I look at other companies to learn from them and what makes them so successful, but I also spend a lot of time just looking at other companies that inspire me—because regardless of your product, there’s a lot of principles from a business perspective that you can apply to your business. That’s also how I learn. I don’t have an MBA or a degree in entrepreneurship, so I learn from other people and networking and social media and subscribing to newsletters.

Rumbly has a specific mission and identity and purpose and story—and there is no swaying it. As much as I get tempted by shiny object syndrome, I don’t get tempted to change the core identity of who Rumbly is, because that is Rumbly and, if I start to change that, it’s no longer Rumbly.

Q: How much clarity did you have before step one, and how much has Rumbly shifted course?

A: I didn’t have anything when I started it. I knew what I wanted to do and I knew how I wanted to make women feel. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes groundwork of coming up with Rumbly’s unique position and how I could put those puzzle pieces together. So I didn’t really have it all mapped out in my head. I didn’t have a business plan. I knew I would have to pivot and be open. That is something that is forever in a company. You get that once you start listening to your customers, your fans, your audience, your listeners. It hasn’t swayed that much since the initial map or puzzle of what Rumbly should be. Through growth, I know there are a lot of opportunities I’d like to explore. It’s just part of the ride. You set course and, as you grow, you evolve pretty naturally—as we do as humans. At the core, you are who you are, but as you grow, you evolve—in motherhood, in humanhood, and in everything.

Q: What does a work day look like for you as a mom?

A: I prioritize and work my work schedule around my childcare. I love that I’m able to do that, and it was one of the reasons I was really excited to go into entrepreneurship—that I could 100 percent control and manage my schedule.

During the day, once my kids are all in childcare and hopefully none are sick—which does happen in the winter here for us probably every week between the four of them—I just go through my day and prioritize what really needs to get done until my kids are out of school. After that, I spend as much time as I can being present with my children. I think that is forever, personally, a work-in-progress of being as present as I can and putting my phone away and trying not to think about work.

But then, I do come back to it. I am a night owl and come back after they go to sleep. I’m actually in my most relaxed state then—once I know the day is done, my children are all sweetly sleeping in their beds, and I can just breathe. I usually eat a second dinner, and then just go at it at anything I really wanted to get done that day from work—and also personal. It’s also my time to read the newsletters I subscribe to. I carve out that time for me-time, so that when I go to sleep at the end of the time, I can relax before I start the new day of unknowns.

Q: What do your kids think about you as an entrepreneur? Do they understand what you are doing or do they talk about it?

A: So, my kids are really little—8, 6, 3.5, and 11 months. My six-year-old thinks it’s cool that I’m a “mom boss.” When she discovered that I’m a boss, it was really amazing. There was kind of a pause on her and a pause on me, which also made me feel really good. She doesn’t understand it as much, but she thinks it’s really cool that I take charge of and have created a company. My son, who is eight-years-old—I don’t actually know his thoughts on it, but you hear a lot of women say they want their daughters to grow up and see them in these big decision-making roles—but actually, what I find most interesting is not for my daughter to see me like that, but for my son to see me like that—to see that women are in these roles and for him to look up to it in that way so he doesn’t just see that men are in these roles. I want my daughter to feel that she is limitless in what she can do, but I also want my son to see women in power.

Q: What do you have the most fun with when you’re curating products and what goes in the boxes?

A: The most exciting part for me is, when I get a customer order, I personally pack the boxes out at this time. So for me, to pack it out knowing that it’s going to put a smile on a woman’s face and to give her dedicated time that feels like it’s just for her to be present in her pregnancy journey—to feel like she matters so much, to help make sense of things that are going on and that she’s feeling, and to make her feel less lonely—there is so much emotion and excitement that I personally have in that moment of packing that box.

The one thing that I actually didn’t want to do when I started Rumbly was curate the boxes. There are seven boxes in the subscription from the first trimester, and then it goes to monthly., Then, I have a range of one-time gift boxes that are all themed to certain milestones in your pregnancy journey. It was a lot to think about how I was going start it. There are so many products. What goes in what? When I was doing it, I wasn’t pregnant at the time, so I was going on memory. It was very overwhelming and I was looking for someone to help me curate all of those, which didn’t happen, so I went after it myself. Once I started actually curating them, it became like a lot of things where you’re like “oh, I can do this.” I put so much thought and care into every single item that went into the box. It wasn’t just to get women to get the box and have some products in there; it was making sure every item is useful for the entire pregnancy, or even postpartum.

So, the most exciting part was every single item and every partnership I made, every brand partner that went into that box. I have Rumbly-exclusive products that I ended up creating because they did not exist on the market, and that was among the scariest things I have ever done and the most thrilling—to actually create your own product that you know other women could really benefit from.

So, I can’t pinpoint exactly. To me, there’s just so much excitement in everything in Rumbly from getting that product out—every product, every box, every item—into the hands of a mom to be.

Q: What exclusive products did you create and how long did it take you?

A: Not as long as it feels. So, for each product that I’ve created, honestly, it was probably max six months—but felt like six years when I was making it, because you’re just so excited and anxious and just want to get it out and know what you want, but there’s a lot of back-and-forth and refining.

One of my favorite Rumbly products is a countdown milestone calendar. There are a lot of calendars out there that track how big the baby is, whereas the Rumbly calendar is all about the mom. I absolutely love this product because each week is focused on the mom and what she’s going through—her story, her experience, her journey, her insights, and facts and prompts. Everything is focused on her.

Another thing I created was a pregnancy folder. It’s this really chic felt folder and organizer with two frames to put ultrasound pictures in, tons of pockets to put pamphlets in, hospital and ultrasound requisitions, all your papers and forms that you need to fill out for your doctor or midwife, a slot for a card for any prenatal appointments you have—it’s your all-in-one, go-to pregnancy folder and it takes you through your entire pregnancy, even after once you’re at the hospital or at home for all the paperwork you have to fill out after.

When I was pregnant, there wasn’t really something that existed for that. Sure, I could have just bought a folder, but there wasn’t a pregnancy-specific design for that and I had stuff all over the place. I had ultrasound photos in my nightstand drawer and all these papers in the kitchen. I would come home from my appointments and just stuff them everywhere.

Q: How did you choose the name Rumbly?

A: Rumbly is that feeling in your tummy—and motherhood and pregnancy is all of these kind of contradictory feelings where you feel you love it and you hate it, that feeling of being unsure, but also excited. Rumbly is also about trusting your gut, so it’s the butterflies of the unknown. But it can also relate to the kicks we first feel in pregnancy and the first signs they’re in there. So Rumbly really represents that.

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This blog post was written based on kozēkozē Podcast Episode 353: Rumbly with Marnie Madras.

If you’d like to listen to the conversation first-hand, tune in here.

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