Ep. 76: Boobs, Bathrooms and Britches

[Music]

Shanna Micko: Hi. Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. On this week’s episode, we have our weekly check-ins. We have our special segment, Mom Confessions, where we have some juicy confessions about boobs, bathrooms, and britches and then we wrap it up with our weekly BFPs and BFNs. Let’s get started.

[Music]

Shanna Micko: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 76. Hey, Laura.

Laura Birek: Hey, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: How are you guys doing? How old’s your baby?

Laura Birek: My baby’s 10 months and one week. Are we going through another fucking sleep regression? That is my question for this week.

Shanna Micko: I feel like you mentioned that just recently too. Are you just in regression hell over there?

Laura Birek: I don’t know. He was such a good sleeper. I feel like I jinxed it by talking about it. Anyway, he’s still an okay sleeper, but he used to just conk out and sleep through the night and I’ve heard that there’s some 8 to 10 month sleep regression. I didn’t think it would last for two full months.

Shanna Micko: Oh, no.

Laura Birek: Well, I don’t know. It’s not every night, but there was one night this week where for three hours between midnight and 3:00 a.m. he was up every 20 minutes.

Shanna Micko: What?

Laura Birek: He wasn’t even crying for the most part. He was just a little creepy.

Shanna Micko: Oh, God. What?

Laura Birek: I’d look on the monitor. He’d cry when he first woke up and then he’d get calm and just sit there and stare at the door like he knew we were going to come.

Shanna Micko: That part gave me the chills.

Laura Birek: No, no, no. That’s not the creepy part, Shanna. Then he would start waving.

Shanna Micko: I’m sorry, but it’s just ghosts. We all know it, Laura.

Laura Birek: He just sits there, stares at the door, and then he’ll just frantically wave and he’s on his stomach in his little Victorian style sleep sack. It’s not a Victorian, but you know what I mean. It looks so old fashioned to be in a sleep sack and he just props himself on one elbow and he’s waving frantically. We were just in bed staring at the monitor being like, “What the fuck is this kid doing?” Then eventually he’ll put his head down and then 20 minutes later he is back up doing the same thing. I just don’t even know.

Shanna Micko: I have a theory and it’s not ghosts.

Laura Birek: It’s not ghosts?

Shanna Micko: It’s not. Maybe his arm fell asleep and he’s waving it around to get that blood flow going.

Laura Birek: That’s pretty smart if he knows to do that. My theory, although now I’m contemplating that this could be the right one, because his arms do weird Egyptian hieroglyphic things. They’re in weird angles. This is my other check-in for the week. I think he’s starting to really understand language in a new way and I think he’s starting to really learn how to wave at people and I think just practicing is his thing.

Shanna Micko: Totally.

Laura Birek: I think that he is up at night and he’s like, I’ve got a new skill. I can wave. He would wave, but before it was just sort of a reflex, I think. Or mimicry. But now he’s like, when I do this, it means a thing and so he is up all night being like, look at my new fun skill.

Shanna Micko: That’s so cute. I recall that with Elle. Especially when she was learning to stand and walk, it disrupted her sleep and I would see her up and just stepping around, practicing her new skill. Of course, she was in a sleep sack, so she’s stepping around in this thing that’s getting caught under her feet. So I feel you on that one. I think you might be right about that.

Laura Birek: Yeah, he got better the last couple nights. So we’re hoping it goes away. But it’s so brutal to have a baby that sleeps well and then doesn’t sleep well. You’re just like, but I knew what it was like when you slept well.

Shanna Micko: Exactly.

Laura Birek: But anyway, to go along with the waving hi, there might have been a first official word this week.

Shanna Micko: Ooh, yes.

Laura Birek: It’s very split, but I have a video of it. Should we play? Okay. Let me do a setup. I went in after his first nap and he was standing by the crib, which he doesn’t usually do. But I went in and he was in a great mood standing by the crib and then, Cal, our younger cat walks in and he turns to Cal and he starts waving and then he makes this sound. Should I play the clip?

Shanna Micko: Yeah.

Laura Birek: So here it is.

Laura and Baby’s recording: You say hi to Cal.

Baby’s first official word: Hi.

Laura’s recorded voice: Hi.

Laura Birek: Then now he’s waving.

Shanna Micko: I can’t tell what’s a baby saying hi and what’s a cat meowing, actually.

Laura Birek: There are zero cats meowing in this clip.

Shanna Micko: Okay.

Laura Birek: It’s all baby.

Shanna Micko: That sounds like a baby saying, “Hi.”

Laura Birek: You are in the majority, because I posted to his little private Instagram and I got 24 votes. The question was, “Is this hi or is it just babbling?” 21 of the 24 people said it was hi. I feel like the people have spoken.

Shanna Micko: Yes, are the three people who said no not parents?

Laura Birek: No, I will out all of them. I hope this is okay. The three people were Keri, who was a guest on our program way at the beginning. She is a mother. Marilyn, who is our number one fan and your sister-in-law, Leslie.

Shanna Micko: What? That is a bizarre group of people and I don’t think any of those people would be fucking with you by being like, that’s just baby babble.

Laura Birek: No, no, no. They’re all very honest and I think I was chatting with Keri about this actually, because I was like, you and I are in the minority. I was not giving him a credit for it, because I feel like it’s a very much apparent thing to overly ascribe things to the six month old is babbling and says, “Mama.” You’re like, he knows I’m mama. It’s like, no, he’s just working with his mouth or whatever.

Shanna Micko: But he’s not six months old. He’s prime talking.

Laura Birek: I know. I was trying to be skeptical, I guess. But yeah, I have to say that the more I watch it, it’d be one thing if the cat walks in, he goes, “Hi.” 

That wouldn’t necessarily mean hi, but then he starts waving.

Shanna Micko: Oh, yes. It totally is it. Especially now that I’ve had two babies that I’ve watched learn language and stuff, I feel like I’m an expert in baby language development, clearly. Also, Elle’s first word was, “Hi,” by the way. So this is very exciting for me.

Laura Birek: Really? Well, I’d love to have him follow in the footsteps of Elle, because she is fantastic.

Shanna Micko: She said, “Hi,” and I ran with it. There was this zero hesitation. I was like, yep, there it was. I just feel like you can tell the difference when you’re tuned into your baby. You can tell the difference of random chatter and something so pointed as that and to me, that really seems pointed, especially since he’s also mimicking you and combined with the wave. So 100% he said hi.

Laura Birek: All right. So we will also post this video to our Instagram so that you can all weigh in. Is that a closed case yet? It’s exciting. I can’t wait for him to be able to express himself more. Oh, God, I was looking at newborn photos of him recently and it’s so interesting to look at newborn photos, because at first you’re like, he wasn’t as cute as I thought he was. He was very cute, but they’re very wrinkly. But also, you can see their faces in them. They’ve changed so much, but it’s the same. It’s so weird. But I had this sense. I was suddenly like, oh my God. You were in there waiting to come out. All this time you’ve been trapped basically unable to communicate and you’re finally able to emerge. 

Maybe that’s a little weird and woo-woo, but it just seemed like it to me. I was like, he’s in there. He’s coming out of his shell. He’s able to actually tell me things and tell me what he wants and that’s just very exciting.

Shanna Micko: For a full minute, I thought you meant talking about coming out of your placenta and your stomach.

Laura Birek: Oh, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: But you’re talking about coming out of his…

Laura Birek: I mean figuratively.

Shanna Micko: You talked about looking at newborn photos, so I thought you changed tracks to all of a sudden talking about how he was trapped in your body for so long.

Laura Birek: Oh, no. He was also trapped in my body for so long. I meant his little personality.

Shanna Micko: Check. Got it. It’s late, everyone. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. today.

Laura Birek: Anyway, maybe we should move on to your check-in. What’s going on with you guys? How old is your baby?

Shanna Micko: It’s actually a good segue speaking of waving and saying hi, because that was actually part of my check-in too.

Laura Birek: Oh, really?

Shanna Micko: Yeah, CeCe realized she can wave this week.

Laura Birek: Aww.

Shanna Micko: It is so cute. She realized it while we were walking around the neighborhood in her little pink convertible car that I push her in and all of a sudden she lifted her arm up and started waving at the cars that were driving by and I was like, yeah. You’re waving. Some people were waving back at her. It was so adorable. Now she’s obsessed with it. It doesn’t wake her up multiple times at night, thank God. I would just lose my mind. But the walks have become even more fun, because she waves at everybody, especially dogs. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, she says doggy now and I don’t think this is me being a mom that’s too eager about her baby’s language. It’s not doggy well enunciated. It’s more like, “Doggy. Aggy.”

Laura Birek: She has two doggies around all the time, so that makes sense.

Shanna Micko: Yes, so she’s familiar with dogs. She loves them. When we go on walks, actually she’ll wave at dogs more than people. So if we see a dog, she waves.

Laura Birek: Fair. Me too.

Shanna Micko: I know. It’s exciting to see cute dogs on walks and babies. She’ll wave at other babies. We’ll be walking and I see her wave, wave, wave and I look up and it’s another baby and it’s just so cute. She’s like waving at her own kind. I just love it.

Laura Birek: Aww, that’s so cute.

Shanna Micko: So that’s a fun little thing. Then the other part of the check-in, and I forgot to mention CeCe is 11 months and one week, she has started to get a little bit of fear about random things. It’s strange. It’s not a lot of stuff and it’s stuff that I never see coming. For instance, the other day we had a garage door guy come and work on our garage door and she saw him, met him and I was like, oh, no. Stranger version blah, blah. No. She was just so happy to see him, waving at him. Then the garbage truck comes by to pick up our garbage and she had a conniption fit.

Laura Birek: Oh, no.

Shanna Micko: She’s screaming and crying and burying herself in my chest and could not handle the sound and the size of the garbage truck. I always loved big trucks and garbage trucks. So I did not see that coming.

Laura Birek: That’s interesting. Did I tell you about my baby’s fear of balloons and a beach ball? Did we talk about this around Halloween?

Shanna Micko: I don’t think so.

Laura Birek: I experienced the same thing, which is my baby seems fearless. He climbs. He has no stranger danger at all. He went onto a freaking TV set with hundreds of people around and was just like, hey, this is cool. My mom bought him a balloon around Halloween and he freaked out.

Shanna Micko: What kind of balloon? Like a big scary, Mylar balloon?

Laura Birek: It wasn’t scary. It was just a Mylar balloon with cute little cartoon. There was a cartoon cat and a cartoon jack-o-lantern. It wasn’t like a scary one. We pulled it down to his eye level and he grabbed me and buried his head in my shoulder and was physically shaking. It was so weird.

Shanna Micko: That’s so sad.

Laura Birek: That week my mom was in town and she was staying at a hotel that had a pool and it was hot as hell back around Halloween, if you remember. So we were in the pool and someone had a beach ball and it came towards us and he did the same thing. He was freaking out and then the whole time we were in the pool, he was laser focused on that beach ball, whether it was coming close to him. I was just like, why? The good news is that we sort of slowly reintroduced the balloon and he ended up loving it. So that makes me feel good. But what is it about that one thing? I guess you should be a little afraid of a garbage truck. It’s loud and weird and big and could hurt you. Balloon, I don’t know.

Shanna Micko: That’s too funny. Those just seem so innocuous. The other thing that freaked her out: she was in the bathtub and she has a lot of toys in there and one of them is a little fish, Dory from Finding Nemo. She was playing with it and then I remembered it has a little string, like you can pull the string out of the fish’s butt and then it starts flapping its fins and swims in the water. So I was like, “CeCe, check this out.” I pulled the string and set it in the water and it starts flipping its fins and she just looks at it and she’s screaming and crying. We were trying to flip it away from her and started climbing out of the tub and into my arms. I was like, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Laura Birek: That’s so sad.

Shanna Micko: I know.

Laura Birek: It’s so sad, but also so funny and you don’t want to laugh at them.

Shanna Micko: It’s definitely funnier in hindsight, because you know at the moment when you’re dealing with a baby who’s crying, you just want to help them. But now that I think about it, I’m like, that little fish just set her off.

Laura Birek: You don’t want to be dismissive of their feelings or anything, but it’s funny, because you know they’re safe and it’s like, what is going on with your little brain?

Shanna Micko: It must have just startled her so bad. Anyway, so that’s pretty much it. Otherwise, it’s a pretty low-key week and we’ve just been having fun together and I love this age and I love her and things are going well.

Laura Birek: I love that and I think that’s a great sentiment to take a break and come back with our special segment.

Shanna Micko: Let’s do it.

[Music]

Laura Birek: Welcome back. Our special segment this week is Mom Confessions where we confess to some scandalous things, but we turn it into a game where we say one truth and one lie and the other person has to guess which is which. Shanna, are you ready with your first Mom Confession?

Shanna Micko: Yes, I forgot my baby’s name. I used a baby bottle as a shot glass.

Laura Birek: Oh geez. Oh my gosh. Those are both so plausible. Just because I don’t know when the last time you’ve taken a shot is, but they do have ounce markings on them. 

Ooh, I’m going to go with the bottle.

Shanna Micko: That was an amazing deduction, Laura.

Laura Birek: Yes.

Shanna Micko: That’s exactly why I was making a mixed drink and I couldn’t find a shot glass. I couldn’t find our little jigger and so I was like, oh, the baby bottle. I wanted one and a half or two ounces or whatever to put in the drink and I was like, boo, boo, boo, boo and poured it in. So I did not like throw a shot back.

Laura Birek: That’s what threw me off, because I don’t think since grad school I’ve seen you throw a shot back. Maybe at your wedding.

Shanna Micko: Probably. Who knows? I tend to not remember those nights. Just kidding.

Laura Birek: Was it a good mixed drink? What were you making?

Shanna Micko: It was not the best mixed drink. It was just like a vodka soda with lime. Something light and refreshing.

Laura Birek: Did you do the one and a half ounces like a good girl or did you get it a little higher?

Shanna Micko: I probably did it a little higher. If I remember correctly, it was two ounces I think and a full can of LaCroix. So it took me a while to drink it down, but the one thing I want to say that it is tricky with the name thing, because it’s not like I’ve ever completely blanked on her name for an extended period or whatever. But I will mix up her name on the tip of my tongue constantly in my house. I call her Elle’s name, I call her the dog’s name and I call everyone everything. It’s like, “Sasha, no. CeCe, no.” I just feel like my mom and my grandma at this point in life.

Laura Birek: We used to totally make fun of my grandma for calling us her cat’s name all the time and now I’m like, I can’t believe she didn’t do it more. I fully call my baby my cat’s name. I’m always like, “Magnus, are you hungry? Wait, you’re not Magnus.” I’ll call the cat by the baby’s name. I think it just shows I love them all.

Shanna Micko: Exactly. They’re just all one big mush of lovable family. That’s all it is. Anyway, okay. What about you? What’s your truth and lie?

Laura Birek: I left a poopy diaper right in the middle of a restaurant bathroom, because they didn’t have a changing table or I paid $5 for parking just to change a diaper.

Shanna Micko: I’m having a little hard time understanding what you mean by you left a diaper, because there wasn’t a changing table.

Laura Birek: Because I had to change a diaper in the middle of the freaking floor of a bathroom and in retribution I just left the poopy diaper there.

Shanna Micko: Oh. No, I don’t think you would do that. I think you paid $5 to park just to change your baby’s diaper.

Laura Birek: You’re right. I did contemplate the second one.

Shanna Micko: It would be such great retribution. Yes.

Laura Birek: There’s a lot of things worse, but there’s no greater disappointment than going into a restaurant bathroom and with a baby who clearly has a very poopy diaper and there’s no changing table. How is that not illegal?

Shanna Micko: It’s so weird and it’s just gross. I know.

Laura Birek: Then you have to change the baby on the floor and even if you have something to put on the floor, now they’re rolling around. Anyway, but I did not do that. You are correct. I paid $5 for parking just to change a diaper. It was actually on the way back from the Aquarium the other day.

Shanna Micko: Oh, yeah.

Laura Birek: My baby has this really amazing skill of the minute you put him in the car seat and pull out of the parking spot, he starts doing his grunt and I’m just like, “Yeah, you’re pooping, aren’t you?”

Shanna Micko: Oh, no.

Laura Birek: I’m like, great. It’s very distinct. There’s no sneak poops anymore. You know when it’s happening. Usually, it’s like just pull over on the side of the road, change in the back or whatever. But we were by the Aquarium and you know how it is like around big tourist attractions. Every parking lot is completely full. It was a Saturday and they’re all paid parking lots.

Shanna Micko: Oh my God.

Laura Birek: We were about an hour from home, so it’s not like I could just leave him. You know what I mean? If we were five minutes from home, I’d be like, all right, kid. We’re getting home. But I couldn’t just leave him in the diaper for an hour plus we wanted him to nap. So we were looking around for spots and we couldn’t find anything and finally Corey was like, “Just go into that lot.” I’m like, “It’s a paid lot.” He’s like, “I don’t care.” I go. It’s like $5 every 20 minutes. I was like, “Great. Great.” Then we had to circle around for a while and then we finally find a spot and we have to change this diaper in the back and it wasn’t just changing the diaper. I have to say, by the way, I did not think about this when I got my car. It’s a Ford Escape that I won on Wheel of Fortune. No brags. 

It’s a compact SUV or crossover and so it has like a hatchback with a big flat trunk. I did not think about how great that was going to be for changing diapers when I got it, but I am so glad that I got it, because it’s like a great perfect big flat surface for it. Anyway, I put him on this big flat surface and I open the diaper and it’s not that much of poop and I was like, “Man, you were really working hard for that,” and then it dawned on me. I was like, there’s more in there and just as I thought that I got to watch as he pushed another beautiful log out of his butt and I thought not only did I pay $5 for this joy to change a diaper. I paid $5 to watch my child squeeze a poop log out of his butt.

Shanna Micko: At least you got some entertainment there.

Laura Birek: Yeah, if anyone’s wondering why we don’t say our babies names, so that they can’t find these stories. Oh, man.

Shanna Micko: That’s too funny.

Laura Birek: But anyway, it all worked out in the end and we got to drive back and he took a nap.

Shanna Micko: Good.

Laura Birek: Shanna, we’re tied. What is your next Mom Confession?

Shanna Micko: I jaywalked with my baby, because the intersection was too far. I purposely took a walk with a stroller with a flat tire.

Laura Birek: Jaywalk.

Shanna Micko: No, I have a Bob. Do you know these strollers?

Laura Birek: I do.

Shanna Micko: They’ve got three huge wheels, like bicycle wheels with air. For people who don’t know, they’re a jogging stroller or a hiking stroller and I love this thing. I went to take CeCe for a walk in it and I take it out of the garage, put her in it, start walking, and I see my neighbor standing outside next door and I ignore her, because that’s the kind of relationship we have. She’s a terrible person. In my opinion, we’ve got a lot of issues. She’s very mean and I walk past her and then I’m like, oh, shit. The tire is completely flat: the one on the right. The stroller is pulling, I want to have to work extra hard to get it straight and I’m like, I don’t want to turn around and go home and put air in this tire, because I don’t want to walk by my neighbor again. I don’t want her to stand there with her arms cross staring at me while I fill up my tire with my pump, because I know that’s what she’ll do. She comes out, she stands three feet from us, crosses her arms and just stares at us with a scowl on her face while we do stuff outside. Like, Elle will be like, “Hi,” and the woman won’t even say hi. It’s just awkward AF so I’m just like, fuck it. I’m just going to walk with this flat wheel. So we just walked for like an hour with a flat wheel and I had to work extra hard to keep the stroller straight.

Laura Birek: The things we do to avoid our neighbors. 

Shanna Micko: Crazy. Anyway, okay. What about you? What’s your next one?

Laura Birek: Okay. I dangled my boob over the car seat so I could feed a fussy baby without unstrapping him or I walked around for a full minute with my boob hanging out, because I forgot to pop it back in and pull my shirt down.

Shanna Micko: Boobs dangling, boobs popping. This is all kinds of crazy. Deduction. You just went to Long Beach to the Aquarium and had a long ride and Corey was there and he was driving. So I bet you popped in the backseat and dangled your boob to feed the baby. That’s what I picked.

Laura Birek: You are correct. The details are not correct, but you were correct. We were going somewhere else. It’s been hard to get the baby in and out of the car seat lately. He’s really fighting it. We’re going to need to get a new convertible soon, I think, because he’s just kind of outgrowing the infant car seat. He’s still within the weight and height range, but it’s getting to the point where he needs some a little more room. We were going to a friend’s house in Culver City. For people who don’t understand, it’s like another 30-minute drive on a good day. So we drove like 10 minutes and suddenly the baby’s crying and freaking out and I was already in the backseat, because I knew that this was going to be a long ride. Me and my forever paranoia, I felt his head and his soft spot felt a little like sunken in. I was like, is he dehydrated? 

He’s dehydrated.

Shanna Micko: Wait, what? Is that a thing you always do? What is that?

Laura Birek: Their soft spots, if you’re dehydrated, it will be sunken in, but really sunken in. It’s apparently very, very obvious. At our kids’ age, they’re starting to get much smaller. They might even be gone. I’m not sure, but my kid’s isn’t.

Shanna Micko: I won’t touch that area.

Laura Birek: I’ll gently brush my hand over it. It is creepy.

Shanna Micko: The hole where you can see the pulse.

Laura Birek: It freaks me out when you could see the pulse when they were newborns.

Shanna Micko: Okay. So you touched the pulsating dent on his head.

Laura Birek: It wasn’t pulsating, but it was a little extra dented and of course I’m like, “He’s dehydrated. I need to feed him.” Corey’s like, “Do you want to take him out of the car seat?” I was like, “I do not want to take him out of this car seat, but my boobs are big enough that I can take care of this.” So we pulled over, because there was no way I could be in a seatbelt and do it. I pulled out my right boob, which was the bigger boob and dangled over and it was very awkward, but he thought it was hilarious.

Shanna Micko: No, I’m sure it was the best car seat trip of his life. Also, it’s so funny to me the things we do in front of our husbands now. It’s just like, yeah. I’m on my knees in the backseat dangling boob.

Laura Birek: When you’re first married, you’re like, I want to be cute and sexy and now it’s like, hold on one sec. Pull over. I got to get my giant boob out. Dangle it. The fact that it can dangle in the first place is going to be an indication of how things have changed. It tangles.

Shanna Micko: Squirt my body juice out of my body. It’s just all so funny when you think about it. Well, that’s great. I’m glad you did that.

Laura Birek: I will say that my false one there’s some truth to it, which is that I didn’t walk around with my boob totally exposed. But there was a day where I was wearing one of those sports bra styled nursing bras that are racer back and crossover. They’re just like soft material and I did forget to pop my boob back into it. I had my shirt over it, but I was walking around in the world with one unsheathed boob floating around under my shirt.

Shanna Micko: That’s amazing.

Laura Birek: But at least I had a shirt over it.

Shanna Micko: Exactly.

Laura Birek: All right. You’re winning, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: Woo-hoo.

Laura Birek: Shanna, I’ve got a crazy idea.

Shanna Micko: What?

Laura Birek: Do you want to take a quick break since we are recovering from all this laughing and come back with one more Mom Confession each and then do our BFPs and BFNs?

Shanna Micko: I love that idea. Let’s do it.

Laura Birek: Okay.

[Music]

Laura Birek: We’re back. Shanna, do you have a final Mom Confession for us?

Shanna Micko: Yes, here it is. I’m jealous of my baby’s clothes. I still wear maternity underwear 11 months postpartum.

Laura Birek: Can both be true?

Shanna Micko: Yes, in some worlds probably.

Laura Birek: If the universe is infinite and there are infinite multiple universes out there, sure. Yeah.

Shanna Micko: Exactly.

Laura Birek: You are 100% jealous of your baby’s clothes, so I got to go for that.

Shanna Micko: Totally. Damn! They’re so cute and I just want them in my size. She was wearing these little pant leggings that had bright colored unicorns all over them with pink and turquoises main and sparkly stars and I just sat there for like a full three minutes just very jealous of these pants and wishing someone made them in my size and that I would even have the balls to wear them in public if I did own them.

Laura Birek: It’s like all our Lisa Frank dreams of childhood.

Shanna Micko: Yes, having two girls has fulfilled a lot of that for me, because I get to live that out. For those of you who don’t know Lisa, can you explain it better?

Laura Birek: Lisa Frank was an artist from the eighties and nineties and she’s the one that did all those trapper keeper covers that were sparkly rainbow unicorns and happy kittens and butterflies. Basically, they were bright colors.

Shanna Micko: So good.

Laura Birek: So if you were a child of the late eighties, early nineties, if you were in elementary, middle school probably around those times I’m going to say, it was a ubiquitous folder you would see. Everyone would have their Lisa Frank folders if they were lucky. The cool kids got to have their Lisa Frank folders.

Shanna Micko: We’ve established I wasn’t very cool, but I did have those and I loved them so much and she was kind of the first of that. That’s all there was of that genre of girly stuff at that time, it feels like. Now that kind of stuff is everywhere: unicorns, bright colors. I’m just in this surreal wonderland of pure joy over cuteness all the time when I shop for them, when I dress them. Elle is expressing her own style, but the baby is like, “Mama wants those unicorn pants. Baby’s going to wear those unicorn pants.”

Laura Birek: It is one of the main benefits of having a baby is you can dress them however you want to. This is also a gripe of mine in that I go to baby clothing stores or you go to like H & M to the baby section or Target and there are three times as many girl clothes as boy clothes.

Shanna Micko: Really?

Laura Birek: Yes, I tried to find a pair of shoes for my baby at Target and there were like, I want to say 12 to 18 different styles of baby girl shoes and there were three boy shoes.

Shanna Micko: That’s crazy.

Laura Birek: I say this with all the knowledge of gender is a construct and you can dress your baby in whatever, but the pink sparkly stuff is intended for girls. I could dress a minute, but it’s a weird thing. I guess I could just start dressing my baby in all the rainbow sequins and stuff, but I haven’t quite gotten there. So there’s cute boy stuff, but there’s just not as much of it and it’s all like suspenders. When you’re looking at what’s going to be a cute boy outfit it’s suspenders. For girls it’s like all the sequins and the unicorns and the rainbows. I’m jealous too.

Shanna Micko: I know. Everything I love. Suspenders don’t spark the same kind of joy that Lisa Frank did.

Laura Birek: No, they are freaking cute, but it’s not the same level.

Shanna Micko: I hear you. I’m sorry about that. That’s really frustrating. The thing I want to say about the maternity underwear though is that it was a real close cutoff there.

Laura Birek: I was going to ask, is this a technicality? Is it because you wore them to 10 months postpartum?

Shanna Micko: Yes, ma’am. It was so weird. All of a sudden one day I was like, God, these underwear are just so loose and roomy and I hated them and I had been wearing them for a few months feeling that way about them. But you just keep them in rotation and then finally one day I was like, I’m just going to throw these away. Why am I still wearing these? They all went in the trash. So no more.

Laura Birek: That’s a milestone. Congrats.

Shanna Micko: It only took 10 months. All right. This feels good to get those confessions off my chest.

Laura Birek: I have one more.

Shanna Micko: You’re up next.

Laura Birek: Yes, okay. Sometimes I will just sit on the toilet and let my baby crawl around the bathroom, even though I don’t have to go. Or sometimes I will trap my baby in my shower, because I know it’s baby proofed and the glass door allows me to watch him while giving my arms a rest.

Shanna Micko: Oh, that’s a good idea. It’s like a built in play pen. I think you probably sit in the bathroom while he crawls around the floor.

Laura Birek: That is correct. Although when I was trying to come up with the fake one, I was like, that is a good idea.

Shanna Micko: I know it is.

Laura Birek: Why do I do this? Because I have one of those showers that even has a built in bench and it has a glass door and so he’s totally safe in there.

Shanna Micko: He can’t reach the water spout?

Laura Birek: No, I don’t think so. It’s pretty high. I might just have to try this.

Shanna Micko: Do it.

Laura Birek: Just put some toys in there. Call it a day.

Shanna Micko: He won’t know except he’ll see you on the other side of the glass, put his face and body against it and pound on it for you like the guy probably in the Graduate.

Laura Birek: Like the guy in the Graduate. What’s his name?

Shanna Micko: Dustin Hoffman. So tell us about what you do and why in the bathroom. 

I think like most moms, I’ve had to bring the baby into the bathroom with me if I need to do my business and it occurred to me at some point that the bathroom is pretty baby proofed. There’s bathtub toys that are in there all the time. So if I just take a few of those bathtub toys out of the bathtub, he’s entertained and he also thinks it’s kind of fun. He thinks it’s a weird adventure to go in there. He crawls around and I have to constantly be like, “No, don’t touch that,” because the whole house isn’t baby proofed. I’ll just be like, “Let’s go into the bathroom. This seems like a fun thing.” We’ll go into the bathroom and I’ll close the door and I’ll just sit on the toilet with the top down and chill out. Look at my phone.

Shanna Micko: Oh my gosh. Yes, it’s exhausting to keep redirecting babies away from things they should not be doing. So I can see why you would want that break. Just thinking about you doing that my whole body goes, yes. You need that rest.

Laura Birek: I’m not ashamed of it, but it is weird to be sitting in a bathroom pretend. In my mind I’m like, well, he thinks I’m going to the bathroom. He doesn’t think I’m neglecting him, but I’m just sitting there looking at Facebook.

Shanna Micko: I think it’s a great mom hack. We should just turn this segment into mom hacks instead of Mom Confessions.

Laura Birek: All right. You got all of mine right.

Shanna Micko: I did.

Laura Birek: You know me so well.

Shanna Micko: Woo-hoo. What did you get? Two out of three?

Laura Birek: I got two out of three.

Shanna Micko: Not bad.

Laura Birek: I should have known about the jaywalking. I thought you were doing that, because you know how much I hate jaywalking. I thought it was like a decoy question.

Shanna Micko: I thought about you when I wrote that one and I kind of thought, she’ll know I didn’t do that, but got you.

Laura Birek: See, it double crossed.

Shanna Micko: All right. Well, let’s move on to our BFPs and BFNs. Laura, what do you have for us this week?

Laura Birek: I have a BFN.

Shanna Micko: Again. Ooh.

Laura Birek: I know. This is a bad one.

Shanna Micko: What?

Laura Birek: So do you remember how when my baby went for his nine month appointment, his iron was a little low and they said that I would have to bring him in for an actual blood draw? We went and had the blood draw and that is my BFN, because drawing blood on a 10 month old baby sucks.

Shanna Micko: Where do they do it? How do they do it?

Laura Birek: There is a place right around the corner from us. It’s like a children’s hospital of Los Angeles lab that’s a little satellite lab. Thankfully, they have trained phlebotomists that are just for children. I made sure to go there, which was really reassuring. I was a little nervous and so I waited till my mom was in town, because I wanted her to come with me, because Corey would need to be at work this week. So I didn’t want to go alone. We went in and he had to get a test for his iron hemoglobin and lead, because we live in a house that was built before 1950 or something. So we went in and they had a little room and the guy doing it was very nice and I thought like maybe they’d strap his arms down or something, but they just wanted me to hold his arms. He was on my lap and I was holding his wrist and they were like, “Hold it really tight.” I was like, “Oh my God.” So I’m holding his wrist really tight and of course he doesn’t want me to do it and he inserts the little needle and then he was poking around and he couldn’t get the vein.

Shanna Micko: Oh, no.

Laura Birek: So he had to pull out and do it on the other arm.

Shanna Micko: Is it like the crook of his arm where we get blood drawn?

Laura Birek: Exactly, like the inside of your elbow.

Shanna Micko: His little veins must be so tiny.

Laura Birek: That’s what they said. They were like, “His veins are so small. They just move when we try to poke into them.” I’m just like, poor baby.

Shanna Micko: I didn’t know that. Wow.

Laura Birek: That’s what they said and then they got it on the left arm eventually.

Shanna Micko: So he’s crying this whole time?

Laura Birek: Yes, poor baby. They got it and it was only like one little vial. That was okay, but I just felt so bad for him and he was just crying, crying, crying. I asked if I could stay in the room and just nurse him immediately afterwards and they said, of course. So I did that and I nursed him for like 10 minutes, which is a lot longer than he normally does these days.

Shanna Micko: Aww.

Laura Birek: He recovered. By the time we left he was okay.

Shanna Micko: Good.

Laura Birek: But it was hard to watch. It was just really sad for him and it really gives me a lot of empathy for people whose children have to go through this all the time.

Shanna Micko: That’s what I thought too.

Laura Birek: There’s so many people who have kids who have to get their blood drawn all the time, have to stay in the hospital. Gosh, kids who are in the NICU and having to get their blood drawn as little preemies.

Shanna Micko: Thank God there’s skilled technicians and professionals who know how to do this stuff. It’s amazing.

Laura Birek: I know. It’s just so hard to watch them be unhappy and not just, because a garbage truck went by.

Shanna Micko: Exactly. Or a balloon floated by.

Laura Birek: So we’re waiting on the results of that, but hopefully they’ll be okay. We’ve been really feeding him lots of meat.

Shanna Micko: Good.

Laura Birek: So it’ll be up.

Shanna Micko: Hopefully.

Laura Birek: Anyway, that was a little sad, but he’s okay. Shanna, what do you have for us?

Shanna Micko: I have a BFP that seems very light and superficial in comparison.

Laura Birek: That’s what we need.

Shanna Micko: I don’t want to say it.

Laura Birek: No, it’s good. We need something uplifting.

Shanna Micko: Yes, it’s just pomegranates.

Laura Birek: I fucking love pomegranates, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: So do I. I love them. I’ve always loved them. I had pomegranate trees in my backyard when I was little, even though they didn’t bear much edible fruit. I did like them and I’ve just recently discovered that they are an awesome baby finger food, because it’s just like a tiny little nugget.

Laura Birek: Really?

Shanna Micko: She picks them up, eats them one by one and it’s not a choking hazard. She loves them.

Laura Birek: I was wondering about that, because I thought maybe the seed would be too hard or something.

Shanna Micko: I think she honestly just swallows it whole. I think she muches the flesh and gets the yummy sugary part, because I’ve seen some results coming out the other end.

Laura Birek: I was going to say you must see. It’s probably a good thing how sometimes you’re supposed to find out what your GI Transit time is. Anyway, that’s a good timing for GI Transit. I’m so glad to hear this, because I was literally just wondering this. I think it’s pomegranate season now, right?

Shanna Micko: It is. They are so good right now and a tip I learned is if you’re trying to buy a good pomegranate test, pick up a few and buy whatever one is heaviest, because that means it has the juiciest pomegranate seeds or jewels or whatever they call them.

Laura Birek: So how do you unwrap? I feel like that’s the best way to put it. How do you peel your pomegranates?

Shanna Micko: They’re a complicated, messy fruit and I’ve tried a lot of methods over the years. Honestly, all I do now is score the skin with a knife and then kind of peel it open and then just peel it apart and pick out pieces as I’m eating a meal and hand her little jewels. I don’t do any big complicated things. I know some people put them in water and do this and the seeds float up and I don’t have time for that. I’ll just sit at the table and pick a few out.

Laura Birek: See, I do the water thing. But for me, I feel it’s faster, because what you do is you crack it open and then you can just really quickly get them all out underwater and the seeds fall to the bottom and then the other stuff floats up to the top. They’re pink and stuff, so you can just sort of skim it off. So it’s nice for getting a big gleaming pile of pomegranate seeds.

Shanna Micko: That’s the thing. I love any kind of food that takes time to eat. Like, I love crab legs because I have to sit and crack and then take a bite or just like sushi takes longer to eat at Maumee. Anything like that, I just love, so I kind of like the aspect of I’ve got to work for this pomegranate. It delights me. I don’t want a big tile of pomegranate seeds basically.

Laura Birek: See, I’m the other one. I’m like more pomegranate.

Shanna Micko: Put a spoonful. Try it with your baby. They’re delicious. She loves them.

Laura Birek: I’m going to try it.

Shanna Micko: There you have it. I think that’s it for this episode. What do you think?

Laura Birek: I think so too. Yeah, let’s wrap it up.

Shanna Micko: All right. Well, if you guys have any Mom Confessions, we want to hear them. So reach out to us. We love hearing from you. Laura, where can they reach us?

Laura Birek: We are on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at BFP Podcast. We also have a Facebook community group. Just search Big Fat Positive community and it’s a closed group, request to join. I will add you. We also have a website, bigfatpositivepodcast.com. Or you can email us at [email protected].

Shanna Micko: If you love our show, please spread the word. Let your pregnant friends or new parents know about us, and please leave us a rating or review on whatever platform you listen. That means so much to us. 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.

Laura Birek: Bye.