[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, everybody, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Rob Burnett, and I've got Brad Bickerton with me here. Welcome to the Daddy O podcast. On today's episode, you're going to hear about baby's first vacation colostrum, harvesting, sweeps and just preparing for baby in general. Brad, good to see you. Happy new year. How you doing?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hi. It's great. It's funny how much I miss doing this with you and thought about it on vacation and all the little stories I can't wait to. Daddy owe that and daddy owe this. And Sarah Beth kind of looks at me and goes, oh, you've got a good one.
And we'll get into that when we go to vacation. And hint, it has to do with sand. But I'd also like to share something with you, Rob, that you don't know that I know, which is a father and a CEO friend of mine listened to our last episode and said, this is excellent. When can I listen to the next one? So we have a listener and an anecdotal verbal. So it's time to start getting these out there and see if other people like it, too. But people who aren't you and I, or married to you and I, are enjoying what we're doing.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: I can't wait to get it out there. It's going to be fun.
Well, Brad, I hear that you went on your first ever little vacation with the baby. Tell me about it. How was it?
[00:01:19] Speaker B: So everybody will tell you this, and you will hear this, and you will not know it until you do it. That vacation with an infant is an alternative place to parent. A lot of the stuff is the same, but it's also totally worth, you know, we just moved houses and we moved houses and then we literally left on vacation. So the big move happened on a Thursday and vacation left on Saturday.
Our baby did great. It was a flight from Denver to Miami. There was on both flights some terrorist child, I mean, seriously, terrorist child, screaming their head off. But it wasn't Theodore. He is super happy just to bounce on mom, and as long as he's got access to food and warmth. And we had great people sitting next to us both ways. One guy didn't care at all. The other guys, oh, these are my twins, and they're eight. And literally, there's a society in a plane of other parents who are on your side. As a bachelor, I always looked at the babies as, oh, the other them. Those people. Oh, thank God for noise canceling headphones. But when you bring baby, guess what? There's looks all over the place of people going, yeah, I've been there. Yep, I got that. Do you need help?
So also, Theodore loves to look at people. Doesn't necessarily love to be held or touched by people. That's kind of iffy. There's some stranger danger. And so we're becoming more aware of that.
And so we get an Airbnb, and that's a whole struggle, trial, difficulty along the way. But Theo wasn't a problem. However, I've been told about the beach. There are three types of babies, infants not yet mobile. There's I don't like being dirty.
There's I love the sand, and there's. I love to eat sand.
We have an I love to eat sand baby. Literally, fistfuls of sand. We had to actively pause him from doing that. But the really funny thing is that we went to kind of a higher end restaurant for lunch, and it was maybe day three. And then Sarah Beth comes out. She knows he needs a diaper change. He's a little stinky. And she comes back laughing, just laughing. She goes, I'm not sure if he still has sand from the beach in his diaper. We put it on wrong, or if he just pooped sand, sweetie. He just pooped sand. And it takes days to clear that. And you're wiping your baby's bum, and he's a soft, cute little bum, and it's like you're rubbing his bum with sandpaper. But it's his fault, because the sand goes in and he only eats milk.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: The sand needs to come out.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: The sand needs to come out. And so we've been laughing about that the whole time. So lots of little journeys and learnings. We're very thankful for being able to get out of dodge and go and just be the two of us together for a couple of days. That was really worthwhile.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Well, I'm glad you're able to laugh about it, too, because I'm kind of of this opinion that kids, for centuries, have put things in their mouths, and I presume that there's got to be all kinds of good health and immune system and gut microbiome benefits to that. And I think kids probably don't get dirty enough these days.
And so I'm glad that you're taking that one in stride, because I think that that's probably my totally non scientific opinion of that, is there's got to be some benefits to kids just touching things and put things in their mouth and playing with stuff.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Yeah, the lactation consultant, we had talked about that and she pretty much said, the scientific research follows what you just said. It's that babies do need to develop these immune systems, and also they're still in connection with mom on their immune system. And so if mom gets sick, as she develops antibodies, she gives them through the milk to baby. As baby gets sick, mom will give the antibodies to baby. And so this time of putting everything in their mouth and having these germs and having these bacterias and all that, mom is supporting them. So when you think about the fragility of a baby as a physical baby, yeah. They can tip over and knock their head, and that could be really bad because they have no muscle strength. They can't control it. But from the immune health, mom is still supporting the baby just the same as from a physical health. I am holding up the baby, or she is or booster seat or whatever.
Yeah, it's good to be dirty.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: That's awesome. So for any kind of new parents, what are the big takeaways from baby's first trip?
Any tips or tricks?
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So do it. Number one, food is really difficult, especially for me, gluten free, but also for Sarah Beth. Really have a good food plan, because in the end, it was 10 hours from when we left home to when we got to the Airbnb and we needed to be able to survive 10 hours on the fly.
The other thing is grace and space and communication. That was where we really got in trouble. Not that we ever really fought, but I thought that I should go take baby and change his diaper after because she'd been holding him for the whole flight and I didn't communicate that with her. And I started walking over that way and she's walking the other way. Whoa. Pause.
But as far as tips and tricks for infant level, they're pretty good with it. It's pretty well written about and known to have baby feeding during takeoff and landing. And that's because the sucking action is the same as you or I blowing our nose to clear our ears. So that's good.
We can talk about keeping him awake longer later. So a couple of other things for air travel, we checked his car seat, and we liked doing that because whether you're renting a car or you're taking an Uber, we actually hired a driver one day. It's nice to have your own car seat and a lot of car seats these days. They'll have the attachment piece that's kind of semi permanent ish. Don't bring that. But they'll also have something where the car seat can just be buckled in. And so that's the car seat we took. So having our own equipment was really nice. And then we also brought our stroller. And strollers are complicated through security.
You basically are going to have to wheel it in. As it is. It's too big to fit in any of the scanners. And so in the end, they're going to have to make you go through the whole process of. They'll wipe your shoes and put it in the little sensor thing and turn around three times to the left and then touch your left toe and all that stuff that you have to do through security. And while that's happening, mom also has to take care of baby. So all of a sudden, the division of labor becomes very sharp of get through security with baby, mom get all baby stuff and dad through security. Dad. And it's almost like you want to dry run it at home. And we did do that. We talked straight through it. It was actually when we were driving there, we're like, okay, you're going to go this way. I'm going to do this, going to hold on to this, going to do that, and we're going to meet at voodoo donuts.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, good.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: I know exactly where that voodoo donuts is at Dia. It's a great meeting spot.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: It is.
Rob, let's flip it back to you. We haven't talked a little bit what's going on with pregnancy journey. Remind us where you're at, because I may know that right now, but someday we'll listen to this again. How are you feeling? What's Rob's world as almost father feel like?
[00:08:46] Speaker A: It's close now. So we're in the home stretch officially. So we are at 39 weeks today. So I had Covid fully recovered back at it really good.
And, yeah. So today, as of today, right now is time. I'm recording. We're at 39 weeks exactly. So it is, like, full on game time now.
It's ready to go. The baby's ready for anyone who knows or anyone who's going through this journey. Right. Like, 37 weeks is, like, term. It's okay. It's not a premature baby at that point. So that was January 1 for us.
So for the last two weeks, we've basically been kind of like, okay, he could come anytime, but we kind of know there's very small chance he would.
But now it's like, okay, as of today, it's like, he can come anytime, and there's, like, a 50% chance he comes this week. And we've got this kind of two week window between week 39 and the end of week 40 that we really want him to be born in, because if he's not born now, he starts getting late, starts getting big. So this is like crunch time now, but we're feeling really good. I'll get into a lot of what we've been doing recently, but I think the big thing today is, if anyone doesn't know, so we did something called a sweep. And talk to your medical professionals about this. I don't know how people in the US versus the UK do it, what the recommendations are. I'm just a guy on a podcast, like, telling you what we did, and you can go look into it. But a sweep is essentially.
Basically a medical professional will get up in your wife's business, to use a technical term, and put a finger in the cervix and start to break some of the membrane and get things going.
And something like 20% of women who have sweep will go into labor within 48 hours. So it's kind of invasive, but it's a relatively quick way to try to just induce labor and get things going.
So when we went to our midwife appointment today, the baby is looking good. He's in a good position, and he's fully engaged now, which means his head's basically all the way down in my wife's pelvis, which makes sleeping through the night and not having to use the bathroom very hard. But it means that he's on his way towards the exit, and we did the sweep. So there's a possibility that in the next 48 hours, I'll have a baby. Otherwise, he's definitely headed in the right direction, which has both my wife and I kind of very feeling very good, because so far, things are, knock on wood, moving in the right direction at the right pace. So that's really good.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: None of the fear gremlins, the person with a bad experience or story, any of that coming into your mind, or is it just you keep getting this reinforcement of everything's kind of following a normal path, therefore, we're on a normal path, and the normal path is difficult but healthy. Where's your headspace?
[00:11:42] Speaker A: My headspace has been pretty good. I'm trying very much to stay on the positive headspace path. I'm very much kind of wearing the.
I feel like it's my job to be the kind of positive cheerleader in all this.
I've thought through some downside scenarios and things, but my job really isn't to bring those up. My job is to keep things positive and happy. We're trying to keep the oxytocin levels high. Trying to get my wife to go into labor. That's my job as far as I'm concerned. I definitely have some fear, but I will say at the risk of again knocking on wood, I'm definitely less nervous now than I was at the beginning of the pregnancy. I feel like between everything I've learned, between this podcast, between kind of taking classes, talking to experienced professionals, I know there's plenty that can go wrong in delivery. But I feel so much more confident now in kind of our progression, the journey, how healthy Laura has been that I'm not nearly as scared as I was going into the pregnancy about kind of this part of it, the birth, labor and delivery. Now, Laura is rightfully quite nervous about it because she's the one who's actually going to have to experience the ordeal of giving birth. And she's done great. She's got such a good attitude about it, but it's of course, nerve wracking. So she kind of fluctuates between I'm excited and I can't wait to meet him and oh God, it's going to happen. I'm really nervous about giving birth.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: There's this really cruel, funny thing about biology, and Sarah Beth was nervous in the lead up to it. The process just. It's rough. It's a rough process. And I think I've mentioned this before. If I didn't need to be with the woman I love because she loves me, she needs me as a cheerleader. She needs me as mental support, help, advocacy. She needs me in the room. If that weren't true, I don't think fathers should be in the room. It's tough to watch the person you love go through this, and so you got to swallow a little bit of that because they're the one going through it. You're just watching. But the interesting biological twist is it took Sarah Beth less than 1 minute post baby to completely forget about all the pain of pregnancy. I mean, the entire ten months of pregnancy gone in a minute, including that last hour and that last push and that last everything. As soon as baby's out, oxytocin hits their body. A soul comes and puts its angel comes and puts its hand on her shoulder. Whatever you believe, they actually have this fun win, whereas we're kind of a little more steady through. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's okay to be a cheerleader, because that's what she remembers. She remembers me touching her back. She remembers me reading Harry Potter to her. She remembers me kind of pushing the nurses around in that clever way that I do. She doesn't remember that at one point after her water broke, she started shaking and uncontrollably needing to throw up. She doesn't remember that. In fact, if she doesn't listen to this episode, she might not ever hear those words again. And it happened to her.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're gearing up for that. And I think right now the name of the game is like, we did all the work, so now the name of the game is like, aim squarely towards the best case scenario and stay calm and loose and nice. If the worst case scenarios come, we'll deal with them then. But there's no point, we've done the work, no point in trying to worry about them right now. So a lot of really good feelings, a lot of good energy, the vibes, good. And I'm just going to shout out, laura, she's just been an absolute rock know we kind of been thinking about, and one thing I want to talk about today is kind of like how we've prepped for the baby and she's just been an absolute rock star and kind of like doing all the little things and I think that's helped both of us. We both like, we were a little type a. We like to be in control and it feels good at the end of the process to feel like, you know, what? We did just about everything we think we should have done. Looking back, there's some things we would have tweaked, but we don't look back and go, oh, man, we wish we had started working out earlier, or we wish we had eaten healthier, or we wish we had done stretches better. We're feeling good coming into it, which is a great feeling to have.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Really well done. I'm so happy to hear that. And when you first told me that you were pregnant months ago and you were kind of thinking like, where are we going to be at the end of this journey and what do we need to prep? And you made a plan, you followed it, and there are potential negative outcomes. But the interesting thing about that is in a first world country, the medical professionals have seen it all and they know what to do and you haven't and you don't. So that type a personality is more lean in on the medical staff. They know what they're doing until it comes to administration, anything administrative, which of course, you're in the UK, so billing won't be a problem for you. But that's where you can advocate. But anything medical kind of. They got this because they do it. I think our birth center does about 200 babies a month. A month? Yeah. They know what's going on.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Well, our hospital does something like, hold on, 8000 babies a year.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: So that's 666 a month. That's a lot of babies.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: A lot of babies.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: That's a lot of babies.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: 20 a day.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Yeah, something like that.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Yeah. You're not special.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Special to Mike.
They've seen it all before this month.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: They've seen it all.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah. They really have.
But actually, Brad, you brought something up that I want to touch on real quick because it's a discussion Laura and I had a couple days ago. And I'm wondering if you either experienced this or you, Sarah, about to talk about this at all was in an attempt to kind of reframe the fear around birth.
The one thing that we talked about was that we're about to experience basically the biggest change I think a human being can experience. Right. The change from being an individual or a couple to a parent. There's not really any other changes that happen that come into your life that are quite that monumental and on a dime where it's like, today I'm not a parent, tomorrow I might be a parent.
And Laura and I talked about the fact that both her going through labor, which she kind of, even though she could just do a caesarean electively, but a part of her, even though she's scared, wants to go through it, and I sit there and go through it with her. We talk about kind of the value of ceremony and the value of kind of like transition in life. And it is kind of this. We're trying to wrap our heads around the idea that labor is almost this little gift where you kind of go through this ordeal as a way to transition together and for Laura to transition from person into mom. And I don't know if you guys felt that kind of like it did feel like this kind of ceremony and this ordeal that you could kind of go through a kind of coming age of kind of experience.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: You're bringing together a lot of concepts, and this is why it's fun that this is a business and a dad thing. So for years, I've talked about state shifts in companies, that there's a period of time where you're an early stage startup and you don't have revenue or you raise your first money, and that the way I design how a startup works is five stages and they're full state shifts. And the metaphor that I used. The illustration that I used for years was, think about it this way. A full state shift is the difference between the last day of pregnancy and the first day of having a baby. Because everyone gets that. It doesn't matter if you're 22 year old and asexual, you get that. The other one I had to use because I was yet to be a father, and it was a little disingenuous for me to use that one was the difference between running for office and governing. That's another full state shift. But the other part of that metaphor is, for everyone else on earth, the sun went down. The sun came up. It was a day for you. It'll never be different.
Sarah Beth and I believe very strongly in taking time to be ceremonial. And one of the things that we do is we make these little plaques, the quotes that we were talking about at this time or the things that we're doing. And sometimes we write them in a journal, sometimes other places. What we ended up doing for the ceremony of the birth was I took all the notes that I could during those very short windows of time. And then about two weeks later, we sat, we wrote the narrative into a journal. And that was our ceremony, right? That was our taking, our collective knowledge of what did it feel like for her? What did I see and experience? What is this photo? Or is this text? And turning that into a singular story. And that's how we celebrated this state shift. But the second thing that I'd say about it is, especially for mom, the state shift happens within minutes through labor to having baby. And I joke about this, but it's the truth, and it's a beautiful truth. Sarah Beth's first words to Theodore were, oh, my God, it's so worth it. And she said that while I hadn't even cut the cord yet, that's how much it happened for her yet. The state shift of being a mom, learning to nurse, waking up with the baby, co sleeping, which is what we choose to do, purchasing stuff, thinking about.
That's a slow arc. And so there's some parts of your life that are unilibly changed because you are now a father. She is now a mother. And there's some parts where you're going to grow into being fathers and mothers. So it's a balance there.
That's my nice little ramble question.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Yeah, a little state shift is a good term, but I'm glad you put that together. I'm going to keep that in my back pocket. Kind of. That journaling and writing down would be really nice.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: What you have that's super lucky that I didn't have is this podcast, which we hope that people grow, learn, mature, enjoy this. And also a primary motivation for both of us is a video diary.
And so you'll have this, which is a great thing, because one of these weeks, probably next week or the week after, the story will be tell me it all, let's get it all out.
Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: And thanks everyone who's listening, because you're indulging us, because we're a little free flowing, because we're just trying to get everything down right. We're not as quite as tight as maybe we could be because we just want to get it all out there.
Speaking of Brad, so should we move on to the next section here?
[00:22:20] Speaker B: I'd love to, everybody. And so now we're coming to the back part and really want to start getting into the logistics and the tips and tricks and the helpful bits. And so, Rob, I know you're intentional about how you're going to go once labor starts, when you're going to go, what you're going to bring, what you've done to prepare. And then I have a couple of tips and tricks that I'll share with you as well. But really just tell us, what is the fatherly duty coming into? You're going to be in a hospital in a day, a week, and you know it, and you got chance to prep. What are you doing?
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really good question. So a couple of things, right? So there's the day of prep, right? So we got our bags packed, we've got comfy clothes, we've got entertainment. The thing we keep trying to remind ourselves is labor is long, might be 6 hours, might be 12 hours, it might be 72 hours. But you want to make sure that you can keep your oxytocin high, which means how do you just stay entertained? How do you stay connected with books, podcasts, playlists, things like that. So we got all that good to go, but I think too, especially this last month, we've really tried to hone in on what are the big things we can do to kind of prep Laura. Be ready. And a lot of things. There's things that Laura has to do, but I'm trying to be as supportive as I can and help. You know, our list of kind of daily or bi daily tasks are. We've been doing a couple, right? So we've. Laura's been doing her pelvic floor exercises, which has been really good, and she's been really religious about that. She's been getting strong in general. We've been doing some weightlifting and cycling and other things indoors to make sure she stays fit.
We're 39 weeks today, and she did a 45 minutes bike ride on our little indoor bikes here. So she's staying as fit as possible, which is, I think, really helping her stay happy and healthy.
The other thing we're doing, which is a fun little thing that I actually encourage anyone to look into if it's right for them. We're doing colostrum harvesting.
For anyone who doesn't know, colostrum is this little kind of like. It's almost like pre milk that comes in a couple of weeks before the baby is due. So we started doing it probably around week 38. And it's basically these little golden droplets that can kind of be expressed from your wife's breasts as she's kind of preparing for labor. And it's supposed to be very nutrient rich and super good for the baby.
And what they sometimes use it for is if either you have a premature baby or if the baby needs to get taken away for a second, for anything you can take, basically, at least for us. Our midwife gave us these little kind of syringes that you can use to kind of suck up the colostrum, and we've got them frozen now.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: YoU can't underestimate how LItTLE volume this is. As a GUY, I didn't understand ounces of milk, and this will be something that comes into YOur JourneY LateR, because 1oz versus 4oz, how much can mom bring? But colostrum is teensy TinY.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: It's tenths of an ounce.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's wild and awesome. So, yeah, keep going.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Yeah. So we started a couple a week or two ago. We probably got ten, seven to ten syringes full. We try to do it kind of every other day, and it's been good for us for a couple of things. One is, it's good for the baby. This is really nutrient dense stuff. It's good for even if you plan to not breastfeed, like, you can just kind of squirt this into the baby's mouth, and you can keep all the frozen colostrum for up to six months. Again, everyone should check this with their own provider, but this is what we've been told is what our plan is. So, one, you can bring it to the hospital if the baby needs it. If they need to get taken away, they can have a LitTLe NutrItioN, and if not, you can keep some at Home and just kind of intersperse it throughout their feeding in their first weeks and months.
It's supposed to be good for immune system digestion, microbiome, all that good stuff.
The second thing is, it's been really helpful because Laura really does want to breastfeed. That's her choice, and that's what she wants to focus on. And it was a moment of real confidence boosting and real.
It was really, I'm CaPABle. BIG RElIEF. Yeah, it was a RelIeF to her to know. She's like, I've never seen ANything come out of my breast before. This is cool. That it was reallY. She was very encouraged that it worked and that she's capable of feeding her child. And this is like, it's something that you don't know you can do until you do it.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: And I think that's near universal, from what I've heard talking to other dads or what I saw with Sarah Beth, when I saw with my sister, with her twins 16 years ago, that it's not necessarily fear about whether they're capable of doing it. That's going to be idiosyncratic. But once they achieve it, and colostrum is a good kind of halfway measure, there's a huge sense of capability that we don't understand.
We just don't understand.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Exactly. And then you have a huge sense of relief there. And also, this is where I don't know if it's an old wives tale or not, but it's definitely supposed to. There's a lot of talk of if you're producing a lot of and harvesting the colostrum, it'll prep the body for birth. So for all we know, it's helping kind of move things along.
Can't hurt. So we're giving it a shot because we really don't want the baby to go late. And then the last thing is that I happen to be good at it. So I've actually been helping.
Laura said it was okay for me to know because you kind of need to use a little bit of grip.
I'll let people kind of make their own assumptions, but you need to use a little grip, and you use the syringes and you get everything.
And basically, Laura has to be there, obviously, but it's kind of become my job. And I think Laura's really enjoyed the fact that I can really help with something, and it makes her feel like I'm involved and caring. And so that's been kind of a funny thing, that we're joking with the midwives. The midwives. That's my job. I'm the colostrum. Guy. So I hope that doesn't stick as a nickname in this podcast, but it's certainly been a fun little thing that I've gotten to do that makes me feel like I'm participating, because as guys, we're just along for the ride for the most part. Yeah.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: It's like that ability to raise your hand and say, I'm willing to try. And also when people go, no, you don't have it, either because of your biology or because of your technique or an ability, but just letting everyone know I'm on the sidelines, who put me in, I'll jump in, I'll give it a shot.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: I'll do it.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: I'll go, yeah, that's an interesting one. So it's a similar but different, just the ways you can interact as a father. And I was really excited to cut the cord. That was something just, that was symbolic for me. But they also said that I could actually catch the baby. There's a better word than catch. But my stepfather, who's family care doc, said I caught a lot of babies in my career, and so I still use that actually, in the moment. I was thankful that Sarah Beth actually ended up doing a sitting position, and I was looking her eye to eye, so I didn't even have the chance to say, no, I actually don't want to do that.
And that was interesting to me. So there are some things where you can be involved, some things you can't, some things you want to. And on that one, I kind of feel like I chickened out, and I'm not sad about that because, yeah, I didn't need to be there for that part. But colostrum, that's great. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: I'm in the same boat.
I'm pretty good. I feel like I wouldn't get too grossed out. I can kind of get, but I think catching the baby is probably just a step too far. I think I'm going to leave that to the professionals and I'll just be up top with Laura. Listen, if things come too fast and we're at home and it's got to happen, I'm in. Put me in coach. But, yeah, that's one of those ones where I want to be involved, but I'm very happy to kind of take a backseat on that one.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: What else? Just admin logistics, other things you're doing to prep for baby or health or food. What's going on?
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Yeah, we're trying to stay healthy. We're trying to eat good, lots of hydration. One thing we've been doing. This is a trick for everybody that's been really fun. If you can pull it off is. So we happen to find time out is a kind of online magazine that does kind of food reviews and stuff, and they often publish. So in our town, they have the 23 best restaurants in Oxford right now. And we happen to be in walking distance of most of them. And so we've basically been on a tear of going out on date nights, and we've gone to, like, over the last maybe three or four weeks, we've gone to, like, 15 of these restaurants now. It's a little excessive. We usually don't eat out that much, but a lot of them are very healthy. They're not all super fancy. Some of them are like, street food and things like that, but they're just kind of like, what's good in Oxford right now? And we've just been going through that list, and it's been really fun because, one, it's delicious food basically every single time. Two, a lot of these restaurants are new to, like, we've seen them, but they're new to us. So we get to explore our own, then, you know, three, we get to do these date nights together, which is really good because we just know that time is going to change. And then final sneaky thing in our city, at least, is we can walk. So we walked, like, a mile and a half to one of these restaurants there, and then a mile and a half home.
And getting those walks in as a pregnant person is, like, primo. So to walk to dinner, build up your appetite, get a chat, have a beautiful dinner at one of these restaurants we've been meaning to go to. And then, like, a nice long walk in the evening home.
It's really kind of been a highlight of our last couple of weeks. Just totally fun and really kind of made these last couple of weeks where Laura's otherwise been feeling pretty big, really enjoyable. So it's been really fun.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: So, slight anecdote and then back to your list is, yeah, we had a scheduled induction date, and then we were called that morning saying, we have too many babies. Can we push you guys till tomorrow?
Whoa. Okay.
Sure. It just changes everything, right? Because we had, maybe labor comes naturally, but there was an end, and then the hospital moves it. And so we go to our favorite dinner place, and we just got to have 05:00 dinner. Because you're not with a 39 week pregnant woman, you're not going to 637 30 dinner. And in the middle of dinner, we're just there, and we're hold each other's hands. We're so happy and thankful for this life coming into our world and for each other and what we have. And the middle of that dinner, we get a call and they say, actually, we can fit you in tonight.
So we went from it's happening on the 6th to, oh, push to the 7th to, well, you can come in tonight at 10:00 okay, here we go. Yeah.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Wild I will find for you. Sarah Beth found a book on foods post baby, and there are some cultures where I believe it's japanese culture that specifically a woman's not allowed to touch water for 40 days. And that's to be metaphorical, not doing the dishes, not cooking, not scrubbing or washing for 40 days. She can just be mom. And along the way with that, just the respect of having up to 40 days of just really calm, chill, learn. Some of that's for healthy, normal, pregnant women. Some of it's for women who have difficulties, whether they're physical or postpartum depression, other parts of postpartumness and having really nutritious, very simple food is a real part of it. And we have a book, and I cannot remember the name of it, and I will make sure to find it and should we ever have show notes to put that in there. But that was something that none of these foods I enjoyed because I'm basically a carnivore and I learned to and enjoyed helping prep these or if she made a big batch of them, just giving her the food and nutrition she needed after, one less thing for her to deal with. So that's something that, it's funny that you're exploring going out to dinner at wild, amazing, great places, but your next part of your journey is eating quietly at home, very simple food. And that's going to be a state shift for you in the next week.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Or two, for sure. And the good news is we usually like eating at home.
Yeah. The last thing on my list that I felt compelled to share is just kind of we've talked about before, but my work to do list. Right. So I've been really intentional these last couple of days about kind of like, I created a group chat with all my key managers where I can just text them and say, and they're all expecting, like, hey, guys, it's time. I'm out. And that's it. And they know. And so it's like we're ready to go. They're queued up. I've been trying to over communicate with everybody. Like, here's when I'm going to be out. Here's the plan.
I'm going to be out for a month. Here's the possible dates it could be be ready for it.
And just kind of constantly communicating with the people, the kind of three or four people who are going to be covering all of my stuff, communicating with them both separately and together so that they all know what to cover and how they can talk to each other to cover that stuff. So these last two weeks in particular and this week coming up, I've really kind of been narrowing in on over communicating with my team what's going to go on, what's going to happen, what they can expect and how to talk to each other and how to make decisions. And then I've also got my own to do list of all the projects I want to get done or off my plate or started so that other people can carry them forward for a month while I'm out. So it's been kind of full on and I've been feeling energized about that, which is really nice. So feeling good about work, getting stuff done. Yeah. So now it's just like am I going to have to work another week or am I about to be out and we don't know. So very up in the air.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: Thank you for sharing so much of that stuff. So a couple of things that I learned about coming into the hospital administratively, you'll start noticing in your life what other parents are doing all over the place. Oh, what's the name of that carrier they have? Oh, what kind of stroller? And some people could do comparison shopping. That's the $400.01. That's the $100.01. That's not what I mean. Just the good ideas other parents have. And one idea that I had, I was actually at a Formula one race some years ago and I saw this family with what was basically like the wagon that Calvin and Hobbes would have except for they're collapsible now and they're a lot bigger. Actually had a kid sleeping in it, of all things, but okay. And I just kind of noticed it because it's right when Sarah Beth and I were starting to try and I thought, you know, that might help for the hospital. And so once we broke open that, hey, how do we carry more stuff into the hospital? That opened a whole bunch of stuff to why don't we bring everything we could possibly want? Her own pillow.
Don't be chincy. Going to the hospital is not like going on a flight where, you've know, this is how we're wired. You've got one bag for you and one bag for the family.
It's not that. It's as much as you want. You can fill up your car. You can even do multiple trips. And the real key unlock for us on that ended up being we knew that there were fridges inside the hospital, and Sarah Beth was able to bring five days of her own food. And hospital food for birthing centers isn't that bad. But having your own food is just so much better. Having your own blanket and then having your own music, really go to town. Design this thing to be as fun and nice as you want. But what's hilarious to me is all this stuff that we did, the food was a very good idea. All this stuff that we did, though, the number one key thing that worked the most. I had been reading Harry Potter to her during all these exams and all these things. Every time we have to sit and I kind of throw my voice and I put in all kinds of fake news inside of my reading. I'm constantly referencing Nelson, which is the town I'm from, or putting my name, our last name into it. And during the day of pregnancy, of delivery, reading to her, because it's my voice, it's our relationship, and it's a story we already knew that ended up being by far the mvp of all things we brought was a $12 book. So that's my little note to you is what can you do to use your voice? Because your voice matters to her.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: A small note on that. Laura and I, actually, not to get too cute, but we actually read to each other quite a bit. It started when we were doing a long distance relationship, and we've been getting through kind of some fun books and series and things. And we've got one that we're kind of like, it's like a third book in a trilogy. And we're like halfway through it, and we're kind of hoping we can hang on through the pregnancy because I do think there's something about not only reading and do those things that might be for some people, might not be for everybody, but having some piece of content, whether it's like a podcast series or a tv show series or a book or a series of books, having something where you're both halfway into it, so you're both really engaged with it and you want to know what's next. Whether it's like Harry Potter I love. Even if you've read it a million times, you're at that point. So that when you're trying to go through labor, which is quite distracting. You actually still do want to hear what's next. I totally think that's awesome and a great way to queue things up.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Awesome. It was funny. We'll start this in the next podcast, but because we have business and life, one of the reasons we started this was because there wasn't a lot of material out there for us to read about or it didn't resonate with us. And so this is in some ways us going through our personal experience and starting to bring in other pieces of literature to talk to our audience about. The second side I'd like to start with is what are you reading or what are you consuming on the business front? And I don't want to start that today because we're already over. But it was interesting that you and I consume a lot of information in a lot of ways and that would be something nice to share.
But I think let's go towards the wrapping up part. Let's do dad wins and losses. And do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?
[00:41:22] Speaker A: I'll go first. I'll just dive right into it.
So my dad wins for this week. Last couple of weeks is definitely harvesting colostrum. That's been my job. I got it done.
Laura was struggling just with the angle and the amount of grip she needed, and I came in and saved the day. So turns out being a boy and having was. Was useful in this particular scenario. So that's been fun. Totally my win for the week. Really fun. Really excited about, you know, I was talking to Laura before we started and at the risk of sounding a little too cocky, just struggling to come up with the fails. But I think where Laura and I were struggling the most, our dad struggles or our parents struggles right now has been naming, finding a name. Now we think we've got one. You heard it here first. We're pretty sure we got to meet him, but we think we got one. But that was one of the most. We kind of ignored it for a long time because we had some early conversations that didn't go very well.
We finally got to last weekend and said, we can't go to the end of this weekend. We can't go to week 39 with no idea what we're going to name him because that's just not okay. We can't be in the hospital being like, I don't know. So we kind of fought through it. We have some differing opinions between families and the UK and the US and what names work for each country. Which names work for each family.
And we kind of ended up coming back to our first thought, but we came back to it not as a, I guess this is turning into a win. We came back to it not as, oh, I guess this is the only thing we can agree on. But actually, we got excited about it. But the kind of struggle there of. I didn't expect it to be a struggle. I expected it to be fun. But, man, I found it very difficult to pick a name and still we don't know for sure. And it's hard to think of him. I haven't met him yet, so it's hard to think of him as that name or anything else. But that's probably the fail of the week was just kind of how much I struggled with that whole conversation.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Thanks for sharing that.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: My wins and fails.
We went through Christmas and moving and then vacation, and now we're still kind of in moving. And so there's 1000 little fails in there that don't really feel like failures. I could have shown up better, but the one that is really on me in this household is we have a one year old golden retriever. We lost our dog last year, this week, actually, and then we got another one, and we knew that that was going to be a lot. He has so much energy and he needs to let it get out. And I've been tired and stressed and everything, and I actually burdened the family by not going and running the dog because he's just running around being a dumb, dumb puppy. He's doing his best, and it's not his fault. It is my fault. And that is something that I own, that I need to take the time. This morning I got on the peloton, which was good for me, but then I had to go out. It's negative four and boulder right now and snowing. And I just said, you know what? I can't shirk this duty. It's bad for everybody. And I have been.
That's definitely a fail on the wind side, it actually feels like there's more winds than not. We actually didn't really do a Theo update, but he's a great little kid and we're starting to do solid foods. But the real win for me, we talked to, her name is patience, our sleep coach, and that it's time for baby to learn to sleep with me.
And one of the key attributes for that is mom to physically be gone. Well, right now we're going to try basement versus top floor. Eventually she. No, no. Sarah Beth, go out to dinner with your friends go see a movie. But the win for me was I've gotten to fall asleep with me a couple times, but really feeling this connection of he basically has only fallen asleep for mom for six months and now he's starting to do it with me. And I feel competent to achieve that goal. And I can't tell you how much your heart swells and grows when you can take care of your child. That a almost choking up on it. It's a lovely, lovely win.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: That is an awesome win, Brad, and I'm so happy for you on that. I'm hoping that goes well and you kind of break that cycle. It'll be great.
Well, why don't we call it there? That's a great place to end it.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: I think so too.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: Thanks everybody for listening. We hope you enjoyed if you have a dad winner, a dad fail. If you've got advice for us, if there's a topic you want us to cover, email us at
[email protected] and if you like what you're hearing, like it, share it, subscribe, do all the things that you need to do on the Internet to help us out. We really appreciate it. And stay tuned for the next episode. Thanks, everybody.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Thank you for listening. Bye.
