Ep. 15: They Said What?!

 [Music]

Laura Birek: Hi. Welcome to Big Fat Positive. This week on the show we’ve got our weekly check-ins and we have a new segment called, “They Said What?!” About the weird shit people say to you during pregnancy and then we end the show with our BFPs and BFNs for the week.

[Music]

Laura Birek: Hey. Welcome to episode 15. Shanna, what’s been going on with you this week? It’s time for our weekly check-ins.

Shanna Micko: Okay, well it’s week 26 and I am just a mess. I feel like that is the theme of my week is just bah if I could put it into a sound. I can’t sleep at night very well. I’ve got insomnia. My hips and my shoulders hurt really bad when I lay on my side and so I’m flipping over constantly. I’m getting up to go to the bathroom all the time. The other night I woke up at like 3:00 a.m. and my whole entire leg was asleep.

Laura Birek: Oh, no.

Shanna Micko: It was weird my leg is going to fall asleep, but I can’t fall asleep. It was very uncool.

Laura Birek: Whenever I have a limb or an appendage that falls asleep, it hurts when it comes back to life. Like the tingling hurts, which I thought happened to everyone until I got married to Corey. When his leg falls asleep, he says it’s just numb and that it’s no longer numb anymore. It doesn’t actually hurt. So am I just weird?

Shanna Micko: Well, I think it depends. For me, if my hand or my foot falls asleep and when it wakes up, yes, I’ll definitely get those pins and needles, but this leg thing, I think it wasn’t like that. I think I got some nerve damage actually in my last pregnancy, because I have kind of like numbness on my thigh ever since that pregnancy. So I think it’s something going on there and so I don’t know if it’s a different mechanism. It’s not that the blood flows getting cut off. It’s more than a nerve is getting pinched or something. That’s weird though. I didn’t know that some people don’t get that sensation of the painful waking up.

Laura Birek: I didn’t know either. Apparently, also when you’re really cold and getting into a hot tub and you put your feet in the hot tub, that for me hurts like the pins and needles. When you’re like, it’s the middle winter and you’re rushing out to get in the hot tub, for me that hurts and apparently it doesn’t for him. I was like, oh cool. So I just experienced more pain in my day. It’s not like I do that a lot.

Shanna Micko: I’d say he’s the anomaly here.

Laura Birek: Okay.

Shanna Micko: I feel like being cold and getting into hot water is totally painful. 

That’s why everyone eases in. They know that it’s going to eventually feel good, but it feels horrible when you doing it.

Laura Birek: I’d love to hear from listeners about this.

Shanna Micko: Please let us know what your experience is with this stuff. I’m curious.

Laura Birek: In addition to your leg falling asleep and you not being, how sad is it your leg falls asleep, but you have insomnia?

Shanna Micko: I know. It’s just so ironic. That leads to exhaustion and a pregnancy brain. This is very embarrassing to admit, but the other day I was at work and I realized that I put my underwear on inside out, which I was like, cool, Shanna. Then the next time I went to the bathroom, I realized they weren’t even clean underwear.

Laura Birek: Oh, no. You were smart to put them on inside out.

Shanna Micko: Oh my God, that’s true. Maybe I actually have super pregnancy brain. My brain was taking care of me.

Laura Birek: It was even when you didn’t realize.

Shanna Micko: Aww, I like that way of looking at it. I tried to ride a bike at work. 

We park now very far away from our office, because we’re renovating our original office and we either take a shuttle or a golf cart or they have these bicycles we can ride and I was like, I’m like a fit pregnant lady. I can ride a bike. I grabbed a bike. It’s first of all a beach cruiser with a basket on it and the seat was way too high. I had my backpack and my lunch all in the basket and I had just bought an iced tea and I’m like, I’ll stick that iced tea in the basket too. I get on this bike and I can’t even barely touch the pedals. But at this point, there are so many people around. I’m too embarrassed to abandon the bike, so I’m trying to ride this bike on my tip toes and it’s digging into my crotch. The handle bars are going this way and that, my ice tea lid comes off, it spills everywhere and I’m just like, oh my God, no. I just need to not do that. I stuck it out and rode all the way and was in pain for two days afterwards, because of it. I was humiliated, but I feel like a mess right now.

Laura Birek: I feel like if there’s nothing else you learn from being pregnant, it’s how to accept humility.

Shanna Micko: That is true.

Laura Birek: It’s this idea that you can just plow ahead like you used to, I’m learning this every day, it’s like, no. You can’t do it. You got to make adjustments and accept help and realize that even it might be temporary, but you can’t do the things you’ve always done necessarily. Some people can.

Shanna Micko: I have a certain amount of pride and I want to try, but honestly, one flight of stairs at work and I am huffing and puffing. It takes a toll on you. The last thing, this is just ordinary, but I did have another doctor checkup and I did my gestational diabetes test.

Laura Birek: You did? How did that go?

Shanna Micko: I’ll find out on Monday.

Laura Birek: Let down.

Shanna Micko: We’ll find out.

Laura Birek: Sorry, was it gross? I have mine in a couple weeks.

Shanna Micko: A lot of people say it’s gross, but I’m not going to lie. That drink tasted delicious like melted Otter Pop juice, which I thought was delicious.

Laura Birek: Yum.

Shanna Micko: The only thing is you have to take it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. So it’s a little bit like woo. But no, it wasn’t that bad.

Laura Birek: See, my doctor said I could eat breakfast as long as it wasn’t a carby breakfast.

Shanna Micko: Well, that would’ve been nice. I wish someone would’ve told me that.

Laura Birek: I feel like every doctor’s different, but mine was like, if you have eggs, that’s fine. Just don’t have pancakes.

Shanna Micko: Interesting.

Laura Birek: My appointment’s also not till 11.

Shanna Micko: That’s hard. Mine was at nine. I had just a little bit of black coffee, because I was worried about not having caffeine and getting a migraine and that’s it.

Laura Birek: Wow.

Shanna Micko: I will let you know on the next episode.

Laura Birek: Okey-dokey.

Shanna Micko: That’s me. What about you? Where are you? What’s going on?

Laura Birek: I’m at week 22 of my pregnancy. I’ve started to think about getting a doula, which I know I want to have a hospital birth. I want to have an epidural. There’s a couple reasons I want a doula. One is that there really is compelling evidence that doulas do a couple things. 

One is I think they shorten labor duration. They also lessen the likelihood of a C-section and it’s just nice to have them around basically.

Shanna Micko: Do you think everyone knows what a doula is? Should you tell everyone real quick just in case, because that might be an LA thing?

Laura Birek: Well, that’s the other thing is the reason I thought I needed a doula was because everyone told me they had a doula and everyone needs a doula and you’re right. It might just be an LA thing, because I think I saw a statistic that only like 6% of pregnancies have doulas. So the way that I’ve had it explained to me is a doula is sort of an advocate and a support system before, during and after birth. So there’s like pre-birth doulas, there’s birthing doulas and there’s postnatal doulas who will come and help you with breastfeeding and stuff like that. They’ll also do stuff like during labor, they have techniques where they can try get you to move to different positions or have you walk around or port you with other tips and tricks that they’ve learned through their hundreds of births they’ve been to. But basically they’re a support system advocate to try to help you have the best birth possible. That’s what they’re supposed to be I think. They’re not medical professionals. They can’t deliver the baby. The way I was looking at it was I wanted to have someone who’s been there for a bunch of births, knows what’s sort of normal and knows what’s not, and is also a person who’s not related to me. So they’re an impartial third party who’s there to be my patient advocate basically and can help me give me massages because I love my husband. But his massage skills are not like tip top, so I want someone who knows what they’re doing to really get in there. We got some referrals. I was totally ready to go with my friend, Sarah’s doula, and then we were about to meet and then she said, “I’ve changed my business plan and I’m not actually doing births next year.” I was like, “No.” She’s like, “I decided that the end of December will be the end of my births and then I’m going to be coaching.” I was like, “But I’m just two weeks after that.”

Shanna Micko: You missed the cutoff.

Laura Birek: I did miss the cutoff and so I got referrals through the website that she works with for some other doulas. I made an appointment to meet with this one who I think she said she’s been at 600 and something births, she’s been doing it for 30 years. She was obviously very skilled. So we went to her house to meet with her and it was the most disappointing meeting ever.

Shanna Micko: Why?

Laura Birek: The first thing she did when we sat down with her was she started bad mouthing my doctor.

Shanna Micko: What? Your specific doctor that everybody loves?

Laura Birek: Yeah, my specific doctor that everybody loves, except for her and maybe apparently some other doulas. She said he was C-section happy.

Shanna Micko: Oh my gosh.

Laura Birek: I thought at first maybe she was just swayed because she had literally just spent the last two days involved in a laborer with my specific doctor. So we come in, she’s like, “I just had a two and a half day labor. It ended with a 10 and a half pound baby and it was with Dr. Dwight.” I was like, “That’s my doctor,” and she was like, “I know. We’ll talk about that.” I was like, “Okay. Oh my God, 10 and a half pound baby, two day labor vaginally?” She was like, “No, ended up being a C-section.” Really disappointed, I was like that sounds reasonable to me. But then she was like, Dr. Dwight, maybe I shouldn’t say his name, but I like him. She was like, “He’s C-section happy. You have to really work to get him not to give you a C-section.” Then she went on to tell us all this stuff about how to avoid his recommendations, basically. She was teaching us code words that we could use to mean I think your doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about and we shouldn’t and do this. Like, your doctor is recommending we give you Pitocin. But this code word means I don’t think we should do that and we should conspire against him. It turned me off so much.

Shanna Micko: That’s so creepy.

Laura Birek: I was, “Look, I’ve been with my doctor for over five years. I love him. There’s a reason why I’m going to him instead of finding a new doctor that’s right around the corner from my house, because I trust him. He delivered my godson. He’s delivered other friends’ babies. I’m not about to change just because you who’s not a medical professional, who’s not a trained OB thinks that you know better than him.”

Shanna Micko: I feel like that’s dangerous.

Laura Birek: That’s how I felt too. After all that, there’s no way I was going to hire her, but I also felt really icky about it. Obviously, that’s not who you want advocating for you in the delivery room, but it was super, super weird. Then also I thought it was going to be like a first date kind of meeting where we just get to know each other and see if we’re a good fit and learn a little bit about her practice or something. Instead, it was a one and a half hour meeting where she went over all kinds of random stuff, like you need to bring washcloths with you to the hospital because the washcloths they use there are not good enough. She gave us all these pamphlets for Dr. Bronner’s soap and all this samples of stuff that she said she didn’t get any kickbacks of, but she gave us all these samples. She gave us a sample of lube and then went on to tell Corey that my vagina was going to be very dry after giving birth, so we’re going to need it. I was just like, I’m 22 weeks pregnant. This is not what I need right now. I appreciate the knowledge, but it was such a weird hodgepodge of information. I was so weird, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: That’s so bizarre. I also feel like she probably wasn’t reading the room at all because I feel you and Corey just could not have been the right audience for this information.

Laura Birek: Oh my God, so much. But she definitely didn’t read us and she wasn’t great. Anyway, not hiring her, but it made me question whether I need a doula at all and then I started asking everyone if they had doulas. Interestingly, my friends who are medical professionals were like, no doula. My friends who are very pro-doula more or less, the one thing I will say is that, Teresa, who we interviewed in episode 10 she’s a midwife. 

So she’s sort of in the slightly alternative world, but she’s an RN with a specialized midwifery degree. She works in hospitals, but she talked me down from being like, well, forget it. I’m not going to have a doula at all. She sent me some actual evidence-based research that showed that there is a benefit and that the evidence is on my side to have one, so we’re going to forge ahead, but oof.

Shanna Micko: Interesting.

Laura Birek: That was not a good first experience let me tell you.

Shanna Micko: That would turn me off. That’s for sure. Anyway, if this is what you want, I hope that you find the right match and maybe there’s a Tinder app out there for doulas.

Laura Birek: Someone needs to invent that.

Shanna Micko: If there isn’t, maybe someone needs to make it.

Laura Birek: We should invent doula dinder.

Shanna Micko: I will say I did not have one. I was interested for about five minutes and I think my doctor was like, “no, you don’t need one.” I was like, “Yeah, I don’t care.” It just didn’t seem necessary. My birth did end up in a C-section though, but I really don’t think a doula could have done anything short of taking a speculum and shoving it inside my cervix and forcing it open. What can they do if your body’s just not cooperating?

Laura Birek: Of course, I think this woman who I interviewed would say that she would have all kinds of tips and tricks, but you never know. I think it’s a crap shoot. I’m on the fence. I’m open to either possibility, so we’ll see what happens.

Shanna Micko: All right. We’ll see. Keep us updated.

[Music]

Shanna Micko: We have a new segment today called, “They Said What?!” When you are pregnant, people say the darnest things. Your body’s an invitation for a conversation that you may or may not want and Laura and I have couple stories to share. Laura, why don’t you tell us first what someone said to you recently?

Laura Birek: I was at my monthly comedy show that I co-host with three other people. It’s very fun. It’s in this little coffee shop in Echo Park called Stories and it’s a coffee shop and they have wine and beer and because we host the show, anyone performing gets free drinks, which is great. So they hand me my tokens for my free drinks and I order a Chi Tea because I am pregnant and the woman at the bartender, whatever she says, “Do you want to use one of your drink tokens for that?” I was like, “You know what? I’ll save it for someone who wants to get alcohol. I’ll just pay for this.” I point to my belly and I said, “Because I can’t drink,” and she turns to me and goes, “You can. You just choose not to.”

Shanna Micko: What?

Laura Birek: I was like, true.

Shanna Micko: What do you even say after that?

Laura Birek: I was like, I guess so. I think maybe she was trying to cut some kind of feminist statement to me, because this is Echo Park. This is like hipster land. Maybe she thought I didn’t actually know that it was a choice and that there’s mixed evidence about having casual alcohol during pregnancy. But the truth is, first of all, I find that condescending because I am very educated about the whole situation. I know what I can and can’t do, but also, it felt very mansplaining despite the fact that she was a woman.

Shanna Micko: Yeah.

Laura Birek: It was just like, I’m just trying to make conversation. I’m just like, I can’t. I’m trying to make small talk and then she takes this opportunity to shame me for not drinking alcohol. I don’t even know what’s going on. I was so confused.

Shanna Micko: So bizarre. That’s the thing. It’s just a turn of phrase. It’s like, I’m pregnant. I can’t drink. You’re just throwing it off the top tip of your tongue to some lady you’re never going to see again. She didn’t need to break it down like that. That’s so weird.

Laura Birek: I understand that everything in my life is a choice. I’m pregnant. I can’t do meth. I know I could do meth. I’m not saying that they’re the same thing. Anyway, that was my very first being I have only really started mentioning my pregnancy relatively recently to strangers. I was just like, all right. I’ll just not say anything next time anyway.

Shanna Micko: Weird.

Laura Birek: That was my first one that I had to get off my chest. What about you?

Shanna Micko: Cool. This is actually something someone said last pregnancy, which my father-in-law, Bob. Backstory, he was a nurse and an ambulance driver. So he is very into the medical stuff and not a lot of boundaries with that kind of stuff and me on the other hand, of course, I’m all uptight and weird and prudish about bodily things, especially around my father-in-law. We were over there for Thanksgiving and everyone had left the room. It was just me and him. We were sitting there next to each other and just out of nowhere he says, “So, Shanna, what have you been doing to toughen up your nipples for breastfeeding?”

Laura Birek: Oh my God.

Shanna Micko: I was like, what?

Laura Birek: What have you been doing? 

Is this something I should be doing now, like toughen up my nipples? By the way, I know this is a podcast and people can’t see me, but I am clutching my bosoms right now.

Shanna Micko: I don’t know if I read this later or if he actually went on to explain, you might want to take a washcloth and rub them over your nipples and toughen them up or something like that.

Laura Birek: No.

Shanna Micko: That’s old information. Obviously, you don’t need to do anything to prepare your nipples for breastfeeding. But I do think that was an older idea. But I think I said, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

Laura Birek: Let’s have dinner. Was it Thanksgiving dinner you had?

Shanna Micko: It wasn’t. We were there for Thanksgiving holiday, but this wasn’t at the dinner table.

Laura Birek: Got it.

Shanna Micko: It was in the living room. I was just mortified and I love Bob. He was the sweetest just very kind guy.

Laura Birek: He really.

Shanna Micko: You knew him.

Laura Birek: I can see him saying that in all sincerity concern.

Shanna Micko: 100%.

Laura Birek: It’s nothing gross about it. He was just like, he really wants to make sure you’re okay and you’re thinking about it.

Shanna Micko: There you go. Do you have another one?

Laura Birek: I do actually. I went and got my eyebrows threaded, which I think most people know what this is. But it’s an alternative to waxing. It’s a thing where a woman, I guess men do it, but I’ve never had a man do it, where they use sewing thread and they hold one in their mouth and the other, they make this little V shape that’s twisted around and it just plucks your hairs out really fast.

Shanna Micko: It’s magical. It’s crazy how they do it.

Laura Birek: I love it. Waxing, my skin can’t take, but threading, it always makes me. I don’t do it all the time. But when I do, I always look in the mirror, I’m like, I look so young and refreshed. But it’s fairly intimate, because they’re right up in your grill as they’re doing it. So I walk up and I’m clearly pregnant at this point. She didn’t ask if I was pregnant. She was just like, “How far along are you?” She starts asking me all these pregnancy questions. She starts asking really more personal pregnancy questions, but I’m just like, whatever. I’m just lying there with my eyes closed, holding my forehead so tight so she can do it. Then I said, “Do you have kids?” She’s, “I have a 16 year old.” She’s like, “When I gave birth, I just tore all the way.”

Shanna Micko: I feel horrible for her, but no, don’t share that info.

Laura Birek: She’s like leaning over me threading my eyebrows. A person I’ve never met before and I was like, “Oh gosh, that sounds hard.” She’s like, “Yeah, it was painful.” She’s like, “But you know what? I had so many stitches. I was so worried about pooping the first time, but here’s the thing. It was such a relief. I wish I had known it was going to know it was such a relief.” I learned a lot about my threader in the five minutes it took. I was like, wow, never have I expected to learn such intimate knowledge about people, but when you’re pregnant, I guess it just comes out.

Shanna Micko: Man, I guess so. She’s been looking for an audience for that story for a long time.

Laura Birek: Why doesn’t she just tell everyone?

Shanna Micko: Maybe she does if she just threw it out there with such ease.

Laura Birek: She just opens with, “By the way, I had a full tear all the way back. Are you getting your lip done or just your eyebrows?” That was a fun moment. How about you? Do you have another one?

Shanna Micko: I have one more. I mentioned earlier that right now we’re in a temporary office space that’s about a mile from our parking garage and so we have to take a shuttle to and fro. One of our shuttle drivers is a dude. He’s got a lot of tattoos and he’s got I think a British accent and he’s nice. Not terribly chatty or anything, but I got in the shuttle the other day and sat in the front seat, because it’s easiest for me. It’s like a really big van and I sat in the front seat and he starts to drive away and he turns to me and goes, “So are you doing your placenta?”

Laura Birek: Not exactly.

Shanna Micko: What? I knew what he was talking about, because I’m in this world.

Laura Birek: Are you doing your placenta?

Shanna Micko: Are you doing your placenta was the question from this tattooed shuttle driver. I was like, “Yeah, I don’t know,” because turns out his wife is a person that dehydrates and encapsulates placentas.

Laura Birek: So plugging his wife’s business is what he’s doing.

Shanna Micko: But imagine that coming out of nowhere from a random dude, shuttle driver.

Laura Birek: Maybe people don’t know what the placenta encapsulation is all about. So do you want to inform our blissfully unaware listeners?

Shanna Micko: As best I can, because I don’t think I’m going to be doing my placenta. But some people do find it very beneficial to save your placenta, send it to someone like this woman who I think dehydrates it and pulverizes it and puts it into capsule form and also tincture. He told me tincture. It supposedly has a lot of benefits. It’s got a lot of hormones. It’s supposed to balance out your emotions after pregnancy, help with depression and stuff like that.

Laura Birek: I should say for you to eat it.

Shanna Micko: For you to consume the organ that you created.

Laura Birek: I feel like people who are very pro-placenta eating and encapsulation and all that, their argument is every other mammal in the world eats their placenta.

Shanna Micko: He 100% mentioned that.

Laura Birek: I think I’m just going to take some iron pills instead.

Shanna Micko: Like I said, I’m just irked out by body stuff. I couldn’t even barely handle my father-in-law saying the word, “Nipple,” in front of me, so I don’t think I’m going to be eating my placenta. But I know that some people do and they find it beneficial, no judgment. It just really caught me off guard.

Laura Birek: I think it’s more common in the UK also and I remember seeing some special on the Discovery Channel or something about a woman who did like chef-driven tasting menus. I’m sorry it’s pretty gross eating your placenta after birth. The thing she was saying was that she’s a very strict vegetarian and she was like, but I guess this doesn’t count. I’m like, if you made it…

Shanna Micko: No creatures died because of it.

Laura Birek: I’m with you Shanna. I guess it just goes to medical waste. Corey wrote on this medical show with a guy, Ryan, and he’s an ER doctor. He created the show and then he co-created the show and he was also a staff writer, so we would hang out and apparently, he is super skied out by placentas. He doesn’t care if someone comes in with like a gunshot wound to the head or their intestines falling out, but he cannot look at a placenta. That is grossed out, which I think is hilarious.

Shanna Micko: That’s really funny.

Laura Birek: But anyway, wow. Those are some things people said to us.

Shanna Micko: You listeners, please tell us what have people said to you. I’m dying to know.

Laura Birek: Oh my God, I would love to hear other people’s stories. I’m sure they’re a million times worse than anything we could ever imagine.

Shanna Micko: Share them. Moving on.

[Music]

Laura Birek: We close every show by talking about our BFNs and our BFPs of the week. So Shanna, what do you have for us? A big fat, positive, or a big fat negative?

Shanna Micko: I’ve got a big fat negative, which is no surprise since I’m a big fat mess this week. My BFN is having an open office plan at my work. We’re in a new office space. I no longer have a cubicle where I can hide in privacy and no one looks at you. It’s all out in the open there at these tables and being a pregnant person in such an open space, I just self-consciously got to pee all the time. I’m always getting up, grabbing snacks. I feel like, okay. You know I’m getting Doritos again today and peeing again and feeling just out there and self-conscious. I just wish I had my little cubicle I could go hide and no one would look at me and I just get bigger and bigger and eat all the snacks I want. That’s my BFN.

Laura Birek: That’s terrible. I would hate to work in an open office. I find that horrifying.

Shanna Micko: It sucks. It’s loud too, because everyone’s loud and they don’t care what they say in front of other people.

Laura Birek: I don’t know if you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert, but it’s an introvert’s nightmare.

Shanna Micko: I do consider myself an extrovert, but I think it’s especially being pregnant in that environment and just not really wanting people to look at me, notice me what I’m doing. So what about you? What do you got?

Laura Birek: Well, I’ve got a big fat positive.

Shanna Micko: Good.

Laura Birek: It’s the L.A. Zoo. I’ve lived here for 14 years. I’ve never been to the L.A. Zoo. But my friend, Muffy, it’s a really fun story, she won $100,000 on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.

Shanna Micko: Holy crap!

Laura Birek: Did you know that?

Shanna Micko: No.

Laura Birek: It was sometime last year. It was awesome. She didn’t tell us either. You’re not supposed to tell us, but sometimes if you’re on a game show, you can wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But she kept it very under wraps and we went to her house to watch it and it was very cool. So as part of her winnings, she is doing the things she’s always wanted to do, which is go to China to volunteer and hang out with panda bears.

Shanna Micko: That’s so endearing. I love that.

Laura Birek: She loves pandas and so she’s using her winnings to go on a trip to China and she got herself a fancy new camera so she can take good pictures of herself with the pandas and all that. She said she needed to practice and she tried to go on the Saturday of Labor Day and apparently it was a total nightmare. She didn’t even bother going in, because it was so busy. So she posted that on Facebook.

Shanna Micko: Where? To China?

Laura Birek: No, sorry to the L.A. Zoo. She posted on Facebook about how it was a failed trip and I was like, I will totally go with you on a weekday. So on Tuesday, we went to the L.A. Zoo together and it was awesome. Especially on Tuesday we went right when it opened at 10, so there was no one there. The only people there were other moms pushing around strollers and actually I think the very first person who acknowledged me being pregnant boldly was there. It was another mom with a stroller, so she probably felt confident about it and she was just asking me when I was due and I was like, this is kind of fun. 

But I have mixed feelings about zoos, because sometimes they make me sad. I know that they do great conservation work, but at the same time I’m like, is there another way to do it than keeping these animals in cages? I still have a little bit of mixed feelings. The lion cages there are not amazing, but they have some really great habitats and I got to feed a giraffe.

Shanna Micko: Cool. That’s fun.

Laura Birek: They have this thing where you if you pay $5, you can feed a giraffe and it goes towards the zoo conservation effort. Actually, Muffy paid for mine, which was nice, because I didn’t have any cash.

Shanna Micko: She has $100,000 burning a hole in her pocket.

Laura Birek: But she gave me $5 to feed the giraffe. I have a picture of it. I look super pregnant in it. We’ll post it on the Instagram I think.

Shanna Micko: For sure.

Laura Birek: So you can see me giggling like a fool feeding a giraffe.

Shanna Micko: That’s so cute. I love it.

Laura Birek: But it was fun and it made me excited to have a baby, because you have more excuses to go do stuff like that.

Shanna Micko: I was going to say when we have our newborns at the same time and we’re on maternity leave, let’s go take them to the zoo, put them around.

Laura Birek: Oh my God, let’s do that.

Shanna Micko: Fun.

Laura Birek: I think that’s our show, huh?

Shanna Micko: That’s our show. Like we said earlier, we would love to know what people have said to you and as always, we’d love to know what your BFPs and BFNs are. So find us on social media. Laura, where can they find us?

Laura Birek: We are on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at BFP Podcast. We also have a Facebook community group you could join where we discuss all kinds of pregnancy stuff. We also have a website, bigfatpositivepodcast.com, where you can find our show notes and links to direct episodes.

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

Laura Birek: Thanks for listening.

Shanna Micko: Bye.

[Music]