Ep. 388: Making Tough Decisions
Big Fat Positive: Pregnancy and Parenting (BFP)
Laura Birek, Shanna Micko
4.7 • 531 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the special segment "Big Topic," Laura shares a difficult decision she made recently that affects her entire family. She discusses the first moment that her gut instinct signalled that things were amiss in this particular situation as well as the events leading up to the decision. Also, Shanna talks about a smaller scale, but still significant, tough choice she recently made to take care of herself. Finally, Laura and Shanna share their BFPs and BFNs for the week. Shanna's kids are 6.5 and 9.5 years old, and Laura’s kids are 6.5 years old and 4.5 years old.
Topics discussed in this episode:
-Making tough decisions to take care of yourself and your kids
-Learning from your past mistakes as a mom
-Knowing when to trust your gut as a mom
-What to do when your child is having a hard time at school
-How to talk to your kids about a big change
-Two fantastic, funny picture books for kids
Products, links, resources mentioned in this episode:
-"Bathe the Cat" by Alice B. McGinty, Illustrated by David Roberts
-"Strange Planet: The Sneaking, Hiding, Vibrating Creature" by Nathan W. Pyle
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. We have our special segment, big topic, where I tell you about some big decisions we've made in our family lately. And we close with our BFPs and BFNs for the week. Let's get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 388. It's me, Laura, checking in. Is Shawna on the line? |
| 0:23.9 | Hi, here I am. Do you want to get us started with your check-in? Yes. Okay, I don't think I've mentioned |
| 0:29.4 | this on the show, but about six months ago, I was talking to friends of ours, their daughter's |
| 0:36.7 | friends with Cece, and we've become friends with the parents. |
| 0:39.5 | We really like them. |
| 0:40.5 | And the mom was telling me about how their family had recently gone camping at the beach. |
| 0:45.6 | And I was like, oh, that sounds really fun. |
| 0:47.2 | That's so cool. |
| 0:48.5 | And like a week later, she's like, oh, I got some reservations for beach camping in November. |
| 0:54.0 | Do you guys want to come with us? |
| 0:55.4 | And I was like, yes. Of course I do. Of course you do. |
| 1:01.9 | I know, I know. Everyone listening is like, Shawna, you hate sand, which is, you know, the number one thing that should have been on my mind, but it wasn't. It was just |
| 1:13.0 | like friend time, outside time, family time, six months away. Yes. And I forgot about that, |
| 1:20.5 | more or less, until last week. And the friend texted me and Steve was like, hey, just a reminder, |
| 1:25.4 | our beach trip is coming up. And I thought to myself, |
| 1:28.4 | oh, that's awesome. But I am coming off a three week stretch of dealing with pneumonia. And I've |
| 1:34.7 | been having better days. But over the last few weeks, I've talked about it on the show, right? |
| 1:39.4 | Like, I'll be feeling better and I'm on a medication and then the medication ends and then I kind of like regress, |
| 1:45.0 | right? And so I've been going through this back and forth with this illness lately. And I'm just like, |
| 1:50.7 | I don't know if going beach camping for a couple days is really something I should be doing. But I want to. |
| 1:58.6 | I want to follow through. I want to give the experience to |
| 2:01.6 | my kids. I think it'd be fun to like get to know the family better. So I've really been |
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