The LA Kings holiday pack is back the perfect gift for the hockey fan in your life a three-game pack starts at just $159 and includes a holiday blanket. Buy today and you'll receive an additional game for free. Don't miss out visit lakings.com/holiday today. Hey radicals quick show tonight. Welcome to the show we have exciting news we had a baby.

We had a little baby girl on Friday morning so thank you to all of you who've been thinking about us and praying for us. We were very excited to have have this little baby girl. Baby is doing well and mama is doing well and it was a beautiful the birth was a beautiful experience.

I just wanted to come on and and let you know that since I know I've been talking about it on the show last you know past days and wanted to come on and mention it on the show and just have a little announcement here for you all. So and then also I went ahead and I thought it'd be fun and I decided you probably get tired of hearing from just me and I invited my wife to come on and just say hello.

So how you feeling babe? I feel good glad to have a pretty baby girl. I know it's exciting. Now the other reason that I roped you in was just a to make this quick announcement but I thought it'd be fun. I wound up mentioning on a recent recent show that one of my goals on my list of goals for a while had been the birth of our little baby girl and that I'd had it on there that before July 15 2015 that we would have would birth our little baby girl healthy happy everyone would be everyone would be great and I had some adjectives surrounding that as far as the way that you know that you and I had talked about the birth and I got some feedback from the audience people said hey we'd be interested in knowing what you did because I said you know we wanted a safe natural easy childbirth.

We wanted it to be a beautiful experience not just something that you regret our grit our teeth and get in get through. So I thought while it was fresh in our minds that that you and I might just record you know five or ten minutes of of ideas here just to share with any of the other parents or prospective parents of some of the things that we've found helpful.

So I'll start though because they probably get the audience gets tired of hearing me talk. How was the birth experience this time for you? It was even faster than last time and we're thankful for fast births. I know it's genetic I'm not taking credit but it is nice. I think you could take a little bit of credit doesn't I mean it's always hard to know because so many things in life you can't necessarily control them but then you can also work hard to control some things.

So when you do everything you know to do and you work hard at it yeah you ultimately can't take credit for things but you can at least acknowledge the fact that you've worked hard towards something. Right we did have a goal and fast or slow you still have to manage the experience.

So we did everything we could to manage the experience and whether it would have been fast or slow we would have done the same things. Right right and it wasn't so much about the speed of the birth I mean we're thankful that it was that this one especially was even quicker than last time but it was more about the experience about having it be a wonderful joyful positive experience kind of an intimate time of bonding for us as a family and just something beautiful that we look back on with pleasure rather than something that we look at and say wow that was horrible.

Now we've had close friends who've had really challenging births so we know that we're definitely we're definitely thankful. So I thought would be useful is maybe just in the same way that if we were talking with some of our friends maybe we just share some of the tips that some of the things that we've worked at to try to accomplish our goal of having the type of birth that we wanted.

What's the first thing that comes to your mind of that we focused on that we worked at that we did differently than many people to try to have a positive birth experience? The first thing that comes to my mind is choosing an out-of-hospital birth. We've seen different documentaries and heard experiences that support what these videos claim that explain how a hospital birth may be taken out of your hands if you're not confident in your care provider and the I guess they're called floor staff the people in the hospital not just your doctor or certified nurse midwife or whoever you have but also the people that actually work in the hospital and they have protocols to fulfill and they have you know laws that they have to follow.

I'm not criticizing anybody just saying that for us we wanted to have a little more control a little more say in our birth so we chose an out-of-hospital birth and I think from there a lot more decision a lot of the other decisions come more easily. Yeah the out-of-hospital one that's certainly very controversial in today's world but I know it was important to us if possible to have a natural birth and the closest hospital to our you know to our house here is a widely known as for having a very positive birth environment.

They got a beautiful birthing suites and it's a very you know a lot of our friends have their babies there but their c-section rate is up over 30%. I can't remember the last year and even 37% something like that and it's an incredibly high c-section rate. Now thank I'm so thankful that that the technology of the c-section exists for the moms and the babies who need it.

There have been countless lives saved by it but for us both of our pregnancies have been low risk. There's not been a single risk factor and I think for us we decided that there's more risky for us to give birth in a hospital absent any since in our case there was no medical indicators indicating that we had any reason to be in a hospital.

We felt it was it was actually better for us to give birth at home which is what we chose to do and it was when you give birth in home in a house or in your own home it number one it controls a lot of the risk factors that can happen with actually giving birth in the hospital.

Number two it actually helps you just to control the environment and I know based upon all of our research one of the things that we've worked very hard to do is to control the emotional and psychological aspects of our birthing experience is to try to work through and we did we did something that's called hypnobirthing.

There are a number of childbirth educational classes and things you can go through the three most popular is hypnobirthing, Lamaze and Bradley and Bradley and we chose to go through the hypnobirthing process and one of the things that the authors of hypnobirthing materials emphasize is the impact of psychology and the impact of of I guess just the mental game on the birthing process.

I know for us that has definitely been our experience. If you're fearful about birth if you're at all uncomfortable and in talking with different friends of ours doulas midwives they've shared various stories just simply about the psychological aspect of childbirth where sometimes they'll be working with a couple through a difficult child birth fairly lengthy things aren't progressing they're trying to figure out what on earth is going on and they'll start digging into the psychology and they'll find out I know one one experience that a doula shared with us one time was she'd figured out that the husband had made some rude statements and the wife had remembered them and all that she didn't know was a problem till all of a sudden they're in their birth and all these fears kind of take over and it stops the childbirth experience.

So just simply the impact of psychology and the impact of feeling comfortable and relaxed and confident can make a huge difference. Also the under like don't going through the class helped us to understand what exactly the body was doing. It helps me to visualize what I'm feeling and not just feel this vague odd sensation I don't know what this is I should probably be scared right now.

Instead I think oh this is what my muscles are doing I can feel this this action happening if I actually focus on it I realize oh yes I feel it right here this is what I'm feeling and it's not scary it's not vague it's a defined happening. So it makes it easier to understand and not be fearful because you realize this is a normal natural process that our bodies have been ours as women have been designed to do.

I know that that was a big one for us was actually learning because the only thing that you know that either of us you because before we got married and had a baby you'd never been to a birth right? I had never been to a birth no. And neither did I of course so the only idea and perception that you have of childbirth when you haven't been through one is essentially what you've seen on a TV show and usually that's been filmed for dramatic effect some woman lying on her back in a hospital gown screaming her brains out and some panicked dad or just panicked person there screaming and saying what are we going to do or the you know the horrifying taxi ride we got to get to the hospital it's all for dramatic effect.

But the challenge is those are the things that stay with us there's a reason why those scenes were chosen and so that's the mental idea that we have. So I know for us a big especially with our first baby it was a big epiphany just to recognize that even the the pain and the experience of what actually physically happens during childbirth is not an unknown factor.

For example when we first went through the class where they explained what a uterus actually is and how the muscles in the uterus actually contract and work to bring the baby from where it's been for nine months through the birth path to be born then all of a sudden it brings a totally different meaning to the word contraction.

You know prior to that I don't know what you mean for me a contraction was just something that was this horrible painful experience but after that we figured out well this is just kind of like lifting weights where you're experiencing these muscular contractions in order to do the work and once you understand it it changes the process.

They're not going to believe me unless you say something. I'm nodding my head over here. Okay yes that's basically what I just said but you said it longer. If you've ever wondered in our marriage I have the skill for making things that are simple long and repeating them and my wife is very concise as you just heard.

So that decision to have a home birth is certainly an important one and you have to be comfortable with it because there are risks to having a home birth and you need to be prepared for those risks. Thankfully if you do number one if you pay careful attention with your medical team to any actual physical risk factors that you have most of those risks are known about in advance and then you can have a plan in place in case risks emerge during childbirth that you know we had a backup plan we have backup physicians backup hospital ready to go we had bags packed all you know contingency plans in place in case we needed to transport to the hospital.

So we were comfortable with those things. And having a home birth doesn't mean that you're not getting quality medical care. We had qualified midwives with us through the whole process we get the same prenatal care that people get who go to an OB. We could choose to opt in or out of certain tests that may have been offered and it's not it doesn't mean just going off in the woods somewhere like a cow and having your baby that's not what home birth means.

It doesn't? No. Another idea that might be helpful for some that are interested in the topic. Let's talk about the fear release process because I know for us that was a big deal and I think contributed a lot even to this last birth to making it a positive experience that we had gone through the process of figuring out what you were fearful of and figuring out ways to handle those fears.

Why don't you explain about that? Yeah one of the exercises we did in our hypnobirthing class was writing down anything that may emotionally cloud your birth experience. So basically fears things that that could hinder your birth from being smooth things that would keep you from being confident while you were going through your birth experience.

And for me a lot of my fears were based on what other people would do regarding the timing of the birth. I don't like to be rushed in anything. Poor Joshua he deals with my slowness sometimes. But I don't like to be rushed and I didn't want to feel like anyone was pressuring me to hurry up and have this baby and I didn't want to feel like a due date meant something because for those of you who haven't gone through this process a due date is the midpoint in well I guess it'd be a little bit after the midpoint in a five-week window when it's safe to have a baby.

It doesn't mean that the baby has to have shown up by that point or something's wrong. And I'm not saying that in some cases it isn't but it's not based on a due date. You can look into that on your own at a later time. Anyway I didn't want to feel rushed.

I don't want anyone to know when the due date was or be asking me where's the baby? Where's the baby? What's wrong? How come you haven't had the baby? We're so excited to see that baby. While I appreciate that they were excited I didn't want to feel like I needed to meet someone else's expectations.

So I had a long list of I guess you'd call it like a family birth plan or maybe requirements for other people that they were not to call me, they were not to text me, they were not to know the due date or if they did they were not to ask about it, they were not to post anything on Facebook, they were not to tell their friends my grandbaby's coming soon or my cousin's baby is due to arrive any day.

Leave me alone. I will let you know when the baby shows up. So that was important for me. We sent out an email to the family and it may have come across I mean a little bit rude just because of the nature of the request. It's not common in our society that people would ask for that.

But for me it was important that my family know that this could hinder my ideal birth and they all respected my wishes and if there were any confusing statements that I made we cleared those up. And it resulted in my feeling like I was free to have the baby whenever he in that first case decided to come and I could relax and just wait for my body to bring the baby and I didn't have to feel under any pressure.

I could just wait and relax and let him choose his birthday. It was very important to me and it was essential for that first birth that I feel relaxed. Yeah and on this last one and on baby number two we didn't even tell anybody the expected due date. The only people who knew were the midwives and also then the person that we'd chosen to care for our son, our older child in case a baby came during the day and we needed to have him taken care of and have somebody come and get him.

So that person needed to know. Beyond that nobody, my mom didn't know, your mom didn't know. We kept it secret. We just told everybody about the end of June and the actual expected due date was June 24. So that worked out and then when you combine them not knowing with the explicit instructions of don't ask, we'll tell you when the baby's on her way, then it led to just a very pressure-free delivery.

I guess to me I was thinking about after the fact like what were the things that we did to prepare and in my mind they all came down to, well many of them just came down to the psychological side, just making sure that you felt rested, that you felt comfortable.

There were some physical things that we did to prepare for the childbirth experience that we hoped to have but a lot of the psychological ones were important. We tried to have everything squared away and plenty of time with baby's things, baby's room, baby's environment. We tried to have all of the things done around the house that needed to be done, any loose ends that were going to stress you out to try to make sure that all of those loose ends were taken care of, to try to make sure that the environment was very comfortable for you, that you had all of the things that you wanted so that you could just be at ease and be comfortable.

All the psychological things as far as no pressure, being in a comfortable environment. We made sure that the house was clean. We made sure I had a nightlight for nursing. We made sure there was greenery in the room where I was going to give birth so it felt like nature-ish.

It was lots of little things. We tried to keep the house clean so that I didn't have to feel like, "Oh, there's dog hair over here and that's a problem right now." And then some of the physical things that we did as far as physical preparations is number one, obviously eating well, exercising.

I made you go on your walks. - And it was hot. - Exactly. I pushed you out the door and said, "Go walk." And I obviously went on some of them when I could. Make sure you had lots of rest. So that was really valuable was to have as much rest as possible, as many naps as possible.

- And snacks. - And snacks. Other physical things would be chiropractic care. You had chiropractic care all the way through. And go ahead and talk about that. - I recommend chiropractic care to every pregnant mama. It, in my opinion, made a big difference. I just know my first baby came so smoothly and easily.

The way it was explained to us was if the baby has all the room possible that he or she can have, then they're not trying to finagle through a wiggly path. Everything is straight and in line. They can just come right on down. And that made so much sense to us that we started to go into chiropractic adjustments about six months in with our first baby and all the way through, well, no, maybe three or four months in with this baby.

And it just, I mean, not only does it make you more comfortable during the pregnancy, it makes everything smoother during the birth because you know that the baby has as much room as possible to get down. - Yeah. There were kind of two aspects to it. There's the first, making sure that you're feeling comfortable because when you're carrying the baby and all of the baby's weight, that puts a lot of unusual stress on your body.

And so making sure that everything's well-adjusted for you can make a big difference. But then during the delivery, making sure, I guess it's hard to describe in an audio format, but just making sure that your pelvis and your pelvic bones are all lined up so there's a maximum space possible.

When you actually look at the human anatomy and understand a slight twisting of the pelvis means substantially less room for baby to pass through. But if everything is straightened out, it's substantially more room for baby to pass through. It makes a big difference. Big difference. Anything else that you can think of that we, I mean, kind of doing this show on a whim here.

- Well, I feel like, I mean, just to leave ideas with people, the biggest thing that we did was our research. We read, we watched documentaries, we talked to various people, we toured the hospital right near us, we visited birth centers, talked to midwives, like home birth midwives. There are two kinds of midwife.

One is a certified nurse midwife and one is a licensed midwife. And they have slightly different philosophies, different trainings. So midwife might mean different things to different people. Then you've got OBs, you've got naturopaths. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. Just different people you could choose to have a baby with.

And then you've got all these decisions to make. Do we circumcise? Do we vaccinate? Do we breastfeed? Do we use cloth diapers? All these questions. And how do we sue the fussy baby? Do we follow a sleep schedule? Do we follow a feeding schedule? So many things that nobody tells you you have to decide about and you have nine months to get it figured out.

So do your reading, do your watching your DVDs, ask people around you who had good experiences. Do not find those people who love to horrify you with "I almost died and my baby almost died and if it weren't for my XY intervention you know we would have died." Sometimes that does happen but it's not encouraging when you're going to have a baby.

So try to find the people that had positive experiences or who can tell you how to have a positive experience and put those ideas in your head. And don't put TV shows with crazy screaming people. Think calm, relaxed, confident, and read. And read from both sides of different issues and make your own decisions as a family.

Because a lot of times people just get swept along. They say "Okay I'm pregnant" and go find whoever can deliver a baby and follow whoever as whoever's advice they hear. "That sounds fine. I guess this is what you do when you have a baby." And then they come out of it thinking "Well that wasn't a positive experience.

I don't know if I want to do that again." But a little reading can save you that feeling of disillusionment. Yeah and it can impart a sense of self-confidence because big time. I know you and I we try very hard to because our birth plan would be different from other people's birth plans.

And the key is not for anybody to assume what another person wants but rather to feel confident and empowered with your own choices. Because at the end of the day it's your family, it's your baby, and it's your birth. And so take ownership of it and take control of it to the largest extent possible.

And then be flexible in your thinking because circumstances can emerge that would say "Well we need to move in a very different direction." You might have your birth plan specifically pointed in this direction and then some circumstance presents itself and you need to make a complete change. And that's why you have a medical team there that's able to help you and assist you in that process.

And that's why you empower yourself because then you understand "Oh I know what this medical term means. I understand the repercussions of not making a change to my plan and I feel confident making this change." It's not just "Oh well somebody suggested that maybe we should do this so well I don't really know what that means but maybe we should do it." It just gives you a place to ask questions, intelligent questions, and take control of your birth whether it follows your initial plan or not.

- Right, right. So two other things about the birth. I'll put you on the spot. I didn't prep her for these questions but I think the audience will enjoy. And then we'll talk about one or two quick things about having a baby or actually when the baby's actually here.

So hypnobirthing claims, I don't know what the word is on the front cover of their book, but it's basically about pain-free childbirth, something like that. - I think it's more they advertise calm and gentle, not so much pain-free. Although they do suggest that that is possible with the right circumstances.

- So what would be your experience? Is it possible to have a pain-free childbirth? - Well I've only had two births. I don't know if you can even ask, that's a pretty broad question to ask one person. Do I think it's possible? Others have claimed so. I had, I would say, pretty relatively pain-free birth.

Not pain-free but not painful, meaning there were moments specifically during the, what is it called, ending where the baby's actually coming out. - Right, final phase. - Right, well I know the final phase is the placenta. Anyway, the part where the baby's actually coming out, that was not pain-free but it didn't last very long and the labor process was made much more bearable by the fact that I understood what was going on.

I felt pressure, I felt tightening, I felt sensations, I felt lowering, the baby going down. But I didn't feel scared about it, I didn't feel confused about what was my body doing. I felt in control, I felt confident with working with what my muscles were doing and I had breathing techniques to help me be able to focus on my body and not just think, "Oh no, what's going on, what's going on?" and tighten everything up.

Because if you tighten up, then that causes pain. But if you can breathe and relax and pay attention and visualize what's going on in your body, then you don't have to be afraid and tighten up and cause your own self-pain. - The best analogy that we came up with that we've shared with our friends that for us was super helpful was when you understand what's going on, it's kind of like a workout.

If you go into the gym, and it's what I mentioned earlier about understanding simple things like what uterine contractions are, but if you go into the gym and you're lifting heavy weights, many of us have had that experience, and you're lifting heavy weights and you're pressing through a bunch of repetitions and your muscles might be really screaming and they're really hurting, you're really feeling a burning sensation in your muscles.

Well, you don't usually just drop the weight and run out of the gym screaming like your hair is on fire. You recognize, "I know what's going on, I'm pressing through this set of repetitions and yes, my muscles are burning, but I recognize that the sensation is normal and it's going to pass." And so by being prepared for that sensation, once you've experienced it once, you know what's going to happen.

It's not pain-free. There's certainly pain, but it's not unmanageable, unbearable pain. And so with the labor process, that's my observation is it's not pain-free, and I've got just the observer's seat, but it's not pain-free. But by the understanding of it, of what's going on, and then by the being relaxed and by the mental preparation as you're going through the process, it's not unbearable.

One clarification, he doesn't have quite the just observer's seat. He is very much involved in the process with helping me feel comfortable, making sure I have water, making sure I have snacks, telling me I'm doing a good job, dealing with my ridiculous requests. "I need water. No, I don't.

I need music. Turn it off. I need my birth ball. Get it away from me. Need massage. Don't touch me." He's very much involved. He's not just an observer. That's part of what makes it easier, too. There's certain statistics, I'm not exactly sure the numbers, but that women who have constant support during labor have far better outcomes than women who don't have support.

And for some, that may be a doula, it may be your mom, but in our case, it was Joshua, and he did an awesome job. And I feel like if you have that support, it makes a huge difference in feeling relaxed and confident and comfortable because you don't feel alone, and somebody else understands what your body is doing and can respond to that and help you.

And also, he timed the surges and watched the process to figure out when do we call the midwife and how are we doing along the process. He's not just an observer. He's a companion. - Yeah, it is good. I can't stand when husbands put everything onto their wives and don't take a place of responsibility in the process.

You were involved in making the baby, it's time to step up and help through the process. The two things that anger me when I see weak, impotent husbands is, number one, when they don't get involved with childbirth, and number two, when they don't get involved with weddings. That's the other one.

That's a rant for another day. But you start here, there's a lot of weak, impotent men who just don't step forward and take any place of responsibility. And childbirth is one of those, I know for us, is just an incredible, really beautiful experience that has drawn us closer together.

And I know both of us, we look back and treasure the memories of the two nights so far, working through that process together. It's a really beautiful experience. - And I know I've noticed, no matter what age of a woman you ask about her birth experience, she remembers. - She sure does.

- She remembers. This is not like a class in school where you might remember certain details here and there. Women remember. So make it as best a good experience as you can. - You spent a lot of time doing affirmations, birthing affirmations, for the weeks up to it. I made sure every night, sent you to the bathtub with candles and birthing affirmations.

I make fun of affirmations a lot on the show from the visualize, "Oh, I'm gonna sit back and visualize millions of dollars floating into my mailbox." But what impact or how useful did you feel that the birthing affirmations were for you? - After the first birth, we did affirmations with the first birth as well.

I started looking for affirmations for everything. I was like, "Are there parenting affirmations? Are there affirmations for maybe like eating right or the way you wanna get things done?" And I'm sure you can make your own affirmations for anything, but I was like, "This is great. We just need these for everything." Because it puts an idea in your head.

It gives you a direction. And if you don't have anything to fill your mind while you're in labor, it's easy to let fear take over or confusion or, I mean, I don't know what you would think of, but if you have in your mind a plan that I'm confident, I feel calm, I feel my breath filling my body, I understand what's going on, my baby's moving down.

These are not the hypnobirthing affirmations, but just to give you some ideas. It puts ideas in your head that you can then cling to in those moments when you don't know what else to think about. - Right, right. I just noticed they were very useful. And I think they have their place in normal life.

Affirmations can help you to focus your thoughts and focus your efforts and direct your mind in a positive direction. - Right, but I didn't see millions of dollars in the bank account. - We're working on that. Don't tell them. We're working on the millions. So then the final two things that I thought would be good to mention are not related to the birth, but actually just to after the birth.

And one is just nice things that people have done for us. And so if you know friends who are having babies, one thing that even just this time, a close friend brought us lunch the day of, and that was really nice before some of the people in our church get together and put together a meal list and people have been bringing us food every night, which is a real blessing.

But even just a friend of ours showed up with lunch for that day and didn't ask, didn't ask permission, just did it. And that was a big blessing. - It was so sweet, so thoughtful. I was just so surprised. I think I thanked her two or three times. She just showed, she sent me a text, "Hey, I'm gonna show up and bring some food." And I was like, "Oh, that's great." But I had no idea she was bringing lunch, she brought dessert, she brought snacks and cereal and sparkling juice.

It was so nice. - Yeah. So those little things can just make a big difference to a family. So if you know someone who's recently had a baby, don't ask. It's hard when you're juggling all kinds of new things, it's hard to try to figure out and plan, just do it and recognize that they're gonna appreciate it.

- But they might turn you away at the door. - Right. - Because when we had our first baby, I didn't want anyone to touch him, I didn't want anyone to show up at my house. I wanted our privacy and our family bonding. And so do it, but you might just also be prepared to leave it at the door and go home.

- Right. And you gotta let mama be in charge, 'cause this time has been very different where we've been totally relaxed and happy to see people and it's been nice to be able to visit with people right away. Then the other thing I thought would be fun was our pet peeve about people commenting about sleep patterns for new parents.

So we were talking about this the other day and it's kind of interesting having a new baby in the house. In our society, we have little mental scripts that we run and a little script like, "Hey, how you doing? Oh, I'm fine, how are you?" - Or you walk up to the counter at the McDonald's, "Hi, how can I help you?

I'd like the number five." - Right. It's just we know the back and forth and it doesn't ever change every time. And so people get used to running the scripts. And so one of the verbal scripts that people use with new parents is talking about the parent's sleep, about how much sleep they're getting or how much sleep they're not getting or asking a question about, "Are you getting any sleep?" And I did this myself for years before I was married and before I'd been through it as a parent.

I just adopted the script 'cause this is what you say. You make a comment about the parent's sleep. You say, "Oh, I hope you're getting lots of sleep." Or, "Oh, are you getting any sleep?" People don't mean anything rude by it. People mean very positive by it. But I know that after we had our first baby, I finally had a chance to understand actually what sleeping patterns are for babies and why sleeping patterns are that way.

And I don't ever talk to a new parent about sleep now. I don't make any comments on it because I actually understand what's going on. So I thought we might do our public service announcement for the listening public about things to actually understand why and how baby's sleep patterns are set when they're newborns.

(laughs) - Okay, carry on. - Okay, so that was gonna be to setting you up to give it. I guess just the thing that I learned, that I had never really understood was the reason that babies wake up during the night is not because there's something wrong with babies.

It's not somehow that a parent is not doing a good job, but rather just the fact that their stomachs are very small. When a baby is newborn, their stomach is how big? - I don't know. Google it. - Tiny. We don't Google on this show. - Oh, I mean, use the duck.

Ask the duck. Ask the duck. - The audience knows that very well. - Ask the duck. - So their stomachs are, the baby's tummy is tiny and it can only hold just a tiny little amount of milk. And so the baby needs to be fed basically about every three hours at the beginning.

And then as time goes on, it can stretch out, but every three hours, she needs food. And so your goal as a new parent is not to get your child to sleep because you're probably at least not nourishing it as fully as maybe you should be if you're doing that at the beginning.

Now, a little while later, yes, it's nice when they can sleep through the night, but in the beginning, it's no problem to need to get up and feed the baby during the night. The baby needs food. And in the same way that you wouldn't tell your three-year-old not to eat for three days and starve them because you're worried about your precious sleep patterns, you want to make sure that your baby's needs are cared for.

So it's not super helpful to ask parents about sleep or not parents about sleep. I mean, it's no big deal. That's just what, it comes with the territory. You have a baby and you need to make sure that your baby's needs are met. And when you do that, part of that is just involves sleep.

And part of it involves waking up and making sure that the baby's needs are met. And I know we're amazed often at just even how our bodies can adapt to that. I mean, I noticed that you are able to very effectively change and it seems like your body was beautifully made to be able to adjust and adapt and basically just change your sleep schedule a little bit to match baby's sleep schedule.

- It also helps to have help. - It's hugely, yeah. The first couple of days are the toughest. They definitely are. And after that, you can kind of get into a routine. But yeah, we've got your mom staying with us right now, and that's a huge blessing. - Yes, because as he said, babies need to eat, which means you're getting less slash scattered sleep.

And there comes a point sometimes 4 a.m. when you just need to sleep and you need to pass that baby to somebody else. So it is different sleeping and you do adjust, but it is nice to have help. - Yeah. I guess my point with the public service announcement is simply, there's no need to ask new parents about sleep.

They're not sleeping through the night. But then again, I don't sleep like I did when I was a 16-year-old boy. I sleep differently as a husband than I did when I was single. I sleep differently as a father than we did when we were married and didn't have kids.

It's just you go through phases of life and life changes and it comes with the territories. There's no need to ask a new parent about sleep, no need to comment about sleep, no need to bemoan or commiserate about the lack of sleep or the abundance of sleep. It's just called parenting.

It runs with the territory. So anything else you wanna add, words of wisdom and encouragement to other, I guess, prospective moms and dads or other moms and dads in general? - Just do your research. It can be beautiful. It can be what you want. It can be fulfilling and memorable in a positive way.

And I feel like every time you hear this speech, there's always the disclaimer, "But you know, there are those emergencies." And of course there are. But why start from there? - Right, right. Yeah, I would say that's a great way to sum it up. Do your research. And I guess as I mentioned, the reason I had Tiffany on the show was just simply because I'd mentioned this a couple of days ago, that set out your goal, set out your ideal vision of what you actually want.

Just like anything, if you can clarify what your ideal vision is and you can flesh it out as much as possible, then you can start to take the steps towards those goals. And you can back it up in the same way that at every stage along, but once we got into the pregnancy a little bit, I've had little sub-goals, little things that need to be done.

Okay, these things on the house need to be done. These things need to be wrapped up. We need to make sure that Tiffany is getting this. We need to make sure these things are happening. And those things put together, I think they make a huge difference. And I wouldn't ever be so arrogant as to say that we control the outcome, but I would say that you can work hard to create the best outcome possible.

And the amount of preparation that you've done can really make a big difference at that time. So we're thrilled to have our little baby girl here. So far, so good. We've been enjoying her immensely. If you all want to see pictures, feel free to connect with me on Facebook at my personal account.

Go to facebook.com/joshuasheets, S-H-E-A-T-S, or just search in the Facebook search engine for Joshua Sheets, S-H-E-A-T-S, and you'll see way too many pictures. Or I guess Instagram also. I'm on Instagram at Joshua Sheets, whatever their thing is. Instagram.com/joshuasheets. Just search Joshua Sheets, S-H-E-A-T-S. I'm the only Joshua Sheets. So thanks for coming on the show, babe.

It's been fun having you again. - Thanks for having me. Hope I didn't bore the audience with my childbirth stuff. - You mean you're the one who gets straight to the point and Joshua who goes on and on. Thank you all for listening. Be back with you soon.