Wonderful! - Wonderful! 178: Tamagotchi Baby

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Rachel and Griffin talk about their second baby experience, from zip-lining doctors to how all children are different.Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Support AAPI communities and those affected by anti-Asian violence: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate Support the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund: https://aapifund.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful, the fastest episode ever. Oh, you know why. Cause we created life with arms around. People always say that they like the soft, you know, soothing tones of our early Henry episodes. Oh, well, they're going to get.

Well, this won't be quite as quiet. Hi, this is wonderful to show. We talk about things. We're in a different house now. So we have a little bit more space between the studio and the room with the babies. They used to share a wall. And now at least we don't have that circumstance. Right.

So it won't be quiet, but it will be fast. It'll be what we called in the theater community, rain pace. Oh. Because, yeah, that's where you would make a show go faster because it looked like it was going to rain. Yeah, that's where you would make a show go faster because it looked like it was going to rain. And so, like, sometimes you would just skip entire scenes if they seemed, you know, sort of unnecessary. Just because, like, if you can get through the first act and then it starts raining, you get to keep their money. Oh, that's fascinating. I mean, that's how we did things at Huntington Outdoor Theater.

Anyway, we had a baby. Rachel had the baby. Yeah. But I helped. Yeah, so we thought we would talk about it. So if you are not somebody that is interested or, you know, is uncomfortable with hearing about birth of a child. Yeah, it's not going to get particularly anatomical. Yeah, I'm not one to get graphic.

This is the soft relaunch i would say of wonderful we hope you enjoyed our hockey and old bad writing episodes they are fun to do and our live show and uh we're we would probably have skipped this week but we wanted to also let you know that next week max fun drive starts yes we're gonna have a lot of uh great stuff for you there including a bonus episode that we haven't recorded it's been a bit of a mess maybe let's start there maybe let's start the conversation there our first child henry is four years old now which is bonkers i think by by any measure and he was a difficult newborn yes who turned into a really great toddler yeah who who has been nothing but a joy any behavioral issues i say are easily quashed yeah he does not he does not have a temper

he always uh he always ate very eagerly yeah um he just had various medical issues that made him a more challenging baby than he may have otherwise been. Right. He was kind of tiny. He had low muscle tone, which is basically a pretty broad diagnosis. Yeah. It meant he was behind on all of his physical milestones. He had no gains. And that made it harder for him to eat. And then as you all know, because I've mentioned it before, he had a milk protein allergy, which meant that I couldn't eat dairy or soy if I was going to nurse him. And so that made a lot of other things challenging, too. Yes.

It meant that basically he would not sleep longer than, what, 45 minutes at a time, which was terrible. Yeah. I remember asking our pediatrician if 20 minutes of sleep was restorative in any way because that was about what he was getting. So, yeah, that was about what he was getting yeah um so yeah that was rough i would say by about certainly by a year it was easier um certainly probably probably about six months he was doing a little bit better at night and uh i mean it was sleep deprivation for us and it was very bad yeah and one of the darker periods of of our life and that's one of the things they don't really tell you especially especially before your first child, but you kind of know to expect it for the second.

It's like, it's okay if this isn't your favorite part of the process. It certainly wasn't mine with Henry. No. And I will also say that when our first child was born, Griffin and I were not talking to therapists or taking any kind of medication to support our mental health. And we crashed pretty hard that first year. was fucking bad man yeah um and at the same time though like i don't know i i feel like that's something i tell people now when they are expecting or trying to get pregnant or whatever like it's it's okay if you don't have that like fairy tale newborn experience because there's a very real chance that you will not um and that's okay like there's it doesn't have to be like you're it

doesn't have to be this sad thing right it just means that it just means that there's different parts of the process that are going to be better for you than others yeah i mean when you're in it it feels like a very long time but in the grand scheme of things it is a it is a small portion of their life right my therapist referred to those like easy babies as accessory babies and that you could just bring them anywhere and do anything with them and they just complimented your lifestyle cool sounds so rad like a little samagotchi and you just like press a button on them and they go back to sleep for fucking 18 more hours that was not our experience with henry and that is not our experience thus far so far hasn't been an accessory

he's been an accessory to i would say fart crimes gus has been he's been a perpetrator of fart crimes he's the gassiest boy he's he is inflatable this child yeah yeah he griffin and i are problem solvers we like to troubleshoot we like to research yes uh we've done a lot of research on gassy babies thus far uh which for me as as the the mom often involves just kind of trying to point fingers at things i could be doing better right uh which is not great no um no it's it's it ain't that it's just it's it's babies are weird man they're born too early they're born too early babies should be a year old when they're born i didn't want to carry him in my body longer because he was a very large baby. But they're born before their digestive system can do anything. All of this is to say that things have been very tough, I would say, around here.

Henry's been amazing. Like, he has been so, so good. Maybe a bit of reversion of him, like acting like a baby a little bit more, but like he's been very sweet with Gus. Have we said the baby's name? Gus. His name is Gus.

Yeah, it's August Clinton McElroy. August Clinton McElroy. We call him Gus. And it's been tough. Like we're late on this recording. We're late on our bonus recording. We're late on a lot of things. We're a bit bedrackled yeah um so i guess this is a good time to say we've been talking about doing

uh for the a little while at least a different uh um yeah all of this is to say for a little while at least and i know that the timing's not great here because max fun drive is about to start uh we're gonna drop back to one topic each per episode. Maybe spend a little bit more time exploring that topic, but keeping the episodes a little bit closer to a half hour, which was the original intent of the show. Maybe we'll play some games. Maybe.

We'll do some impromptu songs. Yes. And once this child starts to sleep and not be, he's so angry. He's so angry. Henry wasn't angry. He was just sickly. Yeah. So Gus is, I mean, we should probably start off by saying Gus is opposite of Henry in a lot of ways. As I mentioned, he was a very large baby. Henry was six pounds, nine ounces when he was born. Yes. Gus.

Gus was nine pounds, nine ounces. So almost 50% more baby. Yes. If you think about it that way, a full three fucking pounds bigger. Yeah. And I will say that we had been warned. I had various doctors telling me that he looked large. Ten pounds was what they were saying, it is unthinkable now yeah yeah big head big torso um and so when he was born

uh there are certain protocol for big babies yeah uh one of which is making sure that the glucose level is appropriate because a lot of times those babies are born and they can't regulate their blood sugar. They're so big. Right. Uh, and Gus did pretty well, but, uh, there's like a 36 hour test that he didn't pass. So we had to start doing formula, which was not anything we did early with Henry. Uh, and I, I'm going to say I'm grateful. Yeah.

No. And I'm going to say I'm grateful. Yeah. It's such a touchy topic of conversation amongst new parents. Yeah. And it gets touchier the more research that those parents do into it of, you know, being breastfed versus being formula fed and the various benefits of both. And it's touchy for so many reasons because and rachel can speak to this obviously much better than i can but it's a very intimate thing yeah and it's a very

primordial thing but it's also like not a thing every everyone can do or wants to do and there's pressures and and all this stuff and for like it was kind of awesome having a doctor just say like you have to give this baby something in addition to breast milk because he's so big. And we're like, okay, whatever you say. And it's made things a bit easier. Yeah. I mean, the thing that happens is if you decide, if you are somebody that can breastfeed and you decide to do that exclusively, you are taking full responsibility the majority of the time. you are taking full responsibility the majority of the time.

And that means that you are doing all the wake-ups, and any time the baby cries, you are the first line of defense. And I did that with Henry for a long time, and it was very, very, very hard. Yeah. And I stuck with it because of the allergy, largely, because that limited our formula options. This time around, we are doing both. We're what's called like supplementing with formula.

And welcome to the field, Griffin McElroy. Hello. Hello, everybody. MVP. Glad to be here. Yeah. Has made this experience a lot better for me. Yeah.

I'm glad I could do that for you. I like it. I like it. I enjoy it. It genuinely is. I don't want to be like, everything changes. But it is a powerful thing feeding a baby because you do get into that like deep in your genes, deep in your soul. Like I am nourishing life um and that's and that's awesome and mostly it's awesome that i'm able to not feel like a complete sack of shit all the time uh because i'm able to actually can you know contribute in a meaningful way especially at

nighttime yeah which is pretty great so i will say that there are some pros to this baby. Yes. One of which is that he is capable, although he chooses not to, but he is capable of sleeping more than three hours in one go. Yeah, he's done it a few times now. Which is unparalleled for us. It's so good. Yeah, it's not even, sleep isn't even the problem, I would say, this time.

It is a different kind of exhaustion because his fussiness doesn't manifest in he doesn't sleep. It manifests in, again, the opposite of Henry. During the daytime, he cannot be put down. Which is like, I'm not as tired. I'm not as delirious as I was with Henry. But I am hurting. as I was with Henry, but I am hurting. Like my body is genuinely very sore from the weird angles that I have to put my body in

to feed this newborn baby. It's like disarming a bomb and like I'm contorting myself to make sure the bottle angle and his head angle and my body angle. And like, it's a lot, that part for whatever reason is a lot harder. I don't want this whole

episode to be like babies can be different from each other but um it was we we had hoped and i had often told people when they asked me would you have a second i said well it has to be easier than the first i almost need a guarantee that this second will be easier because I feel so weary from that experience still to this day. And while there are parts that are easier, it is still very, very hard. It's still tough. I guess this first month or so has been fast in some ways, but also every day is just getting through it. You are battling for every minute of sleep that the baby gets. And it turns into like spellcraft at a certain point where it's like, okay, if we do the nasal drops 10 minutes before and then we do half of a bottle of of breast milk a three ounce bottle we do half of that and then we can put him

in his swaddle and the white noise and the fan and the humidifier it has to be exactly 73 degrees it's like we're filling like a shitty rock star's rider every nap time, of which we attempt a few a day. Yeah, and I mean, I don't think it's possible to regulate a baby this young. No. But it is just every instinct that we have. Right, yeah. I mean, it's tough to backpedal from a four-year-old who I can say, what do you want to eat today? And he will say, four chicken nuggets. And you want to eat today and he will say four chicken

nuggets and i will say ketchup he will say not today and i will say okay and i'll make the four chicken nuggets yeah i i understand griffin and i've talked about like what if they had been closer in age and part of that seems terrible because uh at least with hen, he can entertain himself. Dude just started wiping his own butt and it's like, Mommy, oh my God, yes. Yeah, he can use the bathroom by himself and that is a wonderful thing. Now, is he the best butt wiper? No. No?

No. I would argue there are adult men that are not particularly good butt wipers true um but uh it does mean that we have had a lot more distance between uh infancy and now and so we remembered some stuff didn't remember other stuff other stuff yeah but everybody says it gets better we know that that it does. We know it does. Yeah. It almost has to. I don't know.

Unless the anger he has now manifests into something more sinister. So when we say angry, we mean that if he gets too sleepy or too hungry, he will refuse to do either, even though that is very much what he wants yeah so we will if we wait too long to feed him or if he goes too long without napping he would rather scream and cry than actually address his needs and he did sort of um headbutt me in the bridge of my nose like a like a shitty soccer fan or something like that in a way that was pretty painful during one of these freakouts. And Paru wants to just be like, he's a baby, he doesn't know what he's doing.

But Parmi wants to be like, hey, buddy, fucking watch it. You can't do that to me. I'm your dad. I will say with Henry, Henry didn't seem to have much of a temper. So if he was- He was so weak. Holy shit. He was very weak. He could never, Henry didn't seem to have much of a temper. So if he was- He was so weak.

Holy shit. He was very weak. He could never, this is him trying to hit on me. Nothing. He couldn't support his own head until he was like six months. And so the aggression was always very mild.

More passive aggressive. Just he gave you a lot of looks like, really? No, Come on. Gus will scratch. Yeah. So Gus is a tank, which makes everything hard,

but will hopefully give us an easier time in the long run. The cheeks game though. Oh, he's got, his head is large. And so his cheeks alone could be the head of a small baby it's his head is perfectly spherical he looks like mr fucking baseball it's it's it's insane this kid's head it's amazing our pediatrician i think like obviously this is our second kid and our first

kid had a large head and so when he told us oh and he's um well this one 99th percentile and we were like yep yeah yeah he said that like we would be surprised only his belly is also 99th percentile and so the what you get and his arms and legs are pretty small and so what you get is a sort of weird snowman with vestigial limbs. Just love him so much. Love him a lot. Hey, let's steal you away and then we'll complain to him. Mr. Robot Man, what are you doing?

I'm just taking one last look at the workers. Every journey comes to an end. Remember, Plek, the space will be with you always. Sorry, who are you again? Master Kiarando. Oh, right, right, right. Just calling in. Friendships will be tested.

Dahl, you have to do it. You have to shoot Fleck. Okay. You're so good at saving us. Wow, you shot him so fast. Destinies will be fulfilled. I've become a complete bird. I'm flying.

I'm flying i'm flying on april 28th the saga starts concluding guys we don't have a choice we have to put on a show we can do it in the old barn we've got the costumes we've got a stage we can do it you guys mission to zix the final season on Maximum Fun. I don't know how much you want to actually talk about birth experience. is probably common for a lot of people uh which is where the first child has to be delivered via c-section due to some complications ours weren't serious thankfully uh kind of my man had the cord wrapped around himself like yeah yeah but it wasn't like an emergency it wasn't like yeah it was a pseudo emergency it wasn't like sweat happening in that room yeah but he wasn't like... Yeah. It was a pseudo-emergence. It wasn't like... There was some sweat happening in that room. Yeah. But he wasn't... Indane.

He didn't go to the NICU. Right. He came out fine. Yeah. He just couldn't get out on his own. So, the second baby I had pretty much planned on, and then especially when I found out how large he was... Yeah.

...was having a scheduled C-section, which I didn't know anything about and nobody really ever told me yeah it's it is you hear it and it's not a joke for your second baby that you are not quite as pampered by any medical professionals along the way where it's just like you know the fucking drill you come to the hospital a human comes out you give a milk and we kick you the fuck out in three days or two or two as was the case with you yeah and they um i guess they figured since i had had one before but the first time i had been in labor for a very long time i was somewhat frightened and and didn't really know what was happening. And so when they were like, we're going to do it again, I was like, okay, and what is that? And they were like, you show up and we'll take care of the rest. But in their defense, that is more or less what happened.

Yeah, yeah. So we I thought for sure I was going to have this baby early. Henry was early. This one was very big. I thought there's no way I to have this baby early. Henry was early. This one was very big. I thought there's no way I'm making it to 39 weeks and four days, but turns out that's exactly what happened. Yeah. And we showed up that morning and they put us in a room with what seemed like six other couples. It was a hot day for creating babies. creating babies it was like a reality show almost in that we could hear the other couples getting ready for their birth experience right next to us see and seeing a lot of uh of dudes like coming in in their gowns and hairnets just like sitting down and like staring bullets at the floor and i

wanted to just like walk up and be like first time huh there's a part of me that like was riding a little bit high there like oh uh you don't know this tango, huh? Yeah, and so very little privacy, very little sense of kind of what the timeline is going to be. And what they tell you, so this was maybe the worst part for me, because what they tell you is you're going to go under anesthesia, or not anesthesia, but you're going to have the epidural and we're going to put all sorts of stuff in your body. So we don't want you to eat or drink after midnight because we don't want to operate on a gremlin. And so I was very dehydrated and they had to put an IV in and it took five times maybe. It was one of the worst things i think i've it was and and we came away from this thinking like this is kind of a badass thing to say and have it be the truth but

putting the iv in was the worst part of the whole experience and this is probably very relatable for a lot of people um because uh a lot of people have this issue of of text trying to find veins and having trouble uh this is not something that usually happens to me because the inside of my elbow a plus hundred percent good stuff there good stuff there love it didn't realize chunky veins and because you're going to be holding a baby they want to use your hands or the top generous vascularity and i and i've got i've got nothing good in the tops of my hands when i'm that dehydrated well it's because you're a classically trained flautist and your hands are i will say

when i'm hydrated a lot of good veins yeah sure sure but that was not the case and so you're almost never hydrated so griffin had to fan me so i didn't pass out as they spent what felt like an hour on this part of the process. Yeah. They brought in three different nurses. It took about as long to put the IV in as it did to take the child out. Which is truly staggering. And then they have you, once you're all hooked up, they have you walk down to the room, which felt like a little, I don't know, I wanted like a little parade or something. Yeah. To carry you on a palanquin.

But so, yeah, so you walk in the room and I had known from my previous experience that I was going to get very cold. And so they put a lot of warm towels on me and then talked a lot about the price of a towel warmer, which I really enjoyed. Do you remember me telling you about this? And then talked a lot about the price of a towel warmer, which I really enjoyed. Do you remember me telling you about this? Yeah, there was a lot of conversations happening amongst the medical staff that was pretty delightful to us. The anesthesiologist talked about how you could get a towel warmer for not that much. And they were like, oh, how much? And they said, $200. And everyone was like, whoa, fancy.

I mean, that is a lot of money to spend on a towel warmer. I know. The way he kind of like flippantly like brushed it off. Like, it's not that much. Everybody else was like, oh, la-di-da. Do you have a towel warmer? It's called the microwave. Thank you very much.

Also, a lot of talk of a Costa Rica trip. Yeah. So, the other thing was that the reason I was 39 weeks and four days was because my OB was just getting back from a trip with her family, which we found out during the procedure was to Costa Rica. Because again, her and the other guy that was assisting talked a lot about zip lining. It is. I will speak from my perspective, because I imagine it's even way more visceral for you. During this process, since the second time we've done this, your head and the rest of my whole body is on one side of a sheet. And I am talking to your head, trying to keep you occupied and calm. Griffin takes this very seriously.

I do. I do. It's a fucking insane thing to be happening because on the other side of that sheet, it is horrifying. They're digging it. Right? It's objectively pretty wild. And so it's wild to be like looking in your eyes like you're doing such a good job baby i love you uh deep breath we're gonna hear him our son's about to be here and then on the other side of the sheet where you know the the the terrible stuff is happening uh the doctors are just like yeah so i went ziplining

tell me about that oh it was so fun anybody else here ever been zip lining? It's really, really wild. Good for them, I guess. I'm sure they did it safely, zip lining and traveling in the time of pandemic. But just a wild thing to be like, you guys, you guys are having a completely different day from the day we're having. day from the day we're having um i will say that i uh i felt a lot calmer this time uh because i hadn't been laboring uh i wasn't scared about uh gus he was totally chill um and i was more prepared for the experience so i was talking to griffin uh and I found it very romantic. Oh, really? Yeah. You did try to French me like a lot. Like a bunch. I felt very in love with you. I enjoyed our conversation. I remember specifically you telling me how wet my eyes looked. Oh, yeah, they did.

They looked really wet. They were super, super, super shiny. You have beautiful eyes. I love your eyes. I would say they are almost always radiant. But these were, they were like. Just the wettest they've ever been. They were gushing.

It was wild. Yeah, it was, last time with Henry, they popped him out and cleaned him off and gave him to me. And then I had to leave. Yeah, I don't know why. I don't know why either, because I got to like kick it in there with you i guess because i had been laboring for so long i don't know if there's something about like just coming in just you know fresh off a a night of sleep where they like don't worry about you as much but yeah griffin got to hang out in the room as they like put me back together right as they were pulling the baby

out they offered and i think they may have offered this with henry too like do you want to look over the sheet and it's like the it's the the incredulous i was wearing a mask obviously and like the incredulousness in my eyes alone i think was enough to like answer non-verbally yeah why would i want why would i want that but we heard and i don't know if you remember this happening but as soon as he came out everyone's like whoa big baby yeah and then they all started guessing how much he was gonna weigh yeah and they were like uh nine two no i think it's gonna be nine seven and and nine nine nine nine dummy thick child um our dummy thick child is also waking up we've had

to stop already i think twice this episode just to go check on him um so yeah that's how things are going to be i think for a little bit um and we know we know you didn't ask for this we know it's i promise you as the listener you as the max fun donor you didn't, please have another child so I can have frantic, short episodes. But, you know, we're in love. And we thought we wanted to manifest our love in the form of another boy. And here he is. Yeah. Just angrier than Griffin and I could ever be.

It immediately, like literally the day he was born, started to sink in that i can say things like oh my sons these sons of mine are really i can't i gotta get back to the to the old kids with an s and that's true now it makes me think of the click hole article of which one of my terrible sons are you and i feel like that kicked off a lot of just talking about sons in the abstract is like a funny thing. Oh, me? I have not one son, but multiple sons. Have you started flexing this with Justin and Travis now? Because I know they love to be like, oh, all these kids that I have.

Yeah. No, I haven't. Because it's, I mean, it's not that fucking hard. Like, it's exhausting. It's not that fucking hard. Like,'s exhausting. It's not that fucking hard. Like, come on. So yeah, we'll have an episode for you next week where we will talk about not our kids,

but we probably still will. I mean, it will be impossible not to. But we'll talk about normal stuff too. And we're also going to talk about the MaxFunDrive, our annual pledge drive. And we'll tell you all about the great gifts that we have for, for new members and the bonus content,

bonus content and, and, and everything. And we hope you'll, you'll stick with us as we sort of probably, I don't know, hopefully just for a month or so do slightly shorter episodes. But do you want to,

do you want to thank, thanks to Bowen and Augustus Gus. I i i think augustus goes by gus and i know i should do a bit on character how have i not done a character bonito thing anyway um for the use of our theme song money won't pay you finally to that in the episode description and um thanks thanks for listening thanks to maximum fun for having us on the network we're going to extol their virtues quite a bit over the next couple weeks or so, I imagine. Yeah. And thank you, everybody, for

just hanging in there with us. And we're going to do our best to keep pumping out the jam. Huge thanks to the positive response we got to the hockey episode, which I think we both thought was going to be our most reviled episode to date.

But there's a bunch of, bunch of hockey nuts out there. Bunch of real hockey heads. Yeah. Hockey heads is what they call them. We recorded that back when the Blues were doing much better.

Uh-huh. They're on the uptick again. They're on the uptick again, but they did go in the toilet for a little bit. Speaking of going into the toilet, I don't really have a transition there um but i hey this was an episode this was an episode they can't say that it wasn't it had a beginning it

had ads it had the end which is uh this any uh small wonders here at the back half oh um you want to talk about those nasal drops i mean saline drops for the nose is pretty good. The baby fucking hates them, but it's good for the baby. The shusher? Shusher. I think people are getting a little taste of the shusher maybe in the background. Depends on how much great noise canceling our editor, Rachel, is able to do. We'll see about that.

This baby seems to have brown hair, which is exciting for me. Wild stuff, yeah. Exciting for me. Henry was always very blonde. This one seems to be a little brown, which is, which is fun for me. Yeah.

Yeah. And, um, I'm so tired. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh,

hats off to the new season of the circle. Oh God. It's so choice. It's so good. I can't believe how good it is. All right, now it's an episode. Now it's an episode. Put a lid on pay. Money won't pay.

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