Ep. 18: Caffeine-Addicted Babies

November 5, 2018

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Embarrassment abounds in the segment “What I Googled This Week,” as Shanna and Laura admit the pregnancy topics they recently asked the Internet about. Also, the moms-to-be discuss feeling overwhelmed during the third trimester, baby kicks and more, and they reveal their BFPs and BFNs for the week. Laura is 25 weeks pregnant, and Shanna is 29 weeks pregnant.

Show Notes:

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Episode Transcript

Shanna Micko: Hi. Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. On this week’s show, we have our weekly check-ins, we have our segment called, “What I Googled This Week,” where we both wonder about addiction and emergencies and we check in with our BFPs and BFNs for the week.

[Music]

Shanna Micko: Hey, everybody. Here we are episode 18. Yay! So cool. Let’s start off with our weekly check-ins. Laura, start it off.

Laura Birek: If you recall from last week, I had gone and done my one-hour glucose test and I got my results.

Shanna Micko: Drum rolls.

Laura Birek: I passed.

Shanna Micko: Hallelujah. I’m so glad.

Laura Birek: Of course, the nurse called and said, “You passed your glucose test,” and I was like, “Can you tell me the score?” Because I am an eternal Lisa Simpson, I always have to get an A plus and I wanted to know how well I did on the test as though it’s a test you can study for. They said the cutoff was 140 and I’ve also heard that other doctors will have a cutoff at 120 for the one hour test.

Shanna Micko: It’s true.

Laura Birek: But they said their cutoff was 140 and I had a 90.

Shanna Micko: Wow. That sounds like solid A+ territory.

Laura Birek: Thank you. I enjoy a good star where I can get it.

Shanna Micko: Congratulations.

Laura Birek: Thank you.

Shanna Micko: I’ll print you a certificate.

Laura Birek: Honorable mention. That was exciting and I’m really happy that I can continue to eat all kinds of delicious carbohydrates for the rest of my pregnancy, because it would’ve been very sad to not have to do that. I feel so much for the other pregnant people who get the gestational diabetes and are deprived. All the people who have diabetes all the time, which has got to be really hard, but there’s something especially cruel about it during pregnancy I feel like.

Shanna Micko: Indeed, because it’s when you really want to eat everything.

Laura Birek: I know. Everyone’s like, you can go for it. You’re eating for two. My friend, Shin, had gestational diabetes with her baby and she would send these sad texts in her ninth month being, “I just want an apple. Is that too much to ask?”

Shanna Micko: She couldn’t even have an apple?

Laura Birek: I guess she said she couldn’t. Maybe hers was really out of control, who knows? But she was pretty bummed and I do remember that. I think on her due date, they went and got pizza because I guess the doctor probably gave it the okay. That’s good. I passed the glucose test and then I also had talked I think a couple episodes ago how, Corey, my husband was able to feel the first baby kick and it was kind of anti-climactic. I think maybe he didn’t feel it properly or it wasn’t that exciting that time because it wasn’t like a good kick because since then the baby’s been kicking way more and Corey’s gotten really into it. He’s really excited by it and he’ll come up and put his hands on and be like, “Wake up. Kick for me.” So I want to give credit where credit is due. He hadn’t heard that episode, so it wasn’t just because I was complaining about it.

Shanna Micko: He wasn’t like, “Laura, go back and do a correction, please.”

Laura Birek: “You’re making me sound like good jerk.” He’s the opposite of a jerk. He’s a real nice person. But in retrospect, I think maybe he was just trying to be nice and be like, “Oh, yeah, I felt that.” Or maybe it just felt like a really tiny tap, but since then we’ve gotten some big kicks and he is like, “Whoa, that’s crazy.” So it’s pretty funny.

Shanna Micko: That’s cool.

Laura Birek: I don’t think I mentioned. I’m in week 25, so I’m in that spot in your second trimester where you’re smooth sailing and I’m smooth sailing.

Shanna Micko: I was going to say your check-in sounds pretty smooth. I’m happy for you.

Laura Birek: It’s been a pretty smooth week. How about you? What’s going on with you? You should not make my mistake. Tell us at the top what week you’re at.

Shanna Micko: I’m week 29, so I am in the third trimester. Not so smooth sailing. Let’s bring it down a notch. First of all, my app told me this week that my baby is 16 inches long, which is crazy because when my daughter was born, she was 19 inches. So this baby’s like almost as tall as it’s going to get, which blows my mind.

Laura Birek: That’s what they say though that kind of in the third trimester, they don’t really grow that long in length. They’re kind of like filling out.

Shanna Micko: Because they say, she weighs about two and a half to three pounds. So hopefully, she’ll get more up to seven or so.

Laura Birek: Got to get chunky.

Shanna Micko: But then they’re like, she’s the size of a cabbage and I’m just like, these don’t work. These don’t make sense. A cabbage is not 16 inches long, people. I get mad. I’m too practical for these metaphors.

Laura Birek: The vegetable metaphors never work because if you go to the farmer’s market, a cabbage is one size and if you go to Van’s or your local chain grocery store, it’s another size. You go to Whole Foods it’s another size. So what kind of cabbage are they talking about?

Shanna Micko: They did specify: a small cabbage.

Laura Birek: A small cabbage is so small.

Shanna Micko: I know. I was like, if you’re trying to tell me it’s like the weight of a small cabbage, I get it. But they say the size right after they tell me how many inches the baby is.

Laura Birek: Also, wasn’t your baby supposedly a soccer ball a couple weeks ago?

Shanna Micko: My uterus was.

Laura Birek: I see. That’s different.

Shanna Micko: But the sports balls and the vegetables are all just very confusing.

Laura Birek: There was a point where my baby was supposedly the size of a G.I. Joe and I showed it to Corey and he was like, “Yeah, that makes sense to me.” I’m like, “All right.”

Shanna Micko: Now, that makes sense. If they compared it to children’s toys, I might be able to wrap my head around.

Laura Birek: The Ovia App does. I think that’s how you pronounce it. They have four different categories you can choose from and one is fun in games. I remember one week was a game boy. That was pretty exciting.

Shanna Micko: That’s funny. I’ll have to check that one for next week if I can accept it.

Laura Birek: But you couldn’t have been just not smooth sailing just because you’re mad about the cabbage.

Shanna Micko: No, a couple weeks ago, I think I was talking about hormones making me feel things: angry and frustrated and stuff. I just feel like they’re still kind of getting the best of me in certain ways. A lot of times I think it’s also, because I’m working full-time and taking care of a two and a half year old and I don’t really ever feel like I have a lot of downtime and a break. I just have a quick anecdote to share from my week that I think encapsulates how I’ve been feeling. On Tuesday, I had to take my daughter to her dentist appointment, which is at 8:30 a.m. I was trying to squeeze it in before work and it’s down in Encino and it really shouldn’t have taken that long to get there. But traffic was a nightmare and I made the mistake of trusting Waze. You use Waze, the intuitive mapping app?

Laura Birek: I do use Waze.

Shanna Micko: Which set me through some neighborhood and onto a street that was like full stop, 15 minutes waiting to turn left. By this time, it’s creeping later and later towards the appointment. Of course, I have to pee because you always have to pee when you’re pregnant and I’m just like, Waze, why you always do this to me? Then someone cut in front of me and I just lost it. I was just like, but I don’t want to lose it because my daughter’s in the backseat and I don’t want her to hear me go crazy. So this is me in the pot boiling with the lid trying to stay on. So I’m silently pretending to bang my steering wheel and I’m like screaming silently and then I’m like, oh my God, I bet the other cars just saw me do that. I got really embarrassed and upset that I had this really weird freak out about traffic. I started crying in my car and I’m trying to weep silently so my daughter doesn’t hear me, but then all of a sudden from the backseat I hear, “Mom, are you okay?”

Laura Birek: Oh, no.

Shanna Micko: I was just like, oh my God. Even when you think you’re holding it together as a parent, your kids can be so intuitive.

Laura Birek: They’re so tuned into you.

Shanna Micko: Definitely. It was so sweet and I was just like, “I’m just feeling sad and sometimes when mama feels sad, she cries.” She understands, because she cries. So we get there 30 minutes late and I pull into the parking lot and I’m grabbing her out of her seat and then I’m rooting through my car and realize I didn’t have my purse that day, which I just parked in a pay parking lot and I’m like, oh my God. I’m lugging my daughter through the parking lot towards the dentist and I have my coffee in one hand and my coffee spills all over me.

Laura Birek: Sorry for the injury.

Shanna Micko: I just feel like such a pregnant mess.

Laura Birek: Did the dentist get to see her at least?

Shanna Micko: We had a happy ending. They did fit us in. My daughter is like a dream patient at the dentist.

Laura Birek: Oh, really?

Shanna Micko: Yeah, she opens her mouth, lets him do everything. It’s amazing and then she picks a toy from this treasure box at the end, like a reward and she bypasses the awesome plastic dinosaur and the stuffed animals and picks out this silicone sticky, gel fried egg as her toy.

Laura Birek: That’s where I saw the fried egg on Instagram. That was pretty darn cute.

Shanna Micko: I was like, I love you. You’re such a quirky kid, man. That’s awesome that you picked the fried egg toy.

Laura Birek: That sounds really frustrating. That would be frustrating without being pregnant. The traffic thing, people who don’t obey the social contract and just get in line to take a left, I can’t deal with them. They deserve to get into a minor fender bender where nobody is hurt.

Shanna Micko: Where their car is the only one that’s wrecked.

Laura Birek: Just a little bit of body damage that’s below the deductible, so they have to pay it themselves.

Shanna Micko: That would be just lovely, especially because I had already been sitting there for 15 minutes and then this guy is like burp. I’m like, duh.

Laura Birek: Those Waze’s left turns are the worst. One time, it tried to get me to turn left across Wilshire Boulevard in west LA during rush hour on an unprotected left, which is I think six lanes of traffic. I was just like, this is actually impossible Waze. I will be here for a half hour and maybe die. I’m sorry. That’s frustrating and then I know adding the pregnancy stuff on top of it just makes it doubly frustrating and the fact that you don’t feel like you can let your anger out in front of your daughter, which makes sense. Anger is scary for kids I think, so it’s important to be safe around them. But nothing is more maddening than traffic.

Shanna Micko: Which I was like it’s going to make me late for work. Anyway, it’s over. It’s done. My kid’s teeth are clean. She doesn’t have cavities.

Laura Birek: That’s good.

Shanna Micko: But anyway, here’s to a better week next week. Woo-hoo! Moving on.

[Music]

Laura Birek: Okay. For our next segment, we have our regular segment coming back called, “What I Googled This Week,” where we dive into the depths of our Google search histories or Bing, I guess. Are we being rude not including other search engines, Shanna?

Shanna Micko: I don’t know. Maybe I did a little Yahoo this week.

Laura Birek: Did you? Does anyone?

Shanna Micko: No, never.

Laura Birek: No one does. So tell me what you Yahoo’d this week, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: I Yahoo’d, “If you drink caffeine while pregnant, will your baby be born addicted to caffeine?”

Laura Birek: I want to know the answer to that.

Shanna Micko: “Babies can become addicted to caffeine if mom consumes too much during pregnancy. When born, a caffeine addicted baby will have to be weaned off and might exhibit withdrawal symptoms.” That’s a quote I read from a site that came up.

Laura Birek: What site? That’s what I want to know. I’m always about what are your sources.

Shanna Micko: hellogiggles.com/news

Laura Birek: I love Zooey Deschanel, but that is not a scientific journal. I want hard proof.

Shanna Micko: Hey, maybe they cited a source. Let’s see. Dr. Felice Gersh, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, the Director of Integrative Medicine at Irvine.

Laura Birek: Isn’t that what they’re calling holistic medicine now?

Shanna Micko: I don’t know. She says, “Coffee should be avoided during pregnancy. Although small serving shouldn’t have an impact.” That’s basically the message of everything I found is that everyone’s like, oh, you should avoid it. But small amounts are okay. 

That’s when my doctor told me, keep it around 200 milligrams or under. I’ve been drinking caffeine my whole pregnancy. I guess when I Googled this though, I just had a little bit more than usual and started to of course, freak out and worry that I was messing everything up.

Laura Birek: I rail against this, because I’ve mentioned it many times before on this podcast that a book that you recommended to me was Expecting Better by Emily Oster and it’s been like my north star throughout this whole pregnancy. Just a little recap on her background, she’s a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. She’s a trained economist PhD, knows how to read studies. When she got pregnant, she heard all these recommendations, but she wanted to know what the facts were because they seemed to be all over the place. Some doctors said 300 milligrams of caffeine, some said 200, some said zero. So she wanted to know what the actual science was. She actually writes a whole chapter or at least a big chunk in her book about caffeine intake in pregnancy. Her conclusion is that there is zero evidence that there’s any negative side effects, unless you’re drinking a huge quantity, like six or more cups of coffee a day. That is what I live by and I’d be really curious to see what she says about this HelloGiggles article and the doctor who I’m sure is a fine doctor. Here’s the other thing, I grew up with essentially three doctors as parents. My mom and my dad are both doctors and then my parents got divorced and my mom has been with my stepdad who is also a doctor for like 18 years now. Anyway, the point is I grew up around a lot of doctors and one thing I’ve learned is that doctors are not necessarily the be-all, end-all and the final say in what’s safe or not. They don’t always know. What I should say is different doctors say different things and I know this because if I call my mom and ask her about some medical problem I’m having, she’ll say one thing and then if I call my dad, he’ll say another. I wouldn’t stay up at night worrying about this shot.

Shanna Micko: It’s funny you mentioned staying up at night, because I’m so sensitive personally to caffeine that if I have caffeine after noon, I stay up all night. I won’t sleep. So that’s why I’m worried, am I about to give birth to a baby who’s got a caffeine addiction and is not going to sleep and is going to be awake all the time? It’s kind of a self-preservation.

Laura Birek: What happened with your daughter?

Shanna Micko: She was a good sleeper. She was fine.

Laura Birek: Were you drinking caffeine then?

Shanna Micko: Yeah.

Laura Birek: Proof.

Shanna Micko: Proof that the pregnancy insanity bites you in the butt every time, no matter what. I have lived through it before and still I’m like, but I don’t know. Maybe I should consult.

Laura Birek: I’d like to absolve you. Imagine me waving my hand over your head and saying, “You are allowed to have caffeine before noon.”

Shanna Micko: Thank you.

Laura Birek: Laura said so.

Shanna Micko: Anyway, I’m going to have caffeine after I give birth and it’s going to reach into that breast milk and get to that addicted baby anyway. So I really think she’s going to be fine.

Laura Birek: She’ll get her fix.

Shanna Micko: What did you Google this week?

Laura Birek: I’m giving you a hard time for being paranoid about these things, because what I Googled this week was emergency home birth techniques.

Shanna Micko: No, are you worried about going into labor at home?

Laura Birek: Okay. Worried might not be the right term. I consider myself an optimistic doomsday prepper.

Shanna Micko: Doomsday prepper?

Laura Birek: I’m not really a doomsday prepper. I’m like an optimistic realist as far as natural disasters go. I don’t actually think that there’s a good chance this is going to happen. I think that 99.999999% I will be in the hospital as planned giving birth as planned. 

However, as you know, we live in Los Angeles, which is earthquake country and we are due for a big earthquake in geological time. So we’re overdue for the big one by geological standards, but that could be tomorrow, or it could be 100 years from now. In geological time terms, it really doesn’t make much difference. In whether I get to give birth in the hospital terms, it does make a difference. I always joke about it. I have an earthquake kit in my car. I have one in the living room. I have multiple, because I actually bought one for Corey before we were living together and now they’ve merged, so I have multiple earthquake kits. I keep them up to date with water and supplies and I think of it as being a rational prepared person. Some people think of it as being a little paranoid.

Shanna Micko: You’ve said to me. It’s nothing I’ve got in my house and I wish I did.

Laura Birek: Time to get a real basic earthquake kit. It’s one of those things you hope to never have to use and I will say it does come in handy. The other day we had a big framed print, just the glass on it shattered out of the blue. It tipped over, but didn’t fall and the glass shattered into these large sharks. So we had to clean it up and the earthquake kit was right there and there were leather work gloves inside the kit. I was like, borrow them from the earthquake kit. I’ve borrowed the flashlights for the earthquake kit before, so can come in handy. But I realize what I don’t know is how to give birth without assistance in case the big one hits right as I’m dilating.

Shanna Micko: Oh my gosh. I hope that doesn’t happen.

Laura Birek: I hope it doesn’t happen as well. 

It’s not ideal, but so apparently, I’m not the only one who’s ever been concerned about this because when I Googled emergency home birth techniques, there was a lot of information. You can Google it yourself. I won’t go through all the steps. They make it super easy. They’re like just guide the head out and then they tell you not to cut the cord to let a medical professional do it. But if you’re in the middle of earthquake ruins, I suppose you have to make do however you can. They make it seem really, really simple. But the thing that happened was I looked at some like really basic. What to Expect had this cute little video of what to do if you’re in a taxi and giving birth. It was like a cartoon, but YouTube has a whole genre of home birth videos that I kind of fell down the rabbit hole watching and I found these videos of women who intentionally deliver their own babies, like in their living rooms.

Shanna Micko: It’s not an emergency. Like this is her birth plan?

Laura Birek: Yeah, this one woman and she’s written books about it. She’s like the unmedicated pregnancy and unmedicated birth and unassisted pregnancy and unassisted birth. She has more than one. This woman has at least five kids from what I could tell and at least two of them, you can watch the whole process of her squatting basically and catching her own baby.

Shanna Micko: Is she also holding her own camera? Is she doing it all?

Laura Birek: No, that would be impressive. She has people watching her. I think her husband is taking the video or I think she even had a film crew for one of them, because it seems like she’s sort of built a brand around this, which not how ladies…

Shanna Micko: I feel like this is performance art at this point, putting on a show or something. Sounds like there’s an audience there and of course, the YouTube audience.

Laura Birek: It had a lot of views. Actually, let’s see how many views she has. Hold on. Let me do some typing to find out.

Shanna Micko: Also, I’m just going to mention that sounds like a video I never want to watch, because I’m as you probably know, easily freaked out by bodily things.

Laura Birek: There are so many birth videos on YouTube. I can’t believe it. I just did a search and the thumbnail of one of these searches is literally a baby crowning out of a woman’s vagina, which I’m surprised because there’s a lot of rules about what you can and can’t do on YouTube, I feel like and you have a full view of a woman’s vagina with a baby coming out.

Shanna Micko: Hey, it’s natural, man.

Laura Birek: All right. Okay. Here we are. I found it: Sarah Schmid: unassisted birth in the living room at night has 791,000 views.

Shanna Micko: Wow.

Laura Birek: It was posted about a year ago. It’s a lot, but not astronomical. 

But she does have 18,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel. It appears she has at least three of her births on the internet for anyone to see.

Shanna Micko: I wonder how her children are going to feel about that in 16, 17 years.

Laura Birek: That is a real good question. I don’t think I’d be into it if my parents had done that.

Shanna Micko: No, imagine your peers find out that there’s a video of you coming out of your mom’s vagina on YouTube.

Laura Birek: Can you imagine being a 14-year-old boy and finding out that your friends have watched your birth on YouTube?

Shanna Micko: I think that would freak me out.

Laura Birek: Anyway, that was a rabbit hole I fell down into. Although I have to say that it did make me feel a little more prepared.

Shanna Micko: Good.

Laura Birek: Also, I found a statistic on the whatoexpect.com that said only two in a thousand women end up with an unplanned home birth. I’m guessing that’s in the United States.

Shanna Micko: It’s not going to happen, but now you know, the more you know.

Laura Birek: I guess that’s the end of our Google search this week.

[Music]

Shanna Micko: Our next segment is our BFPs and BFNs. Laura, what do you have this week?

Laura Birek: I’ve got a BFP.

Shanna Micko: Woo-hoo!

Laura Birek: Which is comedy maternity leave.

Shanna Micko: Comedy maternity leave?

Laura Birek: Yes, this is what I’m calling it. I co-host a monthly comedy and storytelling show with a couple friends. It’s called IDK and it’s at Stories in Echo Park. It’s the first Friday of every month and we rotate hosting duties, but every month we all do producing, we all find people to perform and I make the posters and all this stuff and it’s super fun. I love it, but it does take up a chunk of time and I feel like every time it’s been coming up, it’s just gotten harder and harder, especially being pregnant. So on Friday, I hosted my last IDK before I was going on what I’m calling comedy maternity leave.

Shanna Micko: How was your last show?

Laura Birek: It was all right. I have to say that there was all this stuff going on the news about the Kavanaugh hearings and LA is a pretty liberal town. Just that it’s Echo Park, so it’s full of I think a lot of left-wing hipsters, and that was the day that Kavanaugh, basically became clear that he was going to get confirmed. I think everyone was kind of drained from it. It was kind of a hard week for people, so getting people to laugh about silly pregnancy jokes, also, silly pregnancy jokes, I had no time to workshop. I can’t blame the audience. I possibly didn’t have the time or energy to go to an open mic and try out new jokes, because I’m freaking six months pregnant and, who has time for that? Also, all open mics are at 10 o’clock at night. It’s such a pain in the ass that they’re not designed for people with kids or real jobs. It’s all designed for 21 year olds who are trying to break to comedy. I’m not even trying to break into comedy. I just like doing funny stuff.

Shanna Micko: We need to start a 10:00 am open mic session.

Laura Birek: A 10:00 a.m. Sunday open mic. Bring your toddlers.

Shanna Micko: I would be there.

Laura Birek: Actually, there might be a real market for that, honestly, because there’s a lot of parent comedians in LA for sure. Man, have we just decided to start an open mic? 

Let’s add something to our plate, Shanna.

Shanna Micko: Please. I’m not boiling over already.

Laura Birek: I like how my BFP is that I’m going on comedy maternity leave and now we’re coming up with ideas for me to start a new freaking comedy show, but the point is that I’m really actually very happy to be free of one more obligation. It’s a happy obligation, but you need to pair back and that’s what I’m doing and it was a fun show. My dad actually came down to see it from Fresno.

Shanna Micko: That’s nice.

Laura Birek: Because he had been wanting to come see my shows and he was always hedging about it and he works a lot. As I mentioned, he’s a doctor. He is still practicing. Like the previous month, he wanted to come down, but he ended up in the OR till like 3:30 and then he was going to jump in the car and drive three and a half hours to LA and I was like, don’t do that.

Shanna Micko: Oh my gosh, no.

Laura Birek: It’s a silly free comedy show that’s on the back patio of a cafe in Echo Park. It’s not Carnegie Hall, but so this one I texted him. I was like, “Look, you don’t have to come. It’s a silly show, but I’m hosting this time and it’s going to be my last one before I go on leave.” So he came down and it was fun. I don’t think he loved the comedy, I have to say.

Shanna Micko: The comedy in general or your part of the comedy?

Laura Birek: We had some really funny comics in the show. It actually ended up being 100% standup. There was no storytelling on this one and I thought they were hilarious, but I think it might have been a little too edgy for my dad, few too many vagina jokes.

Shanna Micko: That could rub a fellow the wrong way.

Laura Birek: That’s what she said. I’m on comedy maternity leave, but I can still bring the jokes. Anyway, what do you got this week: BFP or BFN?

Shanna Micko: I have a BFP.

Laura Birek: Good.

Shanna Micko: It’s been hard for me to sleep at night, especially like I get hip pain in my last trimester. I had it with my first pregnancy too. It’s so painful. I toss and turn and so I went online to try to find what people have as solutions and someone suggested getting a foam topper for your mattress, something to give it some extra cushion. I bit the bullet and bought one and had it delivered like two days later and it has been awesome. I’ve been waiting to talk about it, because I was like, I’m going to see if this actually works for an extended period before I mention this. It’s been a couple weeks now and I actually, knock on wood, oh my God, I haven’t been feeling that hip pain and shoulder pain too.

Laura Birek: Wow.

Shanna Micko: It’s really nice. It’s like a two inch mattress foam topper that I just put on top of my bed and I kind of sink into it like a cloud and it’s been great.

Laura Birek: That’s nice. Is it like memory foam or just foam, foam?

Shanna Micko: It’s two inch gel memory foam topper.

Laura Birek: That sounds nice.

Shanna Micko: It was only $65 on Amazon.

Laura Birek: That’s totally reasonable.

Shanna Micko: I thought these things were going to be like $200, $250 or something. So when I saw that it was like $65, I was like, I’m going to spring for that, because that’ll be worth it.

Laura Birek: Small price to pay for your comfort. Do you think you’re going to keep on post pregnancy?

Shanna Micko: Yeah, maybe I will.

Laura Birek: I will say I think I have like a one inch one that I got, not because of pregnancy, but we got a new mattress about a year ago and it was very firm and they told us it will take some time to break in and I slept two nights on it and I was just like, I can’t do this. It’s so firm and I was like, firm is good for your back and it didn’t matter. I was just like, I can’t do this. So I went and got I think a one inch one, which Corey was okay with. At first, he was a little concerned that it’d be too soft, because he really likes a firm mattress, but it was the best of both worlds. As we’ve talked about and you’ve giggled about, I have pubic synthesis pain, which is in the front of your hips. But I haven’t had the hip pain. When you say hip pain, is it like on the sides?

Shanna Micko: Yeah, because I sleep on my side anyway and especially when I’m pregnant to try to avoid sleeping on my back and stuff and it’s just so painful. But this is helping.

Laura Birek: I think that’s a real pain. That’s good. That’s exciting. We will put a link to it in our show notes so others can experience the relief you’ve experienced.

Shanna Micko: Indeed.

Laura Birek: I think that’s our show.

Shanna Micko: Yay! Thanks for listening everybody.

Laura Birek: Thanks for listening.

Shanna Micko: If you have anything to share with us about what you’re going through in your pregnancy or have gone through in a previous pregnancy, let us know. Am I the only one that’s a boiling pot with the lid trying to stay on?

Laura Birek: Am I the only one who’s worried about having to give birth at home without assistance?

Shanna Micko: Let us know. Laura, where can they find us?

Laura Birek: We are on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at BFP Podcast. On Facebook, you can also all join our community group. We also have a website, bigfatpositivepodcast.com 

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

Laura Birek: See you later.

Shanna Micko: Bye.

[Music]