Bonus: More Burning Questions Answered, Part 2

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Shanna Micko: Hey, everyone. Welcome to part two of the Big Fat Positive bonus episode where we answer listener questions that you guys sent in to us for our Checkin’ the Inbox segment. We have a few more questions to answer and we are really excited to get to them. So let’s get started.

Laura Birek: All right. Let’s keep going. So we have a question from Cass. Cass says, “I’ve been trying to conceive for a year and a half, and there’s been a few small hiccups in my blood work, and my OB has suggested IVF as the next possible step. I’ve heard someone mention IVF in the podcast, and my husband and I are close to beginning that journey ourselves. I know it’s all individualized, but can you share a little bit about what the journey was like for you where both children conceived through IVF?” Shanna?

Shanna Micko: I guess that question is for me. Well, first off, I talk a lot about this in episode 21. I kind of share in depth about the journey. So definitely check out that episode if you want to hear a lot about it.

Laura Birek: The title is When Getting Pregnant is Hard AF if I recall.

Shanna Micko: Yes, because getting pregnant for me was hard AF and for me, it started with a couple years of infertility, and then I had a miscarriage, and then I was just like, I need to go see a fertility doctor. 

Luckily, my first try with Clomid, which is as a fertility drug, helped me get pregnant with Elle. Then a couple years went by, I had another miscarriage and by that time with my history of infertility and my history of miscarriages and my age, I just was like, I don’t want to mess around with this anymore and I decided that I wanted to look into IVF. So I went to the doctor, and that’s what he suggested for me too and I was just so gung-ho about it. Once I made my mind up, I was just like, we’re doing this despite how intimidating it sounded and what a long journey it sounded like all the needles and everything that was ahead of me. I just decided to take it day by day and just always have the attitude of, well, I’m just going to try, I’m just going to go to the doctor and get a consultation. We’ll see. I’m just going to start taking these drugs. We’ll see if I produce any eggs. So I think kind of having an attitude of like, I’m just going to go for this and see what happens really helped me. Otherwise, I probably would’ve never done it because of fear. So to answer your question: only one of my children is conceived through IVF. The other one is conceived through a fertility drug called Clomid.

Laura Birek: It just occurred to me that maybe she meant both of our children, like my child and your child.

Shanna Micko: Maybe.

Laura Birek: I should say I didn’t need any help from a fertility doc to conceive my child.

Shanna Micko: Humble brag.

Laura Birek: Honestly, but that’s the thing. There’s no bragging about it, because it has absolutely no reflection on your worth or value as a woman or your ability to mother. It’s just like stupid roll of the dice of whether you can get that egg and sperm together and keep it nice and warm. It’s so amazing to me and I do think that there’s so many people who go through fertility treatments and don’t realize how many other women are going through it, because it’s still shrouded a little bit in secrecy or people aren’t shouting it from the rooftops. So I think that it’s great that you are talking so openly about it, because so many people go through this.

Shanna Micko: Definitely. I will say, when I recorded that episode 21, I remember being totally nervous. I just felt embarrassed at that point that it had come to that and I was scared to talk about it. I didn’t want to jinx anything. I was so nervous about the pregnancy and now that CeCe is almost a year old, it’s just like I’m in a completely different place with it. Once you go through the whole process and you have that baby and you realize that it’s not any different than the baby that you had without IVF or any different from your friends babies, it’s just amazing that the science could help you create this child. It just moves me to tears almost and so I can speak about it now with so much confidence and enthusiasm and I do think that if your doctor is suggesting this, you might want to explore it. It’s not an easy road, of course. But now that I’ve come out the other side and I have my baby, I’m so, so grateful and just so glad that I went through it and honestly, all the needles are distant memory now. Everything about the process is kind of a distant memory, except the wonder and joy of having the baby.

Laura Birek: Aww, so Cass, good luck with everything. Keep us posted and thank you for listening.

Shanna Micko: All right. We have a couple questions from Whitney. Her first question is, “How are your babies sleeping now? How many and how long are naps?” Good question. Laura, you have been a nap champion. Why don’t you update us on what’s going on with you guys and sleep?

Laura Birek: Yeah, so as people know, if they’ve listened to earlier episodes, naps were not always our jam in this house. I love naps, but my baby was not into them at first. He would nap like max 30, 40 minutes and oh God, it would drive me crazy and I never knew what to do. But once I started sleep training, which I talked about in episode 55 and 56, it just changed our naps completely, because once you completed nighttime sleep training, we could do nap training, which is like sleep training, but for naps and it worked like a fucking charm, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: That’s amazing. I’m so glad.

Laura Birek: Me too. My baby is on two naps now. We went down from three naps to two at about six months old. I could just tell that he wasn’t really going down for that third nap very easily and it was starting to interfere with his bedtime. So I switched into two naps and that’s been working like gangbusters. He will pretty reliably sleep an hour and a half to two hours in the morning and then like another hour and hour and a half in the afternoon and it is glorious and I love it so much. This is on top of him sleeping 11 hours at night. This is not humble bragging. This is straight up bragging and I know there’s a lot of people out there who would kill for a baby that slept like this and I know it’s a combination of him just being a naturally good sleeper and then me doing the sleep training on top of it. I will say I used Taking Cara Babies. We’ve talked about it. There’s links on our website that you can find and I thought she was a genius. I just would follow her to the end of the earth and yeah, because my guy is just sleeping so freaking well now.

Shanna Micko: Through all the drills and jackhammers and everything out in your backyard.

Laura Birek: Dude, yes. We’ve been doing all this construction in the backyard and they were literally jackhammering right outside his door breaking up concrete.

Shanna Micko: That’s crazy.

Laura Birek: He slept through the whole thing. I could not believe it.

Shanna Micko: This is the white noise.

Laura Birek: I know. It was just additional white noise. I will say that we double up the white noise. We have a little white noise machine and then we also turn the Sonos on to… I have this track I found called Deep Pink Noise for Baby Sleep and it’s almost like an airplane hum. It runs really, really low. So I layer the two white noises. I don’t know if that’s overkill, but I do it.

Shanna Micko: Well, it works. My baby’s pretty much on the same nap schedule to answer question how my baby’s napping too. 

We do the white noise, we have blackout curtains, we make the room dark. Those are our golden tickets to naps.

Laura Birek: I have to say, I’m really pretty strict about being home for the first nap. The second nap we can do in the car if necessary, but he really does well if we’re home. So the nice thing about being on two naps is that you have like a big sort of lunch window where you can go out and do something. I don’t want to go down to one nap. I know it’s going to happen eventually, but then they’ll be napping like straight through lunch hour, which…

Shanna Micko: That’s so true. I forgot about that.

Laura Birek: Anyway, I’m enjoying this while it lasts.

Shanna Micko: He’s happy to get happy hour instead.

Laura Birek: Ooh, happy hour. Yeah, so things are going great. Thank you for the question, Whitney. You actually had another question, which I am really curious about. Here it is. You said, “I’m looking for tips and ideas for a first birthday party. Since your babies are just a bit older than mine, by the time the episodes come out, I would love to have some tips on this.” Shanna, you’re right in the middle of planning this birthday party and I am actually just getting started for my baby. So you talked about it briefly on the last episode.

Shanna Micko: Yes, I have thrown a first once birthday party before for Elle obviously and I would say that my tips are, if possible, keep it small. I feel like Elle was very overwhelmed by her first birthday party. We invited a lot of our adult friends, friends she hadn’t seen in ages or didn’t even know and she saw one of them and just started freaking out crying and spent the first half of the party crying and was just like, what are we doing? Why are we here? She got better as the party went on and it ended up being really nice and stuff. But this time around we’re going to try to do it a little bit smaller, although I think it will still be chaotic, because there are going to be some older kids Elle’s age that will be there kind of running amuck. So I don’t know what that’s going to be like.

Laura Birek: Yeah.

Shanna Micko: Other tips. Do it at a time that’s not during nap time. I’m doing it from 11 to 1, because that’s kind of her wake window. I guess is what you call it. Right, Laura?

Laura Birek: Yeah, wake window.

Shanna Micko: Definitely make sure that they’re not too sleepy and feed everyone if possible. If you’re into this kind of thing, provide a little beer, a little sangria, a little something fun to liven up the kids’ party a little bit.

Laura Birek: Totally.

Shanna Micko: As far as activities, I don’t even know if I’m going to plan activities for kids or if I’m just going to say the activity is eating cake.

Laura Birek: I think that’s enough. Also, kids play with each other. If there’s another kid there, there’s your activity.

Shanna Micko: Exactly.

Laura Birek: I’m having a whole thing with planning my baby’s first birthday party, which is our house is small and everyone’s RSVP’ing yes, which is so great. Family is coming in from out of town, but that means that I think we’re going to have to move it to another venue. So I think we’re going to have to lay down some cash to rent a place, because I was just going to do the park, but it’s January. Even if it’s not raining, it’s going to be cold and the grass is going to be damp. I just don’t know. I think we’re just going to throw money at the problem and rent some kind of play area or something.

Shanna Micko: I think that’s a good idea. You don’t want to stress about it.

Laura Birek: Yeah, it’s definitely easier to throw money at the problem and then other people clean up.

Shanna Micko: But if you don’t have a lot of money to spend, you can also DIY a lot of stuff. The park does work. You know what I mean? You can make decorations, you can make food, you can make cake. There’s so many fun things you can DIY too.

Laura Birek: I would 100% be at the park if it wasn’t an early January birthday.

Shanna Micko: Also, because we have the experience of our friend, Jen, whose son’s birthday is also in January and his first birthday at the park did get rained out and they had to last minute move it to their apartment.

Laura Birek: That’s right. Their apartment at least was on a flat. It didn’t have a million stairs going up to it. My problem is that my house not only is small, but it’s kind of like a toddler death trap and I just fear. We’re up on a hill and there’s stairs and there’s like terraces that are somewhat unsecured. Also, we have all this construction going on in the back, which is supposed to be done by then, but it was supposed to be done six months ago. This is my problem, but next year I think we’re going to have it low-key, because I don’t need to throw a gigantic party for him. We’re just celebrating, but it’s really nice that everyone wants to come and celebrate with us for him.

Shanna Micko: They’ll both be fun.

Laura Birek: I’m excited for CeCe’s first birthday party. I’ve got my rainbow gear all picked out.

Shanna Micko: Yay. Thank you.

Laura Birek: I can’t wait to see your cake.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, Whitney, let us know what you end up deciding to do for your baby’s first. We want to hear all about it.

Laura Birek: Hey, should we take a break and come back with more questions and answers?

Shanna Micko: Let’s do it.

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Shanna Micko: We’re back.

Laura Birek: So our next question is from Emily. It’s an audio question, so I’m going to play it. Here we go.

Emily: Hi, Shanna and Laura. So I have a request from you guys. My name is Emily. I’m from Iowa. I’ve been listening to you guys for about two or three months now once I found out I was pregnant. So I’m a little over three months pregnant now and I was wondering if you guys could do some sort of segment or talk about things that surprised you about birth or motherhood. I am a first-time mom obviously and I have no idea what to expect. Okay. Maybe this is common sense, but maybe the segment could be called like not so common sense things or something, because it’s the things that no one tells you, but everyone goes through them. So like how do they check your cervix? How frequently are you supposed to breastfeed? Things like that and maybe they tell you that in the hospital while it’s happening. But would be good for moms to be to know as well as parenting tips or parenting things that you’re “supposed” to know but you don’t know. So just an idea. I love you guys’ podcast. You guys are the best and can’t wait to hear somewhere.

Shanna Micko: I love this question. Thank you, Emily, so much, because basically everything caught me off guard with giving birth. I just had this vision that I’m just going to walt out with my adorable baby and just love it forever and never have any issues. So there was a lot of things and for me it all started when my water broke. That was the first thing that was like, whoa, that’s unexpected. It can happen obviously anytime. I’m sure we’ve seen it in the movies. My water broke at 4:00 a.m. This is the first time around, because my second birth was a planned C-section. So the first time around it was not. So it might not be common sense what it feels like to have your water break.

Laura Birek: Yeah, I’m curious. I didn’t get this experience.

Shanna Micko: This might be TMI.

Laura Birek: No such thing on this podcast.

Shanna Micko: This is true. Basically, I don’t know if you ever have a really heavy period and you kind of just feel like a gush of something down below. It’s kind of like that, but even more intense, because it’s just like a lot of liquid. It was so intense. It woke me up from my sleep. I was just like, whoa, what’s going on? Then it just kind of leaks out of you. It pours out of you. 

So the whole ride to the hospital, I had to sit on a hand towel, because it was like, I could never wear. The other thing that caught me off guard of that whole experience was how much my body was instantly shaking. I don’t know if it was nerves, adrenaline. I’ve heard this from a few people now that it’s common to full body shiver and shake maybe just after your water breaks or just the whole anticipation of it was really strange to me.

Laura Birek: Interesting.

Shanna Micko: That could happen.

Laura Birek: Were you past your due date? I don’t remember.

Shanna Micko: No, I was about two or three days before my due date.

Laura Birek: Oh, wow. I think it’s a smaller percentage of people who have the like dramatic amniotic fluid gush like you have. I think it’s more common for people’s water to either just not break at all or just have like a trickle if I remember my BabyCenter research.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, I think it’s like 10% of people they say on average. The other thing I did not realize until my water broke is that once your water breaks, you need to give birth within the next 24 hours basically, because the amniotic fluid is coming out and not around the baby anymore. You really need to get to the hospital and get that baby out, which is part of the reason I ended up having a C-section after 20 hours of labor, because I was about to reach that 24 hour point and I was running out of fluid. The nurses were actually pumping my vagina with fake amniotic fluid.

Laura Birek: I didn’t even know they could do that.

Shanna Micko: They di trying to keep the baby afloat in there and it didn’t really help. She was still distressed.

Laura Birek: It didn’t work in the end.

Shanna Micko: It didn’t.

Laura Birek: I’m pretty sure it’s an infection risk too: the 24 hours? It’s not just about the amniotic fluid being low, but that there’s a big infection risk.

Shanna Micko: Because there’s a breach in the amniotic sac and so the infection stuff can come in. Speaking of that, I’ll transition into checking the cervix. I know a lot of nurses and doctors now don’t want to check it too often, because what it involves is the nurse sticking fingers up inside of your vagina to check your cervix and see how wide it is. So apparently if they can put in two fingers, it’s like two centimeters. That’s how they do it.

Laura Birek: That sounds excruciating.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, it is.

Laura Birek: I say really, because I didn’t ever have my cervix checked. There were other benefits, but one of the main benefits of having a breach baby from like day one essentially was they never bothered checking my cervix, because they’re like, what’s the point? You’re not giving birth that way. We don’t need to check it.

Shanna Micko: Right.

Laura Birek: Was it painful for you?

Shanna Micko: No, no, no. It’s not painful. I was used to it. It’s kind of just like having a transvaginal ultrasound: putting something up there. If your cervix is dilated, it’s not going to hurt to jam a fist up there.

Laura Birek: I don’t believe. I’m still like, I don’t know about that.

Shanna Micko: But mine never dilated past like one centimeter. So also I don’t have a lot of experience with it. That’s another reason I needed my urgent C-section as I wasn’t dilating.

Laura Birek: Did your doctor check your cervix before you went into labor or before your water broke?

Shanna Micko: Yes.

Laura Birek: He did.

Shanna Micko: The couple appointments leading up to the birth, she would check and see. I was never really dilated at that point. Some funny stuff turned out.

Laura Birek: Well, I don’t have any experience with labor, because as I mentioned, my baby was persistently breached, so I just went straight into the C-section. I talked about that a lot. So you can go back and listen to my birth story if you’re interested in that. But I will tell you that there are a lot of things about breastfeeding that I was very caught off guard about.

Shanna Micko: Yes, tell us.

Laura Birek: So the first was the duration of breastfeeding. I didn’t realize how long it took to breastfeed in the beginning. Someone told me of course once the baby came. Initially, they say you should do 20 minutes on one breast and 20 minutes on the other and that’s every two hours. You hear from your friends like, “They have to feed every two hours.” What they don’t tell you is that’s from the beginning of breastfeeding.

Shanna Micko: Of the session.

Laura Birek: Yeah.

Shanna Micko: I was told every two to three hours and you know me, I took it to three hours.

Laura Birek: You took it to three.

Shanna Micko: Just so you know, that’s also possible.

Laura Birek: Sure. Every two to three hours. But it starts when you first begin the breastfeeding session. So if your breastfeeding can take 40 minutes, you don’t actually get two hours between the sessions or whatever. You think I have three hours. You don’t have three hours. You got 2 hours and 20 minutes if you’re stretching it. So that was a surprise. Also, what was a surprise is that that 20 minutes on each boob recommendation is actually not required for every woman. Turns out for me that was overkill. So thankfully I think day one, my mom came in and I started breastfeeding and then I was like, “I got to switch to the other side.” She’s like, “The baby seems pretty full. He seems okay.” I was like, “But everyone says you have to switch.” She’s like, “If you have good supply and the baby’s full, you don’t have to switch and the baby’s gaining weight.” I discovered that our little copacetic relationship there meant we didn’t actually have to switch. So I turned into a one side nurser, which just really helped me and it helped me from having an oversupply, because I think for breastfeeding, this is another thing no one told me is it’s a supply and demand relationship if it’s working sort of normally the way it’s supposed to. But the idea is that your body produces what the baby needs and if your body thinks the baby needs more because they’re sucking for longer than they need to or if you’re pumping after every nursing session, your body’s going to think it needs twice as much milk as the baby actually needs.

Laura Birek: So you’re going to end up with like an oversupply, which is really painful and mastitis and all that stuff. So no one bothered telling me that thing. But the other thing that’s related. We’re talking about switching boobs within a session, but I was totally caught off guard by the fact that you were supposed to start on the other boob every other time. Do you remember learning about that? I didn’t realize. It didn’t even occur to me that if you started on the left side last time, you should start on the right side this time and that’s even if you’re feeding on both breasts and I was like, oh, okay. Then trying to keep track of that. Thank God for apps.

Shanna Micko: Oh, yeah.

Laura Birek: I could not keep track of that.

Shanna Micko: You can’t keep track of that in this newborn state.

Laura Birek: They say put a hair tie on your wrist or my friend Keri even gave me…

Shanna Micko: I thought you were going to say put a hair tie on your boob. That would be painful. That would be really weird.

Laura Birek: Not recommended, but Keri gave me a cute little bracelet as a gift that you could switch back and forth, but then you’re like, did I remember to switch it?

Shanna Micko: Oh, yeah.

Laura Birek: Those were my breastfeeding surprises for sure.

Shanna Micko: I love that. Should I talk about some surprises once the baby’s born and you’re in the hospital?

Laura Birek: Yeah.

Shanna Micko: I had heard about the baby’s first poop, but I was really surprised to see what it was actually like: the meconium.

Laura Birek: That shit is real.

Shanna Micko: It is and it’s so crazy. It’s unlike any other poop they’ll ever have. I think my baby’s had maybe a couple of those, really work out that stuff that’s been sitting inside their intestines while it was inside your body and it’s very black and shiny almost like licorice that’s been melted down.

Laura Birek: Yeah, melted down licorice. It’s that sticky too. It’s so hard to get off of their butt and you’re also like, oh my perfect little newborn and you’re afraid of wiping too hard and then you get this meconium and you’re like, how the hell am I going to get this off?

Shanna Micko: Yeah, you have to be so vigorous on that tiny little baby. Oh my goodness. Another thing that surprised me was how many tests and checks they did on my babies in the hospital. I was not prepared for that. People would just whoosh in and be like, “Okay. We’re taking the baby away for the hearing test.” I was like, “What hearing test? We got to prick her toe for this test and this test.” Do you know what all those little tests were and stuff?

Laura Birek: Yeah, I have a pretty good idea. So it’s interesting they whisked her away, because I don’t think my baby ever left the room. They did the hearing test in the room.

Shanna Micko: They did for one of my babies, but not the other.

Laura Birek: Interesting. So there’s newborn screening, which my mom talked about in the episode we interviewed her, because she’s a geneticist and she was actually responsible for helping expand newborn screening in California and I think nationwide. So what they do is they draw blood and it tests for all these diseases that are really important you find out the baby has right away. One of them is galactosemia. I think it’s what it’s called. So it’s like a baby who can’t process the sugar that’s in breast milk and you need to know if the baby has that, because you need to stop breastfeeding right away. So it’s a fantastic program, because you get to find out all this stuff that you would in the past not know for months until symptoms appeared. So those are really great. But it’s so sad seeing your baby get their little heel prick in the blood. There’s a vitamin K shot. I think that’s right after birth though. There are I think a couple other immunizations. Hepatitis I think is one of them. I’m trying to remember. 

There’s the hearing test of course. That’s pretty straightforward.

Shanna Micko: Is the bilirubin jaundice test standard?

Laura Birek: Yes, because that’s a really big problem with babies and so they come and they bring a little light. It almost looks like a thermometer, right? It’s like a little thing they put on their forehead to see how yellow their skin is basically to see if they have jaundice, because jaundice is a problem that’s very common in newborns.

Shanna Micko: Then of course there’s the personality test. They come in and get the baby: the 10 questions.

Laura Birek: Did this happen to you? You were at Cedars, so it probably did. I was shocked by a photographer coming to the room and saying, “It’s time for your newborn photo session.” I was like, “What?”

Shanna Micko: Definitely.

Laura Birek: At first, I was like, “No, no, no. Get away.” But then I was like, maybe we should and we did it and it actually, they turned out great and then I got my mom to buy them because I was like, I don’t have to drop money on this but my mom will. So we actually have some really great photos of the baby when he was like two days old.

Shanna Micko: Aww, that’s cute. Mine didn’t turn out so good. So I just like screenshot the watermarked versions that they emailed me and I was like, good enough for me. Cheap Shanna.

Laura Birek: I definitely was not prepared for a photographer to show up when I’m like nursing like, huh, what’s happening? But they were actually really great. I actually recommend it.

Shanna Micko: There were a lot of people in and out of the room.

Laura Birek: Oh, God. Endless people in and out of the room. The 4:00 a.m. visits from the nurse and you’re just like, ugh. Being in the hospital is rough. It usually only lasts a couple days, so that’s good. I have another sort of diaper related thing that you would’ve never experienced, because you have girls. I learned the hard way that when you put a diaper on a baby boy you have to point the penis down. If the penis is pointing up, urine leaks all over, because it just sprays up. It’s like they don’t tell you this stuff.

Shanna Micko: So you learned that by trial and error?

Laura Birek: I learned it, because I kept being like, why are his diapers always leaking at the front? Is he too small? What’s going on? Then a quick Google search was like point the peepee down. Okay, got it.

Shanna Micko: No one tells you that one.

Laura Birek: No one tells you. So here we are if you have a boy.

Shanna Micko: Here we are telling other people.

Laura Birek: Point that peepee down and it continues to be an issue. It’s something you can’t sleep on. It doesn’t go away after the awkward thing.

Shanna Micko: You’ve got to figure that one out. Here’s another one that caught me off guard. I knew I would love my baby, but I was shocked when this was the first time around. I was in the hospital, she was in her bassinet and Steve went out to get something from the drugstore for me and I was alone with her for the first time and all of a sudden, it felt like my heart was opening and expanding. In that moment, I know for sure I just fell in love with her so hard and this was after a day probably. So it took like a day and it was just undeniable. I never imagine this type of love could overcome me and it was so fast and hard and it was just like from there on out. I was just like an open wound of love for this baby.

Laura Birek: That’s so sweet.

Shanna Micko: It’s so sweet. I love my second baby to death, but it was a little bit different with her. That feeling did come, but with us it’s more like the love is growing and growing and growing and getting bigger and more and more as she gets older. So I was surprised that it can feel different with different children and probably different women and different experiences.

Laura Birek: I do wonder. I think people don’t realize how common it is to have a baby and then not feel that instant love. All we ever hear about is like the baby came out and I just was instantly madly in love and I never could imagine my life without the baby. Honestly, that’s not I think even the majority. I think for a lot of people it takes longer: a day, a week, a month, a couple months. If you’re suffering from postpartum depression or anxiety, it can take even longer and no one really talks about that, because no one wants to admit like, oh, it took me a while to love my baby. I think for me it was a more of a slow burn as well. The minute he came out I felt so protective of him. Actually, that night I had dreams in the hour I got to sleep that I was literally punching and kicking armed robbers who were trying to break into our house to protect the baby and so I immediately had that mama bear response, but the overwhelming I’m so in love with you, I can’t believe it feeling definitely took a while. I don’t even know if I have a pinpointed moment. I just know that there was a time when I was home and I looked at him and you can almost like feel the happy drugs being released into your bloodstream and being picked up by your neurotransmitters. You’re just like, oh my God, I love this baby so much. I wonder if maybe it’s more common to have it take a little longer with C-sections than if you go through labor, because I’m sure there’s something about the intensity of labor that may create an intensity of emotion afterwards. But I will say, I think it does worry people if the baby comes out and they’re not instantly having that madly in love moment and if it doesn’t happen for you, it’s totally 100% normal and okay and there’s nothing wrong with you and you are a good mom and it will come. When it does, it’s the best and it doesn’t mean you don’t love your baby. There’s a difference between love and in love too. We all know that. There’s like infatuation at the beginning of a romantic relationship and then there’s like the love you have in the long-term relationship with your partner and they’re different kinds of love. They’re both love.

Shanna Micko: Yeah.

Laura Birek: Right. But I do love. I just got it yesterday. I was looking at him and he was just being so cute eating his dinner, like picking it up and putting in his mouth and I just felt almost like a full body tingle. I was just like, I love you so much. It was very hard not to go over and give him smooches and he was eating, so I just had to stare at him like a weirdo.

Shanna Micko: Well, that’s what we’re here for: to be weird to our kids. That’s amazing. Well, thank you, Emily, so much for your question. I think that it was really good for me and Laura to share this information and reflect back on the early days of our babies. It was fun to talk about that and hopefully that’ll be helpful to you guys.

Laura Birek: Yes, good luck with your pregnancy and your childbirth, whatever form it may take. Shanna, I think we did it.

Shanna Micko: We got through all the questions. Yay. But if you do have more questions, you can always reach out to us. We love hearing from you. Laura, where can they reach us?

Laura Birek: We are at bigfatpositivepodcast.com. Also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at BFP Podcast. We also have a Facebook community group. Just search for Big Fat Positive community. It’s a closed group. Request to join. I will add you or you can email us: [email protected]. That’s a great way to send us voice memos.

Shanna Micko: Big Fat Positive is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko and Steve Yager.

Laura Birek: Thanks for listening, everyone.

Shanna Micko: Bye.

Laura Birek: Bye.

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