Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 82 Our Baby Boy's Birth Story

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

In this episode, Shawn and Andrew give the FULL story on the birth of their son, Jett James East. All the juicy details from, breastfeeding, Drew's reaction to becoming a big sister, Shawn's thoughts on VBAC, deciding on a name, advice for first-time parents, and adjusting to being a family of four! Here are a few topics that we cover: 0:00 introduction 3:00 emotions leading up to the birth 14:05 medications and surgery prep 17:59 jett's birth 22:50 post-surgery side effects 28:47 comparing births with drew and jett 30:14 the post birth support and set-up 32:27 drew gets sick 35:03 deciding on jett’s name 37:22 postpartum differences with drew and jett 40:55 what drew calls him 41:18 the breastfeeding journey 42:50 how andrew stayed calm 44:06 how drew has adapted 45:17 how to know if you’re ready for kids 47:17 advice for first-time parents 48:45 the transition with two kids under two 49:34 shawn’s thoughts on not doing a VBAC 50:55 how nash is adapting to jett 51:40 shoutouts The East Fam YouTube Channel here ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ15Zl-v8-ghTgEOTpxHdGw ANDD....WE ARE GOING ON TOUR!! Check out the link below to see if we are coming to a city near you in 2022! Click here to get your tickets now ▶ https://www.couplethingspod.com/ We are sponsored by these companies that we love. Check them out below: SlingTV ▶ Go to SlingTV.com/EASTFAM to sign up now and get your first month for just $10! Athletic Greens ▶ Visit ​athleticgreens.com/EASTFAM​ and get your ​FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. Best Fiends ▶ Download Best Fiends FREE today on the App Store or Google Play. If you haven’t yet, please rate Couple Things and subscribe to hear more. Follow us on Instagram to keep the conversation going at https://www.instagram.com/couplething... And if you have suggestions/recommendations for the show, send us your ideas in a video format – we might just choose yours! Email us at [e-mail]. Subscribe for more! http://bit.ly/3rnOdNo Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Twitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/ShawnJohnson Snapchat! ▶ @ShawneyJ Follow AndrewsTwitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/AndrewDEast Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Snapchat! ▶ @AndrewDEastSubscribe for more! http://bit.ly/3rnOdNo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I had so much fear with a C-section in surgery just because it's surgery and it's scary and there's so many things that can happen. But I remember as soon as I heard him cry, it was just like my heart. I just felt like I could breathe again. Oh, we are live. We've been live this all time. We have been live. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to a couple things with Sean and Andrew. Podcast all about couples. And the things they go through.

I'm sorry for that awkward intro where we're just sitting there silent for a minute. We have taken the last eight weeks off pretty much. We have. We've never been good at live streams. But here we are. Never. Give it another try. I don't think we've ever started a live stream properly. Are you blaming me? No. I'm the one who's usually in charge. Okay. So if you got beef, say something. Yeah. We're excited because we rarely. barely get these chances to interact with you live. So we are going to be going through the comments. If you have any questions, anything you'd like us to talk about as we go through the

birth story. Yeah, we're going to try to get through a lot of stuff in the next hour because I feel like a lot of these topics we could talk about for an hour. So we're going to kind of skim through. But like Andrew said, we've taken the past eight weeks off. That was something that I demanded this time around. Because with Drew, we took two days off before we started working again. and I was just a disaster, rightfully so, rightfully so.

We did that all wrong and this time it's been a lot better. I've been able to kind of go through the transition process, the hormones, the postpartum, which is totally still a thing. But I've gotten through a lot of the really thick of it. And I feel a little bit more human and able to work and take on more of this. Let me say this, babe. One, I'm extremely grateful to have you and your perspective. We are, we do an interesting thing where, you know,

some of the most vulnerable times for us as a family are when people want us to create the most videos and, you know, put out the most amount of whatever. And so had it not been for your nudge for us taking a break, I bet we would have gone pretty hard. So thank you for that. Second of all, you've done a fantastic job. Thank you, baby. Third of all, before we get into the narrative of the birth story, want to say welcome. Hello. Thank you for joining us. If you haven't please subscribe to the show and um whether you're listening live right now if you are hit the thumbs up or later please give it a rating um but let's just say hello to some people so we got rebecca hoop uh she says hello ali leman says hi you too we have morgan santiago yes Nicole malaney

leticia leticia what leticia okay okay and what we're gonna do lexie if you wouldn't mind going through we have lexie behind the camera uh who has also been integral for these past couple weeks. If you could go through the comments and we're going to do Q&A at the end of the episode. Okay, the last 10 minutes. The last 10 minutes. We've got to jump in.

We have a lot of stuff to talk about. You're excited, I think. I just know we have a lot to talk about. Let's do it then. Okay. I'm waiting on you. Okay, so Burr's story. We covered a lot of it in our vlogs,

but we wanted to go back and kind of walk you through it. If you don't know, we just had our second kid, Jet James East. We have Drew Hazel East, who is almost two, and we just had our little boy, which is crazy. huge he is literally the Hulk man um but leading up to let's start with leading up to the birth yes if you guys don't know we had a scheduled C-section we ended up or I ended up in an emergency C-section

with Drew after 24 hours of labor and an induction because she was two weeks late and there were some complications I had if you want to go back there were a ton of different things but I had a two vessel cord with her there were some other like risks or flags red flags with her that that ended up being our best option. I would say also one of the big contributing factors to that is I'm six foot two. Sean is four foot eleven and the first child was eight and a half pounds. This one was much bigger than that. We'll disclose that shortly. But the doctor said even with Drew, there's no chance that baby was coming out any other way than a C section. So very long story said short with Drew after the induction. Her heart rate ended up being affected. She ended up

getting stuck in my pelvis. She was never even able to, like, drop. Had a big cone head, the whole thing. All these things. And we got 24 hours into labor and ended up her heart rate dropped too much. So we went into the operating room and she was born about four minutes later, which was crazy. So this time, it was in our best interest and the baby's best interest to kind of forego that. And so we scheduled the C-section again, just with some red flags.

He was a lot bigger than Drew. and the doc thought it was the best and we trust our doctors so much that that's kind of what we did. So we knew the day Jet James was coming unless he came early and so leading up to it we were a wreck.

We were not prepared or expecting that but I remember every like every day the last week we tried to do something like sentimental because we felt like this chapter of our lives was changing and ending forever and it was just going to be this dramatic thing. So we went to

like a family brunch we had all of our friends come over and we did like a cookout i was in tears for like the four days leading up to it pretty much i was so i think i was like extra hormonal in a lot of ways you know yeah you want to you want to do i say that wrong did i say that wrong no i agree it was such a scary time and it it sounds dramatic but and i i remember right for Drew. Andrew and I were pretty emotional just because I didn't know what life would look like sharing my husband. And we had such a strong marriage. And we still do. I don't mean it in like past tense. But it was such a strong marriage. And Andrew is my number one. You're like, you are my person. And I didn't know what it would be like sharing you with someone. I'm trying to like split that

love. And it really scared us. We didn't know how we would handle it. If it would affect our marriage in a bad way. I didn't know how I could possibly love like another human being as much I love you. I just, I'd never done it. And you had neither. Yeah. And so we had some tears. I feel like every massive life change you go through, uh, there's always this huge fear of, of wanting to hold on to where you're at now because you don't know what the next chapter is going to look like. And we were, well, before Drew, we had Nash and we were traveling all over the place. We were doing, you know, I felt like we were foot, foot loose and fancy free. And we were thinking, oh, there's no way. we can love anybody more than we love Nash, our dog.

I know. And then we had Drew, and the past 18 months have been heaven. Yeah, the greatest. Largely looking back on it, not perfect, but like awesome. And then we were thinking about, what is this going to be like? So there's always this kind of, I don't know, anxiety or concern of losing what you had. But we were generally optimistic that the next chapter we were going to look back on, as we had on previous chapters to date and thought, wow, I can't believe that life looked

any different than it does now because now looks awesome. Well, and to summarize, again, something we could talk about for an entire episode, when we leading up to the week before we had Jet, we were really emotional because the first few months after Drew were really, really hard for us. We went through a lot of, I went through a lot of like postpartum, not issues, but just anything normal. I was up and down with, I don't want to say depression, but you could very well call it that. I struggled with my body and with my mental health. And we struggled as, you know, husband and wife trying to get back into the groove of just being each other's number one around

the baby. And it was just, it's a huge transition. And so going into Jett, we were really scared of that happening again. And then we were also really scared of how that would affect Drew. Because Drew is our baby girl and I remember sitting there you and I just started bawling I was holding her and I was like how I'm afraid she's going to feel unloved I'm afraid she's going to feel like she's in the back seat I'm afraid she's not going to be like mommy's special little girl anymore I just like I my biggest fear was that she wouldn't feel as loved as she felt before we had him yeah and we cried about that many days in a row I'm putting up some pictures of us on the screen cuddling with Drew because we thought this was going to be like the end of an era and

we wouldn't hang out with Drew as much but it's crazy Donald says that Donald who's live with us says that husbands do go through hormonal changes uh during pregnancy which is very interesting and then we had I believe as Susan said she had three C sections yeah that's a lot that's a lot C sections are hard on the body I mean so is a vaginal birth first of all shout out to Matt, who says, may the Lord watch over and protect y'all and your family. And also sent a super chat. So thank you, Matt. Appreciate that.

That was unnecessary. Thank you. It's very sweet. Yes. Okay. So the week leading up, we had all of these emotional sessions. Breakdowns? Breakdowns.

We would be in the car. We'd just start crying. And then we would be at dinner and just start crying. And then we went to brunch the morning before the day we had Drew. And we were sitting at this country club having breakfast. And we just started crying. Yeah. We were a wreck, but our life just felt so beautiful and perfect.

We were scared of the change. So the day comes, or the night comes, really, where because it was a scheduled C-section, I was the first one of the day, so I had to, or we had to be there by 5 a.m. So that night, I remember I got all showered and I dried my hair and I tried to make myself look cute. I remember putting Drew down for bed that night, and we both did it. We did bath time together. We read books together. And I was just like, oh, my heart just like shattered.

One, because it's just such a huge change. But two, because of all the protocols of the hospital, Drew actually wasn't allowed to come to the hospital. So we were saying goodbye to her for at least three days. And I just knew that when we saw her again, life would be so different. So that was like, that was a hard night too. Yeah, that was crazy. We ate a lot of cookies that night.

We were literally crushing cookies, the whole, like past, the. week leading up to it, which is wild. But here's a picture of Sean and I, the morning of the hospital, just geeked slash anxious. But I feel like having a scheduled C-section in some ways was way better because you just had the expectations that, okay, we don't have to, there's not going to be a surprise. But it also took a little bit of the fun out because when there's not something scheduled, you're like, ah, today's a day, maybe. It's just happening.

I think for us, it felt better because we didn't, I don't want to say we had a traumatic delivery withdrew but we had a very hard delivery withdrew where so many things happened and it was such a long process again it wasn't a bad delivery it was just so many things happened um so this one was definitely smoother um my parents came over at this is something that we had agreed on with my parents the morning that we went to have jet was they said they would come over the night before and stay the night so we didn't have to worry and i was like no no i want my night with my husband and my daughter like I don't want anybody here I just I don't want to talk about it I just I need you guys to wake up early and come here at 430 yeah which is brutal

on my part I apologize but they showed up at 430 we gave him a hug and we had to the hospital we checked in we got our little C section stickers got into our room and it was like things happened fast yeah I first on that note I feel like we delivered jet we together at a good time as far as a pandemic goes because the restrictions were maybe just loosening up a little bit before they started tightening back down again so it didn't feel drastically different though there were like some stations you had to check in and obviously wear a mask the whole thing so I feel fortunate as far as that timing goes I will say we were really lucky our nurse that was with us when he delivered Drew was actually our nurse who delivered

Jet, which, um, she requested us and we requested her. It was awesome. Yeah, we didn't know like it was actually a thing. And I ran into her and I was like, we can I actually can like, we have you again? And she was like, yes. It was amazing. So we showed up to the hospital. And again, we were so used to having the induction and going through 24 hours of labor. We didn't really know what to expect. I changed into my gown and they started just the whole prepping process. It was really quick. today's talk about what did you take meds in the whole thing so I am kind of a hot mess with that um I did take I mean all of the medications necessary for a C-section so I was on an IV I was under general anesthesia well not general anesthesia I don't know what you would call it I had a spinal block I had a spinal block nice there we go good adjustment there's a spinal tap I think it's a spinal tap I don't think it is. Okay. Well,

I don't know. Maybe someone from the comments can tell me what I had. I had an epidural that was just upped during Drew's, but this son is a spinal what? I had a spinal. So they, you know, did all the IVs, took all the blood work back in, like, our room and prepped me for surgery. I actually, my nurses know me very well.

And so does my doctor, who's also, we're very similar. She's like an avid cross. fitter. She's just very, we're just very similar. I remember. Sorry, Jenny and Tori and Catherine, I'll say spinal block. Yes. I think I actually remember sitting on the operating table as they were giving me my

spinal block and I was talking about the spinal tap and the guy was like, no. Lawrence says spinal tap is a test, L.O.L. Sorry. Okay. But there's a story as to why Sean can't remember. It's because well, we'll get there, but you were kind of messed up. I was

I am a lightweight when it comes to anything. So anyways, fast forwarding, it was time to go into the operating room and they usually put you in a wheelchair and they wheel you back. And I was like, can I just walk? Like, I know I'm going to be laying in bed for the next 48 hours.

Can I just walk? And they laughed at me and they're like, I don't think we've ever had this request. She straight walked into the operating room. Had the whole pipes and IVs in, the whole thing. It's crazy. And drag in and clacking and being, crazy. Were you as nervous this time as with Drew?

Yeah. I was. Yeah. Surgery is scary. I've been through many knee surgeries and I've been, you know, through a lot of surgeries. And I just know I was just very nervous that I wanted, I wanted to be okay, but I more than anything, I wanted our baby to be okay. And it's a scary surgery. So walked into the operating room, got on the table, Andrew had to go sit in the waiting room for about an hour. No, it was quick, dude. It was like a half hour. Oh, like 30 minutes. So they did the spinal block.

And then I naturally have super, super low blood pressure. And this is where this is the start of the downfall for me. During the whole process under anesthesia and the spinal block and just like general medication. Because my blood pressure is so low with the spinal block, it makes your blood pressure drop even lower. So I get very, very, very nauseous, very easy. easily because my blood pressure dropped so much. So we had to kind of work on that medication during the entire surgery where I would have, they would have to monitor my blood pressure.

And so I was on so much anti-naugia medication and like medication to counter the blood pressure that I was just out of it. I was sleepy. I could see it in your eyes. It was pretty weird to see actually. I felt it. I felt just like I was in a different dimension. But I do remember Andrew came in.

I had like the shock shakes where you're just like in total shock and you just can't stop shaking. I had that with Drew too. But he was holding my hand and I remember it just felt different this time. I think again, because with Drew we went through such a long process that was very painful and very hard for 24 hours that by the time we got to the C-section, it was just a relief. This time, jumping straight into it was a little bit harder. But the dock came in, started doing the C-section, everything was great, pulled the little man out. He was screaming, like, as he came out, and they were so happy about that. Yeah.

Because Drew came out purple and almost unresponsive. They said, just like Drew, he had a really healthy umbilical cord. With Drew, there was like this five, 10-second pause where she wasn't crying, and she was just laying on the doctor's palm, silent. And I got so scared. but with jet he came out guns blazing i felt like he was screaming before he even came out and then what was amazing was as soon as uh he heard my voice and then as definitely as soon as he laid on you he relaxed like immediately which was there's something so wild about the whole process seeing the baby born meeting him for the first time and then there's i feel like there's this immediate

bond that we experience because he knew it was us. Mm-hmm. How crazy is that? It's so crazy because I remember, again, there was so, I had so much fear with a C-section and surgery just because it's surgery and it's scary and there's so many things that can happen. But I remember as soon as I heard him cry, it was just like my heart, I just felt like I could breathe again figuratively and literally.

Yeah. And then I watched them take him over. and like weigh him and the entire operating room. We had like bets going on how much he weighed. Crazy. Because I was so large. My belly was so large. Hold on.

Here's a picture of Sean holding Drew. That's how large. Do you remember that? Dude, you were pregnant. Wait, holding Drew. You mean jet? No. You holding Drew with your belly popping out.

Oh, yeah. Big. But I remember everybody like stopped what they were doing and looked at the, um, the scale as he was laying down because I thought he was going to be nine pounds like even the doc thought he was going to be like nine pounds even I thought nine and a half you thought nine and a half and it like popped up and he was nine pounds 13 ounces and everybody just

started laughing they were like holy crap I feel like we could round up to 10 at that point he's a 10 pound baby he's a 10 pound baby can we just as we're listening to this hit the thumbs up button to give Sean just some cred for that. We'd love to see that. Let's see if we get a thousand likes off of that. Also, Danny Carew, who sent an amazingly thoughtful gift our way, is saying she's going to send another birthday gift.

Thank you. Thank you, Danny. We feel very grateful to have whatever sort of relationship this is with so many of you. And then Shannon Johnson sent a super chat and says, y'all both are amazing. I think she really meant you're amazing. So kudos.

So Jet came out. He was nine pounds, 13 ounces. He was 20 and a half inches long. He was big boy. He was screaming bloody murder. Andrew literally walked over and put his hand on him. He stopped. And then they laid him on me while they like finished surgery and closed me up and everything.

And he was just silent the whole time. And I was just in heaven and bliss. This is where it starts to get a little crazy. It was towards the end of the surgery. when they were like closing me up and just like finishing everything i started to feel not great i started to feel a little a little too out of it and i was still able to hold him they were kind of like monitoring me and i just i just remember i felt like i was in a different dimension and i felt sick so we made it through the whole process andrew ended up holding him um they

started wheeling me back to the room and I feel like it was like by the time we got back to the room I was kind of out of it a goner I was just like in and out of sleeping and I could not stay awake at all I was I remember like looking up at the lights and I like could not keep myself just with it it was really weird and that went on for yeah hold on sorry Amy said that her daughter was 11 pounds, five ounces, 23 and a half. Holy crap. Into the long. That's a big baby.

Good Lord. Also, all the people sending the thumbs up in the chat, thank you. But there is a thumbs up below the video portal, like video scene on the YouTube app. Just hit the thumbs up. Sorry. No, that's great. I mean, you'll see the picture on the screen right now. I was out of it.

That's basically like, by the time, I tried holding him and nursing him and I was able to nurse him for a little bit and then I just like I could not stay with it so they ended up taking Jep from me and putting him with Andrew because I like I couldn't hold him and then it was about an hour later mm-hmm where you started throwing up it was an hour later where I started yeah I got really sick and I threw up for long time seven hours I think seven hours straight it was pretty brutal I thought especially with like my C-section I thought I was going to just bust open every stitch that they had I was so sick and they just kept pumping me trying like with anti-nauzha just trying to counteract everything but I literally puked for seven hours straight yeah we were fortunate enough to have

both our parents there again at a time where the hospital was letting some visitors in so we got to have her parents come in and meet the baby which is super special and then my parents drove down from Indianapolis, which is where I grew up. And they literally got in to the hospital and they were outside her door. I went to go greet him. And then I said, well, let me check on Sean real quick to make sure she's good with you guys coming in and feeling okay. Oh my gosh.

And literally, she just started yacking as soon as I turned back around. Not even that. You walked back in and I had jet and I was like, take him. And I could not pass him over fast enough. And I was like, I'm going to puke. The wild thing is you never throw up ever. never never and you were going you threw up for like seven straight hours yeah meanwhile she didn't really want me around helping like it was a tough position no no hold on i'm not saying my position was tough

but i didn't know how to help you out no it was so hard the nurse tried to help and stuff but there was there was truly nothing that could be done because i was right out of post-off i couldn't eat any food any anything that i did that went in came straight back up again all of this was caused because i have such blood pressure that they were trying to make sure my blood pressure didn't drop scary low yeah so all of the medication that I had to be on to prevent that from happening was making me very very sick so it was just all that to say my parents ended up being 10 yards away from meeting their new grandson and then they had to wait like five more hours until Sean started feeling better but so by that night I was feeling a lot better it was basically exactly seven hours later I felt like I snapped out of it and I

I was like, okay, enough of the medication has worn off. It's out of my system. Yeah. I feel okay. I was able to hold jet and just love on him and nurse him. And mom and dad got to come visit. My mom and dad got to come visit, which we were very lucky about. It was just perfect.

And then that night I was able to get up, walk around, which is always so painful right after a C-section. I'm trying to find a picture to share of you doing that. Oh, and that's something else that's interesting. I don't take any pain medication after a C-section because I get so sick with medication on top of the anesthesia and the spinal and the blood pressure medication, I always refuse it, which is very hard.

But I don't even take, I don't take Tylenol, I don't take anything. But always that first time getting up is pretty brutal. Reading through a couple of these comments, Kelsey Ballard says that her best friend is four, foot 11 and had a 12 pound baby holy um and then rebecca book holt said that her sister naturally delivered her son at 12 and a half 12 pounds five ounces that's that's scary that's amazing though kudos to you kudos uh so anyway um here was an interesting thing from my perspective with drew

i think she breastfed for like the first couple days mhm jett was almost immediately different in the sense that he was hooked on mom like 24-7 and so I was really pumped for a couple days in the hospital where I think with Drew we spent three nights and we were fully expecting to spend another three nights in the hospital just because it's such a special time where there's a bunch of nurses who are coming to check on you taking care of you you don't really have to worry about anything else in the whole world and so we're like we want to we want to do that for as long as we can and then it turns out that we got super antsy and jet didn't want anything to do with me so I was just laying there on the couch like I got to hold them every

once in a while but it was still way different so we ended up only staying at the hospital for two nights because one we missed drew two it was just way different it was so different and we had been through it before so we knew with drew it's like we had so much to learn and we were so intimidated and we were so scared to go home but this time after two nights they gave us all you know the all clear they said you can stay as long as you want you can stay another night you can stay another 48 hours which is like usual protocol but they said we can discharge you if you want and we just felt like we wanted to go home we felt comfortable enough with it um he was a night and day better nurseer than drew we went through if you guys followed our story I went through

through some really tough days with Drew trying to figure out the whole nursing thing. We brought in lactation consultants. We tried everything. And she ended up just being a bottle, a fed baby. I exclusively pumped for six months, which was a whole other thing. But Jet was just great at nursing from the time he came out. And he's still doing really well. It's still like a challenge and it's new to learn because I was an exclusive pumper with Drew.

I don't have like the experience. so I'm still trying to figure it out, but he's still doing great. He's gaining a lot of weight and it's been good. So then, first of all, we have so many amazing friends. We're so thankful to have really fantastic people in our life. And our friends, Josh and Chelsea Axe sent this epic, like, care package full of all of our favorite drinks, like LaCroix, fit aid, all this stuff. Balloons, a bunch of snacks, flowers. It was like the ultimate care package.

It was everything. Jimmy Johns and sushi. Oh my gosh. They said so much. Jimmy Johns, sushi, groceries, a full thing of LaCroix, stuff of fit aid. It was ridiculous. Flowers, balloon, like everything. And then we got home and the card my yard people, if you remember, we did something

with Laffy Taffy and they set up this epic card arrangement in our yard and they did one for us welcoming back baby boy, which was really fun. And our friends, Quentin Dormody and Julie Fish set up like this epic light set up with Jets name. And it was all this big surprise. that I feel like makes the transition home something to be excited about as opposed to like being overwhelmed by the you know the new task at hand which is taking care of another baby but we were we try to be super conscious with that first couple days after birth and it's a massive change so

there's risk of postpartum depression too there's risk of you know a bunch of conflict between husband and wife conflict with the kid and the existing kid and so um we had a bunch of friends there to help us but also we do ridiculous things like only watch comedy movies to keep things light as opposed to like all these dark murder mysteries we just try to stay away from i love i love the dark murder mysteries but we only watch the comedies when you come home we tried to go on as many walks as possible let me see if i could find a picture of jet back when he was a little guy of us going on a walk also he started sweating i think he gets this from his dad. That dude sweats like nobody I've ever seen. But then we had your mom there to make

meals for us, which we feel super fortunate about. And I feel like we did a pretty good job with the setup. We did. We tried really hard this time to kind of have everything planned out and have like meal train and we had my parents and we had friends and just everything. We tried to really protect ourselves this time so that we were, we had as much help as we could get. There was another little bringer that happened so again going into jet we were so scared about like postpartum depression and just the transition and with drew all of that we get home drew loves him it's a great introduction we had like these gift spot for her that were from her brother yeah and nash we got nash a gift too it was such a special day and it was the day we got home and the day after we had like

48 hours of pure bliss. Jet was sleeping really well through the night. Nursing was going well. It just, it almost felt too good to be true, true, because it was. Day three, we're home. Drew wakes up in the middle of the night, super sick. We take her to the pediatrician in the morning because it was, it was bad. And she had a nasty case of RSV and an ear infection.

Which were not even like germified. or overly cautious when it comes to sickness. But our pediatrician who's super chill was like your newborn shouldn't get RSV because it could turn into something serious. So we, that was, this was a really rough week for us. We tried keeping Drew home for the first 48 hours of her RSV and ear infection. And we tried like just quarantining in the house. Jet and I basically lived in the nursery.

Andrew took care of Drew. but it was to say it was like the hardest two days of my life is maybe an understanding because I'm dealing with postpartum I'm hormonal I just want my baby girl

I'm trying to figure out how to nurse I'm trying to deal with just how to take care of two babies Drew is so sick and she's just walking around the house crying for mama because of the quarantine I really can't take care of her

because of germs for jet it was it was so hard I had many, many mental breakdowns where I was just sitting there bawling my eyes out for a long time. Yeah. Honestly, for the first five weeks, Jet was with us, there was a ton of illness. A ton of illness. Who was sick? Me? I got sick.

You got sick. We all got sick. We all got sick. But so after the 48 hours, we actually ended up deciding with my parents and our pediatrician that Drew went and stayed with my parents at their house until she was better because it was just. just it was too hard on me it was too hard on her it didn't it didn't make sense for her why i came home with a new baby and i couldn't be around her it was just uh it was traumatic yeah real quick deb canby asked did you know uh his name before you went to the hospital she knows we were struggling with his name um no we didn't we were between should we just share the names now

we're between beau bo james didn't know how we're going to spell it was either going to be a u or but all i could think about was bo jangle so i think that was bo jangle so i think that one was really out for me. Then we had Bear. Bear. This is a dope name, but Bear East, we like the ring of. And then Jet, which was kind of the third in line. This whole time, like before we even had Drew, we were hooked on the name Griffin for boys. So before Drew, if Drew was a boy, he was going to be Griffin Dean, which I still love, but this time around we were just like, I'm just not feeling it. And I feel like

as soon as we both met Jet, we knew that he wasn't a bow or a bear. He was a jet. So we went with it. And the background, first of all, when you shared this story in your Instagram post, I don't feel like you used enough words. You just said it's your great grandma's name or something like that. So we were doing, we actually did a campaign with Ancestry.com, which was really cool. And we got to see our entire family trees and learn about different ancestors.

and one of my, so on my dad's side of the family, my great, great, great grandmother, her name was Jet, J-E-T-T. And it's short for Judah, which is, which is, I think Judah and Jet both stand for excellence is the name behind it. So, I don't know. And we just fell in love with it. We were literally in the middle of this campaign shooting commercial and I, like, read the name and we like looked at each other and we're like, that's it.

That's the name. And then we like, JJ, we like, There's a punch of playoffs that we like on it. But anyway, remember, we're about to get into the Q&A portion. So if you have any questions, please drop them. I do want to give Don Fletcher shout out. It says that she exclusively breastfed her son and exclusively pumped for a friend's baby for 13 months, Sean. That's incredible.

Here's what's wild. First of all, we love hearing your stories. It also is humbling and it's also inspiring because, like, that's amazing. think about that dude she was just breastfeeding doing the breast milk thing all day every day yeah i don't know how you did that time um a common question that people have been asking is how was the transition postpartum um process different between drew and jet so like c section and postpartum after drew i didn't do a good enough job taking care of myself um on top of taking care of her so i think the postpartum process was harder there were a lot of

lot more mental breakdowns and just like a need for help that I was afraid to ask for and I think I had a harder time with my C-section recovery then as well just trying to like learn the process having gone through that I think made this process easier because I was so hyper aware and afraid that I would go through that again so I've been just super vigilant about village vigilant diligent diligent there we go vigilante I've been super diligent about like taking vitamins and talking to Andrew and being very open when I have like a hard day or a bad day. My C-section has been, I think, better this time around than last time.

I was able to be mobile quicker. I think I was more cautious for the required six weeks this time than I was with Drew, which helped me heal a lot faster. Sean was walking around though just a couple hours after the surgery. So kudos to you. But also, you always get this weird rash. Oh. My gosh, it's like this massive, I would show a picture, but I don't think you want to see it.

So I won't show it, but. You can. I don't care. Really? Yeah. I got it with Drew and then I got it right after Jet. And it is miserable. Miserable.

Miserable. It's, oh my gosh. It's the most painful and itchiest rash ever. They think it might be like a latex reaction or from the tape or from the iodine or something. But we can't figure it out. I mean, I'm not having C-sections and surgeries back and forth. So it's not like we can, you know, figure it out quickly. But, yeah, I had this.

I have it for about four weeks before it gets any better. And it's just miserable. I'm also going to share a picture of Sean doing a handstand. No joke. Two days after we got home. So four days after we had a jet. Yeah, that's bad. Don't ever do that.

It's a very poor decision. Would not recommend. But it's amazing. nonetheless. Where is this picture of the rash? Dang it. We need to find it. It was in there. I saw it. Let's get to some questions. First of all, Chelsea Ann wants to know what Drew calls Jett.

You got to answer for that? What Drew calls Jett? What Drew calls Jett? Yeah. JJ, brother, baby. She's starting to say some really good words. It's been so fun. She'll like literally repeat a word from every sentence that we say. Next question is.

Samantha Ross wants to know how your breastfeeding journey is. it's so different for everyone hard is it harder or easier than exclusively pumping we should probably do a whole episode on this to be honest with you that's a whole different story but give a high level overview it's completely different so I got so used to exclusively pumping that that's the only thing that I knew and I figured breastfeeding would just be so much easier and I think that was just naive of me to think because I hadn't done it before with drew the overview is she breastfed for like two or three weeks and then stopped we tried to fix it but didn't work so i started pumping with jet he's just been breastfeeding this whole time um it's easier and

harder in different ways it's going well and he's a great nurseer and he gets a lot of milk and i make a lot of milk but it is different because you're so isolated and it's your your baby is now so dependent on you with pumping there was some sort of freedom, but also not to be able to pump and have anybody feed Drew, whether I was working or traveling with jet now, with nursing. It's just like this dependency thing that we are figuring out, which is amazing. I get so much time with him. But I think it's, Andrew and I talk about it a lot, the dependency factor can make you feel

isolated and alone a lot. Yeah. I'm sharing this picture real quick of, wait, no, not that one, of you doing a handstand. Sarah H said I'm a mother to be I'm actually more worried about my husband during labor what did Andrew bring with him to help keep him calm during either births oh how did I stay calm geez you panicked the first time yeah it's scary experience dude I came prepared with the music I came prepared with snacks and my phone really I feel like whenever I was overly anxious I would try to distract myself which is how I deal with stress situations is tried to think about them less but and then I just tried to help you out in whatever I could which was another way of distracting myself so your husband's going to do great this is what he was made for so I'm excited for you to go through it together I think too something that we did is

we just agreed at the very beginning that I needed to be very vocal with what I needed from him so we talked about like him filming or taking pictures or whatever and I just I just said, I'm great with anything. But if at that moment, I ask for something, like, I need you to hold my hand. I need you to sit with me. I need you to call me down. I need you to be funny, whatever. I need you to listen to that.

And I can be funny on demand. So if you need more of that, just let me know. Logan Rush. How has Drew adapted to having a little brother? We have been very lucky. And it has gone very smooth besides the RSV. She's in love with him and obsessed with him. When she comes down in the morning after we wake her up, she's just, she wants to see him

first and wants to give him a kiss and a hug. We've just really tried to make sure that she still knows that she is our baby girl and we love them both equally and we spend as much time with both, but yeah. She's cute. She is getting into a phase where she's hitting mom and other people. So we're a little nervous about how that's going to go over. She's definitely probably more rough by nature. So she tries to lay on them.

more like she'll pat them really aggressively. We've got to tell her to calm down. But real quick, I'm curious, this is the picture of the rash. If any of you know what might be the cause of that, we think it might be the iodine or the adhesive. The adhesive. Like an allergic reaction to that. So let us know.

I'll get it off the screen now. Next question. That's aggressive. That's a bad rash. It was bigger than that too. Yeah, it usually covers like my whole belly. Next question is, can you two talk about, how you knew you're ready for kids currently married with one pup and we have the same feelings

of what might a baby do to our family that's from ashley prattel by the way thank you katherine samuel for being so uh participatory in this but that question's from ashley how did we know we were ready for kids well put bluntly we accidentally got pregnant we miscarried that pregnancy and that sparked a lot of conversation of are we ready, are we not? And I don't think you'll ever fully feel ready ever because it's such a scary and huge transition. But I think in your hearts, if you feel like your marriage and your partnership is strong enough to go through a transition that big, you're ready. Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like when you're at the point where you understand that life isn't about fulfilling all your own. hopes and dreams not that you have to be so selfless in parenting and you won't be as selfless as you need to be until you actually have a kid but like there's so much sacrifice of you know we've traveled I feel like we both appreciate travel and that was something we had to sacrifice we both appreciate you know alone time and quiet time and you just don't have that and so I think when you're ready to embark on the journey of hey I'm going to start you know devoting most of my time to another thing you're probably close to being ready but marriage is a great first step to that because you get introduced to having to you know abide by someone else's

dreams and hopes and schedule so kids is just that I feel like on steroids I think it's the same exact conversation hear me out on this one that you have with your spouse of should we get a dog like if you're both are willing to like make that sacrifice and put effort towards a dog and take care of them. It's just a bigger conversation with a kid, but it's the same concept. Alicia Grattan wants to know if there's any advice we have for first time parents. We just recommended a couple books. Also, I would say understanding that things go in phases. And so the first couple weeks will be a massive transition from zero to one kids. You're just going through this identity shift of, you know, becoming a parent, which is huge.

There's a lot of conflict that can happen, a lot of, you know, questions that you have, but that's a phase. And then, like, you enter in this phase of six to however old Drew is now, 18 months, which is so much fun. So much fun. It's my favorite age ever. I say that every time she gets a month older. So for better or for worse, things are a phase.

But also, what's the book you like to recommend? Emily. Emily Oster, Crib She's one of them. It's the most relatable book. ever read because it just makes you feel human and like you're making the right decision for your kid whatever that decision is we say this all the time you know there is really no right or wrong if your priority is to take care of your kid and love your kid then your style is the best that you can do so don't worry about like you know there's tons of studies that can get you stressed out um about

you have to do this to raise your IQ or you have to do that for a longer life and it's like don't get caught up in that just do the best you can otherwise it's going to be way more stressful we have a couple more uh yeah um how's the transition been with two under two i personally don't think it's bad only because since we're already in the baby phase we're still changing diapers we're just changing more of them it's like we just have two babies what would you say it's definitely been tough we have way less time there's always someone crying i feel like the pockets of focus that we have last anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes max.

Yeah. And so trying to get work done or trying to get chores done or trying to have serious adult conversations, those opportunities come around way fewer and way more sparsely than they did before. So you kind of have to figure out what the new system is. Let's do one more question and then we will wrap it up. But this has been a good little 50 minutes here. Yeah.

Oh, how about this? Amy Rettledge asked if you were upset, you weren't able to do a V-back. Oh, yes and no. long let me give like the longer version so going into drew i had this 100% dead set plan i wanted to give birth quote unquote naturally so vaginally and i didn't want to do any medications i was very set on that but then one thing after another happened and it was like with every decision it was in the best interest of drew so we're going to do the induction because of the red flags we're going to do an epidural because I was being compromised and that was compromising her.

And then we were going to do the emergency C-section because she was being compromised again. So very quickly, I just learned that having a plan, it's really not up to you. It's up to your baby and it's up to just what happens. And going into JET, yeah, I had preferences and ideas, but I honestly didn't care. At the end of the day, I was going to sit down with my doctor

and say, what is best for him? And when we decided the C-section was the best for him, I could have cared less. I was like, whatever we need to do for him is what we will do. Yeah, you did a great job. Doc Holder wants to know if you're getting ready for Paris now at the Olympics. Yeah. No, like getting ready. No.

And then Jay Snow asked how Nash is doing with both babies. I think better with Jet than he did with Drew. I think so too. We should give him more love, though. We had a good night last night. He found a baseball and he was. so pumped about it. Oh, he's so excited.

He's a freaking good dog. Also, he just lost a tooth, which was tragic. I know. But whenever you pet him long enough, he opens his mouth in pants. And I saw that he had a tooth that was like horizontal, which he is perfect straight teeth. And then I touch it and it almost fell out. So we had to get it removed.

And I was sad. But the dude's a champ. Here's what we'll do. Let's do a couple shout-dust and we'll sign off. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, please do that. Hit the thumbs up on the YouTube. platform. And then let's just say hello to Lisa Blair, Laura Thompson, Amy Settle, Brie Covey, Cynthia Robertson, Veronica Murrow, Tori, Megan. Yes. Morgan Santiago, Mandy Nolan.

Thank you for taking the time to join us. We will be publishing this episode live on the podcast platform tomorrow. And if you like these live streams, we love it. Just let us No, but we are going on a couple of things live tour in 2022. I completely forgot about that. We've been through a lot the past couple months, so it's okay. Oh, Journey says happy birthday, Andrew. It is my birthday. Yeah.

On Friday. Thank you. Happy's turning 30. I'm turning 30. But let me say this. On Friday. Is it Friday? It's Thursday.

Are you sure? The 17th. No, it's definitely Friday. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for remembering, but I hope you had the party planned. we love getting to share our stories with you we love hearing your stories as well so thank you

for participating and we couldn't be more grateful to have this community of what I feel like is a rare rarely positive group of people who supports and encourages each other so thank you for keeping it that way we view our mission as supporting and encouraging families through sharing our stories and thus allowing other people to share theirs. So that's what we're trying to do here is just make families cool again.

So thanks for being a part of journey. That's all we got for you. I'm Andrew. I'm Sean. And we are the East Fam. Out.