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Big Fat Positive: Pregnancy and Parenting (BFP)

Ep. 393: Are We Accidentally Creating Second-Child Syndrome?

Big Fat Positive: Pregnancy and Parenting (BFP)

Laura Birek, Shanna Micko

Parenting, Comedy, Kids & Family

4.7 • 531 Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the special segment "Dear Past Me," Shanna and Laura give their former selves parenting advice based on what they know now, including wisdom about sentimental baby items and encouragement to advocate for yourself in the early days of new motherhood. Also, Laura manages to get her reluctant kids to go on an urban adventure, and Shanna celebrates her daughter's 7th birthday and travels to Phoenix with her family for a celebration-of-life event. Finally, they share their BFPs or BFNs for the week. Shanna's kids are 7 and 9.5 years old, and Laura’s kids are 6.5 years old and 4.5 years old.


Topics discussed in this episode:

  • Finding outdoor adventures close to home for your family
  • The difficulty of transitions with kids
  • Attending a memorial/celebration of life and what it’s like to do meaningful rituals with kids
  • Reflections on early parenting choices and what we wish we could tell our younger selves
  • Why keeping up with milestone keepsakes for all your kids is important
  • Navigating career and creativity opportunities as a new mom
  • Anti-mom bias at work and within creative spaces, and why advocating for yourself matters
  • Kids exploring the performing arts and the joy of seeing them come alive creatively
  • Finding helpful online communities and learning new routines that are rewarding


Products, links, resources mentioned in this episode:


Past BFP episodes mentioned in this episode:

  • Ep. 283 - (Laura discusses Auggie's reluctance to participate in his school's theater production)
  • Ep. 285 - (Laura reports on Auggie's refusal to participate in the theater production on the day of the show)
  • Ep. 374 - (Laura talks about her boys getting excited about their hiking "costumes" in Portland)
  • Ep. 376 - (Shanna talks about her stepdad's passing)


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Big Fat Positive: A Pregnancy and Parenting Journey is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko and Steve Yager.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hi, welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shauna and Laura.

0:05.4

On this week's episode, we have our weekly check-ins.

0:07.8

We have our special segment, Dear Past Me, where we get into the topics of film festival

0:12.6

fakeouts and baby feet fails, and we wrap it up with our weekly BFPs and BFNs.

0:17.7

Let's get started.

0:19.9

Hi, everyone.

0:24.5

Welcome to episode 393. Hey, yo, Laura.

0:32.7

Hey, yo, Shana. Hey. Why don't you start us off with your weekly check-in? I would love to.

0:39.6

Okay, I'm going to check in about a little adventure that we went on that was actually Sebastian's idea.

0:43.1

Oh, how cute. I cannot wait to hear about what this is.

0:50.4

So one day he came home from school and he was just like, Mama, why don't we go on hikes? I want to go on a hike. And I was like, well, you know, historically I have gone on hikes. I'm like, I think as a family, we've gone on like one hike, maybe in the past, you know, hike in sort of air quotes. And I was like, yeah, good question. Why don't we go on hikes? Like, I like hiking. Hiking is fun. Hiking is readily accessible from where we live, you know. Oh, yeah. It's a great area for hiking.

1:13.2

Yeah, I mean, depending on what you call hiking, right? Like some people, you know, my brother might be like,

1:18.7

yeah, that was a nice little walk. But like for us, you know, if you're not on concrete, it's a hike,

1:24.5

okay? And you're going up ill, that's a hike. Yes. My standards for hiking are not very

1:30.9

high. I admit that. Yeah. But, you know, it's an, it's an LA thing, right? To have like urban hikes and,

1:37.0

you know, semi-urban hikes, urban adjacent hikes. And yeah, in Glendale, I mean, gosh, there's

1:42.7

hiking everywhere around us. There's the Verdugo Mountains right near us. You can go out to the San Gabriel's outside of Pasadena. Granted, a lot of the hikes I used to go on before I had kids are currently closed because of the eaten fire from last year. Oh, yeah. That does complicate things a little. But there's still plenty of hiking. And so I was like, good question, Sebastian.

2:02.3

Like, why don't we do that?

2:03.4

Let's do a hike.

2:05.1

And he was really excited.

2:07.4

Oh, you know, I'm realizing now that the only other hike I can really think of that we've

2:11.8

gone on as a family was in Portland when we went hiking in Forest Park in Portland and the boys were like

...

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