Ep. 368: Cosmic Baby Training
Big Fat Positive: Pregnancy and Parenting (BFP)
Laura Birek, Shanna Micko
4.7 • 531 Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the special segment "Today I Learned," Laura and Shanna discuss the intriguing things they have learned recently related to the world of parenting, including a mind-blowing fact about fetal DNA and the "otherworldly" origins of a popular personality assessment. Also, Shanna talks about her quest to celebrate her birthday while managing a migraine, and Laura reports on juggling work deadlines and child care during her 6-year-old's summer break. Finally, the moms share their BFPs and BFNs for the week. Shanna's kids are 6.5 and 9 years old, and Laura’s kids are 6 years old and 4 years old.
Topics discussed in this episode:
-How to treat yourself on your birthday when you are a mom and have a migraine
-Balancing work deadlines and parenting when you don't have child care
-Does fetal DNA remain in a birth mom's bloodstream?
-How do fetal stem cells in a birth mom's bloodstream benefit the mother?
-What is the Cosmic Laboratory of Baby Training?
-One of Shanna's new favorite picture books for kids
-A thought-provoking idea that Laura came across in a fellow mom's Substack
Products, links, and resources mentioned in this episode:
-Non-Invasive Prenatal Test (NIPT)
-The Cosmic Laboratory for Baby Training
-Maintenance Phase podcast's episode on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test
-"Buffalo Fluffalo" by Bess Kalb and Erin Kraan
-Bess Kalb's Substack - "The Grudge Report"
-Kira Cook's Substack - "The Way We Weren't"
Past BFP episodes mentioned in this episode:
-Ep. 367 (For Shanna's mammogram/breast biopsy check-in)
This episode's full show notes can be found here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shauna and Laura. This week we have our weekly check-ins. |
| 0:07.9 | We have our special segment. Today I Learned, where we find out why your baby's DNA may save your life and how one mom built a multi-million dollar industry out of her living room. |
| 0:17.2 | And we close with our BFPs and BFNs for the week. Let's get started. |
| 0:22.2 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 368. I'm here with Shauna. Shana, are you on the line? |
| 0:28.7 | Hey, yo. Hey, oh, give us your update. What happened this week? Well, I am a year older than I was |
| 0:36.2 | last week. Oh my goodness, a whole year just flew by in a week. No than I was last week. |
| 0:38.4 | Oh, my goodness. |
| 0:40.6 | A whole year just flew by in a week. |
| 0:41.6 | No, it was your birthday. |
| 0:42.3 | Happy birthday. |
| 0:44.3 | Oh, thank you. |
| 0:46.1 | Yeah, it was my birthday week. |
| 0:52.4 | And on my birthday, I woke up with a throbbing migraine. |
| 0:57.2 | I mean, the kind of way it's just like you can feel every, like, blood vessel pulse, right? |
| 0:58.3 | It's like, boom, boom. |
| 1:00.7 | Like, no, not on my birthday. |
| 1:07.7 | I had the day off from work, and Steve had taken the day off from work, and we didn't know exactly what to do or anything. |
| 1:09.9 | We didn't have any plans or anything. |
| 1:45.7 | But it's my birthday. We can always find something to do. But this migraine really, you know, set me back a bit. Well, yeah. You didn't have plans, but you definitely did not plan to have a migraine. Yeah. No, I didn't. No, I didn't put that on my to-do list. That is for sure. So it just like left me feeling kind of down and indecisive because I took my medication, my abortive, and the pain went away, but it left me with that kind of like groggy migraine hangover, right? Where I'm like, I don't know what to do. So I just like sat out on the back patio for a few hours and I was like, just listening to an audio book. And I'm like, I want to do something, but I don't have any energy. What do I do? And then I was like, ah, that is what day |
| 1:52.8 | spas are made for, Shana. Yes. Yes. So I found an appointment for a massage at Burke Williams. And went early and I just hung out in the hot tub in the steam room and the, you know, all that stuff. And then got my massage. I spent hours there. And it was the perfect thing to do on a day like this when I felt like this. And so, yeah, it was wonderful. |
| 2:19.7 | That sounds like a happy accident. Like maybe if you hadn't had the migraine, you would have |
| 2:24.4 | forced yourself to do something really active and tired yourself out. But your body was like, |
... |
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