Is There a Perfect Sibling Age Gap? – Ep. 152
May 31, 2021
Listen Now:
In the special segment “Checkin’ the Inbox,” Laura and Shanna answer listener questions about everything from IVF, to sleep training, to sibling age gaps and more! Also, Shanna reports on a very unfortunate “first” for her toddler, and Laura talks about an ingenious way to keep toddlers busy. Finally, they share their BFPs and BFNs for the week. Shanna’s toddler is 2 years old, and Laura’s toddler is 2 years old. Laura’s baby is 12 weeks old.
Show Notes:
- Bat Wings Swaddle Technique Laura's BFP this week is this swaddle technique that keeps her baby from breaking out of his swaddle.
- Chicken Shawarma Recipe This easy and delicious recipe from NY Times Cooking is a favorite in Shanna's house!
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Episode Transcript
Laura
Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. This week, we have our weekly check-ins. We have our special segment, Check in the Inbox, where we give advice on IVF, having two kids, sleep training, and more. And we close with our BFPs and BFNs. Let's get started.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show. This is episode 152. Hi, Shanna. Hey. So just so you know, there is like someone using a chainsaw to cut down a tree behind my office this morning. Oh, good. That's good for recording. Oh, yeah. I was like, great. Fantastic. I'm so glad this is happening right when we need to record. But listeners, I apologize if you hear that. Hopefully they'll stop soon. Hopefully the tree will be cut down very soon. But in the meantime, Shanna, I want to know what's going on with you this week. How are you guys doing? We are fine.
Shanna
At first, I think I need to apologize because I am in the throes of a days-long migraine that is coming and going, and I feel like I'm in a complete fog right now. I'm pushing through. You know, that's the thing about parenting when you have some kind of chronic condition like this is you just have to push through everything. I push through work. I push through podcasts. I push through parenting. So I'm exhausted a lot and I am a bit of a brain fog right now. So if I start stringing words together that make absolutely no sense, you'll know why. We will give you a lot of grace. That sounds awful. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Yeah, it's really a bummer. My poor kids, they're so sympathetic too. It's like, Cici's like, oh, mama, you all better now, mama. And she comes and gives me hugs to try to help me feel better. And they're very sweet.
learning to tolerate when I need to lay down and put a cold pack over my head and eyes. Oh, that's very sweet. Yes.
Laura
But Stella, I'm so sorry you have to deal with that.
Shanna
Thank you. I think part of the reason it came on is that I had a lot of hubbub and excitement this weekend. Luckily, I didn't have much of a headache this weekend when Nana and Pop Pop came to visit. Nana and Pop Pop. So my mom and stepdad were here. Yeah. So that was kind of our big excitement. They were here for four days. We haven't seen them in so long because of the pandemic. And it was really great to reconnect and have them here. And it was so much fun. Oh, that's so great. So they came in from Phoenix. They came in from Phoenix. They drove here. And last time they came to visit, which I think was in October, Cece was terrified of Pop Pop. Oh, that's right. Right. I remember you mentioning that. I reported it on the show. Like she could not even look at him without crying and snuggling in my arms and just needing a ton of comfort.
Well, she's matured since then and she was a lot more comfortable around Pop Pop this time. Oh, great. She still wanted me to hold her and keep some distance, but she was very curious about him this time, didn't cry. She was like, Pop Pop Pop. And by the end of the visit, she would let him sit next to her on the couch, and we even got a picture of them together on the front steps right before they left.
Laura
I think I saw that super, super cute.
Shanna
Yeah, so Pop Pop was very happy about the progress he made while he was here. One thing that happened during this visit, we have these benches at our dining room table. I think we've talked about them before. We have two chairs and then two benches. And Cece loves to sit on the bench. She doesn't sit at any kind of booster seat anymore. And part of the problem with the benches is they don't have a back and sometimes she falls off. That's a problem. Yeah, that is a problem. This time, she was doing something. I don't even know how this happened, but she fell off the bench, didn't catch herself with her hands and landed flat on her nose on the floor. Ouch. Ouch.
Oh, and she got her first bloody nose. Oh, no. Poor thing.
Laura
Jinks.
Shanna
Oh, so sad to see a little kid with a bloody nose, but she would not let me wipe it clean. She was like terrified that it would hurt, and she was just like, no, no. Oh no, when I was trying so hard to gently get in there with a wet wipe and try to wipe it clean. And finally I was like, oh well, we're not going anywhere. It's pandemic. You can just live your life today with blood on your face. So like the first day of Nana and Pop Pop's visit, she's just got blood all over her nose and her cheeks and like Nana's trying to take pictures with her. I'm like, can you just wait until she's like got a clean face? Like an extra from the walking dead. Yes.
It was so sad. So she just had bloody face the rest of the day. The pain went away pretty quickly. Like she stopped crying and stuff, but she wouldn't let us touch her. Oh man. So that was her day.
Laura
Do you want to know a fun piece of trivia about me? Hmm. I've never had a bloody nose. What? How is that possible? I don't know. I don't know. I just never have once had blood coming out of my nose. Sorry. You don't know how. Even as a kid, you know, because it's a thing kids get a lot. If I recall, I remember like elementary school was like, oh, you know, bloody noses. And I was like, I've never had one. I've never once had one. I don't know. Maybe I don't have like the right blood vessels in there. Maybe that's why I'm stuffy all the time. I don't know. There you go. You've got very robust blood vessels in your nasal cavity. I thought I was going to get a bloody nose the other day because Augie, I was leaning over trying to get his pants on him. And he was kind of crouched down and he just stood up straight into me and like slammed his hard skull right into the bridge of my nose.
Like I thought I was going to get a bruised face and a bloody nose, but no, no, that's good. Yeah, I don't know.
Shanna
Maybe I should become a boxer. There you go. That's a good reason to get into boxing if I ever heard one. That's the number one reason Muhammad Ali is in boxing. Kids would get spontaneous bloody noses as kids, right? Like you'd be sitting in math class and all of a sudden like Chester would be like, oh, and holding his nose and blood would be coming out. And that one I never understood. I was like, what happened? Why did that happen? I got bloody noses as a kid because I would like get in tiffs with my brother. And he would like hit me in the face. I got a bloody nose before from that. But the spontaneous ones always flummoxed me.
Laura
Yeah. And that happens a lot. And they're apparently totally normal. But anyway. So poor CECE, did she eventually get over it and was just like running around like a happy kid but with blood all over her face?
Shanna
Yep, yep, pretty much for the rest of the day. Until Bath, we got to clean it all up. Oh, she's so funny. Okay, and then the last thing, she said something this week that I just had to share. So we were outside and they were playing in the sprinklers and she got cold and she was like kind of shivering. And she comes over to me, she's like, I'm cold and cold and climbs up onto my lap. And I give her a hug and she looks at Nana to tell her, my mama always keeps me safe.
That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. I know. It's, you know, so much of the cute, sweet, funny things they do when they're that little are mimicry, you know, repeating things they've heard before. But I mean, I don't know. I don't. I haven't said that to her. I don't know where she got that. It just really came out of nowhere and out of the moment. And so I was like, basically in tears. And I was like, did everybody hear that? Stop, stop. Did everybody hear that? Say it again. Get it on tape.
Exactly.
Shanna
Let's make this moment weird by stopping, trying to re-enact it. Oh my God. So of course I just snuggled her so long and hard and I was like, you go get cold again. Get cold as much as you like and come back to your mama. My sweetie Pa, she's growing up and having her firsts in life and you know, all that jazz. That's so cute and so fun. What a sweetheart. So that's our week. How about you guys? You had a monster of a week last week with all this house whirlwind. Has anything settled down? How are the kids handling it? How are you handling it? What's going on? Yeah, no, things have not settled down. Not at all.
Laura
Oh, no. Absolutely bonkers. I mean, I guess the difference with this week is that like we were home for the whole week for the most part. But yeah, so, oh my gosh, I mentioned that at the end of last week we had a bunch of offers for our house and I'm happy to report that we have accepted an offer for the sale of our house. So, you know, like less than a week after we listed it.
Wow.
Laura
We're now in escrow so now we're in escrow for two houses one to buy one to sell and It's a lot of shit. You have to do to sell it by house It's a very privileged position to be in and I'm very happy for it, but I didn't remember from when I bought this house like all the stuff you have to do like the Inspections and the sewer line inspection and the termite inspector and the appraisal and all this stuff so I We had to give access to all these people to our house. We had to do the main inspection, which takes a long time. And then there was all those things, termites, sewer, et cetera. And the good news, bad news, is that the timeline is very crunched for our buyers, like they offered a shorter escrow, basically. And because of that, we needed to get the inspection done within a week. And because of that, the only time they could actually offer us was like one PM on Saturday.
Oh, that's nap time. Didn't they know? No, they don't have kids. They have no idea. And now in retrospect, I'm like, oh, did we do the same thing to the woman we bought the house from? You know, like you're totally oblivious before you have kids that that is nap time and that that's sort of like sacred time, right? So we had to clear out for the inspection and we're thinking, okay, we have a 1200 square foot house. It really shouldn't take very long, right, to get the inspection done. No, it took three hours. Oh man. Because apparently our buyer is like an engineer and he literally followed the inspector into every room. He followed him underneath the house. Wow. And the good news is that a friend of mine from mommy and me offered to let us just like hang in her backyard basically while we waited. So I just said, you know, forget even trying for a nap.
We're just going to go into her backyard. And she has three kids. She has like a four year old, a two year old and a seven month old. And so her backyard is just like a preschool, basically. Just wall to wall toys, like all kinds of stuff. She had that roller coaster thing you have and they have a swing set and stuff. So we went over and Augie was just like, what heaven have you brought me to? Best day ever. Best day ever. So he didn't care about missing the nap. He just puttered around from like one toy to the other. They had a bunch of toy like ride-in cars.
Shanna
Mm-hmm.
Laura
They had the cozy coop and they had this little like ride-in Mercedes Benz. And I was like, wow, you guys got in Mercedes Benz. And they're like, oh, no, no, no. This was left for free out on the curb. We were not buying that. But yeah, it was really fun. And one of the genius things that my friend Louise, she had an idea of how to keep the kids occupied was she turned the hose on, put it in a bucket with some soap, and was like, do you guys want to clean the car? And so the three kids who were able to walk
were able to just spend, I don't know, it was like 30 minutes cleaning this car, this little Mercedes Benz. They looked like they were little car detailers. I'm going to send you a picture. It's really, really cute. Okay, I sent it.
Shanna
They look like they're straight up in a car wash. Yep.
Laura
Oh my god, that is so hilarious. So if anyone's looking for a new activity for their toddlers, like have them clean things, I bet they would clean an actual car too. They wouldn't get very high, but you could get like the bottom half of your car really clean. You can we've done that with L she loves it scrub everything oh yeah it's a fun activity I'm gonna have to start I'm gonna have to do that okay so that was stressful but fine so we're just like. Basically trying to roll with all these changes and of course Sebastian he's just like along for the ride. Poor little guy. He's basically loving life, though, because he's living in my stretchy wrap carrier. Like he's basically on top of mommy 24 seven these days. Well, not 24 seven. He sleeps at night, but like whenever he's awake and we're like running around, he's he's on me. So that's been fun for him and is sweet for me.
But yeah, it's just been like a whirlwind of inspectors. Oh, notaries. I had to get a notary out. And it was actually pretty great because now Augie knows the word notary and knows inspector and knows sewer line. It's been very good for his vocabulary. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there's not much else to report because we've just been in like house selling and buying land. But I will say there was one funny thing that happened when we were at our friend's house that I wanted to share a fun like little thing that Augie said. So I don't know if I've talked about this on the show, but all of our adult male friends are named Steve. Have we talked about this? I don't know if we talked about it on the show, but I do know that it's true in real life. So our very closest friends are you guys. And Steve is your husband, as our listeners know.
Another very, very close friend of mine is my friend Steve Kim, who I grew up with. And he and his wife, Carrie, who was on our show, they have a daughter who's just two months older than Augie. And so it's been a lot of time with them. And we've actually been spending more time with them because they've been vaccinated for, like, ages because they're health care workers. And so, like, they've come over a couple of times. And so he's seen that Steve a bunch. And then our friend Jen, her husband is Steven. And there's, you know, same route. So everyone's Steve. Like, it's very hard when you're trying to discuss things like, oh, I was talking to Steve and Corey's like, got to be more specific. So this is how you differentiate. I'd last names, last names. Yeah. Yeah.
And you know what's funny is that when I first started dating Corey, before he knew you guys all really well, I'd have to be like, Shanna Steve, you know, like he looks like this, or I'd be like, Jen Steven, you know, I'll be like, Steven, not Steve. And he'd be like, which one Steve goes by Steven and which one goes by Steve. But now he knows. But I say this not because it's all that interesting. I'm sure lots of people have a lot of steves in their life. But when we were over at Louise's house, Augie was in the swing. And Cory had been like pushing him in the swing. And then Louise's husband, Darren, had been pushing like his daughter in the swing and stuff. Anyway, at some point, Augie goes back and wants to get in the swing. And I'm like, I was over across the yard. And I was like, oh, Augie, do you want Daddy to come push you in the swing? And he goes, no, any point.
And he goes, um, um, um, Steve. And we realized he thinks all other daddies are Steve. Oh my God, that's so great. I know. So we're like, oh no, that's Darren. Not every other adult male is named Steve, but that was very sweet. That's very sweet. That's really cute. And it took us a second because you're like, why is he saying, oh, he thinks all adult men are named Steve.
Shanna
Right. Yeah. That makes sense to a little two-year-old brain. I get it.
Laura
Yeah. Yeah. And it was so cute watching him try to figure it out too. He's like, um, what do I do here? How do I identify Steve?
Anywho. That was it for us this week. We just, a total whirlwind and lots of Steve's. Sounds like a good week. Yeah. But should we take a break and come back with our special segment? Let's do it.
Shanna
We're back. And this week's special segment is check in the inbox where we answer listener questions on all kinds of different topics. Laura, I think we should dive right in. I have a question from Kelsey. And I think both of us could probably speak to this one. She says, as things start to open up, will you put your kids in any sports or classes and what type?
Laura
This is a great question and it's one I thought a lot about and I think for me the answer is like yes absolutely please dear god get my kid in the class. I'm talking about my older kid, obviously. Like, my 12-week-old is not exactly... I'm interested in... Actually, though, I do have to say, I am signing myself and my 12-week-old up for in-person, outdoor mommy and me next session. So I guess... Oh, fun! Yeah, they're doing it at the park, and I was like, yes, I want to see people. So we're doing that and yeah, I'm looking into swim classes and I've looked into soccer. And what I really, really want is to find like a gymnastics class for Augie because he needs it. He's like tumbling all over us. Like he likes to climb up us and do flips and stuff. And the kid just needs to get his energy out somewhere.
I'm hoping to find a proper gymnastics class for him so that he can just flip and do whatever he needs to do. But yeah, I'm hoping for outdoors still for most of it. For two reasons. One is it's safer and two is like gets them outdoors. You know, plenty of time to be indoors. So yeah.
Shanna
Yeah. What about you? Same. I want to get both of the girls into swimming. I think that's, well, first of all, super fun. Elle is a water baby. Always has been. I need to get her back in the pool as soon as possible and a safety thing. I want them both to learn how to swim right away. So we're going to look into that. And then I want to get out into some kind of sport soccer or she's shown an interest in karate like I think in one of her books or something. She saw this karate girl chop a piece of wood and so she's obsessed with the idea of being able to chop wood and she makes me like put my hands together like a piece of wood and she's like hi yeah and like chops and. You know just shows me her kicks and all kinds of stuff So I think that she could really benefit from some kind of self-defense class like that.
Laura
Oh, that'd be fun You know Corey was really into karate karate if you really yeah, yeah up until high school Yeah, he was like competitive and stuff. I didn't know that about him cool. You can ask him for advice if you want.
Shanna
Yeah So that's what we have on the horizon. As for CeCe, I'm thinking maybe more generalized class, maybe back to a My Gym or something like that where I could be there with her and do activities and more of a socializing type of thing as opposed to here, learn how to play a sport. Although tiny, tiny person soccer is so cute. So I don't know, maybe I'll get her into that too. Well, you'll have to keep us posted. Yes, I will.
Laura
My barrier right now is like trying to figure out where to do it, because if we're going to be moving, like I don't know if I should do it around here. I'm probably moving 10 minutes away. So I guess it's not that big of a deal if we have to drive from Glendale to Pasadena. It's really not far, but I don't know. I'm hesitant to make plans right now because everything's so up in the air, but I definitely want to get them into some kind of physical activity class.
Shanna
Right. Well, that leads into the next question from Maria. She wants to know, what are some things to do with a very active one-year-old?
Laura
Yes. That was a challenge for me. I don't know about you, Shanna, especially during the pandemic. It was like, I had a just insanely active one-year-old during quarantine. And it was like, what the hell do we do? So for us, one thing that really saved us was what we called the ready set goes.
Shanna
How did we talk about this? No, I don't know what that is.
Laura
It's just what we call running. But like what you would do is he would run down to the end of our like walkway, and then we'd say, ready, set, go or on your market, set, go. And then he'd run to us and we'd like scoop him up and then he'd go back and do it again. And we started doing that in like the baseball field near us, the little league baseball field. And so we just say like, let's do our ready set goes. And basically he would run as far away from us as possible and then run back. It was just making him run.
Shanna
So cute. Oh my God. And they love it at that age. You can't trick him into that for too long in life. But at that age, that's a good one.
Laura
Yeah. What about you? Do you have any ideas for what Maria can do with her very active one year old?
Shanna
Well, my ideas are not helpful because my one-year-old during the pandemic did things like bounce in a freaking bounce house that we bought off Amazon and put my living room. And that's so impractical. But let's see. If there's not a pandemic, you know, like I mentioned earlier, classes like my gym or Jimbury are so awesome to take your kids to because there's a lot of equipment in the room. They can run, play, play in ball pits and climb and do all kinds of stuff like that. Going to parks and playgrounds is obviously a wonderful idea. Getting a little tricycle or like a three wheel push bike is a great way to work off energy. Ooh, I just was reminded of something. Dance parties. Dance parties. Dance parties. Oh, how could I forget?
Laura
We've had so many dance parties. Yeah. Dance parties are my go to if we're like indoors, but we have to get some wiggles out. So we'll just do a dance party.
Shanna
Love that idea.
Laura
Good luck with that, Maria.
Shanna
Yeah.
Laura
Okay, so Jade has a question for you, Shanna. So Jade asks, Shanna, do you have any advice for people who are starting or going through IVF?
Shanna
Great question. I haven't talked about IVF in a while on the show, so this is great. Let's see. Can you remind people your story with IVF? Yeah. So when Elle was about a year and a half, I got pregnant and had a miscarriage. And after the miscarriage, I realized that I had gone through so many years of infertility and two miscarriages and I couldn't do it anymore and I really wanted help. with my fertility. So I looked into a reproductive endocrinologist and got started on the path toward IVF. That was his recommendation for me at my age and where I was in life. And I went through IVF. The whole process took about nine months or so. And that's how I conceived CECE. Cool.
Laura
So what's your advice for people who are about to embark on this journey or are currently in it?
Shanna
Yeah. Well, first of all, it's a very overwhelming prospect. When you're at the beginning, it feels just monumental. Like what are the steps? What am I going to have to do? It's daunting to think about what medications am I going to have to take in the injections and this and that. And I think what really helps at that point is to take a deep breath and take it one step at a time. That's all I could keep doing. Because even in the beginning of going through IVF, I was still like, is this the right choice for me? I don't know, should I be doing this? It feels like such a firm decision in family planning, right? It's like so easy to just spontaneously get pregnant and like there are little decisions made for you. But IVF is like, I'm making a firm decision to grow my family, you know, if I can, if IVF works for me. So that can be very scary.
So I had to take it one step at a time and just be like, well, first we'll just get the blood work. Like that's what it starts with. Just meeting this doctor, getting some blood work, getting the test back. Then you wait and see like what the tests say and then like you get a recommendation of the next steps and every step takes a little while right so you've got time it doesn't happen right away it doesn't happen super fast you time to mentally and emotionally adjust to this idea into this plan. That's a big piece of advice. Another piece of advice is to get acupuncture when you're ready for your embryo transfer. I did not do that with my first transfer and that transfer failed. I don't think that that's exactly why. There's probably a lot of different reasons. I did get acupuncture for the second transfer and just it felt like everything about it felt different.
It felt like it was really helpful. I got so many good recommendations, you know, about this acupuncture. She worked with the IVF clinic, like she actually came into the room and gave me acupuncture right before and right after the transfer. So I highly recommend doing that if you can. That transfer did take and that became CECE. And another piece of advice is to look for support, even if it's online in groups like IVF or infertility groups and Facebook. I joined a mom's group of moms who have gone through the similar thing or were going through it. And it was so nice to be able to communicate with people who'd done it before because no one in my life had ever gone through anything like that. I had a lot of mixed feelings about it. I was scared, insecure. I didn't share it with a lot of people because, you know, infertility can feel like a failure.
So this was a place where the night before I started anything, I took a picture of all of my medications, my needles, my everything. It was like spread out on my bed. I took a picture of it and sent it to my mom's group. And I was like, here we go. Oh my God. And everyone chimed in. They were like, you got this. If you need anything, let us know. And being able to ask questions and get advice from people who've been through it is huge. So look for that support system online if you don't have it in real life. That's amazing.
Laura
That's such good advice. And I remember you were really hesitant to talk about it outside of our very small friend group. Even on the podcast, you didn't want to talk about it for a while. And I think it's so great that you've decided to speak out about it. And I feel like you're so much more comfortable talking about it now than you were just a couple of years ago. And I know that our listeners really appreciate you being candid about it. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And it's so wild to think of that little little embryo transfers now CECE.
Shanna
I know. I have a photo of her embryo because they take pictures of them the day they implant them and they implant the embryo and then they give you this big print out like eight and a half by 11 print out of the embryo they just put inside of you. And I still have that. I'm like, this is my first picture of CECE.
Laura
So wild. That's amazing.
Shanna
It's so wild. It's really cool. It's so cool to think back now, seeing her as this two-year-old and this person in my life, and I'm like, all of that was for her. I didn't know it at the time. I was just doing what my gut was telling me to do, and all of it was for her, so she could be in my life. And I'm going to cry right now. Oh.
It's wonderful. Science is amazing. It's wonderful. No shame if anyone needs to go down that path. It's incredible. Do what you need to do and find the support to get you through it. That's what I have to say. Amazing. Amazing. All right, let's move on to the next question. So we had a lot of people who are asking about the transition from one to two kids. So I think some of our listeners are thinking about having a second kid, Laura. That sounds like it. Everyone's got that baby fever. Uh-huh, very exciting. So we actually talked about that quite a bit in episode 134 in the Check in the Inbox segment. We wanted to put that out there here so you can go back and listen to that if you want to hear our thoughts on that. But we did have a specific question about having two kids that we wanted to answer. So Alyssa asks, how are you feeling so far about the age gap between your kids?
Laura, you're 12 weeks in. What do you think?
Laura
Yeah. I mean, it's a little early to tell. I have to say that, okay, my brother and I are about almost 21 months apart and like my whole life I was like, that's the perfect age gap. Mostly because my mom indoctrinated me into believing that was the perfect age gap, right? But my brother and I are like still super close friends. And we're like, you know, I just thought it was perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. So when I was trying to get pregnant with what is now Sebastian, I was trying to get that like 21 month gap between them. But then the pandemic hit. and time started passing. And so what we ended up with was almost 25 months, like 24 months in change between the kids. And I remember when I got pregnant, I was like, man, I was so disappointed, Shanna. Like it was going to be this huge problem, right? That they were just a little over two years apart.
But I'm here to report that it doesn't really make a difference. And I have to say that I'm very happy with where they are and how they interact and all that stuff, but it is fucking hard to have a two-year-old and a newborn. I definitely was optimistic about that. And two-year-olds are known for their terrible twos and their tantrums. And there's a reason. There's a lot of big feelings, and it's a lot to manage a two-year-old. And then having a newborn on top of that is a lot. It's very extra. But I am really happy about it because I can tell that they're going to be really good friends going for it. You know, like, I love that the age gap is close because I think that they'll be able to really play together a lot once Sebastian just gets a little bit older because even now, Augie, like,
The first thing he wants to do when he wakes up is like hang out with baby brother and lie down on the mat with baby brother and play with baby brother. So I think that that's great. So I hope that hopefully just having that smaller gap will mean that they are lifelong friends. What about you? Your girls are a little further apart in age.
Shanna
Yeah, I wanted a two-year gap, too, because that's what Steve and his sister are, and they're really close. And I knew that about you and Jeff. And I was like, that just seems so great. And that plan went to hell, because I had a miscarriage and then had to go through IVF. So I was set back a year, and they are now about a little under three years apart. And I have to say, I don't see any problems with it. I think it's great. The pandemic, of course, has brought them really close together because they spend every single day together and they've become besties. The age gap doesn't make much of a difference. I think it's just all about when your younger one gets big enough to actually be able to play with the older one, you know? And that happened when she was maybe about a year and a half, even better now that she's over two. She's there like best buddies,
Take them to the playground together and L runs around with the bigger kids and CECE's just tagging right along, running after them and part of the action. And so I want to reassure people that a three-year gap is fine too. I think they can definitely still bond and be besties.
Laura
And I think the moral of the story is that you don't necessarily have control over what the gap is going to be. I think we think like, oh, we'll just start trying at this point. And for you, you had miscarriages and fertility problems. And I had a pandemic. So you honestly don't know what's going to come up when it comes time to You know plan the next steps for your family. So yeah, I Throwing expectations out the window and any gauge gap is good I've heard from people who have like kids who have 15 year age gaps and they're you know, it's great because the teenager loves the baby and stuff So I don't think there's any right answer agreed. Yeah, okay So changing gears Ashton asks what are your favorite toys for infants? And I just want to quickly plug we have a
Gift guide on our website Big Fat Positive podcast comm slash gifts and they are like organized by age So there are in their newborn and infant toys on there that you can see like those are you know a big list of a bunch of our favorites But Sean I thought maybe we could just each like mention one that we really like and then you can go see the rest of them on Big Fat Positive podcast comm slash gifts great so
Shanna
My favorite toy for infants is the musical table. A bunch of different manufacturers make it. I think we had a Fisher Price one, the LeapFrog makes one. There's all kinds. It's just a little table on these little plastic legs. And I think you can even take the legs off. So when the baby is crawling and on the ground, the platform of the table can be on the ground. They can push buttons. Songs and sounds and letters and lots of little things to play with and then when they get older you can put the legs on and when they're practicing pulling to stand. It's the perfect height for them to pull up and stand they can stand there and work on their balance and play with everything on the table. And we've had ours forever, even still sometimes CeCe like goes over and plays with it and practices her letters and stuff like that.
So it's a toy that lasts a long time, has a lot of life in it and was just really wonderful for both of my girls. What about you?
Laura
Mine is like way simpler. I'm going super low tech for my favorite, but it's what's in the front of my mind because I have this 12-week gold. My favorite is the Manhattan Toy Company Winkle toy. You know I'm talking about so it looks like a it's a bunch of tubes wrapped around the cube. I don't know it's just it's so simple it makes a really soft rattling noise. It's the perfect size for little itty bitty hands to like grab and it's also like doubles as a teether. And it's just my favorite because it's inexpensive you can take it everywhere it's you can start using it from like day one. and it doesn't take up a lot of space. So yeah, I'm a big fan of the Manhattan toy.
Shanna
You know what? Just don't ever put it in the dishwasher if you're trying to clean it. I did that with ours back when Elle was a baby to try to like sanitize it and like it kind of warped in the middle and got all weird and stuff. So don't put it in the dishwasher. Good tip, good tip. Ah, all right, moving on. Kaylee asks, when does it get easier? Babe is 10 weeks and still waking every two to three hours. I'm a total zombie. I'm sorry, I understand we've been there. This also is related to Lauren's question who says, is sleep training real or will babies eventually develop and sleep on their own? Laura, why are these questions connected?
Laura
Because when I saw Kaley's question about when does it get easier, my first thought was when you sleep train. And no sleep training is not for everyone. And there's different types of sleep training. There's the firmer method, there's the Gentle method, there's all kinds of ways you can sleep train. But for me, it really changed the game when I was able to do sleep training with Augie. We did it when he was about five and a half months. We did a modified firmware method. You can listen to my whole experience with it in episode 55, and I talk about it in detail. But, yeah, I mean, Kaylee, I'm with you. I know I've talked about how chill Sebastian is, but he's waking every four hours now, which is good, but it's still like I'm fucking sick of it. I'm ready to sleep through the night. It's been three months of just nonstop sleep deprivation, and I get it, you're a zombie.
I am a huge advocate of sleep training because it helps reclaim your sleep, which is important. Maternal mental health is important. It should be prioritized. I hear so many moms not wanting to do anything that might upset their child and just sacrificing themselves and their mental health and their physical health. I'm here to say that you don't have to do that. Obviously, do what's right for your family. But to answer Lauren's question, is sleep training real? I'm not a scientist, and I know that my experience is limited because it worked for my baby. I don't know. Maybe he would have eventually developed full night's sleep on his own without sleep training. I will say that through this podcast, we have a
Facebook group where there's a lot of discussion, I'm in all of these moms groups online and in person, and I pay really close attention to what moms are talking about on the internet and getting to a lot of conversations with people all over, right? And from what I've observed, generally babies don't necessarily just start sleeping through the night. There are some who just do like naturally, but for the most part, like there are a lot of moms I hear from who are like, my baby is nine months old. My baby's a year. My baby's 18 months old and they're still like nursing two, three times a night. They're still waking up a bunch. Like, and they come to these forums and ask, what can I do? And so I will say that like, yeah, it's possible that your baby will just eventually sleep through the night. I'm sure there's a subset of babies that do that.
But my experience is that sleep training is real and it does work. What do you think, Shanna?
Shanna
I think so too. We used a book called The Sleep Easy Solution for both of the girls around five months, four or five months, and oh, 100%, that's when it got easier. Oh my goodness, to be able to sleep through the night is just a huge game changer. Which I know is daunting, Kaylee, because your baby is 10 weeks old, but those couple months are going to fly by and you can start setting the foundation now. Just like Laura has recently started implementing a bedtime routine with her newborn. You can kind of start doing that now and getting them used to the idea of bedtime and then slowly work up to, you know, how to get them to sleep through the night. And yeah, I think it's real too. I don't have anything to compare it to. I only did what I did with my kids, but it worked and it was a sanity saver and I'm a firm believer. Yep, love that sleep training.
Laura
But man, you will not find a more controversial topic. I mean, maybe circumcision. People have very strong feelings about it. So, total respect if it's not for you and your family, but it worked for us. Right. Okay, we have one more question. Shanna, it's a fun one to end on. Okay, so this is actually from another podcast, the chatty mom's podcast, which I haven't listened to, but maybe we'll have to give it a listen. They ask, if you guys could relive one day in the past, which would it be and why?
Shanna
Oh, this is a good question. I assume they're asking a parenting related like reliving one day, not like back when I was on my honeymoon on the beach in Cancun with Steve and no kids. Because that would be a contender. That would be a contender. I love my kids, but damn it. I would love to sit on the beach with a pina colada and look at Turquoise ocean and feel the breeze.
Laura
OK. Whoa. Snap out of it, Shanna. Snap out. Wow.
Shanna
I really went there. OK. Let's assume this is since I had kids, because I have a lot of wonderful days with, you know, parenting. One day that really comes to mind, you were there, Laura, was Cece's first birthday party. I love a party. I love a backyard barbecue get together. That's like my favorite thing in life. We had so many friends over the theme was rainbow. I'm sure I talked about it on the podcast. I made a rainbow layer cake decorated with fondant like all of my favorite things like You know we're in that one day. My baby was a squishy little one-year-old I want to go back and like squishers a little one-year-old and she was so happy that day and all my friends were there and It was just a fun perfect Little one-year-old birthday party and I loved it.
Laura
Oh, yeah, that was a really fun day I want to eat that cake again. Will you make me that cake someday? Actually, no, don't do that. That's too much to ask It was a lot of work, but I can just imagine. Yes, it was fun though Yeah. Okay. What day would I relive? Yeah. I feel like it probably should be parenting related. But, you know, my initial reaction was like my wedding day because it was just so fun. And I wish I could go back and just see all those people again and talk to them. You know, there's a bunch of people I didn't even get to talk to that day. So I'd probably relive my wedding day if we're just doing any old day. But if we're talking about parenting or kid related, you know, I might go back and relive the day I had my C-section with Augie.
Because I was so nervous and just like didn't know what to expect that I think that if I could go back and relive it with like the knowledge I have now. Mm-hmm. I could really sort of enjoy it more. I mean, you know, no one really enjoys getting their abdomen cut open and a baby ripped out of it. But like, you know, I feel like I would pay closer attention to, you know, what he felt like, what he smelled like, you know, all that stuff. Mm-hmm and just sort of really soak it in I was I think I was just a little overcome by anxiety and Everything like you know when they first put him on my chest. I was so nervous. I was gonna drop him You know like now I now I'm an old hat at holding newborn cells I would actually have gotten to enjoy holding him as opposed to just thinking I was going to drop him or smother him, right?
So I think, yeah, I would probably relive that so I could really experience it. And maybe I feel like the same with Sebastian, but that was 12 weeks ago. I remember it pretty well.
Shanna
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, but to be able to go back and hold my babies as a newborn, that's, maybe that's what I would choose, especially Elle, because she's five now. And those little squishy newborn days are so long ago. I would love to just hold her and cuddle her as a little tiny baby. No. Now I'm crying. I know. Oh, my goodness.
Laura
Oh, well, thank you for that question. That was lovely and really nice way to end our segment.
Shanna
Yes.
Laura
But I think we should go ahead and move on to our BFPs and BFNs. Let's do it.
Okay, we are back and we close every show with our big fat positives or big fat negatives of the week. Shanna, do you have a BFP or a BFN for us? I have a BFP.
Shanna
Yeah. This one's been going on for a little while now, so I'm excited to talk about it. Ooh, okay. I have been doing some meal planning.
Laura
Oh, look at you.
Shanna
I know, very exciting in the mom world.
Laura
No, it is very exciting. I mean, that's like aspirational for me. For me, meal planning is it's 5.30 and I realize I have 20 minutes to feed the toddler and it's like, what the hell do we have in our cabinet? That's my meal planning. So I want to hear about yours.
Shanna
Oh, that was mine for a really long time. I was the kind of person that'd be like, oh, I'm going to go to Trader Joe's with the grocery store like day of a couple of hours before dinner and just buy stuff and whip it together, whatever. It was just too much work. We were wasting a ton of food. And I've always wanted to get on track with this. And the pandemic kind of pushed me in that direction. And what really helped was online shopping, grocery shopping, just easily throwing things into the shopping cart online. And the other inspiration was a listener who shared a photo of the whiteboard in her kitchen and she does really kind of simple meal planning with listing out some ideas for the week. It's kind of flexible, like here's what we have available and what we can, what we can put together and make. And so I'm like, okay, I can handle that. So I came about this from a very,
I'm just like sitting there shopping on my phone and I'm like, okay, we have like the same four proteins every week, right? So I'm kind of chicken, like a ground turkey of fish, maybe some kind of beef every now and again, maybe some tofu. What can I do with them that's different, right? And I'm on my phone shopping anyway. I'm like, well, let me just flip to the internet and see like, is there a recipe that like uses ground turkey? Amazing, right? Such a revelation.
Laura
There's this thing called Google and you can find things with it.
Shanna
Wow. I've never thought of it before. But for some reason it seems hard when like you have to go to the grocery store and like go to all these different aisles and like get a one spice from here and one there.
Laura
And you forget like you always forget the one thing that's most important and you're like well fuck like I guess we're just gonna have our like tacos again or whatever. Mm-hmm.
Shanna
Yeah, hot dogs again, girls. Whatever they'd be excited about that. But you know what I mean.
Laura
That's the type of meal planning they want you to do. Hot dogs every day.
Shanna
Hot dogs, mac and cheese. That's all they want, really.
Laura
But I imagine you and Steve could probably use a little more variety.
Shanna
Yes, yes. And more fun. It's fun to cook new things and be creative in the kitchen. So it'll be like, all right, kid-friendly ground turkey recipe. I've come up with sloppy joes, not very hard to make, a real crowd pleaser. Mini meatloafs, you make them in cupcake tins. So you take a regular meatloaf and make it really exciting by making it the size of a cupcake. The kids love that. lettuce wraps, you know, like the kind that you would get at PF Chang's. Like, yeah, I could do that with ground chicken or ground turkey, make those. So I just find a little recipe, throw everything in the online cart that I need, and it's brought to the trunk of my car when I go and pick it up. It's amazing. And then I use my whiteboard, right? I write down my ideas for the week, and it's flexible. It's like, I don't have to have pizza on Tuesday, but it's available there.
I can have it when I have the time to make it. And so I've found that that's a really great way to try new things, add in some staples that we always make and just mix things up a little bit.
Laura
That's awesome. I feel like that's my ideal world is where I can plan out my meals and have all kinds of options for the week and I haven't quite gotten there. I think, you know, I gotta give myself. a little grace. I have a 12 week old. It's not necessarily the time where you can really take on new projects. But you know what I'm always jealous of? I'm jealous of the people who like take their Sunday and make their whole week's worth of meals and they just have them ready to go like pop in the oven. That's the type of meal prep. That's amazing.
Shanna
That's so ambitious. Wow. Wow. I gotta say, that's not my style so much because, A, that's a shit ton of work on Sunday. And then it's like you're just eating leftovers all week. And I can't get myself to eat leftovers off the time anyway. I don't know. That's ambitious though, Laura. I think you can do it if you really want to.
Laura
I was thinking maybe you do all the prep and then it's like just you stick it in the oven, that sort of thing. You know, as opposed to you cook it all. But there's also the people who have like freezer meals ready to go. That's also very aspirational. Listeners, if you guys do this, let us know because like any you have like some surefire way to make it work in my life, send it to me. I want to know because I'm floundering and we end up throwing away so much food just like you said because you forget you have it and then it's like going bad, but you don't want to eat it that night, you know, like a chicken last night. Yeah. Yeah, I feel you. Yeah.
Shanna
And one thing I've learned to do with this is on my whiteboard, I'll write down the date that something will expire. So because we have two refrigerators, which sounds bougie, but look at you. I know. I just had to slip that in there. One of them is out in the garage. It's the old one we used to have in our apartment is out in the garage. So I put a lot of stuff in there and I will forget about it. I have forgotten sometimes that I've got chicken out there or fish, like stuff that goes bad in a couple days. So now I'll write it on the board, like what day it expires. So I know we have to eat it by that day. That's really helpful, too. Gotcha.
Laura
Gotcha. That's exciting to have two fridges. I didn't realize you had two refrigerators.
Shanna
The one in the garage is mostly filled with LaCroix. Not gonna lie. It's my LaCroix cooler.
Laura
That's amazing.
Shanna
But yeah, so that's been a nice thing in our life and we're wasting less food and eating more interesting things. So what's for dinner tonight? Let's see. Let me peruse my list. Tonight, oh, tonight we're having chicken shawarma, which is one of my favorite recipes. It's so easy. It's a New York Times recipe. and you use chicken thighs and you marinate it in like lemon and olive oil and all these delicious spices and you just stick it in the oven for like 25 minutes and boom, it's done. It's the most delicious chicken. Everyone in the family loves it. Serve it with hummus, pita, some cucumber salad or tomatoes or whatever. It's amazing.
Laura
I've heard good things about that recipe. Like I know of that recipe. It's that popular. You know of that recipe. I know of that recipe. Yes. I've never done it. So this must be a sign that I need to do it. I need to cook it.
Shanna
Yeah, you will like it. Yes. Okay.
Laura
I'll do it. I'll do I'll find it. I will cook it and I'll report back. Maybe not tonight.
Shanna
Sounds good. All right. Put it on your whiteboard.
Laura
We'll do.
Shanna
Okay. If I had one. Yes. What about you? What do you got for us? Okay, I also have a BFP.
Laura
All right. And mine is the batwing swaddle technique. Have you heard of this? Oh, no, I haven't.
Shanna
Tell me more.
Laura
Okay, so I've actually been doing this for a few weeks and I just kept forgetting to make it my BFP. But it is a special way of like supplementing your swaddle if you have a baby that's really good at breaking out of the swaddle. So, my baby is still in the snow, he's 12 weeks and he's doing great in the snow, but I've noticed he started breaking out of the velcro that the snow swaddle has. And I should also mention that if they're not in the snow, the recommendation I think is that you only swaddle for eight weeks or until first signs of rolling. I think that's like the official line. I know a lot of people swaddle much past that. I just don't want anyone to like at me for this. Be like, no more swaddles. Like, okay, I know, I know, right? But my baby is going to swaddle in the snow. And the way the snow works is you like strap them into the side so they can't roll over.
But the swaddle is, it's a very cool design. The snow sack swaddle is like you put their little arms down and you just have like two flaps that you velcro together and then you zip them up into this little like sausage, right? But the velcro is notoriously weak. And like if you're in this new mom's Facebook groups or whatever, there's all this talk about how bad the velcro is and how to double swaddle and all this stuff, right?
Shanna
I remember the velcro being terrible. That was my biggest problem with that. She was always breaking out of it and making the whole thing moot point. It was frustrating.
Laura
And apparently they've upgraded the sacks like literally a month after I got my SNU. They've changed the sacks now to have like a bottom piece. Like I don't even know. But anyway, maybe it's better now. But the good thing about this is it's not SNU specific. The video tutorial I saw this is actually being done with like a regular like swaddle me swaddle. Like it works with any swaddle basically. And so what it is. is you take like a long narrow strip of fabric for me I use like one of those receiving blankets that are kind of too small for any good use other than this basically and I folded in thirds so it's sort of like a long strip.
Shanna
Okay.
Laura
You place it down, so you place the swaddle down on whatever surface, the bed or the crib or whatever. Then you put this long strip across it and then you lay the baby down. And then what you do is you take the baby's arm and you take like one side of the long strip and you wrap it around the baby's arm and then tuck it under their back. So their arm is kind of pinned in a little like sausage casing that their back is holding down the flap basically, right? And then you do the same thing with the other side. So their arms are stuck and their back is holding down the strip of fabric. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. And obviously you should just like Google it. It's called batwing like bats, the mammal that flies and eats insects, uh, and sucks your blood. No, just kidding. Uh, so, and, you know, it's seeing it is believing. It's very, very easy.
It's super fast, but I've started doing that because my little guy Sebastian has been like breaking out of his swaddle. And ever since I've done that, he kind of fusses when I first do it, but it's so much easier. You don't have to strap the, new straps super tight after that either because he's already secured and he's been sleeping better because of it I think because he's no longer trying to like break out of the swaddle and accidentally punching himself in the face in the middle of the night. That'll wake a kid up. Yeah. So I wish I had known about it a little earlier, but thankfully the internet helped me out when I woke up one morning at 3 a.m. and I find his little fist right at his chin. I'm like, you're not supposed to, that's not how that's supposed to work.
Shanna
So uncomfortable.
Laura
Yeah, yeah. One thing I will say is it does add a little warmth, right? So you don't want to make sure, like, I started putting them in short sleeve onesies because of it, because it kind of just adds, it's like adding a sleeve, basically.
Shanna
Right.
Laura
So keep that in mind. But yeah, I love it. Backwing swaddle. I wish I had known about it with Augie, but here we are. I'm so glad you found a solution. Yeah. But I mean, that's it for me this week. Just a real simple BFP and I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go swaddle that baby again. Get some sleep. All right.
Shanna
Go get to it. Listeners, if you have any other questions for us for checking the inbox, if you have any BFPs you want to share with us, let us know. Laura, where can everyone reach us?
Laura
We're on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and now TikTok at BFP podcast. You can find us on our website, bigpetpositivepodcast.com. If you want to send us an email, you can always include a voice memo in that email. Just send it to contact at bigpetpositivepodcast.com. And finally, if you want to join the coolest group on the internet, go to Facebook, search Big Fat Positive Community, request to join. Make sure you answer the membership question so we can send you through to that amazing private community where parents and people who are trying to conceive and just Fans of all things, Big Fat Positive are chatting.
Shanna
If you love our show, rate and review us wherever you listen and spread the word. Let your friends know about BFP. Our show is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko, and Steve Yager. Thanks for listening everyone. Bye! Bye!