Laura's Post Baby Update!

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and twenty nine, which is airing in mid to late January. We're going to be talking about the arrival of baby Henry. So this is the birth story episode that maybe some people have been waiting for. Probably others are like, wait, it just showed up in my feed. Was there a baby? Maybe there was, I don't know, so exciting news. Well, they're probably also hopefully excited for regular episodes to come back and for us to be inserting lots of baby updates along the way, since I know that can be a popular topic for those with new ones and their own So don't worry we have plenty of that to come. Yeah, it's gonna be a great lineup of episodes this spring. We're planning that now and looking forward to it. Yeah, being back on track. And you know, we recorded a lot of episodes ahead of time to allow for the fact that we didn't know and Henry would be arriving and what the situation would be. And actually this is airing right around his dutyue. Yeah, I know, I've been pondering this many times over the past few weeks that I'm like, I would most likely still be pregnant with all my other children, I was still pregnant, like I at this point, I'm not even I wouldn't even be thirty nine weeks yet. So it's amazing. How pregnant is this like binary thing? Right? You are? You are? There's no little bit. It's amazing. Well, I'm slightly jealous. I never got to experience, you know, having a baby a little early. I know that in a way that sounds very odd since you want to keep babies great campod and yeah, you know, sometimes you get to that thirty eight week mark and it's like, okay, I would go now, I'd be happy. I never went less than forty weeks. Yeah, well, you know, and I thought about it that, Like, I mean, with Sam and Jasper were both at forty one weeks, and so thirty seven weeks is a full month earlier than that. So yeah, there's a lot less time to be pregnant, which was kind of nice, so that once it turned out he was okay, you know, because there was there's always a little concern when they're a couple weeks early about whether that will be the case and whether he'll eat okay and all that. But he seems to be fine. So I think I think you should just break into this story and tell us from the beginning about, you know, the surprise and the recovery, because now that I'm thinking about it, you said your recovery was taking a little longer. But I'm almost surprised because a baby that was earlier, it's like you were less pregnant. So yeah, that's true. So over the holidays, you know, we celebrated Christmas, we had a lot of activities. My mother in law was here, which turned out to be quite fortunate. We you know, we're doing the various things with the kids, and then my husband's brother and his family came from North Carolina on the twenty seventh, and so we had four other kids in the house too, So we had a whole house full of relatives. It was awesome. You know, we're doing lots of activities with them, and you know, on the twenty eighth, they had all gone to see a movie and I went to get went to Costco to like go get groceries for the evening. Come back, I really needed a nap, took a twenty minute nap, and then we all went to Disney on Ice. So the thirteen of us at Disney on Ice, which was it was a great experience. I totally said, yeah, you seemed to. You said, all the kids liked it. The older one liked it. So if anyone has that coming to their location, you know, it might be worth taking kids of different ages too. But you know, it's just a chaos of that to drive home and cook dinner and then you know, finally get into bed and I wake up at like one forty five feeling this like shot of adrenaline. But you know, I've been waking up in the middle of the night a lot. Was that true with all of your pregnancies or was that? I mean, I don't really remember. I mean, it's it's hard to say. I mean, I must have had some element of you know, waking up, but I don't have the records of it. And this is the one that I have the time log for us, so now I can see like how frequent it was that that this was happening. But you know, so I was like, okay, I'll just lie try and go back to bed, see if I can. And then like around two thirty, I my my water broke. Like I'm just lying there in bed and I'm just like, WHOA, did you feel a little pop? Because I did. I had my water break with care and I just felt like the little most subtle little like like wow. So that that kind of got my attention. So yeah, once I figured out that that's what I mean, that was pretty clear that was what it has had, what it happen, and I it was like quick googling, like what what am I supposed to do? Like how how long I should have texted me? I would have been like you go to the hospitalspital and now, well, so I did. I mean, I did call the the my Obi's Emergency Answering service that they have going overnight and they had, you know whatever, the doctor on call call me back, which hilariously, I mean, because it was a holiday weekend, like three am Sunday, they I mean, it was some guy from some other practice that was like covering for them. So I was like, well, this is I have no idea who this dude is. But it turns out he's good friends with my kid's pediatrician, so all good. But so they called me back and he's like, yeah, just come in because I wasn't even I wasn't really having contractions at that point yet, but I was like, okay, well, you know clearly this is what happened. So I wake Michael up. I'm starting to have some contractions. At this point, we go wake his mother in law, his mother up, tell her you know, we're going drive to the hospital. But it was a more calm drive than the one with Alex several years ago, because you know, I was just starting the active labor during the drive as opposed to having contractions every two minutes the whole trip. So you know, I'm like, okay, this is all good. Like walk in through the emergency room, check in because they know we're coming. The lady you know, pushes me upstairs in a wheelchair, and like I get into the room, I'm like, oh, this is all calm, this is gonna be great, you know, nice and nice and relaxed, and they check. I'm like, only forced that. I mean, it's dilated at that point. So I'm like, okay, well, let me just you know, get the epidural, take a nap, like we'll we'll deal with this in the morning. Of course, then it takes some time to get that started, and in the course of trying to get the epidural in, of course, the contractions start going boom boom boom boom boom, boom boom, and so finally they get the you know, the epidural in, and the nurse's like, okay, kind I'm going to give you that ballus of medicine, you know, so you won't feel anything more. And then I'm like, I feel his head. So so you had another round of like inadvertent natural childbirth. But it was just like, oh, so did you push right after that? Yep? Oh that's so funny. Yeah, that's actually sort of similar to Genevieve because I got to like nine centimeters waiting for my girls as well. But I didn't. I didn't feel the head, so you win, that's amazing. It's like, okay, here we go. So that was it. He's out. Wow, oh my goodness. Probably one one nice push, yeah, pretty much because he is only six and a half pounds. But you know, it's funny having had three children now in this hospital, some of the procedures like they evolve over time, like they've now become what they call it baby friendly hospital, which has some downsides like baby centered, yeah, be centered or whatever. They like, are less likely to you know, quickly take your baby to the nursery overnights, you can say, but like you have to like argue for that. But on the other hand, they you know, put him immediately on me, as opposed to you know, taking him off to wash him up or whatever. And like so it's like, you know, I got to see him immediately and struggle with him immediately, and you know, he's really cute. He's just this like you know, peanut of a baby, little little Henry. So he you know, he did really well, he ate right then. But then you know, so I was like, oh, well, this is like this is perfect. But you know, then after they took him away, got him, you know, got him set whatever. I went into my hotel room, not hotel room, hospital room came, yes, sort of like a hotel room. When they brought him back, he wasn't able to eat very easily, and so we really struggled with that the first day, like I keep trying, you know, but he's just so little. He couldn't latch on very well and you know, suck his not his size, but his gestational his digestational age seven weeks is like right on that cutoff. So some kids are just not going to feed quite as instinctively. Yeah, yeah, so it was yeah, but we learned and he figured it out, and of course now now he's a rock star. Now he's a rockstar at it. He's eating well, and we came home actually the next day, on the thirtieth. He was born early in the morning on the twenty ninth, So when we came home on the thirtieth, all the kids came and visited me in the hospital. On the thirtieth, I had been actually quite anxious about this. That had been a source of some stress. I mean just you know, there had been like I was, you know, I went to write where the mark where they don't call it premature. There had been some risk factors for premature birth for before that, and I was like, well, this could be a problem because in the hospital they're going to have the flu restrictions in place, which means that young kids can't come visit. And I was like, I was dreading if I had, like going to be in the hospital for a longer period of time and my kids wouldn't be able to come see me. Because little alex Oh, I wish I'd had this conversation with him before. He like two days before Henry was born, said well, who's going to be our replacement mommy? And I said what I said, I planned to continue in this role, and we said no, when you're in the hospital. I had to explain like I was only going to be gone for like max like forty eight hours like at that point. So poor little kid had thought I was gone for ages. So it's really good. I wonder where he got that idea. So were the kids allowed to come in then? They could? They could, they had not because it was late December and not like into January. They did not have the flu restrictions in place yet, so they were able to come and How did it go. It went pretty well. It went pretty well. We had them all sit down and hold the baby, and they were very excited about it. And actually our cousins came to like we went through two shifts of kids coming through. We did the old the four older kids first, and then the four younger kids, and yeah, it was it was really cute and sweet to see them. They've been very about about the baby and mostly pretty good about it. I mean, the older kids are big there, they know the whole thing. But you've got to hold the head, got to be gentle. Alex Is you know, a little bit more aggressive with the baby. I mean he loves them, but you know, you show your love in a sort of pawing manner and has had a few little adjustment issues of being I think, you know, it's tough, right, Like there's there's been more bedtime battles and more kicking and screaming than I think we had had for a while, Like, you know, regressed a couple months or years on that. But life's challenging to get a new little sibling, especially if you've been the baby for that long. One hundred percent, I mean that sounds a lot like we had similar issues with Cameron, and in fact, I still regret not doing a better job kind of preparing him for what to do and what was going to happen when he came in that hospital room, because I think our nanny brought him in and he just made a gras immediately without washing his hands, without anything for Genevieve, and I remember being like no. But then I felt like he was wounded by my no because it was a very like Mama Bear protective No. Hopefully it hasn't scarred him for life, but I felt like it didn't set us on a great path starting because I think he then cried because he felt but oh god, it was not perfect. But yeah, there was definitely adjustment. Maybe there's still even adjustment. I think it's hardest for the next youngest kid because I don't feel like my I didn't feel like Annabelle really had any real negative. In fact, it's been pretty easy for her to take on that big sister role pretty much from the beginning, which is similar to your number three position. So yeah, no, it's it's there's a lot of us. I mean, I guess that's what we What I can say is that there are many many kids and life doesn't stop. I mean, with this many kids, I you know, I think about I had written on my blog about the whole check Cheese birthday party that that's amazing Henry was subjected to. I mean, we kept him out in the van and we have a new Saturday childcare thing going now, which is great, but she was out in the car with him most of the time, and I came out to feed him. But you know, it's just like I had scheduled the birthday party to be ideally before the baby came, and then the baby was there, so we you know, we're not going to cancel the party. You know, there's enough adults that can handle it. So we just did it. And you know, it was Chuck e Cheese or you know, Jasper had it. It would have been so bad to cancel because it would have been exactly the wrong message. The baby is here, you can't and of course we wouldn't do that. So I I had a choice. I mean, I could not go, but I wanted to be part of it as well, like and so I was. And although that was kind of challenging because that was before I flipped the moment of my recovery of Sarah and I were talking earlier of my getting over this, but it's been a bit of a more of a journey. Well, let's take a quick break actually, and when we're back, why don't you talk a little bit more about that recovery because I think people would be interested. Yeah, hey, listeners, we know you're busy. That is there something that's interfering with your happiness or is preventing you from achieving your goals. Better Help Online Counseling is there for you. You can connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. So it's very convenient for people who are working and raising families but want to prioritize their mental health. Get help on your own time and at your own pace. You can schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist. Betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who specialize in everything from depression and in stress and anxiety to relationship and sleeping issues. Anything you share is confidential, and if you're not happy with your counselor for any reason, you can request a new one at any time. 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Their causes include women emerging from homelessness, women surviving domestic abuse, and women fighting cancer. That makes me feel really good about each purchase. Laura loves their brilliant eyebrightener. I know she uses it to look awake after even a rough night of sleep with the baby. I really love the liquid lip bomb treatment. It hydrates really well and feels great going on. So start thriving and help women in need today by going to Thrive Cosmetics dot com slash best of and use code b E s t o F for fifteen percent off your first purchase. That's Thrive c a U s E Medics dot com slash Best of using code b E s t o F for fifteen percent off. Once more, that's Thrive Cosmetics dot com slash Best of using code b E s t o F. Well, we're back. We're talking all things birth for the fifth time around with this episode. So yeah, we're just saying life continues and the big kids do stuff. You know, we drive them to school, pick them up at school. The Jasper had a choir concert last night that I went to, so you know, I have to do these things still be tell every parent and tell everybody about kind of how long it took you to start? Well, I don't know, do you feel normal? How we're now like what three weeks out? Oh no, not yet. We we're like eleven days out, but we're eleven days out. How close do you feel to prebate, pre pregnancy. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. It's it's been you know, I don't it's hard to remember. I guess this is the problem. You don't remember necessarily all the details of the recovery from from previous times. In my mind, it feels like it was a little slower, which could be. It's two things. I mean, when I'm older, which you know, I can't do anything about. But I also got this really nasty cold right at the moment of birth or something, you know, and I could maybe it was in the hospital, maybe it was at Disney on ice, like, who knows, like where I contracted this, But I was definitely feeling pretty miserable from that, and so it's hard to know if, like, you know, I would have been feeling kind of gross with that anyway, and like tired and out of it. And then you add that on top of the recovery from childbirth, and it's not a good feeling. So you know, physically, it wasn't a very difficult birth. We were saying, the baby's only six and a half pounds. It was a short labor two and a half hours total start like from water breaking to baby being out that is pretty fast. Yeah, so I can't really blame it on that, but some I think what had happened My stomach muscles were not engaged or something for about a week after the birth and or like very limited engaged, and so I was, you know, having to sort of move differently to get myself up to walk around to you know, so you put a lot of pressure on your back then, and so that was physically pretty painful and I but then something happened overnight, like Sunday to Monday, basically from day eight to nine of postpartum. It's that my the muscles, thedominal muscles like completely came back together. And so overnight it went from like I couldn't I didn't feel like I could engage them, so I could and so then I could like move, which was like getting up easily from lying down or sitting up position or walking around, and you know, it had the sort of vanity element of it went from looking like I was six months pregnant to not looking pregnant in a span of hours because it was suddenly holding everything in, you know, like the breastfeeding is always painful at first as you try to toughen up again just to if we have any first time mothers listening to this. I mean they like to tell you, like it doesn't hurt. It hurts. It hurts for about the first week or two and then it gets much better. Maybe there are some women for which it never hurts. But I guess two for two on this podcast. I will also about you say that you know and it's it's just something you should be aware of. It doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong or that there's anything you know that's going to be like and you know it won't be like that for so if you're sitting there saying, how could I deal with this for the next year, like, you won't like, it won't feel like that for past about you know, day what nine to ten or something. So do you use those little gel things? Those are my favorite? No, No, I just kind of stuck, just toughed it up this time. Yeah, but we've been pumping a lot. Get that milk supply established it at you know, X plus and if you'll set at all, yeah X plus a bottle a day. If you can pump an extra bottle a day, then you can let it drift down over the course of the next year or so your milk supply and it will be okay. If you miss a feeding like that won't be a problem. That's something I've learned because it sets at the baseline of where you come in when your milk comes in. If you start pumping immediately, then the baseline will get set more than you actually need. And how is the night nurse situation going? Yeah, well we had that. We've only had that two nights at this point. We oh, because she wasn't booked to start, Is that why? Oops? No? So I definitely So the first few nights I was it was kind of rough. And what I've gotten to the rhythm of doing is I give the baby to Michael from about ten to We've been able to get to like twelve thirty, twelve forty five and there, so you know, he'd then give the baby to me at twelve forty five so I could get that first two and a half hour stretch in the beginning of the night. And then you know, especially over Christmas that he was like driving us all around. You know, it was kind of he needed to be able to sleep from at least like one to seven to be functional. So anyway, so I took up the night and then I'd nap during the day. You know that that worked, and so but then we were like, okay, well, the night nurse service wasn't even planning to start until late January because I sort of assumed the baby would come around forty weeks and that would put us into late January by the time we were kind of home from the hospital and adjusted and so, I you know, I called up and said, well, I recognize that this is early, but it's it's a service, so there's more than one person. And the owner is the one I know and was here most of the time with Alex, and she'll come late January. But I mean she's booked with someone else, but she has her associates. So we've been cycling through some of them and had two nights we didn't have last night, but he was. He slept pretty well last night. It was not actually not a bad at all. But we'll have somebody tonight. So yeah, it actually works somewhat similar to what I was having Michael do, Like I give the baby to this person at ten, I go to sleep, they bring the baby to me at you know, twelve thirty one for that first feeding I feed, take the baby back, bring the baby back at you know, four four thirty whenever the second feeding is, and then you know, bring them up and let the person out succesh in the morning, and then you know, I might get a little extra time to sleep, but like another half hours. But at that point, I'm trying to get the kids up for school, so you know, there's only so much time overnight. But I mean, people saying, well, what is the rationale for doing this? You know, the baby sometimes they take a while to settle, Like I have the notes from Tuesday night, the night nurse who was here. I mean, he took like an hour to settle after his feeding, after the twelve thirty feeding, and that's time I would have been up and I wasn't. So that was a nice extra hour to get in the middle of the night. So yeah, valuable, valuable, valuable. So then you're able to do this podcast, yes, and you're able to take your kids to school and not be yelling at them because you're absolutely exhausted. Well, there's been some yelling, I will claim. There's that poor little Alex and I have been at it in terms of because he's refusing to go to bed at night, which has been very difficult as I want to go to bed and mostly Michael's been dealing with that, but like after about nine, you know, when the battle is still going on. But you know, we talked about it this morning. It we're like his kindle. You know, at the end of the day, both of us are at one percent and we have to recharge overnight so we can be at one hundred percent in the morning. But when we're both at one percent, it's it's bad. I wonder if it's the post winter break too, because every nobody wants to get up for school. No, nobody wants to get up for several and it's dark. It's like, yes, yeah, dark even here, even down in tropical Florida. It's not cold, but it's it's dark, and it's kind of interesting. It makes me want to buy blackout shades actually, because I always get frustrated in the summer and like it's probably just the light. That was just yeah, no, you could, that's something you can do something about. So yeah, get the way to try it this summer. As much as I like the physiology of the sun, if it's waking my children up at five, the news you don't want the Oh my goodness, okay, let me see if there's anything else on my list. Ooh, okay, even though you're not having the traditional well, talk a little bit about your maternity quote unquote leave or not and any fun things that you're sort of allowing yourself to do during this time while you're taking it a little bit easier. Or is that not really a thing? I mean, you know, I'm lucky in that way when I get when I did get maternity leaves, like I really wasn't doing my main job. But I know you feel more pressure. Well just that there's nobody. I mean, the problem of building a brand, you sort of business is that there's only me and and some of it doesn't really matter, but some does. I mean, like I so, for Before Breakfast, the every weekday morning podcast that I host, I taped ahead of time in December. I did an extra like six weeks of episodes, and so that involved working a lot in December, which was challenging, but I'm really glad I did because when the baby arrived late December, I now have stuff is recorded through to early February, and I may think like two weeks more of stuff that I haven't recorded, but is written, so I can kind of coast on that for a while, although the ads keep coming in like that's I can't escape that problem. But I love my advertisers, and it's usually fine. It's like, just record this thirty seconds. I just have to sit down and do it, and then I can go whatever. I have had some assignments that landed. You know, you can't control exactly when people run stuff, so then edits come back, you know it. But what I've been trying to do because I don't want to spend all my time working. So in the morning, our nanny, our regular full time nanny, is here after the kids, you know, go to school, and Alex's in school, so she tends to take Henry from nine to noon more or less except for whatever I'm feeding him in there, and that's the time I work. And then she goes and gets Alex at preschool at noon, and then I take the baby for the afternoon until about three or so, and so then we're getting our baby time, mommy baby time in that and then you know, the stuff starts happening. People are home three and the other kids home around four, and then we have all the activities. And one thing I did in Deceummer is I hired this second person, so she's working on Saturdays and then working three evenings during the week, so we have an extra driver, which has been good because then we just don't have to bring the baby places, especially when we have two kids at different places at the same time. And you know, it's just I knew we needed it, and so we're trying to, you know, sort out all the logistics of having multiple people, but it's you know, it's so necessary just to and the baby needs to be held at various points, like you know, he's not done well with like putting him down, Like he can't hold his head out up. So it's like all the seats are kind of you know, this will all probably get better in like three four years when Jasper can drive. Maybe hopefully he'll be a good driver. He'd better be. You're better buy him like a tank. Yeah, exactly, dear, But oh my goodness, Wow, that's a lot of specific fun goals. That's fair. Oh the running streak, everyone needs an update. Yeah, well, I can tell you, like if my abdominal muscles didn't even work like such, that walking was challenging, like there was no running, So how many What was the final tally of the streak. Well, I ran on December twenty eighth, and then I had the baby early in the morning on December twenty nine. But I got to three years. I got to three years. So I started out like December twenty four, twenty sixteen, and so I went through December twenty four to twenty nineteen, and then I was like, you know, I kind of feel like running on the next few days. That's so I did very very slow, like waddling around, you know, running laps basically like round the backyard because I didn't want to leave. But then the twenty eighth was actually a really warm, kind of nice day, and so I went down the street like you know, six tenths of a mile and then turn around and ran back and I was like, I managed to do it. I was like, okay, that's great. You know, this feels awesome. I'm okay, like I could do this. And then you know, baby born overnight. So yeah, now it's so I stopped. I stopped running and I have not run since. And you didn't calculate the number of days. It was one thousand, well whatever, three three, sixty five plus four or five right, right, So yeah, that's what it is. That's amazing. Are you going to start a new streak or well? I think I have different running goals for this year. I'm not opposed to a streak. Like I don't think the streak was a bad thing. I'm not sure if I'm going to do like the run at four am in a hotel room thing. I think I will run most days. I don't think I'm going to force it to keep the streak going. At this point, I have registered for the Philadelphia Marathon in November. Oh my goodness, so I've got you know, I'm probably going to do a half marathon in early fall. There's one in Philly that would be a good timing for that. There's a ten mile race in May that I'll do. I'm actually going to sign up for a five mile er at the end of February because that's that's enough outside of the window now that I feel like it would be okay. Since he came late December, that'll be two months out as opposed to being in the window of like the first six weeks. Yeah, so I think I'm gonna I'm going to do more distance running. I want to get back to that. I'm actually going to do once I'm more recovered here, I'm going to start lifting weights more seriously, and those are going to be my my goals for the year. That's awesome. I'm debating this marathon because I did quite enjoy the half. Yeah, so you did, but well you wentn't really fast, So clearly we're not gonna be able to run together. But you don't know. Your build up could be amazing build up. I don't know. I didn't run well. No, I was my my PR for a half marathon, and I'm not saying I could probably do better than this if I seriously trained. I just haven't trained a lot of speed work. My PR is a two fifteen, and so if your two oh three was your bad, like, that's quite a difference. That's a minute mile difference of your feeling like you went slow and me feeling like I went quick. Well, it didn't feel that's the set. I mean, it was sort of a personal worse for quite some time for me, But I didn't it didn't feel slow. It felt it felt at the end I thought I almost had a cardiac event. So wow, Well, so it wasn't like that was it wasn't like that was easy pace. Okay, but even if we didn't run together together, we could train together. That's fun. So I don't know, I'm we'll see. I'm my next fitness goal is I just want to get try to get a little bit faster trained for a five k. Josh said, he's going to be my de facto coach. Yeah, maybe you could slightly fast for a five k then like you could right, like I've done like in the twenty threes before, but not for a long time, and it would be fun to try to get that again. Yeah, yeah, no, that would be that would be really cool. Yeah, but wow, you signed up. That is commitment. I am impressed. Well, you know, I need's something to motivate myself. And you know, now that we have the Saturday childcare, I think it's going to be more like I want to take advantage of the fact that I'm doing this like that. I know it'll be perfect declited to make that decision. So I'm gonna, you know, get the runs in be awesome. All right, Well, let's do our brief Q and A here. Since it is baby themed, this is I'm actually going to include the other part of this, even though the other part is like a comment not a question that I thought it was interesting and maybe our listeners would be interested. So this comes from a listener in Norway, and she says, I love your show, find it refreshing and encouraging. She says, I can report that no matter how short the work week and how good the government support for working families, there is a lot of ankst around working moms here in Norway as well. Case in point, most parents and my daughter's day drop off their kids around eight and pick them up between three thirty and four. The parent who does pick up usually works about seven thirty to three, and the parent who does drop off drops off at eight and works like nine to four thirty. So she says, I guess even if this is considered a full day in Norway, this might be part time schedules to you, I mean, not part time, but a little shorter than it's a little shorter, yeah, yeah, And she said this is how most professionals work, but there's a lot of discussion about the length of days and kids for daycare. She says, all kids have a right to a place in daycare from the month they turn one, and some start a few months earlier. There's a lot of inks built about how that they start a few months later though, right, not earlier than one month? No, she wrote, no, no, no, one year old? One year old? Okay. Yeah, and some start a few months earlier, but people still kind of talk about how this could be damaging to the bond between parent and child, so many families delay the start. She says she finds it interesting that in every culture of the Western world this anxiety seems to be so pervasive. Ooh, so that's a good point. I would love to know if we have any listeners, like in Japan, or in Asian countries or maybe the Middle East? What is it like there? Okay? So her question is do you have any tips on surviving the first trimester? I am so happy and grateful to be pregnant with my second child. Congratulations, but I do not see how I will keep going with a full workload until the second try. Any tips and tricks will be greatly appreciated. Yeah. No, that's it's a tough if, especially if you're really sick and tired. It can be very difficult to manage a full workload. I mean, particularly if you're actually like vomiting at work or something like that, that can be really hard, which maybe you recognize that it will get better in a couple of weeks, and you think about, well, what do I absolutely have to get done during this time, because there's always stuff that could happen but could not happen. You know, if you have sort of any ability to do some work not at your workplace, I mean sometimes being able to work from home can make it more doable. Like if you didn't have to spend the energy to bring yourself into your workplace, like that's a little bit extra work, you know, energy you have to then do the stuff of your work, you might see if you could spread it out over more days. I know that if I sort of fell apart by mid afternoon, like I could maybe do Saturday morning again. If you have flexibility, if you're you know, seeing patients, you can't do that on a time when they're not scheduled or something. But if you know you're sending emails or you're writing to documents, that maybe you could take the work you would have done from like two to three in the afternoon when suddenly you're too sick and tired to do anything and do that on Saturday morning and Sunday morning, for instance. Yeah, what do you think, Sarah? Yeah, I think we just remember that it really is very temporary for most people. I mean, some people don't feel any better and second try, but hopefully if you do the first time, you will the second time. I mean, I'll give you some commiseration. I hate the first draw. I'd rather read thirty nine weeks pregnant than nine weeks pregnant. That's what I always say, because I am almost nonfunctional. I just basically am so nauseated. All I can think about is like, so nauseated. I just want this feeling to stop. So I get it. I certainly don't feel like I was working, you know, it was that it was survival mode. It was like, do what absolutely has to be done. Everything beyond that is probably not going to happen. And even if you're pregnant three times or even five times, you know, that's only like ten weeks or so times three, which is not really in the grand scheme of things, a huge chunk of your career time. So my biggest thought is, try to give yourself a break, do what feels good, eat plenty, of carbs. If that helps. Exercise did often help me feel a little bit better. So if you can work that into your day, great, But I also just think this is one where it's like take out the zoom lens, zoom out and realize that you will probably be feeling better soon and can ramp it up. And in fact, many people feel kind of like superpowers in their second try so you may feel like you can make up for lost time. Yeah no, And at that point you can sort of get through the stuff that like make a list like if if it's you're having the sort of psychological like worries about it, the anxiety, just make a list of the things that you are going to do as soon as you start feeling better. I love that second try list, the second try list. And you then have your first try list of the things that absolutely have to happen, and monitor your energy through the day and if you are feeling good, tackle something and then give yourself a break when you when you can't. All right, well this has been Oh we have our love of the week, Yes, forget our love the week, Okay, you do yours first. It's a baby, a baby related thing. So yeah, I've been have it on my desk All show Sarah my hot So. One of the nurses in the hospital told me about this product. It's h A k A A I think is how you're or h A k A A. Yes, as two as there. It's this silicone cop that people who have nursed babies may be aware of this phenomenon that when you're nursing on one side with one baby. If you have twins, it's a different matter, but one baby on one side, the other side, the letdown reflex is not side specific, so you wind up leaking on the other side, and so this little cup, the silicon cup, collects the other side, and if you are very leaky, you can collect quite a bit. Instead of just having it run all over your shirt, you just put it in the freezer and like you build up your freezer stash that way. And the upside of that is again it just would have been running all over your shirt. And second, it's not extra time. You don't have to sit by the pump, which is time that you could have been sleeping or whatever, hanging out with your baby, playing with your other children, reading. You are just you would have been nursing anyway, So you just put the cup on and nurse and you get extra milk for the freezer stash. So that has been a new discovery. I didn't know about these in pregnancies one through four, so now I do for number five. So I'm sharing it hoping that it helps other people, since definitely not planning on pregnancy number six as of now. If anyone's listening to this and it is like, like I don't leak, something's wrong with me. I never leaked any drops during my like combined thirty whatever months of breastfeeding that I did, so I don't think this thing would have worked on me. I mean, I guess I'll never know, but I do think it probably depends on, Yeah, how how willing your boobs are to give up this book, how laky they are? Yeah, how I have a feeling it probably correlates to, like people who have to do a lot of massage and pump for a full thirty minutes. This probably won't be the holy Grail, but people who can like get it out real quick and who's you know, it'll probably work great. So nice to have another tool exactly, all right. My love of the week is I discovered a new podcast called Well Actually it's a brand new podcast. I think they've only aired one episode, and it's called Money Meets Medicine. That's perfect. And it's written by this anesthesiology or spoken by this nispe caesiologist who wrote a book called it. He goes by like the physician philosopher, and he's big into like financial independence and all that stuff. And he does it with a financial advisor. And I've already pitched myself as a guest. I think I'd be awesome. I was saying, why don't we, Hey, we think of what would be the perfect podcast for sarahould be like money meets Medicine meets planning meets running. Yeah, maybe no, I don't need another podcast. I'm good. I am good. Actually, that's funny that you mentioned this, because I recording the intro to the next episode on my own to give you a little bit of a much deserved break, and I would be well, I'll let the listeners listen for themselves. Excellent. Cool, All right, Well this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about the birth of baby Henry, among other things, and we will be back next week with more on making work in life together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of Both Worlds podcast. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together