The Unplanned Podcast with Matt & Abby - Answering our most asked questions

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Matt & Abby are answering everything you’ve been asking — from parenting two under two and keeping their relationship strong, to how they’re processing grief after losing their baby girl. They open up about their marriage, family routines, homeschooling, and what life really looks like behind the scenes right now. This episode is sponsored by Ka'Chava, OLIPOP, Article, Zocdoc & Cozy Earth. Ka'Chava: Go to https://kachava.com and use code UNPLANNED for 15% off your next order. OLIPOP: Get $2 off a 4-pack of OLIPOP: Works on any flavor of 4-pack, including Spongebob, any retailer URL: https://drinkolipop.com/UNPLANNED Article: Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit https://ARTICLE.COM/unplanned and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. Zocdoc: Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://Zocdoc.com/UNPLANNED to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Cozy Earth: Go to cozyearth.com/UNPLANNED for up to 20% off! Chapters: 00:00 - Q&A Questions 01:29 - Family halloween costumes? 04:13 - Was it as stressful as you thought it would be to have 2 under 2? 06:10 - Do you ever experience parental rage? 07:55 - Can you share more about your homeschooling thougts? 11:59 - Do you sit as a family for dinner? 13:45 - How do you manage spending quality time with both of your boys equally? 15:13 - Do griff and Auggie fight or are they little besties? 18:08 - Advice for young couples who really want kids but are not yet financially ready? 20:27 - Best advice for a newly married couple 23:35 - Whats your secret to a good sex life? 25:58 - Abby, how did you know Matt was the one? 29:26 - Pros & cons of your tesla? 32:44 - Dream vacation destination? 36:14 - Favorite youtube video you've made? 38:44 - If you weren't living in Arizona where would you pick? 39:43 - What has been your favorite podcast to record? 41:27 - What is one thing you would like to achieve before the end of the year? 42:08 - How do you stay present in such a busy time in your lives? 55:40 - Why aren't you calling your loss a stillbirth? 56:29 - What has been the most positive experience to come out of this terrible time? 1:01:09 - How will you two as a couple be memorializing your girl? 1:02:47 - Would you recommend grief support groups? 1:05:22 - What do you wish people knew who had a family member going through the loss of an unborn child? 1:06:21 - How are you handling other peoples baby announcements? 1:08:31 - Did the boys know about your loss? How did they react? 1:09:06 - Will you be sharing the genetic condition that baby girl had 1:09:53 - Will you share the name of your sweet angel? 1:10:28 - Are you going to try for another baby? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You heard me free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash unplanned. That's wildgrain.com slash unplanned or you can use promo code unplanned at checkout. Don't miss their seasonal products. What is your secret to a good sex life? Well, first of all, do you think that we have a good one? Yeah, I would say so. Moms tend to grieve immediately. I certainly do that.

And then now, as I'm getting on my feet again, I feel like it's starting to hit you more and more in waves. Will you be sharing the genetic condition that baby girl had? Will you share the name of your sweet angel? Are you going to try for another baby? Before we get started, I just wanted to thank all of you guys for all the kind DMs, messages, comments. You all have surrounded us with so much love. We really feel it. It's been beautiful, to be honest.

And I just wanted to thank you guys. I honestly have just been blown away by how kind people are. Truly just feels so humbled by everyone's love and support and kindness. And nothing makes going through this any lighter, but it helps you grieve with hope. We've had a lot of really dark conversations and topics on our podcast recently. And today we're doing a Q&A. You guys sent a lot of questions on our Instagram account and a lot of questions about miscarriage and what we're going through right now.

So we will get to those. but I wanted to start on more of a positive note. That's a good idea. We have four different topics we'll be talking about today that we answered questions on. The first is family. The second is relationships. The third is random. So you guys ask a bunch of random questions.

And then the fourth will be miscarriage. So for the first topic of family and parenting, we got, are we doing a family Halloween costume this year? I don't see. getting organized to do that. Come on. We got to. We need to. If we do, it'll be like the week of we Amazon Prime ship something. Can we be the Avengers? The boys would love it. Oh my gosh. I just ordered a costume for the boys. They're obsessed with Hulk. That is not the Avengers. They're obsessed with Hulk and Spider-Man. So I think Griffin could be the Hulk. Augie could be

Spider-Man. I'll be Captain America and you can be Black Widow. You would look super hot in a Black photo costume. Okay, so here's the thing about kids, especially little kids like the kids our age. When you ask them what they want to be for Halloween, you're going to get a different answer every single time. And you have to nail it. You have to constantly remind them, but you said this. So our friends actually recorded their child. So they have video evidence. Wait, are you serious? I didn't know our friends did that. Yeah, they're like, what do you want to be? And then they got video evidence because then the next day, she said, He's like, no, I don't want to be that.

I want to be like, what you said. So that's the age. They're like, they show it. They're like, this is what you said. We have proof. They literally showed her the receipts. Our friends that did this, how old's their kid? Three.

Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, the tricky part is for our two-year-old, if you ask him, Augie, do you like Spidey more or Hulkmore? He goes, Hulk. If you like Hulkmore or Spidey more, Spidey. It's wherever you're saying last.

So, so, yeah, anyway. But I think this is reality is what Matt is saying that we're going to do this big elaborate family costume really we've never actually quite gotten ourselves organized enough for that um it's a great idea but what i think will realistically happen is our son oggy got a spidey costume for a second birthday that he will never take off and he's constantly wearing it so he's probably going to end up wearing that and then our oldest has been saying every time we ask him what he wants to be he always says slinky dog yeah what's up with slinky dog that's so random he always he's been consistently saying that recently. So I ordered them a slinky dog costume. Unfortunately, if someone can find a single slinky dog

costume, let me know because every time I see a slinky dog costume, it's a head and a butt end with the coils in between. Yeah. And so I think Augie's going to be slinky dog. In the back? He's going to be the booty? Plus spidey. Like in his spidey costume. I want to see you in a black widow costume all night. You'd look so good. I'm not going. Why would you not wear a lot? Door to door in a black You look so good. We're the Avengers. With a little slinky dog walking around. It's so confusing.

Okay, wait. No, that makes sense. Yeah, if our kids are no longer wearing their Avengers costumes, then we can take ours off. Okay. Was it as stressful as you thought it would be to have two under two? Very much so. Yeah, I would say like that season was so crazy, but boy, was it worth it because now our boys are basically twins like they do everything together they laugh together they tackle each other

and have wrestling matches in the living room they are best friends and it is so much fun to see their relationship grow i love like walking away and then i just hear this like tickle fight going on and everyone's laughing and they just they mesh so well together and i wouldn't do it any other way almost makes me want to do two under two again like seriously it actually makes me want to do it because you know like, okay, yes, it's hell for a year. But then you get through that year and your kids are, they have a built and best friend. I wouldn't say it's hell for a year. But I mean, it is, it is a tough thing to do. One of our friends had twins and was like, and she also, actually, she was on this podcast. Carol Lowry was on this podcast. She had 2002 and she also had twins. She said

2002 was harder. Yeah, I don't know if everyone that has twins would agree with that. That's true. That's just her opinion. But it was a challenging season for sure. And I think the hardest part about 2002 is if they're on different nap schedules, you will be nap trapped for the whole day. And if your kids or anything like our kids getting outside of the house is like a key part of like keeping them happy, entertained, getting their energy out. So navigating that and you're constantly having to change your rhythm too when you have 2002 because they're both changing dramatically into different stages so frequently now it's stabilized so much and they are i think it's really easy to have a two and three year old are two and three years i mean everyone's experience is so different but our kids are

like they really play so well together yeah they really do 100% it was meant to be and yeah do you ever experience parental rage honestly you guys i don't think that's something that we've ever struggled with like we we just both are obsessed with their kids we love them so much i did yell the other day because our son was holding onto my hair okay fell off of me he was like balancing himself on my leg body weight is pulling Matt's hair it hurts so bad I was almost certain that all my hair you're you yelled and it like got louder at the end you go ah ah like it hurt like I felt him tugging on the hair and then he fell and it was like and I was like oh like I think I did I scream out what did I scream I don't know you just like yelped and then they were both they were both

scared. Rip and started crying. It was so sad. It was so sad because, I mean, you don't yell at them. And so he started crying. And he like froze. He like cowered and froze and started crying. And then I apologize.

And then Augie kept going, I'm so scared. I'm so scared. Yeah, I apologize to them after that because I've learned like as a parent, you need to show your kids that you can make mistakes. I don't think that you were yelling out of rage. It was literally just like it was a pain response. Yeah. Well, you just had trauma done to your head.

Yeah. I did have a hair transplant and a lot of my hair fell out, but it's looking, guys, it's looking better. I got a haircut recently. It looks so much better. I still have a ton of hair missing from the top that's all going to row back in. So I'm excited for that in 10 months when the full result comes. But yes, I did yell and it was a little hectic. But you weren't yelling at him. No, yeah. Yeah, no, parental rage. I definitely see where that could happen. We haven't gotten to that stage yet. Maybe it'll, maybe it'll come. Yeah, I'm sure at some point our kids will do something really stupid. That'll piss us off. Okay. Can you share more about your homeschooling thoughts,

how it's going? You guys, proud dad moment. Sorry, I feel like I'm kind of taking over this podcast. Proud dad moment. Griffin, he's actually doing a two day, two day a week, like homeschool, like hybrid thing. He basically perfectly did like the tracing for all of his letters, every single letter of the alphabet. I'm so proud of him. And I think part of the reason he did such a good job at that was because recently I got him. actually using this iPad onto this learning program that didn't you have kids that you'd babysit a couple years ago when I was doing elementary education like in some of my practicums or even when I was substitute teaching a lot of public schools use it oh public schools use ABC mouse yeah oh yeah so then I knew about this thing called ABC Mouse so I got Griffin doing like the three-year-old learning

activities and one of the activities is tracing his letters so that's been super helpful using that app, which we had to pay whatever the yearly subscription is. But it was like the cost of what you pay for like an education book at a store. And so that's been good. And then the home school's been good. So I'm a proud papa. Proud pop. Yeah. Yeah. So right now with just a two and a three year old, we haven't had to like think too seriously about it. I feel like learning at this age is through mostly play. And they do a lot of that. We go to museums. We go to to the zoo we go to a lot of things like we do a lot of like active out and about educational activities but what we've been doing since like august is twice a week with um like four of our other friends

that are like all all of kids the same age we just like get together and we have like a little self-made curriculum thing where we work on like a letter of the day we read books they do learning activities and like little crafts they do like some motor skills activities and it's just for two hours twice a week and that's working really great for now I'm interested to see how our homeschooling journey evolves or like what it becomes maybe one day you do a hybrid situation um yeah we're really lucky to be in a place where there are a lot of options around us as far as like there's support for homeschooling there's a lot of different kind of cool hybrid situations there's great public schools there's great charter schools private schools there's so many

options. And so I'm really open to a lot of them. But right now, this little homeschool with our friends thing is working great. It's really sweet. And they look forward to it. They feel so old. They say, we're going to school. Do overpriced spinach wraps from coffee shops leave you with more cravings than comfort? Or can we talk about how many times after the gym we stop and get our favorite shake that is literally $10 a shake? But we have a fully stocked fridge. And that is why we wanted to tell you guys about one of the sponsors of today's episode, Cachava. It is all too often, way easy to sacrifice quality nutrition for convenience. And that is why Cachava has made our life so much easier and better this fall with delicious

whole body nutrition. I love having a protein shake after my workouts, but something that's been really hard to find is a plant-based protein that actually tastes good, but look no further than Cachava because I'm telling you guys, they nailed it. That's right, Matt. I have so many delicious flavors from chocolate, vanilla, chai to matcha, coconut, assay, and strawberry. See, the thing is, I'm really a vanilla guy because I love mixing my protein with, like, other fun mix-in. So vanilla is like the perfect base, but you're saying err to vanilla?

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Yes. We do? I feel like half the time. Oh, our kids don't stay in their seats. Yeah, they are very mobile and love to, they just get distracted. And so we have to keep reminding them of like, hey, if you want to eat dessert, you have to finish. your dinner before we get dessert we do eat at the same time though and we put their plate on a table they're usually coming and going and eating their food but they yeah i think they got ADHD from

their father i don't know i think they're just normal like little toddlers but you think that we eat at the same time we eat dinner at the same time like as a family yes sometimes is also we don't enforce that they stay in their seats very well yeah that's something that we need to work on um but recently I feel like they're still too young. It has been helping, though, because they want to go in the pool every single day with me. That's like their big thing is they're like, can we go swim with daddy in the pool? Like, I don't know, but they're obsessed with the pool. We have to eat your dinner.

So we've been using that as their bribe to eat their dinner before we go in the pool. So, yeah. So, yeah, I would say we eat as a family, though, every night. You're right. We do. Yeah, it's not like we're eating, we're not living different lives. Like, we're all together. Yeah.

I'm just thinking because they get up so much that we're not like all seated. True. Yeah. It's not like we're all. seated at the table using our manners. I have to bring them back to their seat five or six times. There's food spit out onto their plate. There's food thrown.

There's, there's negotiations happening. It's almost easier to eat outside because then I can just hose off everything. Maybe that's why we don't get rage is because we have very low expectations. We're like, oh yeah, sometimes I will literally feed them a bite if they're going on the slide. I'm like,

let me just try to get this in here. Anyway, how do you manage spending quality time with both of your boys equally do we i feel like it's i mean i think we do a pretty good job they don't like to be separated yeah we kind of just are it's just with them together so like if we're going to spend quality time with one of them is with both of them it is really special though when we get them like one on one but it doesn't happen a lot no that is no you're right when i do have griffin and it's better about that i feel like it's fun like it's really fun well it's hard though because then you're like then i'm leaving another kid out and

they like to do stuff together yeah and then they're so close in age, but I think as they get older, it'll be more and more important to have one-on-one time. But I do feel like we get one-on-one time, like maybe not both of us with one kid, but like me with one kid and you with another kid. That happens. Because Abby's had commitments recently to where I needed to bring Griffin to school. And so it's just me and Griffin in the morning hanging out. And like, I get to help him pack his backpack and put all his snacks in there because he loves to put snacks in his backpack. And, you know, see him be so proud of himself when he puts on his clothes by himself and his shoes by himself like he's so proud yeah so I I love the

one-on-one one-on-one it is sweet we need to do that more and more I when I took a one-on-one trip with Griffin to Disney earlier this year that was really special but then I did feel bad for Augie maybe he'll take Augie on a one-on-one trip I'll I'll do a one-on-one trip with both of them that would be fun yeah I've never done a one-on-one trip with them have I it's so sweet I need to we're all always together so yeah but we should do that that would be fun that's a good idea Next question, do Griff and Augie fight or are they little besties? I would say they're definitely little besties. This doesn't mean that they don't ever have conflict.

Yeah. I feel like every siblings like have conflict. And usually the kind of conflict that we're seeing, it just feels so normal. It's like two little boys that are getting worked up. And I've noticed this, like two little boys like wrestling are playing. Like they're going to continue to get like worked up. Like it's like a balloon getting inflated. Yeah.

Like it's going to pop. some point like someone's going to cross the line and like do a face shot but the wrestling is so fun for them like they love it even if augie gets like elbowed in the face he laughs like he's so but there's always a point where it crosses the line and then someone's upset true but i mean i would say for the most part they are such besties yeah they are the only time i really see them get upset with each other is when they're having issues sharing so something that we've enacted in our family whenever they're sharing issues is I'll say okay hey Griffin Augie has that toy right now you'll get to have it in two minutes I'll say Augie could you share actually I'll first ask Augie to see if

he can have like the encourage them to do it themselves yeah yeah ohgy would you be can play with that toy yes or like would you guys be willing to trade something so sometimes Griffin in order to like he really wants Augie's toy and so I'll say Griffin Augie's playing with that right now but if you're able to find something else that Augie would want to play with then then maybe Augie would consider trading. So then Griffin's like going and fighting all these different toys and bringing them up to Augie and be like, oh, you want to trade this? Augie's like no. And then Griffin will go and get this and Augie's like no. And then he'll get like a Spider-Man toy. And then Augie will be like, okay, yeah. Like that's my favorite superhero. So, you know, it's stuff like that.

I think that's all like normal stuff. Yeah. But they, in general, they are really good sharers. And I think it's because they've had a sibling for forever. And the two-minute rule, like oftentimes, like even today, there was something that they were trying to share and Basically, Griffin just told Augie, hey, Augie, I just need two more minutes and then you can have it. Yeah, he always says two minutes. Two minutes. And that, like, seems to work really well because Griffin, like, knows immediately, okay, I'm fine for now. And in the future, I will have to give this up, but I can still get a little bit more time out of this.

They can usually work it out. Yeah. Yeah, but they always want to do everything together. They do not want to be separated. When they're, like, going to watch a show, they, like, want the other person to sit right next to them. They want to do, they want to play up the same thing at the same time. So they're definitely best. Okay, that wraps up the family and parenting section.

Now we're on to the relationship. This is like couples, questions, questions about love, romance, relationship, all that. Well, I also, by the way, Matt wanted to match with me today. And I'm like, wow, we're already in the elderly couple stage where we just like start matching every day. But you've done this for a long time. You're like, what are you wearing? Okay. And then he comes out in a brown shirt.

Yep. It's sweet. We are both wearing brown. I think that's sweet. Okay. First question. advice for young couples who really want kids but are not yet ready financially. I would just send it honestly.

I would just send it like, okay, look, I will say. I was going to say the same thing. We also were financially prepared for kids when we started having them. So we probably do have a bias there. I'm sure there's people that started having kids that were not financially ready and it probably really stressed them out. But I think like there's something about having a family that just makes you work your ass off.

I'm sorry. Yeah, for sure. Like, that's kind of what marrying Abby did to me. Like, I knew I wanted to marry her. So right away in college, like, I got a job. And I just, like, started penny pinching and, like, you know, just, I was very strict on myself because I had this goal in mind. So I think, yeah, if you know that you want to start a family or that's something that you're wanting to do, but the finances aren't quite there, like, let that be a motivating factor. We know a lot of people really well.

And personally, that would have probably said, yeah, I mean, I guess we weren't quite. quote unquote, financially prepared when we started our family. Yeah. But you, when you have the gift of a baby, you realize how small, all those physical things you thought you needed to have in place beforehand are in comparison to like the absolute like magnitude it is to start a family. Like let me like even one thing would be like a nursery for your kid. We did all this stuff to do like a nursery for our like our first kid because we thought

we had to. we're like, oh, we got to have all this and that for the nursery. Second child, like, you just realize, like, wait a second, like, they just sleep next to your bed for the, like, they really can for initially. Like, all these things that you think you might need to have in place beforehand, um, it's, it's largely based in, like, culture or society and not like, oh, like this is actually a necessity. And like Matt said, there's no greater motivator really than having people to provide for. also here's the other thing you may feel quote unquote financially prepared and you have a kid two years down the line like you never know what life is going to hand you there's job loss i know you grew up and experienced job loss like recessions like just like things you cannot prepare for

and you cannot expect can happen and that can happen at any time next question best advice for newly married couples probably to do some sort of premarital counseling or yeah marriage counseling I think it's been amazing in our own life. We've seen some huge benefits to therapy in our life. A free thing too is I think that's great in something that we definitely do. But also, like, through every season of our marriage, we've always had, like, couples that we can, like, talk to, be open with, not, like, in an inappropriate way, but we can, like, have dinner and, like,

we can talk about our marriage and we can talk about, like, oh, like, this thing came up. And it's not like we're using them as our therapist. But just, like, having community to, like, talk about life and marriage and celebrate your marriage and, like, the joys of it and be with you and, like, the harder times. I think there's a lot of value in having other couples that are married to surround you to also, like, help uplift your marriage and, like, your unity and stuff. Is it okay if I hold your hand? I just want to hold your hand. You look so good. Yeah, I was about to change.

And then Matt was like, do not change. I love this outfit. Guys, blow up the comments. Blow up the comment section with how incredible Abby looks in this outfit. It's all matching. Stop it. I even helped pick it out. She asked me my opinion on the outfit.

And I think you look stunning in it. Thank you so much. I love it. Wow. You look so good. Is it the, I can't tell. I guess it's the brown, but then the blue accents are cute and the yellow stripe on the side. I like it. It's a cute outfit.

Cute outfit. Okay. Next question. This might be TMI, but we can always cut this out if it is. What's your secret? Well, we never say TMI stuff. Do you love drinking? Nothing like a fresh cold olipop. Do you love soda, but not all the added sugar? I'm in the same exact boat.

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that people tell you are flavor, but you cannot taste any flavor in them. These are delicious. They actually fill that same craving as a soda. Get $2 off a four pack of olipop at drinkolipop.com slash unplanned. This works on any flavor of four pack, including SpongeBob at any retailer. Olipop is sold online and available in almost 50,000 retailers nationwide, including Costco, Walmart, Target, Publix, Whole Foods, Kroger, and H.E. E.B. What is your secret to a good sex life? Somebody just, they're assuming that we have a good sex life. Let me guess you put that question in here. I didn't put that question in. This is what our sister-in-law, Addy, put in here. Okay. I mean, I like to talk about sex. Okay. Tell me about it. What's the secret? What do you think the secret is, Abby? Well, first of all, do you think that we have a good one? Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, I would say so flattered. Yeah. Actually, in the shower the other day, I asked Matt, I was like, rate our marriage on the scale of one to ten. We're going to say at the same time. And I was like, this is a great way to.

get your feelings hurt and I feel like if we did that for sex life it's like even to be rate it our sex life right now you want to do a rating right now let's just give it the last like three months I feel like I want to keep that to ourselves I feel like I feel like I feel like I want to wait what I feel like there's certain things that you want to keep private I don't want to like I don't know I feel like that might be crossing I'm feeling overly confident everyone what's the question the question is how to why is our sex life so good no what's a secret I don't I mean wow that I think probably just half-saxed well yeah that would be the number one one do it a lot yeah I'm just kidding um I think like let me just think of like a base level communication oh yeah

should I even say that we have like this what do you mean have what we have like oh the cards yeah the cards cards can be fun I think that's great because you're like position cards you're like okay I don't really want to like you don't want to take the you want to keep it fun and fresh but you also don't want to take the brain power it's a good it's like a fun little game like you just pull out a card and just try whatever is on the card and like sometimes we laugh and we're like absolutely not that's not that's not gonna physically work or like we give it a shot and it's actually really you never you never know it just keeps it fun and fresh and I think honestly sometimes it's really fun when we laugh when we're in the bedroom yeah no I love it doesn't have to be like a romantic passionate movie like no I love it when we're like

And do embarrassing things. It's the best. We are in the act. And then we like, I like, I like, just, I like, it's always me. I'm always the one that starts laughing first. Yeah, that's true. I think that's the best. I think, yeah.

Okay. Anyway, um, next question. Um, okay, no, we're going to move on. Now we're going to move on to random. I feel like that was enough. It was Abby. It was Abby. How did you know Matt was the one?

Aw. It's a little soffy, but hey, we can... You were my best friend. That's why I knew that you were the one. When I, like, thought into my future, I was like, everything I was thinking of down the line, like, you were in it. Yeah. Like, you had already been written into my future in my mind, so I was like, this just feels

like such a natural thing to enter into. No, that's how I knew that you were the one, too, because it was like our friendship was so strong. And, like, you quite honestly became the closest friend that I'd ever had in my life. so then it was just a no-brainer to get rid of you and also on a deeper level i had noticed so many things about your character that i was like looking for in a partner and even you made me realize there were traits that i wanted in a spouse that i didn't even think about before i was like oh this is so good that like you are willing to like humble yourself to seek advice from others

like the way that you were willing to like get a mint like we have mentors in our relationship and like get counseling and to like invite that in and like be willing to be wrong and learn like that's a really really important quality that I hadn't even thought about because I was like thinking I'm like so in that's spontaneous and like fun it makes me laugh and like all those things are good and great but like definitely am spontaneous are you teachable like how many times have I tried to get you to like go on an international trip and you know what I just say yes because you do about one percent of them of your crazy ideas okay right now can we go can I take Griffin to Tokyo to go ride trains

in Tokyo. Why are me and Augie left out of this? And I'd take you and Augie with us. Sure. Yes, we're going to do it. Sure. And the next year? Sure.

Go to Tokyo and we can ride the train. I think our kids would think the, because they have these like really fast, high-speed trains. You guys, if you want an actual glimpse of our marriage, this is literally what happens. No, Abby. Every single day. Okay. I think the boys would be obsessed. They would think it's so cool.

No, seriously. They would feel like it's like being on an amusement park ride because these trains are very, very fast anyway I don't know amazing catch us on the bullet trains and we can eat sushi in Asia they're awesome uh Japan Japan yeah I've heard Japan's really safe too okay great yeah so anyway sorry I feel like I just killed our conversation right that right there you're just such a puppy dog sorry sorry about that okay now that was the end of the relationship section great now we will move on to the random questions before we get into the final topic which is miscarriage and that's dark and scary, but we're going to talk about it in any way.

Oh, it's not so dark and scary. Um, okay, uh, random. Random. It actually is dark and scary. Yeah. Um, okay, wow. Um, I feel, also, also, I feel like we've been developing dark humor recently. Yeah.

What was the thing that you said the other day that like, I've been saying a lot of dark things? Like, what was one, what was the thing that we were talking about yesterday that was actually like, it was so dark, but so dark it was funny. Me when I was saying I was putting blush on to look happy. Oh my God. That was it. See, for me, that didn't even like, because I'm. I'm in such a kind of dark place.

Like, I was like, oh, is that really, is that bad? That's dark, but hey, you know what? We're in the, we're in a dumb club now. Well, I put blush on to look happy today, so. Give me nucks. No, I just put blush on to put my blush on. And I take antidepressants to be happy, and that seems to work for me. See, we're dark.

Okay. Okay. So now we're on the random session. Okay. Okay, first question is pros and cons of your Tesla. Whoever sent this question, thank you so much. Oh my gosh. Guys, I recently purchased full self-driving the monthly membership because it used to be like-

I thought you were so frugal. You literally said that earlier in this podcast. What? Oh, I still. I'm not, okay, I'm not technically frugal anymore, but we also, we got a little bit more to play with, okay, and we have, we have our emergency fund, we have investments. Okay, talk about the Tesla. So we're not, you know, we, we,

You can, it's okay. I'm not sure to call you out. Abby, I felt very called out. Sorry about that. Okay, but the Tesla, full self-driving. I love it. Our car just drives itself. So you just like press down the lever and being, it drives itself.

And right now, I think it's $100 a month, which is expensive. But for having your car drive itself, I paid for it for one month just to try it out and see if I thought it was cool. And I love it. And I don't plan to get rid of it anytime soon. So that's why I love it. Kahn would maybe be. The question wasn't about self-driving.

I know, that was the pro, though. The pro of the Tesla is the full self-driving. No, I think the pro of the Tesla is that it's electric. Yeah. You never have to get gas. You just plug your car and at your house. Which has made me want to get solar panels because if we had enough electricity to, like, cover our electric bill from the solar panels, we would essentially, I want to say pay off the solar panels that I'm thinking of getting in the next five years. So they would just be like, then we just have free electricity, you know?

Isn't that cool? And it's good for the environment. There you go. What are the cons of Tesla? Maybe space? I mean, I feel like it has decent space. Yeah. I guess, like, if you're looking for a bigger vehicle,

the third row Tesla is not that spacious. The back row is very small. True, true. I don't really have a lot of negatives to say about the Tesla. I think it's a really good car, and I actually didn't expect to like it as much as I do. Yeah, we have the Model Y. Thinking about the Model X,

we kind of realized maybe what we could do is Abby gets her car, like her favorite mom car and then I get my favorite dad car and then that way we can both fit like our full family whenever we end up having more kids because I think we kind of are almost wanting four kids now can I say that out loud is that okay I am loving that you're saying I don't know I just love being it I'm just like I've really entered my my dad era I love being a dad and it's like yeah at least how I feel right now I'm just like why are you crying yeah it's sweet hearing you say that But also, like, I think just like the reality of losing a baby, you just realize how valuable our children are to us.

Yeah. I think the, like, feeling the weight of how profound, like, this loss feels, you just realize, wow. There's nothing greater in this life than our family. So, yeah, that just made me cry. But also hearing you say that is really sweet. See, this is where we're out right now. we're at like dark humor one minute here's the next that's where we're at right now sorry

keep going that's where we're at random questions we're not even on the no it's all good hey we're not even we're not even then are we still in the tesla one right now yeah this is oh yeah we're still on the tesla question okay next question is dream vacation destination yes or what do you say i would love to plan a really fun trip in europe with our kids around uh the do you date of our third baby because I would love something to look forward to that's like big and like bonding as a family and also distracting because I just know that those milestones like I'm anticipate it's almost like the anticipation's worse is what I've heard but like the anticipation of like those dates is hard so I want to have something to counteract that that's like

exciting is that a hopeful is that a response to grief to travel yeah because because like getting out of the space my initial instinct reaction to everything that's happened no I was like Abby let's go I was like can we go to Japan I think I said and I think and I think and then I was like okay maybe something domestic like I was I was like maybe that's a little bit too crazy but I think for you I think that was a little too like out there right away but yeah that was definitely like yeah you know I think that probably is but I love that I love that idea for I know we've talked about that already but I love that idea of planning this amazing trip for February just to yeah help help us like

like get through that month and get through that specific date, which sucks, but it'll be good. Somewhere in Europe, the boys have never been to Europe. So that would be really fun. Yeah. And I went to Europe for the first time ever five years ago. So that was 20. Our kids are like going to so many cool places and they're like, they're two and three. I know. They're two and three. They're two and three. They're so good. But still, it's sweet. Their favorite place is like literally when they see an airplane, they just think about going to Grandma and Pop-Balls. I actually asked them this, you guys, I said, do you guys want to go? Okay, I did keep in mind, I didn't say Disney World, Grandma and Papa's, and then like a couple other places.

Hawaii. They said Disney World first, but then after that, then second was Grandma and Papa's. So I thought that was really sweet. Are you in the market for a new dining table or dining room chairs? Because we were about a year ago, and that's why we purchased products from Article. Well, really, they have a lot of furniture selections at Article. Oh, really? Yes.

More than dining tables and chairs? They certainly do, but something I love about Article is that you get your furniture order in a timely manner. I can't tell you how many times I have ordered furniture and it's like, oh, your estimated delivery date is six months from now. It's like, well, I need somewhere to sit today. Article offers a curated range of mid-century modern, coastal, and Scandy-inspired pieces that not only shine on their own, but also pair seamlessly with nearly any other article product. This thoughtful design approach makes it incredibly easy to mix and match, helping you create a space that feels cohesive and stylish. We get so many compliments on our chairs and our table. It's like the

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Our next question in the random category is, favorite YouTube video you've made. Well, I like our wedding video one. I also like the one where we read our. are like letters to each other that's cool um those are fun those are ones i go back to a lot because they're just like there's so much value and like okay like these were the vows you made to each other these were things that we like said and like now we're like living in that like reality of like this role we're creating yeah together um i love that i have all that footage on a hard drive so i can keep like making new videos with it in the future because i just think that's fun like I'll see that footage through a different lens every decade or whatever because I recently

last year re-edited that footage to the wedding song that I wrote and then before that it was just like the OG wedding video that I made and surprised you with on Valentine's Day but that's something that I was thinking about like recently is like I'm glad we have all this like this I love that video honestly any video we made in our Springfield Missouri apartment those are so sweet pre-Hawaii videos on our YouTube channel really sweet videos like when I surprised you for Valentine's Day that was really those like make me cry when I got my haircut and surprised you those are so fun yeah I love those really I sorry I was just thinking about the haircut video and how I had to make an edit in it yeah let's not let's just keep that to ourselves as you brought it up on this podcast

If you weren't living in airs, okay, oh gosh, fine, you can tell them. Say it in, say it in appropriate language that doesn't sound weird. Stop it. Pitching a tent. Oh gosh. Oh gosh. So somebody told us one of our friends was like, you know, you know you got to edit that out for the, like, you, you, you've got to edit that out. from the like you missed the part we posted it i wasn't looking for that i didn't think that was

happening i don't watch our videos i've i completely missed it in the edit and try to go back on youtube and edit that part out um she just texted me i just loved your hair so much first year marriage first year marriage baby okay okay all right crazy if you weren't living in arizona where would you pick pick Hawaii. Yeah, either Hawaii or California. Hawaii would be better than California, but California does have opportunities, especially like now that we have this podcast, like transparently, you guys, if we did live in Los Angeles, interviewing cool guests is just 10 times easier when you're already in L.A. because everyone is always doing press cycles in

L.A. for their new book, their new movie, whatever. It's hard to get people to fly to Phoenix. So that would, honestly, I'd probably say, realistically, California, but, you know, maybe one day we'll split time. Maybe one day we'll spend part of the year in Arizona, part of the year in California or Hawaii and do want to do that. We'll see. Why are you smiling like that? I'm like, okay, whatever. I love Arizona so much. Abby's an Arizona girl. I like love Arizona. She loves the heat. I do. I'm a reptile.

What has been your favorite podcast to record? Wow, I actually, off the top of my head, can't think of what that podcast would be. The one I'm proudest of is the one we just did regarding our miscarriage. It was really important for me to just do it for myself and for anyone that it would serve. And I just wanted to put it out there for anyone that needed it. And for people that didn't need it, I wanted them to not partake. but it was there for people that needed it and I needed to do it. And so, yeah, I'm not using my words well.

No, that's really good. It felt like an exhale for me. And like it felt like a milestone in like growing through this horrible experience. It felt like a way to commemorate her life, our daughter's life. And the experience that we went through as a family and as a couple, and it felt, it's the most motivated I've ever been to like speak on something I think I think what you said in that episode was powerful for so many women out there that have been through something similar that know somebody that's been through something similar seeing the comments that people were saying like

I just went through a miscarriage too and this has been really healing to to see this to to hear you share what it's like that feels good or I went through a miscarriage when you were pregnant with Augie and I was pregnant at the same time and I lost my baby and it was like devastating and now watching this like makes me like in a weird way feel seen like feel understood. I think you being vulnerable in the episode was really cool. Thank you. We have a few more random questions before we get into the specific miscarriage questions. What is one thing you would like to achieve before the end of the year? Mine is to build a half pipe in our backyard for me and the boys. What about you? I actually am so excited about this.

Halfpipe. I'm going to skate it probably every day. I'm so stoked. I'm not really a goals person. Am I? I'm a journey person. I'm a journey person. I'm not really a journey person. I'm not really a goal person. Our final question from the random call. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm on some game show. We're going to get to level four. Sorry. This is our last time. I'm trying to like enjoy the fun questions before we get to the morbid ones. How do you stay present in such a busy time in your lives. I think that, yes, the stage of life that we're in is a very, quote-unquote, busy time, but also the blessing of having littles is that I think you'd be shocked to how actually slow our day-to-day is. Yeah. Like, they are in bed at like 7.30. We're home.

We're home a lot. We did have that night. They nap every day. We hung out with our brother and sister-in-law so late that we put them to bed at 11 p.m. Yeah, see, that was unique, though. That was unique. Like, I feel like people would be shocked by how slow and simple our day-to-day life really is. Like, we're on more of a routine than we ever have been because with the kids, I think they just thrive with, like, order and routine. Every night, we just hang out as a family and, like, play outside. You get in the

pool with them. We do bath and bedtime and dinner. Like, it's, it really, does feel like it's fairly slow. Like, I don't feel like where we're at right now, we're like overwhelmed or drowning. We're just in such a sweet season. We're like, it's taken on a slower pace. Wouldn't you agree?

Yeah, I love the season that we're in. I feel like I can take- We're very protective of our family time too. Well, like our, guys, I seriously, I think I've said this on the podcast before. It felt like we were parenting on expert mode. Like, I used to play Minecraft in middle school.

Okay, there was expert mode, and I would like never, survive expert mode because it's so hard okay and then you do easy mode and it's like chill you're just chilling and i feel like that's what happened like i feel like we're on parenting expert mode and now with our boys being so close in age they do everything together they entertain each other like obviously i love we spend a lot of quality time together but i don't have it's not like we have an only child we have to entertain them all the time like our kids will just go play on their play set and go swing and go down the slide it's fun to play with and we're able to like do the dishes and like you know pick up our house and

it just feels like we're parenting on easy mode right now. So it's so fun. I will say if you're struggling as a parent with staying present, I would encourage you to examine your online behavior because I feel like I have fallen so easily in this trap of like filling any gap time with scrolling. And that messes with your brain. Your brain is not meant to ingest all of that.

And so if you just maybe have like enforced stricter boundaries, with your online or your phone usage. Yeah. You wouldn't feel like this lack of stimulation when you're playing with your kids as much. Yeah. Because it's like it would be dopamine enough to just play with them.

And color with them and like go on a walk. Yeah. So I feel like. Especially putting time limits on the apps that you scroll on. So like if you're going to spend an hour on YouTube a day but you're watching like a 30 minute history video, that's something I would do because I'm a nerd. and then like a 30-minute science video.

Well, it's like you can scroll, but maybe they're isolated to their nap time or once they're in bed because then you won't feel like you're... Totally. I don't know how to put the words. That's actually a really good idea to like leave, leave, you know, if you say you want to give yourself,

let's say 45 minutes a day to scroll, you know, you give that to yourself at the end of the day because then you've gone through your whole day. That's what I have a lot of my friends do. They like put their time restrictions to like their kids nap time. That's cool. So they restrict their like Instagram and TikTok. I actually don't think you can restrict it.

app for a certain amount of time, but they allow themselves 30 minutes and then they only do that during that nap time. That's actually really cool. Yeah, I wish the apps could say you could only use this from X time to X time. I wish, I don't know why they don't have it. I think there's a way to do that. Okay, help me with that. I've done that actually with my phone before. Okay, help me with that then. Yeah, I can set it up for you. I think that, I think that can help you immensely because it's like, you're not the problem. Your brain has just been trained to get dopamine hit after dopamine hit after dopamine hit. And so then when you're with your kids, it's not, it's, your brain's not getting that same release.

Yeah. But if you train your brain to not need that as much, then you're going to find more fulfillment. I really believe this. You'll find more fulfillment in just like being with your kids and playing with them. Yeah. All right. Now we've moved into the sad questions.

So sorry. Now we're going to talk about sad stuff. But we got to craft some questions from you guys about miscarriage. So we thought. Once again, if you're like pregnant right now and this is going to be like making you fearful, like just get off of that. it. It's totally like I would have been that same way a month ago, two months ago. No shame. No shame in that. Have you been putting off a doctor's appointment because you have a busy life and you just don't want to drive to the doctor? That was me. Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that I have ADHD. I actually got diagnosed with ADHD by using Doc doc. That's just common knowledge.

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Zok-Doc appointments happen fast, typically within just 24 to 72 hours of booking, and you could even score same-day appointments. I've actually done that in the past. A year ago when I had a concussion, I was able to get a same-day appointment to be viewed by a doctor. After I told my symptoms, they're like, you should go to the emergency room. So, anyway, I use Zock-D-D-O-C-2. Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to Zock.com slash unplanned to find an instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com. We really like to go hard during the day, I would say. We like to keep it busy, keep it lively, get out of the house a lot. But at the end of the day, we love to come home and really wind down. We read books in bed, y'all. We like to get cozy in our sheets. We love to get cozy. Here's our bed right here. This is where we get cozy every single night. We've got the cozy earth sheets on this bed right now, y'all, and it is so cozy. Just think about how much time you spend in bed. I, It's like basically, for us, it's like nine hours a day.

Yeah, and we are a huge fan because cozy earth bamboo sheets are temperature regulating and guaranteed to give you a comfortable night's sleep. Yes. For Matt, he's like sleeping next to a furnace. And for me, I'm always cold. And so it's nice that has that temperature regulating quality so we can both feel comfortable all night long. And their cuddle blanket is also so luxurious.

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It's how you feel. Let's go home with cozy earth. First question we have is how is Matt doing? He was so strong during the last podcast. How is he processing? Okay, to be honest, I am on antidepressants to you guys. So I feel like that's really helped me. Like, I wish I could take credit for, wow, I'm, I looked so strong.

And I'm like really being tough. Like I saw a comment. I was like, wow, he's being really like, you know, just there for Abby. And that was nice. But you have been. Well, thank you. I mean, I'm trying my best out here. But, you know, I'm also like not perfect.

There's definitely things that I could be doing better. But it's one of those things where I have been on antidepressants. And because like, yeah, because I'm on those, like it really, I think has helped me a lot. Yeah. And something else is that. like when we were in the hospital when all of this was happening a lady came in to talk to us like about grief a little bit and I feel like we were so in shock at that point that this this is like the one thing I really remember her saying because it was very helpful and I saw this pattern in

her own marriage and like as we were like processing everything that had happened was that like moms tend to grieve immediately and grieve so hard and like I certainly did that and am doing that and then once gradually once the mom is able to like maybe stop being so teary every day get back into like a little bit more of a swing of things like kind of just get back on her feet again is usually when it starts to hit dad and then because dad's been taking all the hits right and like being strong, being the person to lean on. And that's exactly what you've done. Like you have fielded all of my grief and sadness as you're experiencing yourself.

But like I feel like you've almost been like holding it together because I'm crumbling so much. And then now as I'm getting on my feet again, I feel like it's starting to hit you more and more in waves. Yeah. And like now I feel like we can go through this together. before if you would have like been like crumbling like me i don't know what we would have done i'll be honest to like you had you had to fill in so many gaps for me because i was just i was just a mess i couldn't get

off the couch i was just sobbing all day every day and so like you had to you had to be strong you had to keep going for me and like i feel like you were just going on this adrenaline and like i have all this responsibility i have to do this i have to do this and that like you couldn't even begin to start your own griefing journey, exactly. I'll be honest like that is exactly how I felt. Like, I think I've been allowing myself to really think about things. Like, it almost was like my brain wouldn't let me think about it. Yeah.

Like, yeah. I don't know. Like, the more that I do think about it, the sadder I get. And I think, obviously, there can be an unhealthy way to do that where you, like, never allow yourself to grieve and you never process the emotions. But I think that, like, for one, the antidepressants have helped me spread. that processing time out so it's not like a big wave at once and it just like overwhelms me and then I can't work I can't take care of my kids like you know there you know there there's

been been days where I you know had to had to fill a lot of different gaps just because like I think it's it's more normal for women to like especially with you carrying our baby for all of those months and then going through that like it's just so overwhelming for you that like you just feel utterly hopeless and so i think like that that is something that happens but yeah for me it has been more spread out and then that allowed me to kind of keep things going keep you know wake up with the boys give them their breakfast like you know take them take them to school whatever it needed to be yeah i feel like i like literally shirked off every responsibility on to you for so long that like you were like okay i have a full like i have all these things

to do that it was like you were doing all these actions where it was like the emotions didn't even have room to come in yeah like fully until like maybe now it's like starting you know yeah and i also think like something programmed in my brain since i was a kid was just to like not show emotion like I feel like the the emotion I've talked about this with my therapist like I feel like positivity happiness like laughter I feel like that's like an okay emotion but like you know especially when like for myself I just don't feel like it's like it's appropriate for me to show sadness so I like as as a guy I was like trying to be the the tough guy so it's really hard for me to get to that place um I don't know anyway I I uh you've been such a rock for me

and for our family and like you've taken on so much so that I've had this room to like process and grieve and heal how it felt appropriate and yeah couldn't have done it without you thank you it's been weird it's been weird though like the the time the random times it just hits me and I'm like I'm like okay whoa whoa whoa whoa like it just like hits me of like just how effed up everything was and is and just how sad it is but it's just like okay like just like little just like little moments of just like realizing that happened to us this isn't like somebody else that this happened to which is awful this happened to me and my wife like that just gets me um next question is why aren't you calling your loss a stillbirth this is coming from a stillbirth mama herself

I that's very sweet of you to ask why we are calling it a miscarriage because I think medically if you if you look at the definition like in the state of Arizona miscarriage is up to 20 weeks stillbirth is past 20 weeks and so it was 17 weeks when we found out the news so very late miscarriage you know very similar process as what very similar process as someone going through a stillbirth goes through because they have to deliver and labor um it's honestly the same process of a stillbirth but yeah it's a weird thing it's weird yeah but that's that's why i definitely relate to stillbirth's yeah experiences oh 100% 100% yeah what has been the most positive experience to come out of this terrible time i mean obviously the feeling the community love and support has been incredible so appreciated it feels so in a time that's like so like unmooring like you feel so insecure like anything can happen to it it feels really anchoring to have like I would say we have like an army of people in person and not in person like that love and support us and are rooting for us and so that has been great um there have been other people

positivity. I feel like it's still hard for me to see that, like where I'm at right now. Like, I feel like every once in a while when I think of something positive, I like, we share it with each other. But it's, it's not at the top of mind yet. We're still like, we're still, we're still down in the dumps. So it's hard to like think of the positives, but certainly like our community has been such a light. What would you say? I would say, well, I can think of another positive too. I view life so differently now because of this. Like I've always would say, say that I view life in such a high regard and like babies as such a gift and now I'm like they're truly a miracle like every person the fact that you're here is a miracle and like yeah yeah I think

I think for me as weird as it is it's like almost made me want to have more kids um yeah just because I like recognize like how beautiful life is and how beautiful it is that we've been able to bring life into this world. And as awful as it is that we have been through a miscarriage after having two very successful, you know, great pregnancies, you know, everything. I think it's just like the positivity of family, the positivity of like my kid, like I think another reason that another thing that's helped me in addition to antidepressants during this time. It's just been our kids. Like, I've spent more time with our boys in the past couple of weeks, like, percentage-wise

of my day than ever. Like, I just spend so much time with the boys. And we have a very deep bond, and that probably, that's been amazing. Like, it's been, oh, it's been so good. Just have a relationship with them that I, quite honestly, was not expecting at all. Like, it, it, the, the, the deep. I get into fatherhood the more I understand why people rave about it so much because it's just like they're my best friends like I love our kids so much I love them really really stellar dad like you're amazing and you can tell that it like you find so much purpose in your role as a dad one more positive thing I can think of right now I'll probably think of some more down the line once I'm not in this dark stage as much as we're describing it is that like I have gained so much like more empathy and like perspective now sometimes I'm not very good at like sending

gifts to people that are going through something and so all the people sending us things has been make like made me want to and next time I see someone that goes through something I want to like reach out to them and get their address so I can send them an edible arrangement or send them send them flowers send them a gift card something you know yeah um just people have done that for us and it's been really nice yeah um next question sorry if this is overstepping but has the loss of your baby girl, strengthened your marriage. We actually just talked about this in the car. Yes, it has.

Any time, I feel like you go through a trial, like, I think anytime in general in your marriage, you're either moving closer together or further apart, it's really hard to just remain neutral. Yeah. But especially in a trial, I feel like you're going to X speed. Like, you're either going to run to each other at 2xb or you're going to run apart at two X speed and like from the very beginning like we just were like we have to cling to one another through this and that has yeah I couldn't have gone through this without you like literally

not even it would have looked very very differently if I did if you hadn't been there for me in the way that you have and so yeah I feel like I'm trauma bonded to you even more now trauma bonded love you It's awesome. That's so dark. Okay. How will you two as a couple be memorialized? Why can I not speak?

Memoralizing your girl. I've lost two babies and don't know how. For us, I'm not going to get into the details because we want to keep a lot of things private, but there is a place that we plan to visit once a year to remember her because it's where we have decided to place her remains. And so that place is going to be very special to us. And, you know, every time we go, I think it'll just like, it'll, it will just, we'll think about that time and it'll be sad and it'll be hard.

But I think it'll also make it a conversation point with our boys so that they can understand what happened in an age-appropriate way as they get older. Yeah. We're like going to do a family activity. Yeah. It's that location. every year I mean we have more things too but that's like the main one that we're like okay that will be like an annual thing whereas like I have her on my necklace like close to my

heart and so like I feel like that's also a really good talking point like as our kids and like I can just touch it and remember her yeah and show the boys um these are all my babies mommy's babies which I saw you say that too was it Augie and Griffin the other day and did they ask further questions about that I can't remember if they like sometimes they do and sometimes me they don't yeah but i think that's my goal i don't ever want it to feel like i just wanted to feel like a normal conversation yeah and um yeah those that's like the main thing that we want to do for her next question would you recommend grief support groups did you do it um this is from someone that lost their son at 24 weeks i'm so sorry that's awful awful awful awful i think grief support

groups can be amazing. I think we haven't attended any specific groups. Our hospital has an event coming up because October actually is like infant loss, like pregnancy loss awareness month. Yeah. So there's like events at our hospital that we've like looked into and then also grief support groups I kind of like have created my own. Yeah, you really have. I mean you have all these moms that you know. I think that's that is an amazing resource. And, And I would have 1,000%, even if you're like, I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to think about this. I don't, like, I want to avoid this at all costs.

Like, I think that you will be shocked at, like, the fruit you see from those conversations. Like, it is, it's also just, like, think of it as a way to honor your baby that you lost. Like, keeping them in conversation keeps them alive in some degree, like, their spirit alive in some degree. And so, like, if you're like, not, don't. think you're like, okay, I don't want to do this because I don't need it. Think about it as a way of like also honoring your child. That's helped me too because I'm like, oh my gosh, I feel like talking with this constantly and I'm constantly wearing on people and it's like, no, I want to keep her memory like very much alive. I think it's good to have people that have been through

it or are currently going through it because then it doesn't feel as weird to talk about it. Like There's nothing wrong to talk about it with people that haven't been through it. They also know the right questions to ask too. Exactly. So, you know, whether it's maybe you're a new widow, maybe you're somebody that just lost your spouse. Like maybe you're someone that's going through something really hard and you're like, I don't know what to do. I am in the darkest place ever. A grief support group would be amazing for you.

And they helped us come up with like ideas of ways to memorialize her and like to have these conversations with our kids. Like just that shared life experience. It is such an amazing tool. And the other thing, again, you know, it doesn't have to be a grief support group. We can literally just be somebody that you know personally. Or, you know, maybe it's an acquaintance that you barely know, but you know that they've been through the same thing. Reach out to them because you're going to be able to connect over this like shared trauma that you both have. And it's going to make you both feel a lot better to actually just talk about it.

And you don't have to keep it a secret that you're going through this. Next question, what do you wish people knew who had a family member going through the loss of an unborn child? I think bring it up because especially the nature of like miscarriage are still born like you're already having like a certain complexity to your grief because you didn't get to like you don't have memories to share with this person you don't have like like I feel like that's how like I honor people that I miss I have past is like oh you share memories yeah Well, we don't have that. Like all we have is memories of the pregnancy, which feels like another degree distant and no one even brings those up.

And so I would just recommend like bringing something, bring it up. It's scary to and I totally have felt this way before like where I'm like, oh, I don't want to make them sad by bringing this up. It's like, oh, they're already sad, by the way. Like this thing just happened. They're already sad. Abby, how are you handling other people's baby announcements, showers, etc? Um, I'm not on social media. You're not on social media, which is so wise, because when I scroll and I see those,

it pisses me off. But it's not like, don't, if you're, it's not personal. Yeah, it's not personal. Like, if that's you and you're posting that and you're like, I don't know if I should share it. No, share it. It's just like, I'm the problem. It's something to be celebrated. Yes, it's something to be celebrated.

And like, but, yeah, I think it is tough. Yeah. It's like I'm so happy. I'm so happy for all my friends that are pregnant. But I keep having this image in my head, like, we were all running this race together. And then I just dropped out of this race. And I didn't want to. And I'm just like out of the race.

And they're going to finish. They're going to cross the finish line. And they're going to get to hold their babies. And it's just like, well, it's like I would want nothing different for them. It's just, it's a reminder of our loss. But you did nothing wrong. And that's, that's like a hard thing. Like, that's a hard thing to understand.

Because it's like I love my friends so much and I love that they have this beautiful gift. And it's, it's like that's just what grief is. It's so complex. but um everyone has been so respectful and awesome i remember thinking at the time of finding i was pregnant i was like this is amazing everyone's we're all pregnant together we're all doing this together and now yeah i just i this image it will knock it out of my head of me just being like plucked out of this race and like we all had different finish lines and we all had different like journeys and then i'm just out of it and that

It's such a bummer. Next question. Not to touch on a sense of topic. Did the boys know about your loss? How did they react? Yeah. They're still really young. And I think that's a gift of being young,

is that you're kind of given, like, what did you say? Like, you're kind of tapered into, like, the gravity of situations. Like, they definitely know. And they were sad. And they are sad. They talk about, like, I want to meet the baby. I want to take her home, like, things like that.

Will you be sharing the genetic condition that baby girl had? I think we're going to keep all of her medical, specific medical stuff, private. Yeah. Like we would, our other children. Yeah. Yeah. We thought about cheering more, but it's just like, I don't know. I don't see how that would be productive.

and it's one of those things too where you can you can do so much research on what could have what could have gone wrong like something that happened that like is something that we have that we could have gave to our kid and then you like blame yourself like there's so many things that parents can do to beat themselves up about miscarriage and I just I don't think it's productive personally the next question is will you share the name of your sweet angel That's sweet of you to say that. But we've decided just to keep that private, something that we don't plan on sharing. And it was really just instinctual.

Like Abby knew the name pretty much right away at the hospital. And it was just one of those things where we just decided. Like you said it right away. You're like, I don't know if I really want to tell like, yeah, the world, our daughter's name. Yeah. But you say her name. Yeah. Yeah.

And the last question we have is, are you going to try for another baby? Gosh, sorry. Sometimes, like, a thought just, like, hits another way. Like, even just the thought of, like, I hate the phrase moving on. It doesn't really resonate with how I feel about that. because we'll never move on from this. Like, this is something that I will always grieve that I don't get to be the mother to her in the way that I had hoped so badly I could be.

So I think I'll always feel that loss. I don't know. I really feel like I always feel that. I don't know. I'll let you know if one day it ever lets up. I anticipate this feeling changing. I don't think I'll ever not miss her, and I'll never not grieve the fact that I don't get to be the mom to her that I really, really wish I could be. As far as, like, future babies, this isn't, like, the end for our, like, growing our family.

Certainly, I would say for me and for you, going forward feels more complex. then scary and scary really scary I think the scariest part is like you hear about people that happens to again and like when you hear about those stories it's like gosh I wish that didn't exist like I wish there was like a you know wish this was like a board game where like okay you got this bad card so now you can't get another one of those for a while you know you get a you get a free pass on the next pregnancy but like life doesn't work that way so i think that's like really scary it's always been like such an exciting thing yeah for us and we've like thought about trying for a baby like yeah it's always been so exciting

and light and now i understand the gravity that that holds so much more um so yeah like it's like i'm almost afraid to even say yes we will have more kids because now it feels like any anything can happen, right? Like if this one terrible thing can happen, any terrible thing can happen. But I will say, we are hopeful to continue growing our family and we'll take whatever timeline. I know that we're going to have enough. Yeah, isn't it weird that it's like so scary now to like, to say anything about that

with any type of certainty? I mean, yeah, yes. Okay, Mr. Optimus. I don't know, I just, I think we're going to let, I don't doubt, I don't doubt that we're going to have another baby. I don't doubt it. Well, we're going to let, um, the fate to decide. The fates decide. Yeah. Life decide what happens for us. We would be so joyful to have more babies added to the Howard family. Yes, we would. And I definitely see that happening. Like I, I am envisioning that in our future. am such an optimist so like i don't doubt for one second that we're going to have have another baby but the reality that we lost our third baby is just so dark and yeah and it's just like all yeah all the dates all the dates are hard totally yeah so i think you this trip idea this travel idea I think that'll be good just to kind of get our minds off things and I think

you know we have plans soon to go to Disneyland which I think will be good for the kids good for us just to like get out of everything and just so dumb I'm like Matt how am I going to the happiest place in the world when I'm the saddest girl in the world yeah but we already had this trip planned and I don't want to take that away from the kids and I do think it'll be good it'll be like a sweet distraction, potentially. 100%. So we're going to keep going. We're going to carry this heartbreak with us.

We're going to try to grow around it. But I don't want to ever, anyone ever think I'm taking this lightly if I just, because I'm not. Yeah. But that's just the reality of it. Well, everybody, thank you so much again for being a part of this community. it's like just overwhelming the amount of love and support you guys have all shown thank you to everyone that has um subscribed to our podcast like youtube channel that is just crazy to me that like

we have this community here um i think there's just like there's more that i want to do for like for the community that that we have like there's so there's so many great people like i don't know i don't know if we could plan some in-person event or some like meet up or what that could look like but there's just like a lot of cool people here so just know that you're loved thank you for you know liking sharing sharing commenting anything you have done to engage because it's just fun to like interact with you guys in the comments and chat with you so we appreciate you and I hope that this if you've made it this far to the if you made this far in the video wow you're awesome that's that's really cool thanks for being here yeah thanks for being here actually yeah if if you made it this

far in the video, most people stop listening by the very end. So you should, you get a gold, a gold star. I don't know what, like, yeah, I wish we could send you all a gold star. Ever wondered if that UFO sighting was a secret government project? Not because they didn't go to the moon, but because they seen something on the moon they weren't supposed to. Or if ancient civilizations really had alien architects. Like, so Roswell, obviously, they think they were covered crafts and beings. On theorist theorizing, wild speculation, meets season storytelling. How they dug two kilometers below these pyramids

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these U-boats that fled to Argentina that there was something there. Theorist theorizing. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcast. Ever wondered if that UFO sighting was a secret government project? Not because they didn't go to the moon, but because they seen something on the moon they weren't supposed to.

Or if ancient civilizations really had alien architects. So Roswell, obviously, they think they recovered crafts and beings. On theorist theorizing, wild speculation meets season storytelling. How they dug two kilometers below these pyramids and created all the structures that we're now finding. Join the theorists as they dive into UFOs, cryptids,

government cover-ups, true crime, and the weirdest theories the Internet and humanity has to offer. Giza and the pyramids itself being an energy source, you know? It's not a lecture. It's a round table of curiosity, comedy, and what if? Maybe they got tipped off. by these U-boats that fled to Argentina, that there was something there. Theorist theorizing.

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