Ep. 50: The Wacky Things We Googled This Week

[Music]

Shanna Micko: Hi. Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. This week we’ve got our special 50th episode. We start things off with our weekly check-ins. We have a What I Googled This Week special segment and we wrap things up with a very special BFP, BFN segment where we talk about our most favorite baby registry items. Let’s get to it.

[Music]

Shanna Micko: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the 50th episode of the Big Fat Positive Podcast. Hi, Laura.

Laura Birek: Hi.

Shanna Micko: This is huge.

Laura Birek: I agree. I know that probably every fifth episode at least in the beginning, I was like, oh my God, we’ve made it to 10 episodes. We made it to 15 episodes. But this I think really is monumental. I’m pretty proud of us.

Shanna Micko: 50 is half of a hundred.

Laura Birek: That is true.

Shanna Micko: Is that special? I don’t know if it’s true math.

Laura Birek: That is true math. Well, I think first of all, it’s almost a whole year, right?

Shanna Micko: Yes.

Laura Birek: 50 is a large quantity of things and the fact that we’ve never missed a week despite being pregnant and then super pregnant and then having newborns and you having a newborn and a three year old, I think we deserve to feel a little bit proud of ourselves. So I’m excited and we plan to keep this going. This is just the beginning, right?

Shanna Micko: Yeah, exactly. Anyway, so we’ve got a fun show prepared for everybody. Let’s get to it. Let’s start with our check-ins. Laura, on this 50th episode, where are you and how old is your baby?

Laura Birek: My baby is 18 weeks old.

Shanna Micko: Okay.

Laura Birek: Last week we talked about how our doctor told us that we should wait until six months to introduce solid food and how we were probably going to go against medical advice on that one. Well, we did and we started. We started with some zucchini, so I actually just had a zucchini in my fridge. So I steamed it up and blended it and fed it to him and man, he fucking loved it.

Shanna Micko: Awesome. Oh, man. Cool.

Laura Birek: We did that for three days, because it’s so all over the place, but if you really want to really be safe about it, I’m sorry. I should rephrase that. It’s not about safety as much as like, if you want to make sure you know why your kid might be having an allergic reaction or some kind of intestinal discomfort, it’s best to introduce foods like one, every two or three days. So you know all he’s had is zucchini. So if his tummy’s upset, it’s because of the zucchini. There’s nothing else.

Shanna Micko: That’s smart.

Laura Birek: We’re doing that, but it feels like it’s taking forever. I was like, zucchini again.

Shanna Micko: No, I’m way too impatient for that.

Laura Birek: This week we got through. We got zucchini and then I was really anxious to get peanuts introduced, because I really want to start getting that exposure in. So I did peanut butter, then I made sure I got peanut butter at the store that was just peanuts. Like if you look at the ingredients, sometimes it’s like peanuts and palm oil and salt.

Shanna Micko: Right.

Laura Birek: I managed to find the organic peanut butter.

Shanna Micko: I know you just spoon fed him Jiffy.

Laura Birek: Yeah, isn’t there the one that has the jam mixed in too?

Shanna Micko: There you go. Smucker’s or something? That’s what our four-month-old needs.

Laura Birek: But no, so I got just the pure peanuts and I mixed it with some breast milk, which last week I talked about my newfound skill of hand expressing and I thought I had some extra breast milk to mix in, but then I realized I didn’t have any pumped milk. I’d have to thaw some and I didn’t want to thaw a whole bag. So I’m like, I know how to do this now. I just whipped down a boob in the kitchen and I was just like, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze into the peanut butter.

Shanna Micko: Into a spoon?

Laura Birek: Into his little baby food cup thing. My cousin gifted me this whole set of little silicone baby food bowls, I guess. I don’t know what she’d call them, but I was just squeezing it like a cow into there until it was thin enough.

Shanna Micko: Oh my God, watch out world. Laura just squeezes her boob milk anywhere she pleases.

Laura Birek: I did see a news article a few weeks ago about a woman who was being shamed for breastfeeding in public and she squeezed her breast milk and sprayed the person who was shaming her.

Shanna Micko: There you go. Oh my gosh, that’s going to be you if that ever happens to you. The shaming, that is.

Laura Birek: I have mixed feelings, because my first feeling was hero and then all these people in the comments were like, “I don’t care. If she was being shamed, that’s assault.” Why can’t we have any fun?

Shanna Micko: All right. Come on.

Laura Birek: Why can’t we just spray some people with our breast milk every once in a while?

Shanna Micko: Feel good about ourselves. Anyways, you were saying about your baby and the peanut butter.

Laura Birek: He loved it. I’m starting to see a trend. I think he’s just going to love everything like me. I like all foods basically. So that’s been fun and that’s going fine and he hasn’t imploded or nothing terrible has happened and the thing is he was totally ready. 

From a physiological standpoint, he actually ate the food. He kept most of it in his mouth. It was pretty not messy, which I was impressed by. So he didn’t have that tongue thrusting reflex or whatever they called it. But anyway, that was good. So against medical advice went great at least for the first week. Two other things are notable this week. The first is that my mom is in town. Like I mentioned, she was coming back into town. So it helped to have her in town for introducing solid foods, because she’s a pediatrician just in case something went wrong. But she’s also facilitated two amazing things. One was Corey and I had a date night where we went to a concert.

Shanna Micko: You are going to more concerts than I’ve been to in my adult life. What are you doing going to concerts? I’m impressed.

Laura Birek: Apparently, we were buying a bunch of concert tickets when I’m pregnant and thinking it’ll be super easy to go. So we went to a Jenny Lewis concert. Jenny Lewis, she was the lead singer of Rilo Kiley and she’s now solo and she’s just a beautiful singer songwriter and it was just a very pleasant concert. It was at the Hollywood Palladium, which I have to say is not my favorite venue, because it involves a lot of standing. But we did have one stroke of genius when we bought the tickets, which was it was $12 more per ticket to get the “VIP” section, which is just a little bit of a sectioned off area on the balcony of the Palladium. But what they don’t tell you is that it has private to the VIP area bathrooms and there was a private lounge with all these couches. So we got to the concert maybe 30 minutes before it actually started and we found this lounge and Corey and I were like, “What if we just sleep here during the concert?”

Shanna Micko: No, oh my God. Ultimate parent move.

Laura Birek: So that was well worth the VIP and then the other thing my mom allowed me to do this week is something I’ve been itching to do since before the baby was born and I just haven’t had time, which is I Marie Kondo’d my kitchen.

Shanna Micko: Wow. That’s a huge task.

Laura Birek: It took all day and there was no way I could have ever done it if I didn’t have my mom there. She fed the baby. She held the baby the whole time. She helped me with stuff. We put him in a little BabyBjorn bouncer thing and he actually enjoyed watching us clean, which I’m like, cool. Learn how to organize now. But it would’ve been impossible without a whole sort of afternoon set aside and it felt so good, Shanna. I got rid of so much junk like lids that don’t fit to anything anymore. The best part I used to have all my glass Tupperware container thingies in a high shelf and everything was just a jumble, everything was piled up and all the lids and every time you had to find a lid, you’d have to pull out this pile of lids and filter through them and it just drove me fucking insane. Now I have the most beautifully organized drawer where all the Tupperware nests into each other and I made sure that every Tupperware had a lid.

Shanna Micko: Okay. You are getting me excited with this organizational talk.

Laura Birek: I was going to say it’s a little erotic. So I should put not safe for work. Some really hot talk about organization in this episode.

Shanna Micko: I love it.

Laura Birek: Anyway, that was really, really exciting for me and it was a good week. Got solid foods, we got a concert and all my Tupperware has lids.

Shanna Micko: That sounds like a BFP of a week if I ever heard one.

Laura Birek: Great week. So how old is your baby this week and what have you been up to?

Shanna Micko: My baby is 22 weeks old and she’s over five months now and last week I was talking about getting on the sleep train trying to really work on getting her to sleep through the night and stop needing breastfeeding or any kind of milk during the night.

Laura Birek: That’s right.

Shanna Micko: So I have an update.

Laura Birek: Yes, tell us.

Shanna Micko: So Steve, my hero took charge of this night process and like I mentioned, last week he was doing the weaning. He would give her a bottle one night of five ounces, then four ounces the next night, et cetera, to wean down and that ended.

Laura Birek: He got down to zero?

Shanna Micko: He got down to zero and that’s why I was like, what the hell next?

Laura Birek: Yeah, what happens?

Shanna Micko: What happens now? So the idea is that if they wake up at night after they’ve been weaned of the milk, you don’t give them milk. You have to comfort them back to sleep. Help them. Part of that, what we’ve been following is first let her cry for like five to six minutes and this is from an amalgamation of resources. My top resource was the Sleepeasy Solution. I did also read Happy Sleeper and I read some of Taking Cara Babies stuff. So let them fuss and try to work it out, because a lot of times they will just go back to sleep and like I’ve mentioned before, my baby just doesn’t cry and fuss. She can wail and so we decided to try to let her work it out in the middle of the night and just see what happens and not worry about if she’s going to wake up Elle. So it was tough. She woke up a lot of times after she weaned the milk.

Laura Birek: Oh, yeah.

Shanna Micko: Steve took charge one night and he had a really hard night of waking up, like every hour basically. She would cry for five minutes. He would go in comfort her for five minutes, lay her down. She would cry for five more minutes and then put herself to sleep. So luckily, we never had a night of where she cried incessantly. 

She always was able to put herself back to sleep.

Laura Birek: That’s good.

Shanna Micko: So that’s good. But it was just like every hour and I started thinking those cries sound familiar, because if you recall way back in the beginning, my daughter had reflux problems. She would wake up in pain basically crying, screaming. I was just thinking that doesn’t just sound like waking up kind of needing milk or being disoriented cries. That sounds like maybe she’s in pain and I started thinking that this kind of waking up incessantly and crying in pain had been going on for a few weeks about when I started feeding her solid foods.

Laura Birek: What?

Shanna Micko: Not the smart person I am, I was impatient. I wanted to just give her everything and not wait those few days and assess her and everything. But the last few days I had only given her the rice cereal and so I was like, I wonder if that rice cereal is upsetting her stomach, because I would give it to her at dinner time before bed and then I would nurse her and everything. So I was like, I’m just going to do an experiment and cut that out completely and see what happens. I cut it out and the next night she slept through the night.

Laura Birek: Oh my God.

Shanna Micko: She did not wake up in pain.

Laura Birek: Wow.

Shanna Micko: She woke up maybe a couple times to fuss a little bit, but we waited the few minutes and she put herself back to sleep like no problem. She wasn’t screaming in pain. I was like, oh my God, the rice cereal was giving her that indigestion problem that you mentioned earlier in your check-in.

Laura Birek: Poor baby.

Shanna Micko: I know. I feel so bad I didn’t make the connection for like a month and I just thought she was in a sleep regression or having problems waking up hungry.

Laura Birek: Well, that’s the thing. It’s so hard to know with them. It could be a one of a million, are they in a leap? Are they in a regression? What a bummer.

Shanna Micko: The thing is she was going through all of that. She was kind of at the same time as the regression she was in the fourth leap, which has been crazy for us. She’s just really had a hard time during that and so anyway, I did that on Monday night. She slept through the night and the rest of the week she has slept through the night and knock on wood, I think she succeeded. We did it.

Laura Birek: Oh my God, you didn’t have to do the full cry it out thing except for one night. Poor, Steve.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, he had that long night with her and then I took the next night. I was like, okay. I’ll take this night and that was the night she slept through. But guess who woke up every single hour anticipating the baby crying?

Laura Birek: Was it Shanna?

Shanna Micko: Yes, of course. So I got no sleep of course, because I’m so anxious right now and I’m just like, oh my God. Oh my God.

Laura Birek: No.

Shanna Micko: I woke up at 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, 5:30. I woke up every hour just like, is the monitor going off? She slept till 6, 6:15.

Laura Birek: That’s so unfair.

Shanna Micko: I know. It’s so unfair.

Laura Birek: Your stupid brain.

Shanna Micko: I was just like, this is so ironic. But all in all, I’m really, really proud of her and I’m so happy we figured it out. I feel like there’s hope for everyone who just wants to get that sleeping through the night down. It will happen.

Laura Birek: That sounds so nice.

Shanna Micko: It will happen.

Laura Birek: We’re not there yet, but he’s still in the SNOO. We talked about the regression and it’s sort of on and off. I thought it was better after about seven days then it got worse again and I just feel like there’s always something. We’re also in this leap. I don’t even know if I believe in leaps anymore, but part of me wants to, because I’m like, that means it’ll end at some point. But yes, that is super optimistic and hopeful for everyone listening I’m sure.

Shanna Micko: Yeah.

Laura Birek: I read some stupid article that was like, “Parents will sleep again in six years.” Some new study showed that parents don’t get good sleep until their baby is six years old or something. It came out right when my baby was born and I was like, this is not what I need right now.

Shanna Micko: No, it’s not.

Laura Birek: This is not news I could use.

Shanna Micko: I will say I was sleeping fine. As we all know, my first daughter Elle slept pretty well from six weeks on. But even still, she does wake up occasionally as a toddler or three-year-old from dreams or sickness or whatever. But all in all, I’ve been getting decent sleep as a parent. So I do believe that it’s possible and you don’t have to buy into the fear and I think it’s possible. I’m trying to give everyone hope and also I’m knocking on wood, because this could all go to shit tomorrow.

Laura Birek: I hope it doesn’t, but I know you’ll keep us informed.

Shanna Micko: Yes, I will. So that’s my big check-in for this week. I’ve got nothing else.

Laura Birek: All right. Sleep is the best check-in. Shall we take a break and hear from our sponsors and then come back for our special segment?

Shanna Micko: Let’s do it.

Laura Birek: All right.

[Music]

Laura Birek: Hi. Welcome back to the show, everyone. So our special segment this week we are actually going back to the special segment we had on our very first episode, which is What I Googled This Week. Shanna, do you remember what your first What I Googled This Week was?

Shanna Micko: I do. It was something along the lines of 12 weeks pregnant, nipples hurt, so bad or something.

Laura Birek: That’s right. Oh my God, I remember you said it was like razor blades, right?

Shanna Micko: It was so bad. Yeah, I just felt sharp shafts of glass on my nipples. It was crazy. I could not go anywhere cold. I’d walk into the grocery store and be blasted with AC and I’d be like, zing. I’d be like, ouch.

Laura Birek: Did that resolve itself eventually? I don’t think we ever got a follow up.

Shanna Micko: Oh, yeah. What helped was not being pregnant anymore. Thank God, because could you imagine breastfeeding with that condition?

Laura Birek: No, terrible.

Shanna Micko: Ouch. I don’t know why that’s what my hormones did to me. So anyway, do you remember what you Googled way back in the day?

Laura Birek: I don’t, but I looked it up, because that is so far. It’s so long ago. I’ve Googled so many things since then, but what I Googled was, “Best anti-chafe boy shorts?”

Shanna Micko: You were having chafing issues.

Laura Birek: I was having the chafing issues and I’m happy to say that I ended up getting these I think Jockey brand seamless boy short underwear things that are super stretchy and they were great during pregnancy I think maybe. Actually, no. I wore them all the way through, because they kind of could roll down in the front if necessary and they were great. They also had the secondary benefit of not having panty lines when you’re wearing dresses and stuff and especially when you’re expanding so your clothes are hugging a little tighter. That was great.

Shanna Micko: Cool. I could use that now actually.

Laura Birek: I still wear them all the time.

Shanna Micko: Nice.

Laura Birek: But anyway, now we are talking about the present day almost a year later. Shanna, what did you Google this week?

Shanna Micko: What I Googled this week is, “What is my baby’s numerology?”

Laura Birek: Oh my God, of course you did.

Shanna Micko: I guess that’s not that surprising seeing a a couple weeks ago I was talking about my baby’s personality quiz, so I’ve just been on a never-ending quest to figure out my baby’s personality and I’m like, let’s turn to the new age to figure this out. So this week was what’s my baby’s numerology, because to be honest in college, I was real into numerology.

Laura Birek: Really?

Shanna Micko: I loved it. I was into personality quizzes of any type. If the internet had been really booming back then, I would’ve wasted all my time on every internet personality quiz there ever was for sure. But I’m old enough that back in the day it was not like that so much that I had to buy physical books and take handwritten quizzes. I had a book about numerology and I loved it. I happen to know that I’m a five, which means that my life’s path is all about trying to seek and achieve a sense of freedom and the challenges in my life come from blocking that sense of freedom. So that’s kind of what numerology is all about, like kind of determining your life’s paths. I’m like, God, I wonder what my new baby’s life path is. I’ve got a five month old baby. I’ve got to know now. So that Google search brought up a website called momastrology.com.

Laura Birek: Go on.

Shanna Micko: The first step is you’ve got to calculate your baby’s numerology, his or her life path number.

Laura Birek: Okay.

Shanna Micko: I’m going to make you do this for your baby in like two minutes, Laura. So get on board.

Laura Birek: Send me the link.

Shanna Micko: Hold on. Sending.

Laura Birek: Walk me through this.

Shanna Micko: First you start with your child’s full birth date.

Laura Birek: I know it.

Shanna Micko: So CeCe’s birthday is December 10th, 2018. You take the numbers. December for example is the 12th month of the year so you add up the numbers. So one plus two for 12.

Laura Birek: You add up the digits.

Shanna Micko: One plus two is three and then you add onto that the digits of the birthday. She’s 10, so you actually only add one, one plus zero. At that point I’m at… I already lost track. Let’s see.

Laura Birek: Wait, you add one plus two equals three and then you add one more. So that’s four.

Shanna Micko: Plus zero is still four and then you add the digits of the year they were born. So 2018. Four plus two is six plus zero is still six plus one is seven plus eight is 15. Then you have to bring that down to a single digit, so you add those two, one plus five is six. So my baby is a six.

Laura Birek: What does that mean?

Shanna Micko: Then what I do is I click on the six. I can find out what that means and I’ll tell you: my baby’s life purpose. She will not stray from this, because this is totally serious. She is here to develop a sense of responsibility, acceptance, and ability to see the big picture. That’s kind of general and kind of boring. I wanted something more exciting to be honest with you, but let’s talk about what her challenges are going to be. Shit. Your child is challenged with being a perfectionist and a control freak.

Laura Birek: What?

Shanna Micko: Laura that’s me basically. I’m not a six, but I am a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak.

Laura Birek: Yeah, we’ve met. In the nicest way I would reframe that. I would say that you are a person who likes things just right and you will work hard to make sure that they are the way that you like them. This is why I think we make good writing partners, because you’re fastidious.

Shanna Micko: Yes, that’s a better word for it. So I guess I can kind of see that in my five-month-old as she works to perfect her rolling in her gross motor skills. This is another interesting thing. The sixth life path is often a precocious child with early verbal mastery. Interesting. A creative powerhouse. Often the sixth life path is musically gifted. Your child thinks they’re into charge and your child is a natural counselor and they easily get frustrated with others’ lack of doing what they think they should be doing.

Laura Birek: Wow.

Shanna Micko: I think none of this really applies to my five-month-old at this moment really, but maybe this will give me something to prepare for.

Laura Birek: Here’s my feeling about this. I’m of the skeptic mindset where it’s like, if you clicked on any one of these, you would find something to identify with. Don’t you think?

Shanna Micko: Especially when you’re doing it for a barely out of newborn phase, because really how can any of the supply to them at all?

Laura Birek: I worry a little bit too about imposing. Obviously, I know you don’t take this so seriously that you’re going to be like, CeCe’s a control freak. 

So you got to be careful to make sure you’re going to let her personality develop and you’re doing it for fun and just to try to get a little more insight, but I’m sort of the mindset that they could all apply.

Shanna Micko: Probably.

Laura Birek: With that in mind, let’s figure out what my guy is and see if it fits.

Shanna Micko: Yes.

Laura Birek: Let’s do this. Before we do it, let’s figure out what we think he is. So I’ve talked about it. Like he’s very chill. He’s very social. He just loves like observing the world. He loves going into public places and watching the people and smiling at strangers and watching all this stuff going on around him. He’s very energetic. He never stops moving. This is what I know going into it. All right.

Shanna Micko: Okay.

Laura Birek: You’ve sent me the link, so I’m going to do it. To protect his privacy, I’m just going to tell you what the numbers are, because I don’t think I’ve publicly said when he was born. Let’s see. I’m just going to do it in my head real quick. Is eight correct? Shanna, will you check my math?

Shanna Micko: I am going to use a calculator. I do know your child’s birthday.

Laura Birek: You do.

Shanna Micko: Eight.

Laura Birek: I’m going to click and let’s find out. What’s wrong?

Shanna Micko: I’m sorry I’m reading it too. Go ahead.

Laura Birek: Life’s purpose: to develop their relationship with money, power, authority, power, control, and philanthropy. I like how they threw philanthropy in there. I’m like, we want to say something nice.

Shanna Micko: And power twice.

Laura Birek: Understand that, because what we’re here to do is never going to be the easiest thing for us to do. Your child will have challenges and difficulties with developing and acting upon these very themes.

Shanna Micko: So your kids are going to have problems being philanthropic.

Laura Birek: Here we go. He just doesn’t know which charity he should dedicate his life to. 

The eighth life path child is intense. First stop off point, personal power. Your child will be tested to tap into their sense of personal power while standing firm and strong. I’m scanning. Oh, man.

Shanna Micko: If that doesn’t sound like your chilled laid back baby, I don’t know what does.

Laura Birek: Wow. Remember how earlier I was like, you could find anything. Any of these would really just match? I take that back because reading this I’m like, no.

Shanna Micko: Eat your hat or eat your words or whatever that phrase is.

Laura Birek: What does this say? The eight life path thinks in businesslike terms. Your child is action oriented.

Shanna Micko: He does move around a lot.

Laura Birek: That’s true. Your child is learning how to be in charge and be an effective leader or manage so they can be bossy, blunt and opinionated.

Shanna Micko: Laura, let’s check-in on our hundredth episode and we’ll follow up on these numerology quizzes and we’ll see if they’ve panned out.

Laura Birek: That’s a really good plan. It was still fun.

Shanna Micko: (04:08)
That was fun and that was my embarrassing Google for the week. What about you? What have you Googled recently?

Laura Birek: Oh God, this is embarrassing too. I Googled, “How to get a baby modeling agent: Los Angeles.”

Shanna Micko: Don’t they just walk down the street and approach you, give you a business card? Be like, hey, pay for these headshots. I’ll get your kid in the pictures.

Laura Birek: I haven’t been approached yet, which is a travesty. It makes me sound so obnoxious that I’m like, my baby should be a star. Obviously, I think he’s the cutest baby that’s ever lived, but I also know that I’m looking at him through mommy goggles. I know it’s not objectively true that he’s the cutest baby that ever lived, maybe in like a 20 mile radius. But the thing that actually made me think about this is there’s two things. One is I’m not working yet and when I do work, I work from home. So I know I could transport him to casting calls or whatever. But the thing that really made me think about it was this kid, it’s uncanny, when you bring a camera or an iPhone out to take a picture of him, he looks straight at the camera and smiles every time.

Shanna Micko: He’s meant for it.

Laura Birek: Yeah, that’s why I was like, I got to put this to use, because there’s some end like I said, he’s so chill and social. So he’s fine going into a bunch of strangers and sitting there and smiling. He’ll smile at anyone. At least right now, who knows what happens when he hits stranger danger? So I was like, shit, I got to get this kid an agent and I was thinking print ads. You know what I mean? He’s not a twin, so it’s hard to get him into film or TV and also, I’m not sure if I even want him to do film or TV, because I know what it’s like on set. My husband’s a TV writer. I’ve been on sets. You and I have shot short films on our own. Even the chillest set is a little bit like, I don’t know if I want my baby involved in that. But taking cute photos in a studio for a campaign I think I could deal with that and I’m like, start a college fund for him.

Shanna Micko: What did you find out?

Laura Birek: So there’s a bunch of scams. There’s all these websites you can sign up for where you pay money to try to get your kid on like casting calls. Those are scams. Those are trying to make money off of vulnerable people. So I definitely didn’t want to do that and then there are a couple actual legit agencies in LA and I found one. I can’t remember the name of them now, but I did send in a few of his pictures on their online submission form, so we’ll see what happens.

Shanna Micko: Ooh.

Laura Birek: I’m not holding my breath, but it could be fun. Who knows?

Shanna Micko: Why not? It’s a fun prospect. A friend of ours has her son doing that stuff. 

He’s been in Gap ads for this little bike and stuff and he’s so adorable. He’s so cute and so great at it and they make extra cash. I think there’s actually no shame in it whatsoever and I think it would be awesome if that happened. I will say driving across the city for auditions probably would suck with you.

Laura Birek: He doesn’t mind being in the car. He has all these aspects to his personality that I’m like, he might be made for this.

Shanna Micko: What about you, Laura? You’re the one that has to sit in traffic from Pasadena to Santa Monica where the calls of inevitably are.

Laura Birek: That’s true. We’ll see. We’ll cross that bridge when it appears in our path.

Shanna Micko: I hope it happens, because I think he’d be so cute in a little like OshKosh ad. I can totally see it.

Laura Birek: He’s also got these big anime cartoon eyes. I have these googly eyes.

Shanna Micko: Googly? Oh, please. They’re gorgeous.

Laura Birek: Stop. But no, they are very big and prominent and he got them from me. He has my eye shape. No question. Babies already have big old eyes, so he kind of looks like cartoonishly adorable. So I’m like, get this kid an agent.

Shanna Micko: If listeners have any connections…

Laura Birek: Yes, let me know.

Shanna Micko: That is too funny. Aww, I’m so glad that for our 50th episode, we went back to our roots and admitted what the hell we Googled recently.

Laura Birek: We’ll have to revisit in 50 episodes.

Shanna Micko: Okay. All right. Let’s move on after this break.

Laura Birek: Sounds good.

[Music]

Shanna Micko: We’re back and for this week’s BFP, BFN segment, we thought we’d do something a little bit different since it’s our 50th episode and we’ve been getting questions about our thoughts on baby registries and oh, do we have thoughts on that.

Laura Birek: So many thoughts.

Shanna Micko: Now that we have our own little ones we realize what has been super useful, what has been not so useful and if you know us, you know that we love to share recommendations. So we are going to share some items that we think definitely belong on the baby registry and a couple items that we didn’t use really and we think can be ditched from the registry. Laura, you are up first. Why don’t you tell us what was useful and maybe what wasn’t so useful?

Laura Birek: When I’m talking about things that are useful, as you know, I have shared so many items as my BFPs and I’m actually going to talk about some stuff that I haven’t talked about before and my criteria for talking about these is sort of things that I didn’t know existed and have made my life so much easier. So the first thing I’m going to talk about, which is a good thing are QuickZip Crib Sheets. Have you heard of this?

Shanna Micko: What is this? No, I had no idea.

Laura Birek: I didn’t know they existed at all and I didn’t have them on my registry and my stepmom was like, “You need these. This is what I’m going to buy you,” and sometimes when people do that with the registry, you’re like, why doesn’t she just pick from the ones I need? But she was 100% right on this. So what they are it’s you get a base so that you put around the bottom of your crib mattress and then around the perimeter, there’s a zipper and the top of the sheet zips on and off. So the idea is that if the baby spits up or it just gets dirty or there’s a blowout, instead of having to pull the whole crib mattress out or wrestle with the fitted sheet, you just do zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, and you take it off and zip it right back on and they really do zip on super easy. You think they’re not actually going to work that. This is a gimmick, but I’ve got to say I’ve been using them, because my baby he’s been napping in the crib lately. He’s still in the SNOO, but he’s been napping in the crib and they’re so easy to get on and off. So highly recommend.

Shanna Micko: That’s cool.

Laura Birek: The only thing is they’re pricey. So I got them as a registry item, but I would 100% pay for more. I’m probably going to buy more tops. The nice thing is you only need one base and then you just get all the tops. So if you just want one base and one top it’s $45, which is a lot. But if you get one base and three tops, it’s $95. Honestly, you’re doing laundry so much. You never really need more than three. So highly recommend the QuickZip Crib Sheets.

Shanna Micko: Awesome.

Laura Birek: Then the thing that I wish I didn’t have on my registry after all, there’s not like a specific brand, but it’s receiving blankets. They’re like tiny, nothing blankets, basically. They’re not like the big Muslin swaddle blanket.

Shanna Micko: Why do I want to say felt? It’s not felt.

Laura Birek: The ones I got were flannel and I think I got like two packs with them, because I thought they would be useful. Honestly, they just ended up being burp cloths, because they’re too small to use for anything and you can’t put a blanket in the bassinet with the baby at night. 

So it’s just like, what is the point of these things? They’re too small. So just don’t bother with them. Just get those really nice Muslin swaddle blankets. They call them swaddle blankets, but they do everything. They cover the stroller and protect you from the sun. They keep the baby warm if you need to. They act as a burp cloth in emergency.

Shanna Micko: Covering in your breastfeeding in public.

Laura Birek: Totally. So I 100% say just register for more of those Muslin blankets and just don’t get receiving blankets, because they’re kind of useless.

Shanna Micko: I agree.

Laura Birek: So what’s your BFP and BFN registry related?

Shanna Micko: My BFP is the Pack N’ Play and I think you have one of these too. Oh my God, I love this thing. I didn’t actually have it ready to go for CeCe and I had a couple other things to put her in like the MamaRoo and it just wasn’t working for me, because I knew from my first daughter Elle that I loved having a Pack N’ Play. You can put the bassinet top. I didn’t have any of the extra accoutrements. I just had the flat bassinet top, so she’s higher up. But she can roll and play and be safe and it’s like a safe, flat place I can set her down that the dogs won’t get her, that the three-year-old won’t get her, that I can set her down and go pee in the living room. You know what I mean? Well, I won’t pee in the living room.

Laura Birek: I hope not. Maybe in an emergency.

Shanna Micko: Maybe. Because I can set her down in the living room and go do whatever I need to do.

Laura Birek: It’s always pee.

Shanna Micko: Always. As soon as I realized that was missing from my life, I went on Amazon and ordered one next day delivery right away. I love the Pack N’ Play and now that she’s older, I’ve taken that bassinet part out and she just goes down in it and it’s just like a little safe yes space for her to play and explore her toys and roll around and she is safe. So I love it.

Laura Birek: We also have a Pack N’ Play and actually we don’t use it for the play part at the moment, but what we have is we got the kind where you get the little additional things that clip into it. So we have a little changing table that clips into it and it’s like a bouncer bassinet. It’s not the full size of it. It’s just a little baby bouncer thing that fits into it.

Shanna Micko: Cool.

Laura Birek: That you can actually take out and put on the ground if you want to use it as a bouncer and that has been a lifesaver for us, because that means that we can change our baby’s diaper in the living room and not have to go into the bedroom to do it. So we’ve really liked that as sort of a station in our house. But I think it’s time to dismantle it and actually use it for play. But the other thing is we have no dogs or an older kid to worry about.

Shanna Micko: Right. But that’s the cool thing about it is that it transitions and the one other thing that I found super helpful with my older daughter is we used it for a long time as a travel bed. If we went out of town, we’d bring the Pack N’ Play and that’s where she would sleep out of town and stuff. So it transitions through age, through time and it’s just worth its weight in plastic. My BFN is Rock ‘n Play. So I like the Pack n’ Play. I don’t like the Rock n’ Play, which is a Fisher Price item and I actually didn’t mind it so much. I’d put her in it and rock her and stuff, but she didn’t love it. It wasn’t that useful for me and then I found out it got recalled three months after I started using it. Did you hear about this?

Laura Birek: I sure did.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, so apparently a lot of children have passed away in this Park N’ Play.

Laura Birek: It was over 30. It was a tragedy, honestly. It’s something that really pisses me off. So I was in Target just a week ago looking at baby stuff and they actually still had one of the Rock n’ Plays on display. They weren’t selling it, but they had forgotten to take it off the floor. I was looking at the way it was marketed and there was a sign on it that said, “Safe for all night’s sleep.”

Shanna Micko: Oh my God.

Laura Birek: It’s crazy, because we all know the guidelines say, “Separate, flat surface on their back. Not on a steep incline.” This is why you’re not supposed to have your baby sleep for a long time in their car seat because of the positional asphyxiation risk and somehow they got away with selling this product for like a decade and it was so popular. Everyone had one. I had one in my garage that I just never brought in and I’m so glad I didn’t, because it turned out to be super dangerous and I know there’s so many people who swear by it being the only thing their baby would sleep in, but it’s so scary. It turned out to be super dangerous and it pisses me off that it was even allowed to be marketed like that. Let alone be on the market.

Shanna Micko: Exactly. Obviously, those children have died over the years and why wasn’t that information made public earlier? I don’t know the whole story.

Laura Birek: So I’ve read a lot about it and I don’t want to get into it too much, because it’s a bummer. But the main reason I actually never took mine out of the garage, because if you remember early on, I was having major sleep issues and I was thinking about co-sleeping if you recall, like bed sharing and that’s when I got the SNOO and it’s helped me enough that I didn’t have to worry about bed sharing. But at that time I was thinking about using the Rock n’ Play and I started googling and in like the whisper network of babycenter.com, there were so many posts by so many moms saying, “Do not use this. It’s unsafe.” That’s why I never brought it in.

Shanna Micko: Interesting.

Laura Birek: Then so when the recalls got announced, I was like, moms have known this for a while. People have been telling each other that this is dangerous for a while.

Shanna Micko: That’s interesting, because I feel like the whispers of my mom’s group have been, “This is amazing. Put your baby in it. It solves problems, reflux, blah, blah, blah.” So that’s partially why I bought it for her to rest.

Laura Birek: I should clarify that this was all buried within all those comments. So someone would be like, “My baby doesn’t sleep. What should I do? Should I get a Rock n’ Play?” It’d be like, “Yes. Yes, my baby loves. Yes. Yes.” Then there would be in the middle, “Don’t do it. There are all these reports of death. It’s really dangerous. I don’t know why it’s on the market.” Then people would respond, “No. No, my baby sleeps in it fine. It’s no problem.” So they’d just be sprinkled in, but it was there. It’s not like it was some completely hidden thing.

Shanna Micko: I feel like the only thing that moms talked about in mine was like, it could cause flat head and I was like, that’s not that bad.

Laura Birek: So he can sleep in a bassinet.

Shanna Micko: I did not ever use it for her overnight sleep, because we have a family room and a living room, I was like, I need some surface for her in every room and that’s why I bought it. It was a big fail and then it got recalled and now it’s just sitting taking up space in my house. So it was a big bummer.

Laura Birek: That sucks. But I’m glad you didn’t end up using it.

Shanna Micko: Me too. Anyway, I feel like we should end on a more positive note. Do you another BFP registry item that we could share?

Laura Birek: You know I could talk about this all day, but I will share one more and this is another thing that there’s actually a couple different brands of, but it’s a thing I did not know existed that actually another mom told me about probably when my baby was like five or six weeks old and these are Burpy bibs. Do you know about this?

Shanna Micko: No.

Laura Birek: So we went through burp clothes like no one’s business, because my baby was a happy spitter just spitting up all the time and I never had enough burp clothes and then my friend Alyssa actually came over and was like, “You got to get Burpy bibs.” I was like, “What the hell are Burpy bibs?” So what they are is they’re kind of like an elongated figure eight shape. They’re narrower in the middle and wider at the out. It’s an infinity sign or something.

Shanna Micko: Oh, okay.

Laura Birek: There’s a little snap at the ends and so it’s a burp cloth that you can also use as a bib. It’s like curved around and it’s big and it covers the baby’s shoulders. But the problem we would have is that I’d be burping the baby and he’d turn his head all the way to the side and then he’d spit up over his shoulder and it’d be like, what am I going to do? This solved that problem and I wish I had known about them. So there’s one brand on Amazon. If you just search for Burpy bib, you’ll see. It’s like Ziggy Baby or something. There’s three for $18. It’s worth it. Then you can get fancier Aden and Anis ones that have really cute prints for more.

Shanna Micko: I love that brand. They have such cute stuff.

Laura Birek: Yes, highly recommend.

Shanna Micko: Awesome.

Laura Birek: What about you? What’s your upper at the end of this 50th episode?

Shanna Micko: I do have one more BFP registry item and I love it. I have one for each of my girls. It’s the Dohm Sound Machine.

Laura Birek: I have that one too.

Shanna Micko: You do?

Laura Birek: I think I probably have it, because you got it.

Shanna Micko: Probably. Dohm, D-O-H-M, I love the sound machine. I actually did try a couple other ones and they just sound too digital, too harsh on the ears and the Dohm is almost like a grounding kind of white noise. It feels good on the ears. I feel like it’s safe for the girls’ ears and it does a great job drowning out external noise in the house and I put it in their bedroom and they sleep to it and I love, love, love it.

Laura Birek: The thing that’s so cool about it is that while other ones are just little digital speakers, this one is it actually pulls air through. It’s like a mechanical sound.

Shanna Micko: I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that’s why it sounded better.

Laura Birek: It’s not a speaker. It’s like a vacuum, so it’s sucking air in and then you twist it to make it different whatever pitches. But it’s an actual physical sound not some digital sound that is just coming out.

Shanna Micko: That makes huge difference. Those digital one are so harsh to listen to, in my opinion, so the Dohm is fantastic and my three and a half year old is still using it and it’s just great.

Laura Birek: That’s awesome.

Shanna Micko: Get it. Get it.

Laura Birek: So I should say that we are building a page on bigfatpositivepodcast.com that’s going to put all of our favorite registry items on it. We’re at least going to have these ones we talked about on it by the time this episode airs. But the idea is that we’re going to put all the things that we cannot live without that we wish we had on our registries or that we had on our registries that were like a big hit. So go to bigfatpositivepodcast.com/registry, or just follow the link from the homepage and you’ll be able to see all of our recommendations and we’ll add to it if we think of things that we need to add to and if listeners have anything, send us what your registry must-haves are and we’ll talk about it. So bigfatpositivepodcast.com/registry. You could also find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook at BFP Podcast and we have a Facebook community group that has great discussions going on. Just search for Big Fat Positive on Facebook.

Shanna Micko: Big Fat Positive is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko and Steve Yager. Thank you for listening, everyone.

Laura Birek: Thanks for listening for 50 whole episodes.

Shanna Micko: Woo-hoo!

Laura Birek: Thank you. Here’s to 50 more.

Shanna Micko: Yes.

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