Ep. 59: Mysteries of the Infant Body

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Laura Birek: Hi. Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. This week we have our weekly check-ins. We ask Google for some help with our baby’s little bodies and we have our BFPs and BFNs for the week. Let’s get started.

[Music]

Laura Birek: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show. This is episode 59. Shanna, how are you? What’s been going on with you this week?

Shanna Micko: I’m really good. My baby is 31 weeks old, so she’s seven months in a week about and holy shit, she is making some progress on the movement.

Laura Birek: Oh, yeah?

Shanna Micko: Last week you know she started crawling and first day, wobbly crawl. I think I mentioned this and then by day two, she was like, got it. By the end of the week, she was already pulling to stand. She’s standing. That’s all she wants to do now, so she’s just pulling up and standing on everything and the cutest thing is when I lay on the floor, she comes crawling over to me and just wants to crawl all over me, like pull a stand on my body and my legs and, oh my God. It’s my favorite thing. I love it.

Laura Birek: How sweet is that?

Shanna Micko: It’s so sweet. It’s just so fun to play with her like that and get the cuddles and I love it.

Laura Birek: That is so fun and that happened so fast.

Shanna Micko: I know right. I couldn’t believe it. But then I was brought back to when Elle was also a baby and I was like, oh yeah, she did that real quick too. It’s almost like crawling was just the gateway movement to standing.

Laura Birek: That’s interesting. My mom says that they don’t even really consider crawling a milestone anymore, because a lot of kids just skip it altogether. So it’s one of those things where it’s like, if your kid doesn’t do it, it’s not considered like there’s something wrong with your kid, because a lot of kids just go straight to walking.

Shanna Micko: Interesting.

Laura Birek: It sounds like she basically is doing that.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, she’s crawling. Been there. Done that, because she could pull up to stand without having to crawl. That doesn’t need to happen first. I can see that.

Laura Birek: Okay. I have a question about pulling up to stand. Other than when you’re lying down and she does it on your body, what does she actually pull up to stand on? Do you have furniture that she has access to or what’s the deal there?

Shanna Micko: Excellent question actually, because I was just going to mention that I finally set up her yes space, which I’ve been talking about forever and I tricked it out with things she can pull to stand on.

Laura Birek: Oh, really?

Shanna Micko: Yes, as soon as I realized that’s what she wanted to do, I went to the garage and pulled out the stuff that I used with Elle when she was doing all this first thing. It’s like a little baby table. It’s maybe a foot and a half off the ground and it’s like a little musical table. Perfect height. So she pulls on that and this is kind of my honorary BFP this week. It’s this Foam Shapes Play Set that I got on Amazon. There’s a square that’s maybe like a foot off the ground and a rectangle and one is a ramp that she could use as a slide or climb up and all these different big foam things that she can crawl and pull herself up on and stuff like that.

Laura Birek: That’s cool, because I was just thinking about this. The thing about pulling up to stand is you have to have something to pull up to stand on and I’m like right now our sort of yes space since my baby’s not crawling is just a big play mat that I think I talked about, but there’s really substantial on the play mat. So I was like, if he wanted to practice, he wouldn’t have anything to practice on. Sounds like I need to get some baby furniture.

Shanna Micko: Totally. The gate that I use, she’ll go over, put her little fingers in the holes and pull herself up to stand on that. She finds anything and everything, but before all of that was set up, I think she was mostly pulling up on me and Steve. That’s how I knew she was interested in that, so that’s why I provided all of this stuff for her.

Laura Birek: Cool.

Shanna Micko: Specifically, if anyone wants to check out this play set, I wanted to share what it is, because I love it so much and it’s one of the best things I bought and also my three year old loves it too, of course. This is a really crazy name. I don’t know what this name is. It’s ECR4Kids and the four is the number four. So ECR4Kids SoftZone Climb and Crawl Activity Playset and of course we’ll link to it.

Laura Birek: Bigfatpositivepodcast.com. That’s right. I want one. You’ll have to send me the link tonight.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, I definitely will and I really love that one of their sets is kind of a cool color palette. I personally am not into the primary colors.

Laura Birek: You like a desaturated color palette.

Shanna Micko: 100%. This is kind of like blues and teals and grays and stuff like that. 

We’re doing great and we’re all set up and she’s just loving life in her yes space and I can tell she’s feeling confident in there and moving and grooving and doing her thing.

Laura Birek: That’s fun.

Shanna Micko: It’s really fun. What about you guys? What’s up with you?

Laura Birek: This week we are at week 27, which is like six months and a week basically and I talked about how last week the baby got a cold. Well, now I got a cold.

Shanna Micko: No, why did he do that to you?

Laura Birek: We both have a cold and the cold itself isn’t that bad. It’s one of those colds that before you had a baby, before you had kids, you would’ve just slept it off and it would’ve been fine.

Shanna Micko: Those days are so long gone.

Laura Birek: They’re gone. Maybe they’ll be back when we’re like in our sixties not right now and the good news was that Corey was actually home already. He was writing on a show that ended up taking sort of an unexpected break. So he had a surprise week home and I was like, perfect timing. I’ll just get sick, which sucks, because we can’t enjoy ourselves. But at least we had childcare so I could sleep.

Shanna Micko: Good.

Laura Birek: That was good. Baby still has a bit of a cold. I have a cold and a tooth broke through.

Shanna Micko: What?

Laura Birek: He got his first little tooth.

Shanna Micko: Little baby.

Laura Birek: His front bottom left. Usually, the bottom two are the ones that come in first and it was right there. It’s been so close for weeks. I’ve been like, this tooth is coming, but in the last week you could really tell there was a bump under there and it was getting kind of white, swollen. You could see it and then just one morning it was that’s an actual tooth poking through.

Shanna Micko: Did he have any teething symptoms?

Laura Birek: He was fussy. We gave him some ibuprofen. The problem is that he was sick. So I was like, is the fussiness from being sick or was it the teething?

Shanna Micko: Yeah, but don’t they also say that teething can also cause cold-like symptoms. Is that true or is that fevers?

Laura Birek: I’ve heard mixed things. Some doctors say, yes, they can get teething fevers. Some say they can’t. Either way it doesn’t really matter, because he didn’t really get much of a fever anyway. But he was drooling like crazy. He wanted to chew on everything. He always wants to chew on things, but it was very clear that he wanted some cool. We were putting stuff in the fridge for him to chew on and so it was very obviously different. For months we’ve been like, is he teething? Then when it was actually actively teething, it was like, okay, now it’s clear. You know what I mean? It was unambiguous. So the real tell was that you could feel it under his gums. When you ran your finger along, you’re like, no, it’s harder and there’s a ridge. But he’s got the one tooth out. I’m sure the next one is right behind it. We’ll see. It’s got the bump there too, but it hasn’t come out. But man, those things are sharp.

Shanna Micko: So sharp. Has he bitten you yet?

Laura Birek: Thankfully, not on the boob.

Shanna Micko: Good.

Laura Birek: He has bitten my nose.

Shanna Micko: What?

Laura Birek: He likes to sucker fish on various parts of my body. I think we talked about it when you did the BFP of baby kisses. He just likes to put his mouth on everything and so he sometimes likes to bite my nose and when he had no teeth, it was fine. But then this week he went to bite my nose and I was like, ow, actually it hurts. Thankfully, I think with the bottom two teeth when they’re nursing, they have to have their tongue over those teeth in order to create a suction.

Shanna Micko: That’s true.

Laura Birek: So far I’m protected. So far so good.

Shanna Micko: That’s good.

Laura Birek: I’m a little nervous about that.

Shanna Micko: Oh my God, that kid’s ready for some prime ribs, some steaks.

Laura Birek: This is good news, because he wants to eat everything we are eating. So the sooner he can get his bottom two and top two teeth in, the sooner he can start eating like lots of more solid foods, really chewing into things. He’s really funny. If I eat something in front of him, he looks at me and starts like smacking his little hands.

Shanna Micko: A little gourmand on our hands.

Laura Birek: I know. That was his sort of week in milestones, but I have an update that is very exciting and kind of unexpected, which is baby got a modeling agent.

Shanna Micko: Ooh. What? Hold the bone. What is going on? Has he shot an OshKosh commercial yet? Tell us everything.

Laura Birek: No, he has not shot a commercial yet because holy shit, it’s a lot of paperwork to get a modeling agent for a baby. We signed with Paloma Model and Talent, which actually our friend, Cathy, her daughter is also signed with them. Total coincidence. She didn’t get me in.

Shanna Micko: Interesting.

Laura Birek: But I asked her, I said, “Are they good, et cetera?” She was like, “No, they seem really great.” So I was like, “All right. Sure.” I got the acceptance and then they sent me their portal, which has all this documentation of what you need to do and it was a novel worth of reading. Then we had to sign all this paperwork and it’s a little more complicated, because he is a minor and there’s a lot of really quite tricky and strict photo requirements they have for his little headshots. He has to have onesie that are plain with no logos, but with bright colors, which is surprisingly hard to find.

Shanna Micko: Interesting.

Laura Birek: Then on top of that, he can’t be sitting on any blankets. He can’t be inside. He has to be outside, but he can’t be in front of anything busy. There’s all these rules, so we’re working on getting his wardrobe together and his wardrobe has to be approved before we shoot the headshots.

Shanna Micko: Oh my gosh.

Laura Birek: In addition to the really strict headshot rules that we have to get approved, we have to apply for a work permit for him.

Shanna Micko: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Laura Birek: On top of that, we have to set up a special bank account for him called a Coogan Trust account where I think 15% of any money he makes just gets funneled straight into it. So that you don’t have monitors taking advantage of the kids.

Shanna Micko: Right.

Laura Birek: I fully intend to funnel 100% of it into there. Maybe I’ll change my mind.

Shanna Micko: I will say you do a lot of the work as the parent.

Laura Birek: True.

Shanna Micko: You drive around town to take them to auditions. I think there’s zero shame in taking a cut of that pie, because really you are doing a lot of the legwork.

Laura Birek: Though I do feel icky about it.

Shanna Micko: Why?

Laura Birek: I don’t know.

Shanna Micko: It’s your time. It’s your effort.

Laura Birek: I guess, but it is his likeness. You know what I mean? I guess a cut of it like a manager would, it’s fine. I’m not doing this, because I want to make it rich. I don’t want to hit the jackpot with my cute baby. I’m just doing it, because I thought he was super freaking cute and he likes people. We’ll see what happens and I’m sure, hopefully my agent isn’t listening to this or his agent I should say, because if he doesn’t like it, we’re not going to keep doing it. I’m not going to force him to go to auditions and casting calls and stuff if it’s miserable for him. I have no interest in that. If he likes it and it works out, great. If it doesn’t, no problem.

Shanna Micko: Did you get this from blind submitting to the form from online?

Laura Birek: Do you remember how I did the blind submissions a while back and I was trying to get him an agent? I must have missed this agency. I think I thought I submitted to them, but their website kind of sucks. The other thing I want to do is even if it doesn’t work out with them, I want to be like, hey, can I rebuild your website for you, because this website sucks? It’s not mobile friendly. So I think what happened was I’d never actually submitted to them, because I needed to do it at my computer and I hadn’t been able to sit at my computer until recently because he never napped until recently. I realized I never submitted to them and I was like, I should submit again and they actually emailed back within like three hours being like, “We’d like to represent him.”

Shanna Micko: What?

Laura Birek: I know.

Shanna Micko: That’s amazing.

Laura Birek: I think they represent a lot of kids. I understand why, because you probably have to have a huge pool of talent when it comes to babies, because they’re always aging out and you probably only get 10% that actually end up being able to work. For whatever reason, their parents can’t drive them to auditions or they don’t tolerate it well, or they just don’t like being on set or whatever it is. So we’ll see what happens. It’s totally a lack and it’s kind of just because I want to get cute photos of him and he gets to be the face of OshKosh B’gosh. Is that even still around OshKosh B’gosh?

Shanna Micko: Yeah.

Laura Birek: Good. That’s a lasting brand.

Shanna Micko: I think they’re just Oshkosh now.

Laura Birek: They’re just Oshkosh.

Shanna Micko: I don’t know.

Laura Birek: Okay. They rebranded. All right. But anyway, so I was doing a bunch of that paperwork this week while I had a cold and I was like, wait, he’s just getting teeth. So we can’t take photos until his teeth come in. Anyway, there’s all these weird things, but it’s exciting and I’m happy. It feels really stupid. I feel ashamed at how validated I am. I’m like, yeah, my baby is cute. It goes against everything I believe. You don’t need an external validation. Physical beauty is a relative thing and it’s all in the eye of the beholder and it doesn’t have any reflection on your value as a person. Yet I’m like, yeah, my baby is cute. That’s right.

Shanna Micko: Yes, that’s the only thing you needed to know that your baby is cute. Not the hundreds of pictures that are adorable and everyone calling him cute all the time.

Laura Birek: I needed an official rubber stamp from Hollywood.

Laura Birek: Anyway, that was fun and it was a fun silver lining to a sick week.

Shanna Micko: Good. Yay!

Laura Birek: Should we take a break and move on to our special segment?

Shanna Micko: Okey-doke!

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Shanna Micko: We’re back and this week’s special segment is What I Googled This Week, where we love to reveal to you what possibly embarrassing, unusual, funny, whatever things that we have asked the internet recently. Laura, lay it on us.

Laura Birek: All right. So what I Googled this week is, “Do baby’ arms fall asleep?”

Shanna Micko: You added the question mark.

Laura Birek: Yeah, it’s a question. You have to tell Google it’s a question and I got to say I haven’t gotten a lot of clarity on this. Google is not the place to go for this question and I think it’s because the keyword baby and sleep or baby and asleep, they don’t really lead to limbs being asleep. They like, “How to get babies to fall asleep.” You know what shows up is like, “Is baby falling asleep in your arms?” I’m like, no, that’s not what I’m trying to find out.

Shanna Micko: That’s so tricky.

Laura Birek: The reason I Googled it is because he’s now sleeping on his tummy. I’ll put him down on his back like a good girl and he immediately flips over and I always question why I’m even bothering putting him on his back in the first place, but it’s fine. Then he’ll get his arm totally stuck under his torso. I know he can get his arm out from under him, but he doesn’t and so I actually have a picture of it. Of course, I’ll put this on our social media so everyone can see. This is the way he was sleeping in his crib for hours and to describe it, he’s on his tummy and his right arm is completely pinned under his body 100%. You can’t even see it. It looks like he doesn’t have a right arm and he was like that for hours. You can also see it looks totally bonkers. I have at least four pacifiers arranged in a semi-circle around his camera.

Shanna Micko: I was wondering what that was.

Laura Birek: That’s a Taking Cara Babies sleep training thing where she doesn’t want you to replace pacifiers in the middle of the night. But the idea is that if a baby wants a pacifier, if there’s a lot in the crib, he can reach out and get one and try to put it in his own mouth. So that’s what those are there for. Mixed results. Also, we got rid of his sleep sack, because he seemed like to be kind of hindered by it. I don’t know how well that’s going to go. We’ll see. Anyway, here he is in his little sleepy pajamas with an array of pacifiers above his head with his arm pinned under him. I found some on Stack Exchange. I didn’t even know there was a Stack Exchange for parenting. Do you know what Stack Exchange is? Have you ever heard of it?

Shanna Micko: I have no idea. I picture either like factories with smoke stacks and the stock exchange. This weird amalgamation comes into mind.

Laura Birek: I know Stack Exchange from coding. It’s a really popular site for asking coding questions. If you’re struggling with some kind of problem when you’re building a website say and you just cannot get a certain chunk of code to work, you’ll post it to Stack Exchange and people will answer like, “You’ve got your JavaScript syntax wrong,” and they’ll tell you, “Thanks.” But there’s a Parenting Stack Exchange and someone said, “Can baby’s limbs fall asleep in carriers due to lack of blood flow?” The question is pretty straightforward and then someone says, “Yes, but no.” I don’t know who this person is or why they have expertise. It’s also from 2012. It says, “Limbs falling asleep is a common and physiological phenomenon. I see no reason why it could not also happen to baby.”

Shanna Micko: Well, Laura, they must fall asleep because that was my line of thinking is what this person just said is it happens to humans. So it probably also happens to babies, but either they don’t care or don’t notice. That’s my Google answer.

Laura Birek: Thank you, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: You are welcome.

Laura Birek: I should have just texted you. But I guess he woke up and he was fine, so it’s fine. But it made me like, should I go in and fix it? What do I do? I did not.

Shanna Micko: Don’t disturb a sleeping baby.

Shanna Micko: Anyway, he’s got the falling asleep genes of his dad, which he doesn’t get pins and needles.

Laura Birek: Yes, have we discussed this on the podcast?

Shanna Micko: Yeah, we have. Your husband doesn’t get pins and needles feelings, so your kid probably doesn’t either. He is just like smooching my arms, sleeping for hours. No bigs.

Laura Birek: But doesn’t the pins and needles stop you from cutting off your blood flow forever? I don’t know. I guess Corey’s made it this long. He has got a limb falling off.

Shanna Micko: He has. Who knows what’ll happen tomorrow?

Laura Birek: Who knows? Hopefully not. That’d be sad. I need help carrying the baby.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, exactly.

Laura Birek: Google, not a huge help that time, but entertaining. So Shanna, what did you Google this week?

Shanna Micko: This week I Googled, “Does my baby have high cheekbones?” I am not 100% sure why. I think just sometimes things come into my head and I Google them and I’m very curious, like, what is my baby’s personality going to be like in the future? What is she going to look like? All of these things pass through my mind and I’m idly at my computer and I would type that in because I have high cheekbones and my mom has high cheekbones.

Laura Birek: Okay. I can see that.

Shanna Micko: I’m just looking at her face and you know baby’s faces are so chubby.

Laura Birek: They’re lots of chubs. They’re so delicious.

Shanna Micko: It’s so delicious and her face is chubby, because she’s a chubby little one and I’m just like, I wonder what’s going on with those cheekbones. Literally no one is talking about this.

Laura Birek: No one’s concerned about their baby’s high cheek bones.

Shanna Micko: Baby bones are radio silence.

Laura Birek: Hold on. I’m looking this up too. I want to see. Did you put a question mark?

Shanna Micko: No, maybe that was my problem. I forgot the question mark.

Laura Birek: I’m going to do it. Okay. Go: “Why do babies have chubby cheeks?”

Shanna Micko: Well, girl, I’m going to talk about what I did learn. So don’t give any spoilers.

Laura Birek: No spoilers. Tell us if you have lower or high cheek bones. I have to say I wish Google was around when I was a teenager, because I remember maybe I was like 12 or 13 and I read in some magazine about face shapes and they were talking about like, “Do you have high cheekbones?” I remember being like, I don’t know.

Shanna Micko: I will tell you because this is what I learned, Laura.

Laura Birek: Tell me so I can beam it back to my 13 year old self.

Shanna Micko: I learned nothing about whether or not my seven-month-old has high cheekbones, but if you want to know if you have high cheekbones, here’s the way to do it. Looking at your clean and they for some reason emphasize a makeup free face, which is hilarious because my face is almost always makeup free. Who has time?

Laura Birek: What is this makeup you discussed?

Shanna Micko: You’re not spending hours contouring the bone structure of your face while taking care of a baby?

Laura Birek: I am not. Although I do have a gripe about contouring. Can I real quick two seconds? When it became a thing and everyone was contouring the new hip thing, I was like, “Have you people never taken a theater class or been into play, because theater makeup is just contour? Anyway, I was just like, is this a revelation? I’ve been doing this since I was in theater productions in college.

Shanna Micko: For some reason, I always played old people in my high school productions. So the contouring was always just lots of wrinkles, so that wasn’t helpful for me.

Laura Birek: Go on. Sorry. Sidebar

Shanna Micko: “Look at your face in the mirror.” I guess this is talking about both your ears. “Place the thumbs on the top part of the cartilage over your ear canal and then place your index finger at your nostrils and then draw the thumb and index finger together over your face until they meet. If you press down gently, you’ll feel your cheekbone!” There it is. Then it says, “Now look back in the mirror. If your cheekbone is at the lower part of your nose, you have low cheekbones. If it’s directly underneath your eyes close to the top of your nose, the bridge of your nose, you have high cheekbones.”

Laura Birek: I have to turn. I have a mirror right here. Listeners, I have low cheekbones.

Shanna Micko: You do.

Laura Birek: You know the little curve of your nostril? That’s where it is.

Shanna Micko: Okay. There you go.

Laura Birek: I got low cheekbones

Shanna Micko: I have high cheekbones. I don’t know what any of it means.

Laura Birek: La-di-da.

Shanna Micko: We are two different cheek boned people.

Laura Birek: We are. It’s true though. Actually, if you look at us standing next to each other, we definitely have a different cheekbone structure.

Shanna Micko: Yeah, I think so. I did try this on my seven-month-old of course.

Laura Birek: Where did she land?

Shanna Micko: I don’t know.

Laura Birek: Kids are tiny.

Shanna Micko: The cheeks are chub. Speaking of chubby cheeks, what I did learn as you mentioned is, why do babies have chubby cheeks? I was like, I literally never wondered that before. I just assumed it’s because it’s cute and so it actually helps with breastfeeding. Compared to the rest of the baby’s mouth or tongue is large and that helps them get in contact with the breast milk and then the tongue is cushioned on either side by fat reserves in the cheeks and it helps the tongue stay in place while drinking milk and it keeps the cheeks from sinking in. So it makes the drinking milk easier and it’s also for the cute aggression, which you talked about in the previous episode.

Laura Birek: Delicious cheeks.

Shanna Micko: It makes them so cute that it helps temper your overwhelming love for their cuteness or something. I don’t remember what that was.

Laura Birek: It was the aggression comes out, because that is balancing out your overwhelming affection for them. You have to get a little aggressive, because otherwise you would collapse into a puddle on the floor.

Shanna Micko: Right. So I think they’re saying that the cute cheeks are the thing that kind of tip you over to feeling like, okay, I need to back it up and have a little snuggle, so I don’t go all the way into the deep end.

Laura Birek: Those cheeks are great.

Shanna Micko: They’re so good.

Laura Birek: They’re so soft.

Shanna Micko: Aww, the kisses. Google was not completely helpful for me either this week. Sorry, guys.

Laura Birek: Got to step up your game, Google.

Shanna Micko: I know right. We will try next time. We’ll see what Google can deliver.

Laura Birek: Hopefully, they’ll help us.

Shanna Micko: Hopefully. But until then, should we take a break and wrap things up with our BFPs and BFNs?

Laura Birek: Yeah, let’s do it.

Shanna Micko: Okay.

Laura Birek: All right. We’re back and we close every episode with our big fat positives or our big fat negatives of the week. Shanna, do you have a BFP or a BFN for us?

Shanna Micko: I have a BFP.

Laura Birek: That’s good. Let’s hear it.

Shanna Micko: It is this giant ass bib that’s I think it is called an apron too. It’s like a bib apron and it is my favorite bib that I’ve tried of the many, many bibs. Specifically, it’s called the BIB-ON, B-I-B-O-N.

Laura Birek: Because you put a bib on the baby.

Shanna Micko: Exactly. It’s a full coverage bib and apron combination and it fits six months to two years or something. So it is huge. It’s real big, but I love it because her bibs are these little things that stop at her breast bone and I’m like, hello? There’s puree getting all over her lap, all over the high chair straps everywhere. This thing straps around the neck, straps around the back and protects all of that area. It’s awesome.

Laura Birek: I actually saw you use one of these when I went over to your house recently and I was like, what is that magic? I need one of those. I immediately ordered it on Amazon and got one and I can attest that is the best bib. It’s also like a fabric. It’s not one of those sort of stiffer silicone ones, which I think might be better for older kids who are eating chunks of food, not purees because they have those little scoops at the bottom to catch extra food that fell. 

But we don’t need that right now. There’s no catching of extra food. It’s just like protecting of the environment around the baby. We got one and it’s awesome. It’s gigantic. It’s like putting a blanket on them right now.

Shanna Micko: It’s so hilarious. You basically just tuck it under the tray. But the reason I discovered this bib actually with my first daughter and I’m mentioning it because this is another way it comes in handy, if you ever encounter this problem, Elle was having car sickness troubles in our commute to work and daycare.

Laura Birek: Wow.

Shanna Micko: I was just like, oh my gosh, it’s a nightmare to clean up vomit from the outfit, the straps, the car seat. It’s terrible. We were doing that a couple times and of course, I consulted the internet and was like, ‘What can I do?” Someone suggested these bibs and they’ll strap them in and then put that bib around their neck and kind of over and it will protect the whole area. I’m sure you would still get some leakage or whatever, but in general catch most of that stuff.

Laura Birek: It’s like a baby hazmat suit.

Shanna Micko: Yes, exactly. It’s good for that. It’s good for painting and stuff later on when they’re ready to paint, get messy. You can use it as an apron and they have some cute designs too. I have a really cute teal and white like Chevron design. It’s super cute.

Laura Birek: That’s awesome. I’m thinking I need to get another one actually, because it’s my favorite bib now too.

Shanna Micko: Cool.

Laura Birek: It gets dirty and then it’s dirty.

Shanna Micko: I just got my second one now. Do it good.

Laura Birek: It’s awesome.

Shanna Micko: That’s it. What about you?

Laura Birek: I also have a BFP. It’s something I found on Twitter and it was this guy. His username is @lagomorpho, L-A-G-O-M-O-R-P-H-O and it’s called the Sleep Blanket. It’s a project he made and the description is, “A visualization of my son’s sleep pattern from birth to his first birthday and it’s a crochet border surrounding a double knit body. Each row represents a single day. Each stitch represents six minutes of time spent awake or asleep.”

Shanna Micko: Wait, I can’t visualize what you’re talking about.

Laura Birek: I’m going to tell you. It’s like big square or a big rectangle.

Shanna Micko: It’s a handmade blanket.

Laura Birek: It’s like a hand-knit baby blanket basically.

Shanna Micko: Got you.

Laura Birek: Every row is one day of his son’s first year from birth to the day before his first birthday. Every stitch is representative of six minutes of the day and he’s color coded it. So blue is asleep and white is awake. If you look left to right, you can see the first row is the first day awake, asleep, awake, asleep, awake, asleep. Then if you go down from top to bottom it’s him getting older and so it’s like a 24-hour span and it’s totally fascinating because the pictures, it’s just a visual representation of his sleep. It’s like basically a chart of his sleep, but it’s knit, which is super interesting and it’s awesome for me, because I’m a big knitter and you can watch as his sleep consolidates. So you can see up till about three or four months his sleep is all over the place.

Shanna Micko: This blanket would give me PTSD I think.

Laura Birek: It does a little bit, but then you can see where he goes down to three naps and then goes down to two naps and then down to one nap. The top looks very modeled and then it gets down into some very well organized columns at the bottom. I love it because I’m very nerdy about this sort of thing and I’m a big knitting nerd. But on top of it, I’m a big tech nerd and so he actually built himself a web application to track the sleep and convert it into the stitches he needed to make so that he could reference it on his phone on the go as he was commuting or whatever and knitting, so he knit it as he went. It’s just basically the perfect project for me and it combines obsession with baby sleep, obsession with knitting, obsession with really tedious color work. That’s kind of my jam too.

Shanna Micko: This does sound up your alley.

Laura Birek: It was one of those things too where I saw it and the first thing I thought was like, damn, I should have thought of that.

Shanna Micko: I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had. But are you inspired to do one of your own, because wouldn’t that require you to actually track every single minute of sleep?

Laura Birek: Yes, he did on the apps. I haven’t tracked every single minute of my baby’s sleep. If I had known I would want to do something like this, I probably would have. There’s a point where he says, “There’s a bit of empty data at the beginning, because those first few days were ROUGH.” Emphasis on rough. “I wrote some of it down, but it never made it into the app. The incomplete data breaks my heart and will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

Shanna Micko: Oh, buddy. Let it go.

Laura Birek: That’s something he needs to let go, but it’s totally fascinating and it’s actually like a really cool looking blanket and he gave it as a gift to his son for his second birthday, which is super cool.

Shanna Micko: That’s so cool.

Laura Birek: I love it. My jealousy is a reverence jealousy. I think he did a great job. I will of course post a link to this on our socials. We will regram it if we can. But it’s awesome. Hats off hats off to that guy.

Shanna Micko: Get creative parents, man. All right. Well, I guess that’s it for us this week.

Laura Birek: I think so.

Shanna Micko: Fun show. If you guys have anything you want to add to the conversation, we’d love hearing from you. Laura, where can they reach us?

Laura Birek: We are on the social medias at BFP Podcast. That’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook BFP Podcast. We also have a website, bigfatpositivepodcast.com, where we post show notes and links to things we talked about. We also have a Facebook community group. Just do a search for Big Fat Positive community and request to join. It’s a closed group, which means only people in the group will see what you’re posting. So it’s a safe space and we are having some awesome conversations in there.

Shanna Micko: If you know anyone who’s pregnant or a new mom, new parent who you think would like the show, spread the word. Big Fat Positive is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko and Steve Yager.

Laura Birek: Thanks for listening, everyone. We’ll see you next week.

Shanna Micko: Bye.

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