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Big thanks to our sponsor Laborie — LifeBubble® Umbilical Catheter Securement System

LifeBubble is made of a Soft Medical Grade Silicone to minimize skin irritation, Reduces the Risk of Catheter Migration and Early Discontinuation, and Protects the Insertion Site of our most vulnerable patients. Find them on Instagram @laborie_ob

Today’s guest is Janene Fuerch, MD.

She is a Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine, Associate Director of the Biodesign Innovation Fellowship Program at Stanford University, and Co-Director of Impact1 where she mentors and advises entrepreneurs in the pediatric and maternal space through all aspects of medical device development, from identifying clinical needs to commercialization. Her specific areas of investigational interest include the development and commercialization process of neonatal, pediatric and maternal health medical devices. She is a national leader in neonatal resuscitation, ECMO, device development and has been an AHRQ, FDA and NSF funded investigator. But her work extends outside of the academic realm to industry having co-founded EMME (acquired by Simple Health 2022) an award-winning reproductive health company, medical director for Novonate (acquired by Laborie 2023) a neonatal umbilical catheter securement company and notable consultant for Vitara (EXTEND – artificial environment to decrease complications of prematurity), Laborie, Ceribell, Novocuff and Avanos. Janene is passionate about improving the health of children and newborns through medical device innovation and research.

Links for you:

Previous Laborie Episode on Forceps (260)

Timestamps:

00:00 NICU Challenges: Bonding & Separation

06:55 Choosing the Right Hospital Level

09:47 Bonding with Baby After Separation

14:06 NICU Innovation: Challenges and Opportunities

15:14 Umbilical Catheter Infection Solution

18:17 NICU Bonding and Communication Tips

21:59 Premature Baby Care Innovations

25:04 Prioritizing Investment in Children’s Future

Keypoints:

• Many families are surprised when their baby needs to go to the NICU, so it’s important for all pregnant families to know some basics about what to expect.
• The NICU can range from having just a couple of extra staff in the delivery room to having 15 people if a baby needs help, making the birth experience much more intense and involved.
• Planning ahead with your partner about who will go with the baby in case of separation can help make a stressful situation a little easier.
• About 10% of babies need some help breathing at birth, but most recover quickly; only a small percentage require NICU care beyond the basic interventions.
• NICUs are graded by levels (I-IV), and knowing what level your hospital offers can help families prepare—higher-level NICUs can treat more complex issues but aren’t always necessary for uncomplicated births.
• If your hospital isn’t a level III or IV, babies needing higher-level care may need to be transferred, which could mean temporary separation from parents; hospitals always work to reunite families as quickly as possible.
• NICU nurses are passionate, skilled, and deeply care about the babies and their families, creating a loving and safe environment even during stressful times.
• Parents can support their recovery and milk production by getting rest and using NICU technologies (like webcams) to stay connected—it’s okay to take breaks and trust the NICU staff.
• Emerging technologies like Labry’s Life Bubble are making NICU stays safer and more comfortable, allowing parents to hold their babies even when special catheters are in place.
• Skin-to-skin contact in the NICU is highly beneficial for both babies and parents, helping with bonding, milk production, and even neurodevelopment; parents are encouraged to ask staff about timing and any concerns about wires or tubes.

Producer: Drew Erickson

PUT TRANSCRIPT HERE:

Keywords:

NICU, neonatal intensive care unit, premature babies, neonatologist, types of NICU levels, level 1 NICU, level 2 NICU, level 3 NICU, level 4 NICU, hospital delivery, separation from baby, bonding with baby, skin-to-skin contact, umbilical catheters, infection prevention, NICU innovations, Labry, Life Bubble, technology in NICU, neonatal health, maternal health, NICU nurses, milk production, pumping breast milk, trauma of NICU stays, baby monitoring, necrotizing enterocolitis, artificial womb therapy, premature birth complications, hospital transfer, parental tips for NICU, emotional impact of NICU

The post What Every Pregnant Family Should Know About the NICU appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Bond with Baby Before Birth:

The best, BEST thing to do to bond with baby is to do kick counts. Now, before we get started a LOT of people tell you to do kick counts the WRONG way and I’m here to stop that — so grab my kick count cheat sheet right here:

As a labor and delivery nurse of 20 years — I really know what I’m talking about on this one.

BUT, why can kick counts help you bond with baby? It’s a great question, because some people just say it makes them feel anxious — but I’m here to say, maybe they’re not doing it the right way?

First off, the cliff notes of kick counts is that you note the time, sit there and feel for 10 movements, and then note the time again. Then, each day you’re just going to look for a pattern. I recommend getting an app that will help you sort of chart them and maybe start to see a pattern. Most often we start kick counts at about 27 weeks.

And, if you have a million questions — I hope I answer them in this episode:

But, WHY would these simple kick counts help you bond with baby. Let me give you three ways.

Map that Baby

Do you wish you had a window you could peek into baby? The thing is, you do — but it’s baby’s movement, not an actual window (because, that would probably be really bad — all things considered).

Those bigger kicks are probably legs, and the smaller movements are likely arms…. heads can shake and dig…. You truly can figure out which way they are in your womb, and you can be the expert on their movements — but you gotta “listen” — and kick counts is a GREAT time to do that!

Dream

I think a lot of kick counts is a time filled with anxiety if baby will give them the movements, but I would say it’s a time to close your eyes (and obviously feel for movements) but just dream about life with this baby.

In case you need a few jumping off points:

• That first smile, how it will capture your entire heart
• That first time they realize what Christmas really is, and how magical it is.
• Have a favorite childhood haunt — how amazing it’s going to be to share it with them…
• Their first few halloween costumes where you get entire say over what they’ll be and how your heart just explodes as you see them toddle around in it.

And, as a mom who’s been around a few blocks — the amazing feeling of pride you have in that little person when they graduate college or high school or just any big accomplishment. You think that heart explodes with that first smile, but when you see them work so hard on something big — oh man, insert me crying here.

You are going to have so much wonderful life together. So, dream about it as you count those kicks.

Involve Others

It’s amazing to feel the kicks yourself but involving someone ELSE you love can make it even more amazing:

• Partners
• Other siblings (kids LOVE to help with this — and they need to bond with baby too!)
• Mom/Friend

It really is amazing that you’re able to produce an entire other person inside your body. Let’s feel how amazing it is, together.

If you can’t tell I’m a huge kick count advocate and I think there are SO many benefits. Remember that fetal movement is your best indicator of fetal well being and any big changes in fetal movement outside their normal pattern should take you into your provider.

When done correctly fetal kick counts save 33% of stillbirths — that means 1 in 3 parents would have a baby with them, rather than just grief. Those stats make me wildly passionate about it. DO it. :)_

Looking for more info on kick counts — be sure to check out these posts:

• Kick Counts Made Simple: FAQs, Expert Tips, and Why It Can Save Babies’ Lives
• Normal Daily Fetal Movement – Kick Counts
• 7 Things You’re Doing Wrong in Your Third Trimester
• The Importance of Kick Counts with Emily Price from Count the Kicks
• 35 Weeks Pregnant Checklist

Ok, so I think kick counts are the best ways to bond with baby — but what can you do right when baby is out to bond with them? I’m glad you asked…

I want to mention, really fast, that a lot of this made me feel insane in the beginning. To be doing this with someone who could barely even interact or look at me in the eye felt weird — so if you’re in that camp, I see you — and I promise this will get better and start to feel more natural.

Read Them a Book

This was the easiest one for me — I often was too tired to even think of something I could do with them — but I did get a few board books at my shower and we’d look at them together.

Now, often children’s books don’t work great for newborns to LOOK at (they still love to hear you talk though). Their brand new eyes need high contrast — and once you give them something high contrast you’ll see some serious attention from them. I think these are cool — but I also had some black and white images that I laminated at my local school supply shop, and they worked well too.

This high contrast phase doesn’t last long, but when they’re still sort of a pile of goo — it’s your best option.

Don’t feel like you have to READ the book – -you can just point out the lion and say “rar” — they just love your voice, and learning, and you can give them that!

Really quick, Kiwi Crate offers a cool infant crate that you can find right here. You can get toys tailored SPECIFICALLY to where your baby is at. As a parent who literally had NO idea how to “play” with a baby — they would have been so helpful for me!

Feed Them

Feeding time is a GREAT time to get their attention, to chat and just enjoy each other.

I see a lot of people saying that breastfeeding promotes better bonding, but I honestly have no idea why. It was still me there, holding a bottle (on top of breasts that wouldn’t feed them) — so, we still bonded a LOT as I fed them.

This takes a LOT of your day — so it makes sense to make the most of that time.

Of course, any of your other “functional” time will be like this. Changing diapers, putting clothes on — chat it up with them!

BTW, if you’re like — I’m weak on those baby tasks, I totally get that. I recommend this.

Sing to Them

Now, you have to take this time when they enjoy your singing without any sarcastic comments — take it!

Have a favorite pop song? sing it.

Have a favorite children’s song? — sing it?

No idea what to sing, put some children song’s or lullabies on your favorite media player and find a few that you love to sing to them.

It doesn’t have to be intricate, you don’t have to be good at it, but just you smiling and dancing with them to some tunes will build that bond in a fun way.

And while we’re at it – -dream about those dance parties you’ll have in a few months with your new favorite toddler. There is a lot to look forward to!

Narrate Life

This one felt the weirdest, but I think it’s so important (and later, when I’d drive to work without them I’d find myself still doing it — and thinking I was insane).

But in reality, I was just a really good baby/toddler mom.

If you’re like — what would I say? You’re just going to narrate the whole day. You can take it more of a Morgan Freeman type method, or you can just be like “arm! This is your ARM — we’re pulling it through your SLEEVE.”

We’d go on walks and I’d talk about the crunchy leaves, the bright sun, the wind on our face.

I’d make dinner telling them about all the ingredients and why I chose this delicious recipe for dinner.

When we were changing the laundry I would tell them what color the shirts were, or we’d count the socks. I’d love them feel WET clothes and DRY clothes….

We’d be in the car and I say oh GOSH there’s a FIRE ENGINE and woah, there’s our favorite ICE CREAM place, and now that’s the library where we get BOOKS….

Again, you’re just narrating it — and bonus points if you make it fun and exciting by changing your voice as you do it. They love that!

This the best teaching you can do as a mom, and someday your little one will say “fire engine” from that back seat and you’ll realize you’ve been teaching this whole time.

Let me say that we’ve sort of been taught that we need fancy toys, or the best gear to teach our kids — but let me be the one to tell you that:

• Feeling for your baby to move
• Narrating your life
• Allowing them to experience life with you

Are some of the very best things you can do to both bond with baby and promote learning for them.

Mostly I just want to encourage you to try.

It may make you feel anxious, or silly, or maybe it is the freedom you’ve always wanted to be a little silly with a purpose — I think that’s what it brought out for me.

While we’re here, I love that you’re getting prepared for baby — but I gotta ask are you preparing (and bonding) with your PARTNER? That’s why I created this. Getting prepared together is one of the smartest things you can do — because both mom & dad need these skills to help that baby to grow and be the big, strong, smart influence you want in this world!

Not sure we’re a good fit check out my free class — It’s your first step towards being your own birth boss.

The post How to Bond with Baby: Before Birth & After appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Knotts Berry Farm vs Disneyland

Disclosure:  I was given Knotts Tickets for our family and have gotten Disneyland tickets at times in the past, but no posting requirements were included.  All opinions are my own.

Differences between Knotts Berry Farms & Disneyland

Disneyland is truly a magical place.  I don’t think of it as a theme park, but as more of a destination.

Knotts Berry is a theme park (owned by Cedar Fair, which owns a LOT of US theme parks).  And frankly, probably the best one I’ve been to.

Knotts has big rides — HUGE rides, that are super fun.  It’s well-kept, themed well, has good food, and is great for a family day.

Disneyland has smaller rides, with more imagination.  There is something for every member of your family to delight in.  It has a high standard of cleanliness, has great food, and is a destination for family travel.

BUT, each one has its place.  I’ve talked a TON about Disneyland tips — so, today I’ll talk more about Knotts Berry and what is great about it!

Knotts Berry Farms Ticket Pricing

If you’re looking more into Disneyland — check out my Disneyland budget and my Disneyland trip calculator.

Knotts Berry Farms Tickets (when bought online at the time of publication) are about half the price (or more — depending on when you go) of Disneyland. That is HUGE. If you have other things you’d prefer to spend your money on, but still have a fun vacation, that makes Knotts a great option!

Plus, Disneyland has the whole park hopper/Genie+ add-on, so that adds to the price as well.

Let me spell it all out for you in a table. Please note that both parks have dynamic pricing for 1-day tickets (meaning it’s more expensive on weekends, etc).

Disneyland tickets vary from about $90 to $169/day (this is why most people prefer multi-day tickets — your price/day goes WAY Down). Knotts seems to vary from $69-$89

Keep in mind that with Disneyland “Genie” you only get to use each Lightening Lane once, vs the Knotts Berry farms Fast Lane allows you to the ride the same rides over and over if you’d prefer. It is a much better value for people who want to ride a few times many times in one day.

Like most places, I recommend buying your tickets before the gate (buying at the gate is one of my biggest Disneyland Mistakes)…..

I have a whole post on if you can buy your tickets to Disneyland at the gate (you shouldn’t, and 99% of days you can’t) — that shares the CHEAPEST way to get Disneyland tickets!

Knotts Berry Farms Discount Tickets

My #1 choice for Southern California tickets is Get Away Today.  You can usually get Knotts tickets on this page (just scroll down a bit to find the Knotts tickets). FYI, sometimes Knotts has sales that make buying off their site cheaper, but Get Away Today will price-match their ticket prices.

You can also get great prices on Universal, Disneyland, Sea World, and more (and when you combo them, you save even more!).

I would 100% recommend pricing a Knotts hotel in the area with them as well.  They have the best price guarantee.

2025 Note: I often see that Get Away Today is not selling Knotts tickets, in that case I do think your best bet is to purchase through Knotts online.

Knotts Berry Farms Hotels

If you plan to go to Disneyland as well, I would get your hotel location based on Disneyland, and drive (or Uber) to Knotts.  They’re actually quite close to each other.

If you’re just going to Knotts, they have their own hotel — The Knotts Hotel

We actually stayed there at our last visit and I was nervous because the hotel doesn’t get great reviews.

The hotel has recently been updated and the rooms were nice, but it was definitely a surface remodel. The rooms were loud, and the handle on my sink came off when I turned it to hot. However, it’s SUPER close to Knotts, and if I was visiting Knotts again I’d probably stay there.

• The price is great — check it out here
• It’s so close
• The rooms were comfortable, just loud.

**AND when you book with Get Away Today you get REDUCED PRICE PARKING which is a nice savings!

There are some great deals that can be found if you want to go to Knotts and stay at their hotel. Their packages can be found here.

If where you stay is important to you, we have also stayed with the Ayres chain that is in LA (we stayed in their Seal Beach Location — and Get Away Today can book any hotel if you call them).  Get Away Today offers a few of them. They have an AMAZING breakfast, the rooms are large and we really enjoyed our stay there.

They also recommend the Holiday Inn Buena Park — which is at a great price point.

Disneyland to Knotts Berry Farms

They aren’t far from each other at all.

Personally, I find the area around Disneyland to be much harder to navigate, so we usually stay near Disneyland and drive to Knotts on the day we are headed there.

This shows to take the 5, but we often drive down Ball and then turn north just past the 39 — there are some fun things to see along the way.

I also checked the price for an Uber/Lyft, and it was about $25 each way (obviously depending on timing) to go from Disneyland to Knotts.

Knotts Berry Farms Rides

Knotts Berry Farms has rides for everyone in your party.  Even with small children, Knotts can be very fun.  There is a Snoopy area, and lots of other fun rides for kids & families (more on that).  Many of the rides don’t have height restrictions, and kids will find them SUPER fun.

I think Knotts can be fun for kids of all ages, similar to Disneyland.

Knotts is split into areas.   There are lots of rides and something for every taste.  However, they are much more amusement-park-like rides, unlike Disneyland which seems to have its own brand of rides.

Of particular note of popular rides:

• GhostRider — a great wooden roller coaster, my husband said it’s one of the best he’s ever been on (you can see it in the photo above). I rode it for the first time recently and REALLY enjoyed it.
• Knotts Berry Tales — an interactive dark ride where you learn the history of Knotts and “shoot” things.
• Timber Mountain Log Ride — A log flume — has a lot of story to it.  Very similar to Splash mountain, we really enjoyed it (and didn’t get TOO wet)
• Silver bullet — a hanging-type coaster.
• Calico Mine Train — This is a family-friendly fun ride through a mining mountain.  It’s like Knotts Berry’s Pirates of the  Caribbean.
• HangTime — this was their newest ride when I went and has one of the steepest drops of a coaster on the west coast.
• Xcelerator — Another steel rollercoaster that is amazing – per my husband, because I am NOT a roller coaster rider

There is also a raft ride and lots of spinning rides.   Like I said, most of your basic amusement park rides.

I will say if you’re a lot on the overweight side, Disneyland will likely be more comfortable.

There were a couple of rides that I was too big to ride (or very uncomfortable buckled in).

Also, if you’re pregnant, there isn’t a ton for you (but you could still have a fun day. There are a lot of places to sit down, and a few rides you could enjoy. Knotts is MUCH easier on my feet.

Knotts Soak City

Knotts also has a water park tied to it called Soak City. You can get tickets to it here. It’s only open during the summer months, and is just your basic water park. It was crowded, but spread out enough I didn’t feel claustrophobic. They had a nice locker system and changing area. It’s across the street from Knotts. Most people that are doing Soak City have a pass and are enjoying both. I would not recommend buying Knotts Theme park tickets, and adding on Soak City also.

On our stay we went to Soak City on our arrival day for a few hours and then went to Knotts the next day.

Camp Snoopy & Other Options for Little Kids

Camp Snoopy has been re-done in 2024. As I toured it I will say most of it looked pretty familiar, just some re-theming, new coats of paint, etc. Lots of times to visit snoopy and places to explore. This area tends to have rides for small kids similar to other amusement parks.

There is also the Ghost Town area that has informational stuff on the history of California and sometimes extra fun for little kids (especially at Halloween and Christmas). Lots of interactive experiences (including a blacksmith etc). That type of interactive entertainment isn’t just for Disney. When I was there they also had “Ghost Town Alive” where characters would talk to kids and it was super interactive and fun!

One of the biggest perks for small kids is not having to wait long for rides. Anyone who’s waited an hour for Buzz Lightyear with a 2-year-old knows from whence I speak.

Note: Fast Lane does not work for any of the rides in Camp Snoopy — so Getting smaller kids that would be of no use, just FYI.

Knotts Berry Farms Rides for Teenagers

Like most amusement parks — Knotts is a mecca for teenagers. yes, while they will likely skip Camp Snoopy (and the many routes through the park makes that doable, the rest of the park is perfect for them).

While not impossible, I think Knotts is a little harder to do with kids of all ages.

Knotts Berry Farms Rides for Adults

I think adults will find a lot of fun at Knotts as well. Because it’s not as crowded you aren’t constantly faced with teenagers who will annoy you. There are a lot of really nicely themed areas and adults also appreciate the lack of lines.

Knotts Berry Farms Crowds

In general Knotts is much less crowded than Disneyland. But, at crowded times at Disneyland, Knotts also tends to be quite crowded.

We went the 3rd of July, and it was BU-SY. Thankfully, we had fast lane passes.  That got us on to the rides quite quickly, and I think they were 100% necessary on that day — I would not have wanted to go to the park without them.

There are times that ride wait times will get to about 3 hours (looking at you Ghostrider).

On a regular day, I think the Fast Lane passes might not be worth it.  You can add them to your pass in the park if you decide to do so  (you can get them at many of the stores).

Knotts Berry Farms Entertainment

I have to say that I’m not sad that my kids aren’t too into the “shows” anymore.

Knotts has great shows, some of the best I’ve seen at amusement parks. They also have great bands and characters around the park. WAY better than your “average” amusement park.

But, Disneyland has broadway-esque ones. So, for me, there isn’t much of a comparison. The win to Disneyland on this one.

Knotts Berry Farms Parking

Knotts doesn’t have a lot of hotels that are within walking distance, but there is plenty of parking in the area it is currently $30, vs the $35 it costs at Disneyland. 

As far as WHICH parking lot at Knotts, I recommend the North lot — it seems to be closest to the main entrance.

Food at Knotts Berry Farms.

Knotts has a LOT of food options, and I found the pricing to be pretty great in comparison to Disneyland food.

We got some Carne Asada fries that were really yummy, and very shareable — just near the Fiesta Plaza.

We got those in the afternoon and then had an early dinner at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Restaurant.

It was pretty good, and HUUUUUGE.  I would recommend ordering the fried chicken dinners — My adult son and I split and we still couldn’t eat even close to all of it.  it included:

• Soup
• Salad
• Biscuits (SO yummy, with their delicious KNOTTS jam)
• 4 pieces of chicken
• Mashed potatoes
• Corn
• Pie

All that is around $30.  I think 3 of us could have split that dinner!

Disney also has a great chicken dinner, at a bit lower price point, but less food.  I think their chicken is better (you can find it at the Plaza Inn at the end of Main street).

Pro Tip: Knotts has a bit different rules on what you can bring inside vs what you can bring to Disneyland, so be aware.

My favorite Knotts treat is to get the funnel cake but with the ice cream and the topping on the side. That way the funnel cake stays warm and doesn’t get mushy with all the liquids on it. They didn’t even hesitate when I asked for it on the side. So good after a long day at the park!

Knotts All Day Dining

This last time we went I tried the Knotts all-day dining package. It was around $37 I think. It allows you to get a full meal every 90 minutes. There were 3 of us, and we just got one. Obviously, it could be a GREAT value if you do it right:

• Get a meal every 90 minutes
• Enjoy the types of foods offered on this meal plan.

Some downsides:

Obviously, this is just for “one person” (although there are no rules about who can eat the food, they’re just very clear that only one person can purchase the food — you are given a wristband). So, THAT person has to stand in line to get the food each time.

This only includes MEALS. Much of the offered food is fries or burgers. During Our day, we got:

• Carne asada fries in the Fiesta Village
• Orange chicken from Panda Express
• Pizza & a salad

In total that food would have been around $45, and we just paid $32. But sadly, this meal plan does NOT include the delicious chicken dinner.

Pro Tip: The Boardwalk BBQ has HUGE meals and are included in the wristband — it was yummy, easily split-able and I’d recommend it!

You’re stuck. The Panda Express line stretched far out of the restaurant, but since I’d already paid the money I was stuck eating at those venues. I also couldn’t just decide we’d rather sit down for the chicken dinner.

Be aware of open/closing. There are no breakfast options on the meal plan, which made it so we couldn’t even get a meal til’ around 11. We’d hoped to get some tots, but that place was closed, so we went for Pizza. Just be aware of those things. Also, if you plan to leave early that limits how many meals you can get since it’s just one every 90 minutes.

The Lines for Food are Long — in reality, you almost need to get in LINE about every 75 minutes, because some of the lines are long. It was fine for me because my kids love big rides and I don’t mind sitting out — but again, something to think about. It did take up a considerable amount of my day.

Honestly, for the 3 of us, it was a decent amount of food for the day. The portions are pretty decent. If our boys were there, I would think 2 bands would do all of us for the day.

Pro Tip: What to BRING to Knotts is very similar to what to pack for Disneyland.

Knotts All-Inclusive Vacation:

As I was typing all of this up — you could get a REALLY sweet Knotts Vacation (pricing is current in July 2023)

• Stay 2-nights at the Knotts Hotel for $304
• Get a 1-day knotts ticket for $60-$70 (looks like weekends are higher)
• Option: Add Fast Lane in the Parks for $99-$119 (busier days being more expensive)
• Optional: Add the all-day eating for $32’ish (might be able to knock off a kid or two depending on if they’re big eaters)

For a family of 4, here’s your pricing (and I’m using average pricing)

• $564 without fast lane
• $964 with fast lane
• You’d even be just over $1,000 if you added in food.

This gives you a total of under $1000 for all the food and fun for 2 days (you’d only get one day of the food pass, I’d recommend splitting a couple of meals at the chicken dinner spot your first day).

I’ve recently seen some Knotts hotel packages that include fast lane — which is a nice option. I love going back to relax there in the afternoon!

Honestly, that’s less than just our Disneyland tickets cost us. Just putting that out there. Be sure to check out my Disneyland Budget. You can also get a better idea in my Disneyland All-Inclusive Packages post.

But, here’s some basic comparative pricing (and I want to be clear that most people visit Disneyland for more than one day, but I want to compare apples to apples):

• 1-day Ticket ($169-$104) I’m taking an average day at $144
• 2-nights at The Anaheim Hotel $430 (this is a similar type of hotel that is close to Disneyland)

The total for those for four is: $1,006 (so, basically double what Disneyland was)

If you add Genie the price goes up to $1106, and if you add park hopping to that it goes up to $1,366

Anyway, that’s just to give you some pricing ideas. The pricing does vary a bit depending on when you go, for both parks. I have a whole post on the cheapest time to go to Disneyland.

Knotts vs Disneyland at the Holidays

We actually attended Knott’s and Disneyland last fall for both of their Halloween festivities.

While Disneyland is certainly amazing at Halloween, I was really impressed by how Knotts did it up.  Our kids were able to trick or treat (no additional charge) and the ghost town was done up really fun.

A few of the rides (especially the log flume) were done up for Halloween.  Although, I am pretty sure my kids are scarred for life from the Log Flume — it’s a little weird, and the music is certainly an earworm.

Knotts does Knott’s Scary Farms in the evenings in the park and I hear it’s some of the scariest stuff in the area, which has ZERO appeal to me. So, there’s that.

They also do a “Knott’s spooky farm” during the day for the littles where ghosts hang out in the Ghost town. It’s pretty fun. Kids can even trick or treat on the weekends.

Disneyland again does Christmas up like crazy, but Knotts isn’t to be beaten with their Knotts Merry Farms!

Knotts also has their own festivals including the Knotts Boysenberry Festival (which sounds delicious).

Disneyland or Knotts Berry Farms: Final Answer.

While each definitely has its own place. A few thoughts:

If Disneyland tickets/hotel alone is going to stress your vacation budget to the max, go to Knotts — I think you’ll have a great time and feel less financial strain. BTW, check out my Disneyland Trip Calculator (which can easily be used for Knotts or any other trip).

If it is your visit to Southern California and can only pick one — pick Disneyland. Overall, it’s better, more iconic, and — something your family will always remember. There are tons of other fun things in Southern California as well!

If you’ve gone to Disneyland a few times, I say try Knotts! I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the decreased crowds, fun rides, good food, and enjoyable days!

All in all a trip to Knotts is a LOT of fun.  I think it’s different than Disneyland, but can be done for a LOT cheaper, and with a lot fewer lines (although I do have a whole post on how to skip the lines at Disneyland).

There are just SO many California Theme parks to choose from (which is awesome). Be sure to check out my post about Universal also (I even have one on the brand new Nintendo land).

All in all — Knotts is awesome for thrill-seekers, and Disneyland (for me) is more magical.  I am not a thrill-seeker though, and our kids absolutely love both parks.

If you liked this post, be sure to join my #1 tip for family travel:

The post Knotts Berry Farms vs Disneyland? Which one is right for you? appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts

You can also watch it here:

Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines you’ll see that a specific routine makes a big difference!

Today’s guest: Stephanie Straub is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Group Private Practice Owner in Syracuse, New York. She specializes in reproductive and maternal mental health, supporting women and families throughout their perinatal journey. When she’s not working she spends her time outdoors, watching junk reality TV, or reluctantly exercising. She is also the proud mother of two beautiful and active daughters. Find here here: www.cnytherapysolutions.com

Links for you:

Stephanie’s other episode (110) : https://www.pullingcurls.com/podcast-110-postpartum/

Timestamps:

00:00 “Bridging Parenthood Preparedness Gaps”

03:19 Inclusive Parenting Dynamics

06:49 Parental Shifts and Responsibilities

11:11 Navigating Partnership Dynamics

15:09 “Sunday Sit-Down: Weekly Planning”

17:45 “Prepping Kids for Vacation”

19:54 “Fair Play: Household Task Strategy”

23:02 “Weekly Meal and Relationship Check-In”

28:34 Navigating Life’s Changing Roles

30:57 Traditional Male Provider Stress

34:46 Empowering Others Through Support

38:54 “Teaching Kids ‘Notice and Do'”

42:13 Postpartum Challenges and Encouragement

43:48 “Sunday Sit Down Reflections”

Keypoints:

• The episode mainly focuses on changes in marital roles, particularly after a new baby is born and through various life changes.
• Hilary Erickson and Stephanie Straub discuss how marital roles are defined differently for each couple, emphasizing their responsibilities and tasks.
• There’s recognition of how support shifts postpartum, with Stephanie highlighting how things like taking a shower become major accomplishments.
• A focus was placed on how partners, especially new dads, also experience significant role changes during postpartum periods.
• Hilary shared insights from her birth class creation, emphasizing the importance of partners understanding and getting on the same page.
• They delve into the concept of the mental load, specifying how it’s often invisible but heavily carried by one partner, usually women.
• The “Sunday sit down” was introduced as a strategy for couples to plan the week and share responsibilities to balance the mental load.
• Hilary pointed out how roles naturally shift over time with children growing up, like when they start driving or start going to school.
• The discussion included how societal expectations shape gender roles and how they affect parenting dynamics.
• They emphasize the importance of communication and being on the same page to handle changes in family dynamics and reduce potential conflicts.

Producer: Drew Erickson

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Hey guys, welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 258, we are talking about changes in marital roles. Let’s untangle it.

[00:00:07] Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial over complicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and The Pregnancy Nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop over complicating things, and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled, The Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:00:37] This episode of The Pulling Curls Podcast is sponsored by Family Routines. If you are looking to make life easier, teach your kids the things they need to know, and prioritize what’s really important to you, come join us in Family Routines.

[00:00:50] Super excited for today’s guest. This is her second time on the Pulling Curls Podcast. She is a clinical social worker and a group private practice owner in Syracuse, New York. I found her on Tik TOK with mama therapy. I absolutely love her account. You totally need to follow her. I want to introduce today’s guest, Stephanie Straub.

[00:01:07] Hey, Stephanie, welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Hi, Hilary. Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be back. Yes. I’m so excited for our new format. We’re talking a little bit longer and it’s going to be so good. Okay. So today we are talking about marital roles. Stephanie, tell me like, what’s a definition of a marital role?

[00:01:25] Stephanie Straub: All right. Coming in hot with a hard one. I think the thing that makes this such a difficult subject is the definition is different, right? For it depends on the individual couple, but in general, I think it’s the responsibility, the task. The energy that each partner brings to the partnership, to the marriage.

[00:01:46] And specifically, my expertise is in providing support after a baby’s been born and when we’re kind of in the postpartum and parenting stage.

[00:01:55] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: And marital roles just go out the window at that point.

[00:01:58] Stephanie Straub: I think a lot of things go out the window

[00:02:00] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: For the woman, right? Because you feel horrible. You’ve had a major medical, which I think a lot of people don’t really like look at it that way, but they should, especially partners should be looking at it that way.

[00:02:11] You know, my appendix perforated last fall and when I came home, like I was like, I am going to get back to regular life. And I didn’t, Stephanie. I could barely get to the shower. So, you know, when something big happens, things change.

[00:02:27] Stephanie Straub: Because you’re a doer and a go getter and it’s like, okay, I could stay on top of things.

[00:02:32] And then all of a sudden something happened, like a surgery or like a new baby. That all of a sudden, it’s a miracle if you took a shower that day, that was a good day, right? It’s like a departure. Yeah, it’s like dating all over again.

[00:02:49] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: This is actually why when I, when I created my birth class like forever ago, over 10 years ago, I was like, how do I want to make mine different? Because I think the thing I brought to the table was that I’ve now been married 27 years. And I really understood how the dynamic changes and how little your partner understands about how things are going to change when baby comes home or what to expect and all those different kinds of things.

[00:03:11] And if you could just get on the same page, even like loosely on the same page, it really can make a difference. when that baby comes home.

[00:03:18] Stephanie Straub: Yeah. I don’t want to take, you know, if, if we’re speaking about kind of heterosexuals, cisgender roles, right? I don’t want to take the male out of the equation or the non birth.

[00:03:31] If, if, if it’s a same sex or relationship, I don’t want to take the non birth partner out of that because their world has also changed as well. But I think we focus so much on what’s going to happen. Getting, like, getting to the point of labor, delivery, bringing the baby home, taking care of the baby, that we kind of forget there are two other major layers that are going through something here, and there are going to have to be adjustments made on both sides.

[00:03:59] Of course, I’m very protective of the new mother because they just went through a major medical event. But for the dads or the partners, like, it’s happening to them too. That’s something major is happening. It can really throw you for a loop and it can impact the room.

[00:04:15] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: I will say that the longer, the further I got away from having babies of my own, the more I looked at the dads and felt a little bit more sorry for them.

[00:04:24] You know, right after I have a baby, I would just be like attacking those dads with my eye daggers, right? If they were like, in the corner, because I’m at a stage where my sons are closer to having babies than we are, right? Yeah, my youngest is now 16. So yeah, hopefully they have a baby in the next 16 years.

[00:04:44] Stephanie Straub: Yeah. Teach men how to do this. Do a real good job letting women know what their roles should be, right? I think we do. It’s a detriment of a lot of folks who struggle with balancing it all, but I don’t think it’s good of a job talking to young boys, young men, and new parents, new male fathers about what should their role look like in terms of being an emotional support, in terms of recognizing the invisible mental load, in terms of stepping into that space.

[00:05:15] You know, and I don’t want

[00:05:17] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: to turn off the people not having babies, too, because I think this applies to any major life event changes. Mom goes back to work. Dad goes back to work. Any type of thing like that. I think that this conversation relates to all big. Changes in family.

[00:05:31] Stephanie Straub: That’s a very good point. I start out with a lot of times people who are pregnant are really postpartum.

[00:05:36] They stay on with me, which I’m going to take as a compliment. They enjoy the work we’re doing. They feel good about it. It seems to be supportive, but not working with people who have kids who are five years old. I’ve been working with them since they were pregnant or people who just start with me later.

[00:05:51] And this is a huge mistake of… You know, maybe they were the go getter and the do it all and the manager, but then, and once we add, you know, career and babies or a whole, a home and, and now your parents are aging, you’re taking, like the stakes get higher, the responsibilities. And it’s like, Oh, like I can no longer do it all by myself.

[00:06:14] And they’re trying to call their partner in, the partner really hasn’t had to fill that space yet because they’ve been. They’ve been doing it, like they’ve been doing it on their own at that, and so it’s a big adjustment for both partners of like, I don’t like having to ask for help, so now I have to do it, right?

[00:06:32] And the, and the other partner is kind of like, I don’t know how to help. I don’t know how, I don’t know how to help. I don’t know. So tell me how to help. Well, then that feels like now I’m doing your mental work. Nobody told me what to do. You know, it’s this whole snowball effect. And then people come in here and they say, what do I do?

[00:06:49] So

[00:06:50] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah. And I think five is a big time where things shift because you’ve got one going to kindergarten. A lot of times then the mom’s like, I’m going to pick up more time at work. Um, you know, there’s, somehow we think their kids are going to go to school and that, like, our responsibility ends from eight to three or whatever, but for me, I then picked it up by helping more in the classroom, and I was, I was an idiot and was a PTA president, right?

[00:07:13] Like, we all Make choices that aren’t always the best, but you know, I think we look at this and we’re like, oh, we got through the postpartum thing, but I think all through parenthood, we’re in a zone right now where my youngest will soon be able to drive, right? And so that’s a big load off of high school.

[00:07:29] In high school, you are literally just a taxi driver. And now that we’re going to eliminate that in these coming months, what does that look like moving forward? How can we rebalance the load if one was the driver more, one wasn’t?

[00:07:41] Stephanie Straub: Right. Right, and I think, I think things have evolved where this generation’s partners, like, they might be doing more than their dads and their grandfathers did, but there’s still this issue with the mental load.

[00:07:57] Somebody still maybe has to tell them that something needs to be done, and that’s a lot. That’s a lot. And they’re willing to do it, but they might not recognize it needs to be done without the being instructed to do that. So I acknowledge that that’s not progress, but I think the demands on the American family have evolved a lot faster than these, these roles, marital roles in marriage and parenting.

[00:08:24] So as the demands on the family are increasing. Right? The, the shifts are not kind of shifting, uh, at the same rate.

[00:08:33] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah.

[00:08:34] Stephanie Straub: Yeah.

[00:08:34] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: And this whole mental load thing is something that is just like, women have always talked about it, right? Like we’re in charge of getting all the presents. We’re in charge of making sure kids get their yearly checkups, even if the part, even if our partner will take them to the checkups or come with us and support us in the checkups or help us pick a pediatrician.

[00:08:50] A lot of us still have all the kind of the mental work of that little task list that we’re like. Okay, they’re turning one. We also need to get an appointment. Okay, we also need to get a dental appointment. Okay. I don’t think we talked about that the first 15 years of my parenting. Maybe 12 years. I think it’s just in the last five years, maybe, that this has really started to come up, that people are verbalizing, because I would just be like, why do I have to make the to do list, right?

[00:09:14] Stephanie Straub: Yeah. Yeah. So interestingly enough, I was working with a client a while back who was struggling with this in their partnership and she saw me for therapy. Her partner was also in therapy and God bless her partner, went to therapy and said, my wife is asking this from me. I’m really struggling. I don’t know how to do it.

[00:09:34] And that therapist told her partner. It’s a list of the things you could do that would help reduce her mental load. Now I have to write a list of what you could do to reduce my mental load. Whereas, I think the frustration is we can see the garbage is over. Both can see the garbage is overflowing. Or we both know that kids need to get their teeth cleaned every six months.

[00:10:01] We both know, right? And what’s huge is Default parent that that’s what it’s on. And again, that can work for a certain amount of time until it doesn’t. It can really create a wedge in our, in our approach. So.

[00:10:18] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: And honestly, the default parent, it changes, right? So just recently our, our school likes to change the communication method about every six months, I swear.

[00:10:28] And so I was getting the emails and my husband wasn’t getting the emails because I had gone through and clicked all the 600 boxes that I needed to get the emails and he was just like, whatever. But, you know, my appendix ruptures. And I’m still like, Hey, did you know that Paige has testing today? Hey, did you know, you know, and I’m like, why is why we are both parents?

[00:10:47] We both have email. Why is this always falling on me to check the email and know what’s going on with her at school where it’s had worked prior to that? Because I again was fully functioning and had was right, right.

[00:11:00] Stephanie Straub: Um, but

[00:11:00] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: you never know, like there was no, we didn’t plan my appendix to rupture. You just never know.

[00:11:05] Or I go to a conference and all of a sudden I’m at the conference and I’m having to send him a text and be like, did you see the email? And he goes, what email? And then I’m like, right.

[00:11:14] Stephanie Straub: Yeah. And so I think there’s a couple of things that we can do around this to address it. And again, it works until it doesn’t work.

[00:11:21] So if you’re in that role, there’s typically one person in the partnership, it’s a little bit more of the manager and the plan B, one who is and one who isn’t, and then they marry each other. And so there is necessarily an issue or a dysfunction in one person being a little bit more on top of these things, or just maybe it’s a little bit more aware, but it’s when we couple.

[00:11:43] This person into partnership, do they hop on board? But I think one thing that people who are the doers and that they have to struggle with is watching something potentially fall apart or crumble, right? A ball get dropped and watching somebody struggle and the tragic and the desire to swoop in and prevent that and fix that.

[00:12:06] Right? For the other person. And I think sometimes it has to be, because it’s a big deal thing. And I think sometimes it does have to be. You don’t have to… The mistake can be made, the ball can be dropped, made out of rubber, it’ll bounce back. Sometimes they’re made out of glass and they won’t, right? And so you do have to step in.

[00:12:26] Just let the mess up happen. Because there is no greater teacher and it works way better if you’re saying you need to do this and you need to do that. So I think sometimes the person who is the doer and the planner and the manager needs to step back even if we know Something’s like something’s maybe not being done the way we would do it.

[00:12:47] Maybe something’s gonna be missed. We can let it happen. We can let it happen. And if there’s a consequence or repercussion Right? That will be the learning tool.

[00:12:57] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah. Or it’s just a different way to do something, right? Because I worked, I worked dinner time when my kids were little. I worked 3 to 11 and my husband wouldn’t plan meals every day like I would.

[00:13:08] So a lot of times it was mac and cheese or like fried rice, just kind of like whatever. He was feeding the children, they were getting fed, but I was bothered that it wasn’t the way that I was doing it. And finally a friend was just like, you just have to let him do it the way he’s going to do it. And then if you want to, you load up extra vegetables on your day.

[00:13:25] Stephanie Straub: Yes. Yeah. That’s a, that’s a great point of just because it’s different, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s wrong, you know, and, and, and that’s okay. And we can sit back and we might always feel some level of distress about it, right? But we can sit in that, that distress.

[00:13:44] In pursuit of what’s best for the relationship because if you are harping on, Hey, I need you to help out with dinner and then they help out with dinner and they’re like, no, not that way. Well, what’s that in the relationship? That’s not going to feel good for your partner and creates a marital rut.

[00:13:58] Where we’re kind of parentifying one partner over the other, that’s going to wear everyone down. So it’s important where we can to sit back.

[00:14:08] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: I totally agree. I think that it is hard, especially when you feel like, these are my kids, we’re ruining them. You know, especially with young kids, like teenagers I’ve given up ruining them.

[00:14:19] And especially, my daughter should know that stuff is going on at school. She’s a sophomore in high school. If they’re having testing, it really should be her job to be like, Hey, we have testing tomorrow. I’ll need a ride home early or whatever the case may be. Right. But I, of course, wanted to swoop in and make sure that she was just taken care of in every little need.

[00:14:36] Stephanie Straub: Sure. And again, I’ll go back to that, that trusty old soapbox. That’s kind of what we’re told to do. Like, right. That we’re kind of the emotional caregivers for everybody and everybody, everybody and everything. Right? And that’s kind of what our role is. And if something happened, like we feel unnecessarily a lot of the times guilty about it.

[00:14:57] Yeah. One thing that I encourage for couples that I, that I work with, and I say couples, I don’t actually do couples work any longer, but I do couples work by proxy, if that makes any sense. Right? So I’m working with the individual they’re coming in. I recommend this to pretty much everyone and it’s called the Sunday sit down.

[00:15:15] I would love to give credit to whoever I, wherever I picked this up from, but, and it doesn’t have to be Sunday, but I like the observation, down on a Sunday evening with your partner. And we will look together at the calendar and somebody might be more of the leader in in the partnership and the pairing where they’re the one who’s going to come in with a suggestion to do it.

[00:15:37] And they’re the one who might sit down and say, okay, remember, we have let’s do it at seven. And you look at every coming up in the next 7 days. This is where this kid needs to be at this time in this day in this. Instead of saying, instead of positioning oneself to say, you do it, you do it, you do it, you do it, I’ll do it, right?

[00:15:57] We just say, all right, all right, I’m gonna do that. Or, you know, there’s a dentist appointment on Thursday that needs to be, Joey needs to be taken to. Who’s gonna do that? Instead of positioning oneself as the delegator of the test, Really allow yourself to be in partnership with your partner and together decide who’s going to take on ones.

[00:16:21] And I think that that really helps because there’s no assumption it’s discussed and there’s not one person who is in charge of giving out the task and decided to put together. So while there may be one person who might more aware of the tasks, that’s the starting points. Right? Because once the person takes them to the dentist appointment, well, what happens at the end of that dentist appointment?

[00:16:48] We make the next appointment, right? And now, now they’ve scheduled the next appointment and they’re the keeper of that mount. They’re the one who’s bringing it. Does that make sense?

[00:16:58] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yes. Yeah. It is crazy how much, I don’t know if it’s just women, but we just, all the things that are in our brain that don’t ever come out.

[00:17:08] Um, I think a Sunday sit down, especially like birthday parties, that was always just like… my kid would get a birthday party invitation at school and I would just crumble because I’d be like, Oh my gosh, we have to go to the store and find a present. I’m going to have to get him to the birthday party. I’m going to have to pick him back up or I had to stay at the birthday party.

[00:17:24] You know, the whole time, whereas my husband would be like, great, you’re going to Cooper’s birthday, right? But he didn’t realize that, you know, there was the getting the gift there was, and he’s a much better about this now. And I just think it took some time to be like, can you take her to get the gift? To verbalize all those things that come in our head with the invitation.

[00:17:44] Right?

[00:17:45] Stephanie Straub: Yes. And I had another place that I was working with that was just planning a vacation. You know, and it was like a spring, spring or February break. So, you know, they have to pack the kids, but it’s not as simple as like getting the stuff from, from last season and throwing it in a suitcase. You know, the funny thing about kids, they grow up.

[00:18:03] Yes. It’s all last summer. Fight not. When we go to Florida, and if they don’t, then I have to go and get new stuff or go shopping for new stuff, and we have to try that on, right? And the partner was unaware of this. And there’s one BAM superwoman in the partnership that like kind of does it all, and, and that’s like a badge that they wear.

[00:18:28] And, but they burn out, right? So they’re not talking about the fact that they’re doing this stuff. And so again, until they’re maxed out and now they’re like, and burn out. So, so yeah, so it wasn’t until they shared with their partner, Oh my gosh, I was so stressed out at work today because I was thinking about this.

[00:18:45] And their partner was like, wait, what? I had no awareness that this is what was going on behind this. Yeah.

[00:18:52] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Trip planning is a big one with a mental load, right? Because my husband’s just like, I’ll put the bags in the car, right? Like he’s just thinking, we’ll just get things. It’s kind of like that the actual tasks of the trip, right?

[00:19:07] Yeah. The, instead of like the finding the hotel, booking the rental car, for me, that was always a really tough time. And then we would get on the vacation and things would start to go wrong. And I would blame myself that things were going wrong, even though I had done everything that I could. Right. Have you?

[00:19:22] Is Stephanie, am I the only one here?

[00:19:25] Stephanie Straub: No, no, no. I hear that. Yeah. How talk about the things that need to be done in the home send a message. Like, I need you to empty the dishwasher. Can you help me get the kids back? That kind of conveys, it sends a message that this is my task, that you’re Give helping me out with this is a favor you’re doing for me as if a dishwasher or the bathing of the kids It’s only my responsibility so I think to Talk about these things like like Joey has a dentist appointment this week instead of saying I need you to take Joey to the dentist Right, or can you help me in taking Joey to the dentist?

[00:20:06] I think it kind of shifts the vibe and the tone around and a great tool for this the book Fair Play Is, and there’s a podcast and there’s also a documentary called Fair Play. It gives some strategy, real strategies. And the book actually comes with, or you can order with the book, the sets of cards. And these cards, all the different jurisdictions in the home and the family.

[00:20:33] And the couple’s down and they divvy up. Okay. Who’s going to do what? And when it comes to something like birthday party, right? It’s if you take on the kid’s friend’s birthday parties, it is from conception to execution. So if, if Joey, this imaginary child, Joey, Joey gets an invitation, then the parent who’s involved in that, whose jurisdiction that is, they get that invitation and the other parent doesn’t do anything about it.

[00:21:02] That’s your job. And we don’t go in there and micromanage to make sure it’s getting done a certain way. It’s that parent’s job. And from, okay, and I’m going to put it on the calendar and I’m going to make sure that, that the gift gets purchased and I’m going to make sure that they get there, you know, or I coordinate for a carpool or whatever, right?

[00:21:20] That is that parent’s job, and the other parent has to sit back and let it happen without their in micromancy yet.

[00:21:27] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: So what do you do though if their appendix bursts, right? And then Joey as a party, so then is that they saying, Hey, we have a party on Saturday, can you help me? Is that the point when you say, can you help me?

[00:21:39] Get Joey to the party, right, because we’re still gonna, stuff’s gonna happen, people get sick.

[00:21:43] Stephanie Straub: I’ve worked with a couple that, that uses these cards, and they sit down every so often, and they, like, re divvy out the cards, because, again, like, things change, you know. I have a 14 year old and 11 year old, and dad would do haircuts.

[00:21:58] Well, it only took one really bad haircut for my oldest daughter, about a year and a half ago. And it was like, we can no longer just take them to the little hole in the wall salon around the corner. She wants like a real big girl haircut. So like, I took that responsibility back because, kind of a girl thing, and I had a good person.

[00:22:21] And so, I took that back. But then we shift things around, right? So, so, things change that, that. Uh, here’s the shuffling of the cards. For sure. Yeah, that’s a really good point.

[00:22:35] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: It’s And I’m It’s because

[00:22:38] Stephanie Straub: For a season, it might, it might be a permanent change or it might just be for a season.

[00:22:42] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Well, and ultimately that will get to be a very light load, right?

[00:22:46] Because she can then, at some point, she gonna take that card, right? She’ll make her appointment. She knows the hair girl. She’ll text her. She’ll make the appointment. She might even drive herself there. Right? So ultimately we’re trying to give all the cards back to the kids except for like make our own beds.

[00:23:02] Stephanie Straub: Right? Right. For sure. For sure, but yeah, but, but I think having regular communication about, so if those Sunday sit downs, we talk about the meals and who, and like what we’re going to plan and this and that, and who’s cooking and all that kind of stuff, and we’re doing that together, then I think part of that Sunday sit down can be an emotional or relational check in.

[00:23:25] So, what works this past week, what didn’t work this past week, and if it didn’t work, you can’t just be like, this didn’t work, right? You gotta come in with some sort of solution connected to that, right? This didn’t really work for me, and again, it’s relational or emotional, right? But it’s great to have a space that you’re regularly gonna sit down and check in with each other on that level as well.

[00:23:47] When it is calm, because the worst is when Joey, you know, it’s Friday night, the party’s tomorrow, he hasn’t gotten the gift, you don’t know how he’s getting there, all those different kinds of things, right?

[00:23:58] Yes, when it’s calm, and it’s sometimes removed from the incident, because I know for, for in my relationship, there are things and I’m like, ah, it bothers me.

[00:24:08] And so I might just kind of make a note of it. And, um, and I’m not kidding. I literally, that’s the notes section in my cell phone, right? I’ve just like, I just might be something that I want to talk about. And by the time you’re like, so that thing anymore, but in the moment, it was a thing, right? Leslie, that helps too, if we can prove ourself from it a little, and it might not even be worth talking about, or if you’re 60s later and you’re still like, no, yeah, I’m gonna talk about it.

[00:24:38] Right? Yeah.

[00:24:40] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: That’s a great idea though, to just be able to like chart it on a, however you’re going to write it down and then you can reflect on it and be like, was that me micromanaging? Because that’s definitely a problem in my relationship. I want things done a specific way and I’ve ultimately had to decide that if I really want it done that way, then I’m going to need to be the one that does it.

[00:24:58] Right. Yeah. We all learned that. We all learned that. I think with time.

[00:25:04] Stephanie Straub: And it’s harder about it. So I don’t. So when it comes to the holidays in my marriage, I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it because it was important that it be done a certain way. And I had a problem with the fact that, that my ex husband didn’t really contribute at the same level.

[00:25:22] It took years to go. But I could come back and be like, well, if you, right, right. So I couldn’t come back and say that. So that was my jurisdiction was happy to take that on as my jurisdiction. And there were other things that, that my partner did, but that’s okay too. Like you can hear things that are like, this is, I want this.

[00:25:42] But then we can’t complain that you’re the only one doing it.

[00:25:45] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah. That happened early in our marriage with laundry. My husband wants laundry folded a specific way and I was like, God bless, enjoy the laundry. Because that was also a test that I was fine that he put off for a while. He could do it on the weekends.

[00:25:57] He was a teacher. So I didn’t care if laundry piled up. I wanted it clean so we could grab something out of the basket. But if he wanted to let it pile up and then, and then do a bunch of the loads on a specific day, that was fine. So I ran the laundry and he folded it and, and that worked out just fine because he was picky.

[00:26:12] We all have our picky things. I think a lot of times people think, Oh, it’s only the woman who has the picky things, but that is not the case at all. I don’t think

[00:26:19] Stephanie Straub: no, no, that, Oh no. I think we all have our, our stuff for sure. I think we all have our stuff for sure, but I, I like having. That time, like, that we prioritize to sit down and to talk about those things.

[00:26:33] Because if you’re somebody who maybe gets a little anxious, like, this bothers me and I need to share, I’m having a thought or an emotion, which means I obviously need to share it immediately in the moment, right? It doesn’t always work, right? Because we might be, like you said, might be emotional or reactive.

[00:26:49] So it’s that time later that we know we can address it should we feel like we need to. And that may bring some of that anxiety down in the moment, knowing, I do, I will have a space to address this later if I need to. For people, if they’re not maybe naturally inclined to bring stuff up on their own, provides them a platform to do that, where they don’t necessarily have to be the initiator of a potentially uncomfortable…

[00:27:16] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah. So they sit down for the win. And especially, I think we have to then verbalize all those things that were in our brain, right? It’s not just the dental appointment, it’s scheduling the dentist appointment, having a trigger in our mind so the dental appointment needs to happen, and talking about those things if we’re not going to get the fair play cards.

[00:27:32] I don’t know how deep the fair play cards go, like, do they say schedule the dental appointment, take the dental appointment, or is it just like dental appointment?

[00:27:40] Stephanie Straub: I’m not entirely sure, like, I think it’s like dental appointments and then together you guys decide, like, what all of that entails.

[00:27:50] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: You know, but I think we have to be better about talking about all the mental things that come with whatever our task is.

[00:27:56] So I am the financial good person in our house. Like I do the taxes and I get everything in and sometimes my husband will just like, send me an email with attachment, whatever the file is, right? His W nine or whatever they’re called and I’m like, can you just put it in the drive? You know, and it would have taken him just as long to put it in the drive as it would to email me.

[00:28:17] But if he emails them to me, then I have to download, then upload, put it in the drive. Right. And so when we use our words to just say, Hey, this is the drive. When you get things, can you put it in there? That would be great. Right. Instead of just sucking it up and being angry about it.

[00:28:34] Stephanie Straub: Yep, exactly. Like how our roles change, whether it’s like a baby being born or, or a child going off to college is like another big like, this is where it’s now like, okay, I have time that I didn’t have before or a child driving or, or an illness or an ailing parent or something like that.

[00:28:54] The thing that goes unrecognized is, there’s a little bit of loss that goes, a lot of loss that is connected to these shifts and changes. And with any sort of loss. There can be the potential for feelings of so obviously lives change and shift and individuals change and shift and I think it’s okay to say, and look back both as an individual or with her of like, remember when we were kids, right, we were just dating and and we could just.

[00:29:31] Sleep in or eat cereal for dinner, or it was a lot easier to kind of be fun loving or impulsive. And some of those things have to change and there’s. Sometimes your sadness is connected to that. And sometimes your sadness is connected to watching our, our roles change and our partner’s roles change.

[00:29:55] That’s okay.

[00:29:55] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: And I think that Sunday sit down is a great time to be like, doesn’t it kind of make you sad that we’re not chauffeuring her around anymore? Because I’m sure I might feel that I’m not going to feel it right now, right in the middle of it. But I’m sure. When I’m no longer in the car with her constantly hearing about all the boy problems at school, I’ll probably be a little bit sad that I don’t have that time anymore.

[00:30:15] I’ll also probably be a little bit happy and that’s okay too.

[00:30:18] Stephanie Straub: Right, right. I probably have some of the best conversations with my 14 year old in the car on the way to gymnastics. Yeah. Um, because yeah, there’s something about it that that’s just where we open up. And, um, right. And so we can have two feelings at the same time, same thing.

[00:30:35] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah, and this is especially true with a new baby. I think I was like, I don’t even know who I am. There was a person that I was just a few weeks ago, and that person is completely lost. And I don’t, I don’t, I’m never gonna find her again. I don’t know where she is. Right, because I just want to cry all the time and every thought in my whole life is about this baby and I have no idea what I’m doing and I used to be really competent at what I was doing.

[00:30:57] Stephanie Straub: Yeah. And again, I’m going to speak a little bit to kind of a cisgendered heterosexual partnership, but I do want to hold space for males who are conditioned that their job is to be the provider. And how that feels a lot heavier, and there’s a baby involved, and that’s scary, I think, for a lot of partners that have just started expanding their family, to feel like, okay.

[00:31:26] Now, it just all got real and now I have to provide as well. And right, wrong, or indifferent, that’s a stressful position to be in. So I want to hold space for that, that role changing of, you know.

[00:31:41] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah. And I see dads who have been really, you know, in the trenches with the mom the whole time. And when people are in labor, you see that dad just feels so helpless.

[00:31:50] Especially if things are going wrong. They don’t know if there’s anything they can do. They wish they could do something. They wish they had some, they, they, they have no control, right? There’s nothing. They just have to sort of sit there and watch and support, which they may or may not be good at anyway.

[00:32:04] Stephanie Straub: And so this sucks. So I think this is a three hour podcast, right? This happens in partnerships, any kind of relationships, but awful feeling. And I think childbirth, it’s probably. Maybe one of the worst spaces, but that that partners feel it of absolute helplessness. A lot of times people want to be problem solvers for the people that they love, right?

[00:32:29] Problem I want to solve it and they may come in with like suggestions or how can I fix it or whatever and that feels Invalidating to the person sharing the problem, right? But sometimes there is no there is no Solution to the problem like right other than delivering the baby, right that further can’t do anything, right?

[00:32:48] Well, you know, they can’t really do anything until that baby’s born like that’s that’s on mom You know, that’s on the birthing person. And so I think that that can be a real struggle when it comes to like, now, once that baby’s here, breastfeeding, what can the partner do where the skill will kind of empathy and validation is so, so there’s just getting in the hole with somebody, right?

[00:33:12] So a lot happens is, you know, some body that we care about is struggling. We, we kind of envision that they’re at the bottom of like this dark hole. And it’s like cold and damp and muddy and stinky and it’s just like right and it’s just blegh. Nobody wants to be in a hole. What we ought to do is we stand at the top of that hole down.

[00:33:34] We say valuable than that, right? Tell you in that, but it’s called power. Well, as you go in the hole with the person and you just sit with them and bear witness to how icky that hole really is. And. I’m really sorry, this is awful. This sucks, and I’m so sorry you’re going through it. So incredibly helpful. And it’s so, so simple yet, yet a lot of times our distress around watching the people that we love struggle prevents us from being able to just get in it with them and sit in it with them and just say, yeah, this is awful and you’re so sorry it’s happened to you.

[00:34:17] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: At what point do you decide you show them there’s a ladder in the hole or you think there’s a ladder, but the ladder may break, right? Or you can, you can easily jump out of the hole, right? Cause you have all this upper body strength because you work out or, you know. Right. They always struggle with the whole, let’s sit in the hole together.

[00:34:35] Like that’s usually what I start with is let’s sit in the hole together. But then if they seem so frustrated, I’m like, but there’s a ladder right here. Or you know, if you just learned to jump harder, you could get out of this hole or whatever.

[00:34:45] Stephanie Straub: Right. Well, I think, and this is as a kind of part of my role too, because like, right, I’ve got ladders, right.

[00:34:52] To help them, like, here are my degrees, right? Let me show you how to do it. Right. It has to be with their consent. So sometimes depending on the situation we’re sitting there and we, and just sitting there and hold them space and bearing witness empowers them enough to like, figure out how to climb their way out on their own, right?

[00:35:11] Suggestions wrong with offering that, but I think. It has to be with their thoughts about this. Are you interested? Right? Right. I mean, that would say, right? So I’m so sorry. It’s terrible. I wish I could help you. Right. Cause sometimes there’s nothing we can do to help. Right. Uh, I wish I could help you and you know, or I wish I had the perfect words for this or whatever.

[00:35:34] Like, so we could share that and sit in it with them and it was something that to feel like a potential solution to we, we feel like we’ve got a potential ladder to help now. Then we can all accept that. But again, they don’t have, they don’t have to consent to it. And that’s not personal. It feels personal.

[00:35:53] Like, why don’t you want my ladder? Why aren’t you interested in that? Right? It’s not personal. They’re insured. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so it, you can offer the ladder, but I would start with the validation and the getting in the hole. Then you can say, hey, if you’re interested in that, and then if they’re interested, then you can offer it.

[00:36:12] So

[00:36:12] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: that’s a great analogy of like getting in the hole with people and I think we have to do that with our partner because I think we’re real, real quick to be like, we’ve got a ladder to get out, you know, this situation that you are in with our kids, right? Well, I’m going to start with this,

[00:36:28] Stephanie Straub: like what I do, right?

[00:36:30] So these don’t just stay at the office, right? So I think, of course, I’ve got a ladder for everyone, my kids, my partner, my sister, my friend, the male, you know, I’ve got a ladder. Right. And so I really have, I really, really have to, and I’m sure you experiences maybe it with lots of things, but like, especially in the medical space of like, Oh, I know what to do about that.

[00:36:52] Right. Because that’s your, your expertise. And so, sometimes I really have to check my shuffle a bit around, like, to answer any of that.

[00:37:00] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah, and I have to, as a nurse especially, I have to realize that my ladder just may not align with what they’re wanting, right? My ladder might be, why don’t you just get induced, when they are so adamant that they don’t want to be induced, right?

[00:37:10] So, my ladder is of no use to them, even though I figure that’s the ladder that could get them out of this hole.

[00:37:15] Stephanie Straub: Right, right.

[00:37:17] Yeah.

[00:37:18] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Well, I love the idea of the Sunday sit down. I think that’s something that I’m going to implement for this. And I think no matter what your family looks like, that is something you could implement because especially as my kids get older, they’re taking some of the fair play cards of their own.

[00:37:33] I may need a comms place where I can be like, Hey, I noticed that you missed a couple of assignments this week. You know, is there, is there ways that I can support you better in that or, you know, with the husband where we miss a birthday party and some kids just totally, you know, taken back by that, you know, we can talk about how things got missed and it wasn’t going to take over.

[00:37:53] Right. Instead of in the moment being like, I told you,

[00:37:56] Stephanie Straub: yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it’s a useful tool, and for whatever reason, I suggested it, and I think people are a little resistant to it. But then the folks that do follow through on it come back, and I’ve never had somebody say, It wasn’t helpful. It wasn’t helpful.

[00:38:11] But it does, it does require intention. It does require intention, so.

[00:38:15] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: I gotta say, we did therapy after 2020, and I was shocked by how much of therapy is really just having a discussion. Together, because my husband doesn’t want to take less of the load than I do. That’s not the person that I married. He’s not looking to take the easy way out.

[00:38:29] He’s not looking to ignore my mental load. He simply just doesn’t see it like that’s not part of his, like who he is, right? And so the more I discuss it, the more he realizes, okay, this is something I can do. I realized that it’s just not something he saw, right? And there’s things I don’t see like home improvement.

[00:38:48] I’m like, that wall can stay chipped forever. I do not care. But to him, he’s like, well, we’re going to paint that, right?

[00:38:54] Stephanie Straub: Yes. Yeah. And I think, and I just saw something recently where a mother was talking about how she is teaching her children. The skill of notice and do notice and do, and I thought that was so great.

[00:39:10] Like, so rather than like a chore chart where there’s value in that for sure. But it was more of a, if you notice X, then do Y around that. So if you know that you took the last paper towel off the roll, the household expectation would be that you go, you get a. So I think that that’s a really great skill so that like the next generations were teaching that.

[00:39:40] Male and female and everything between that we’re teaching that. That’s what contributes to the the household as opposed to one person is the delegator of all the tasks and the seer of all the things. Yeah.

[00:39:54] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Well, and that’s awesome with kids, right? Because they might not realize that they have to get a birthday present.

[00:39:59] Right? So when the kid gets the invitation, then you sit down and you’re like, okay, we have a party on Friday. Can you go. Right? We have to look at the family calendar. Then we have, you know, going through the mental load steps instead of mom always being the one that’s like, I’m just going to grab the present while I’m at Target.

[00:40:14] We’re not even going to deal with it. But teaching kids those steps so that they realize how they can take on those things on their own. And then hopefully someday with these boys that I have, they are taking more of the mental load. And, you know, my husband is 6, 000 times better than his dad at all of these parenting tasks.

[00:40:31] My hope, and I think his hope also is that our boys are 6, 000 times better than he is so that we’re ultimately. Just making life a lot easier for everybody.

[00:40:39] Stephanie Straub: Absolutely. And again, I go back to, this is kind of how for generations, males and females have been kind of social, and moms and dads and all, right?

[00:40:49] And wives, husbands and wives, that’s how kind of we socialize. And so, it’s taking, it’s gonna take time to continue to undo that, and to kind of learn new ways, in the midst of a million other things changing in the world, right? And so, yes, while each generation gets better. Right? We can continue to build up for sure and influence the next generation.

[00:41:15] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: And we’re all going to have missteps along the way, both of us, and we have to be, we have to allow that because we’re all just here learning. We’re all just people.

[00:41:23] Stephanie Straub: Yes, this is true. So I hope this is a takeaway, I hope there are little tidbits that folks use and you find valuable.

[00:41:32] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yeah, I think there will be.

[00:41:33] And I got to tell people that I think this is something that absolutely every couple struggles with. Because we’re different people and shockingly, we can’t read each other’s minds, which is really annoying in a couple.

[00:41:44] Stephanie Straub: I mean, that’s probably a double edged sword. Sometimes I don’t want to know what’s going on, but, but I will say, and, and I may have shared this with you previously, but when I’m working with a newly postpartum mom who’s dealing with distress or depression, anxiety, or whatever the case may be, I know that they’re, that is starting to resolve when they start to come in and complain about it, right?

[00:42:07] That is normal, right? That is, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know. There’s a couple, I don’t like, yes, that is what pretty much I would say every couple of months. After having a baby and bringing it to the home. So I always feel encouraged. I know they’re in a new brand of distress, but I’ve always encouraged, oh, that the original brand of distress that brought you in here, the depression and the anxiety is getting to be a little bit more resolved.

[00:42:34] It’s no longer our acute, acute, most pressing issue. If we’re coming in and just being like, gosh, I feel like I need to protect this. And he does. If it’s like, okay, yeah, okay. Get on with stuff. So yes,

[00:42:46] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: It’s very, very normal. If you’re out there thinking Hilary of 27 years has got this solved, I absolutely do not.

[00:42:53] And we, we still travel this bumpy road frequently in my house.

[00:42:57] Stephanie Straub: Yeah, for sure.

[00:42:57] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Stephanie, I think people need to follow you on TikTok. It’s mamatherapy, right?

[00:43:02] Stephanie Straub: Mamatherapy on TikTok. Yep.

[00:43:03] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Yes. She gives such good little nuggets because I’m not in therapy currently, but I loved… I just saw one about grief and how grief, your life gets bigger and that makes grief a little bit smaller, but it’s still going to hit your pain button.

[00:43:15] And I was like, that is so perfect. So I think it’s so nice to get little nuggets of therapy. Well, I’m on TikTok from you, so I hope the people will follow you. Are you on Instagram, too? I mean, we all are, because who knows, by the time this airs, maybe TikTok will be a thing of the past.

[00:43:30] Stephanie Straub: Who knows? Who knows?

[00:43:31] I am on Instagram, and it’s just my name, Stephanie Straub, L C S W.

[00:43:35] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: And we’ll link that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for all the work that you do with moms and couples out there. I think it is a great work, and I’m so glad there are people out there like you.

[00:43:45] Stephanie Straub: Thank you, Hilary.

[00:43:46] This was a real delight. I appreciate it.

[00:43:48] Hilary Erickson | The Pregnancy Nurse®: Okay. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I just thought it was, I love that Sunday sit down because doing things when things are calm, which Sunday nights tend to be a little bit more calm at my house. Really makes such a different and when you’re like carving out time and it just happens every week, then it gives you that chance to say, Hey, this didn’t work out for me when things are calm.

[00:44:07] I think that’s such a good idea. I want to know what you guys took from the episode. Come find me over on Instagram where we can keep the discussion going. Tell me how you adjust to changes in marital roles. And if you have as many issues with it as I do, even though I’ve been married for what seems like a very long time, also a short time though, too.

[00:44:23] Thanks for being here with us.

[00:44:25] Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls Podcast today. If you liked today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you.

Keywords:

Marital roles, changes in relationship, mental load, postpartum, parenting, collaboration, Sunday sit down, task delegation, communication, partnership, life event changes, relationship dynamics, support system, emotional support, role adjustment, family routines, gender roles, household responsibilities, emotional check-in, mental health, parenting challenges, time management, calendar coordination, division of labor, problem-solving, relationship strategies, therapy, life balance, relationship growth, division of tasks.

The post Lessons in Partnership: Adapting to Changes in Marital Duties With Stephanie Straub of CNY Therapy Solutions appeared first on Pulling Curls.

I have an email I can send you that specifically addresses some of the financial stuff:

Organize Your Accounts

This one is an easy one that is SO smart to have available no matter what happens to you even in the next few weeks.

That’s to get all of your accounts. I’d list the kind of account it is, the last 4 digits, the number to call and website if possible.

For me, I had a 401k for every place I’d worked. When I did this I realized I should just combine them at the same time.

Was it fun? Absolutely not, but combining them helped simplify all of this a lot.

Ultimately, we have one brokerage account for all the things that aren’t currently held with a job (aka, jobs we’ve left — we pour any of the money in retirement accounts there, into our own brokerage accounts).

Yes, this means I have several accounts with this company, but it is still easier than having many at multiple different places.

So, this step is to gather all of those into a specific spot. This includes any money they need to gather should you die. That includes:

• Bank accounts
• Retirement accounts
• Life Insurance
• Pension with a death benefit account

Be it an email you send to your family, we have a spreadsheet that I update with any changes that my parents, husband and adult kids all have access to. And yes, I named it something like “in case I die” so they can look it up fairly easily.

Is this the absolute most secure thing? Probably not — but all of them having access to it helps a lot. You will have to balance security with your family having access should they need it.

This is free to do, and once you have the money for the next step — it’s going to make it a lot easier!

(this next step does require some cash)

Make a Will/Living Trust

I have a whole post on how to make a will without a lawyer. We ended-up using a paralegal, or you could use something like Legal Zoom (honestly, if we didn’t have a business that probably would have worked the best for us).

We ended up spending about $1,000 — and Legal Zoom is around $600 — but we did have an LLC that we had to work into it, and she did some field work putting our home in our trust, etc. When I got quotes from lawyers it was close to $5,000 which just seems insane. It really is a lot of paperwork that software can easily put together.

Pro Tip: Once you put your home into the trust, you want to be sure that you also change your home owner’s insurance beneficiary. I have heard they can deny your claim if they don’t match.

I’m not going to dive too deep into it because this post is SO helpful:

An In Case You Die File

Ok, you put your accounts all in one spot, but I think it’s also smart to have a document file with anything necessary that your family would need.

This will vary by what phase of life you’re in, and what types of things you mange in your family.

It might need to be the kid’s pediatrician (if your husband has no idea who that is).

For me, it’s a lot of business practices, and who my family would contact to keep my business going.

A big one in here is passwords — I am a huge fan of password managers that you family also has access to.

When I went in for a recent appendix surgery I just kept thinking if my husband knew all the things he needed to know, but I knew that if he had my master password, he’d do alright.

Declutter

Here’s another one you can do, for free. It’s not going to creep you out, but it’s going to make life easier when you someday need to move on. Be that a new home or retirement living.

You can do this slowly. Take it one cabinet, or one shelf at a time. Or, take on a whole room.

I do recommend taking everything out of whatever area you’d trying to work through. I give some of my best tips in my 5-word challenge:

Check-Out Your Next Step

The thing I learned the most when I moved my parents into assisted living is that I wish we had toured this places years ago. I wish we’d gotten on waiting lists years ago.

Most often you can get on the waiting list for free of a small fee. They will contact you when they have an opening — you can say “not ready yet” or you can decide now’s the time.

My dad ended-up touring them on his own, and my mom had a surprise new home once she left rehab. I mean, they talked about it — but she wasn’t able to tour them like she probably would have liked to.

I know it’s not something you want to think about — but it’s important — and will be an important investment in your future.

I have a whole post about moving my parents into retirement living that dives deeper into that process.

And, if you’re an over-achiever you can also consider:

• Looking into an estate sale company if you think you’ll use one (I wish we’d done more research)
• Buy a plot where you’d like to be buried (somehow my parents did that WELL before they did any of these other things).
• Consider what mortuary you’d like to use, and jot down any notes you’d like at your services.

Honestly, I’m not sure that it’s ever too early to do some of these things. We never know when our time will come. Some of them are fairly easy, and you can make life easier for your family when your time comes — which will be nice for them.

What did I miss? I know there’s a LOT to get done, but as I’ve moved through this process with my parents, these are 3 that come to mind. Tell us what ELSE we should consider in the comments!

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Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines — to make room for important things like baby proofing, having the rest of your life in a routine totally helps!

Today’s guest is Dani Morin. She is a child safety advocate and CPST on social media. Helping parents make informed parenting decisions and providing product research to help moms make the perfect baby registry. Find her here: @Danimorin_ on IG and @danimorin13 on TikTok

Links for you:

Timestamps:

00:00 Necklace strangulation hazard led to tragedy.

03:27 Baltic amber teething necklaces: all risk, no benefit.

09:10 Struggles with safety advice for parent education.

11:24 Desiring family connection and appreciation for moms.

13:12 CPST instructor identified car seat errors.

18:02 Regularly check floor level for baby hazards.

22:01 Overprotective, balancing safety and learning experiences.

25:14 Anchor furniture to prevent tip-over incidents.

26:08 Millennials source furniture anywhere, anchoring optional.

32:11 Avoid outdated plastic; seek modern electrical options.

33:13 Avoid hazards: baby-proof, prevent falls, lock windows.

38:31 Keep detergent pods safe; store, don’t display.

41:21 Share safety tips; be open to feedback.

45:17 Balance mom worries with safety precautions.

48:44 Doctor advises against bedsharing; recommends separate sleeping arrangements.

51:33 AI prioritizes popular articles, not necessarily best.

53:43 Son’s low blood sugar led to NICU.

57:53 Dani moron 13 keeps humble TikTok presence.

59:12 Episode focused on friendship and parenting choices.

Keypoints:

• The episode is focused on baby safety and features Dani Morin, a car seat technician and TikTok influencer.
• Dani shares the tragic event of losing her son Deacon due to a Baltic amber teething necklace, which drives her advocacy.
• Baltic amber teething necklaces are shown to be ineffective and potentially dangerous, with some platforms banning their sale.
• The importance of anchoring furniture to prevent accidents is emphasized, as well as modern safety challenges with slim TVs and high-voltage cords.
• Dani discusses the concept of safe sleep practices and the risks involved with co-sleeping, advocating for strong safety standards.
• Baby-proofing is highlighted as a continuous, evolving process as children grow and develop new abilities.
• Both Hilary and Dani stress the importance of sourcing reliable, professional information over random online articles or AI-generated content.
• Dani uses the “shit sandwich” method to offer safety advice without coming across as judgmental or critical.
• The episode emphasizes creating supportive communities for new mothers to share information and provide emotional support.
• Safe storage of household items like laundry pods and electrical equipment is crucial to prevent accidents, with practical tips provided for parents.

Producer: Drew Erickson

Transcript

[00:00:00.000] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 254, we are talking about baby safety. Let’s untangle it.

[00:00:09.320] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and the Pregnancy Nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop overcomplicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled, the Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:00:29.690] – Hilary Erickson

This episode is sponsored by Family Routines. If you are looking to do things like baby safety, having routines that help you update your baby safety protocols and really be in a routine, Family Routines is going to help you get there. Family Routines is the course for you. Come get on some great routines with me.

[00:00:54.190] – Hilary Erickson

Super excited for today’s guest. She is a CPST, that’s a car seat tech on TikTok. She is great at helping parents make informed choices, especially about their baby registry. I want to introduce my friend, Dani Morin.

[00:01:06.600] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, Dani. Welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:01:08.760] – Dani Morin

Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here. I don’t know if people know how we know each other, but we got on TikTok, I think at the same exact time, in 2020, the Wild West of TikTok. But I sat next to you at a brand dinner with Aussie Bubs, and it was one of the funnest times. You are absolutely hilarious. I don’t know if people know how funny you actually are from your videos. You are so funny. It was one of the funnest nights that I had. So when you asked me to be on the podcast, I was like, automatically, we’re going to be talking about baby stuff, but I’m sure we could make it funny.

[00:01:44.090] – Hilary Erickson

And you were taking shots of infant formula, so you know it was a good time.

[00:01:48.230] – Dani Morin

No. That’s how you take shots these days as moms. Formula. It wasn’t bad.

[00:01:53.900] – Hilary Erickson

I could not do it.

[00:01:53.920] – Dani Morin

It wasn’t bad.

[00:01:55.610] – Dani Morin

It was the toddler formula. It wasn’t bad. Anything for the content.

[00:02:00.190] – Hilary Erickson

See, that’s why.

[00:02:02.080] – Dani Morin

Didn’t they bring out a shot ski?

[00:02:04.660] – Hilary Erickson

Yes, they had a flight. Yes. So, Dani, tell me a little bit about your history, why your heart is in children’s safety. I just want people to know just a snippet of why, because I think that’s really important as we go into this.

[00:02:20.930] – Dani Morin

Yeah. So this gets asked a lot, and I will do a little bit of a trigger warning if child loss is involved in here, but it is a huge part of my story. I could talk about the logistics, and I could talk about my son now. It’s been eight years, but my son, Deacon, my first child, he was strangled by a Baltic Amber teething necklace at his childcare.

[00:02:40.560] – Dani Morin

Logistically, I don’t know exactly how it happened. The childcare is watching too many people. Two things are true at the same time. The necklace was a strangulation hazard, and the daycare was not doing their job.

[00:02:52.700] – Dani Morin

And I lost him in October of 2016. Worst, I never thought I’d come out of it. And I decided maybe two years into it that I wanted to open up about my story. And this was a hard decision because I put a Baltic Amber teething necklace around his neck that I thought helped with teething. I was a very crunchy mom at the time. If you asked me what the AAP was, I would have shrugged and said I didn’t know. And these Baltic Amber teething necklaces, we do all these things to help our baby.

[00:03:27.970] – Dani Morin

We’re desperate to do anything to make our babies feel better. Not realizing that some of those things are just pure risk, which we know now. In 2008, a lot of people come to me and be like, Did you read all these studies? No, those studies came out in 2018 due to my son and other children that were strangled.

[00:03:45.240] – Dani Morin

Those studies came out and proved that Baltic Amber teething necklaces serve no purpose. The child’s temperature would have to be 392 degrees Fahrenheit for this acenic acid to even release. Your child would not be alive at 392 degrees Fahrenheit.

[00:04:00.130] – Dani Morin

It’s all risk and no benefit, and that’s where the messaging is. Those studies came out in 2018. These were very popular in 2014-2015. They’re still very popular now, believe it or not. You can’t get them on Etsy anymore. You can’t get them on Amazon anymore. They’re not sold in stores, but there are some boutique owners that will order them from Lithuania and so on.

[00:04:19.710] – Dani Morin

They’re still out there. They’re still being sold. So I try to do my best to warn parents, but I started going on the news. I started getting in parenting magazines and sharing my story, and it wasn’t getting me anywhere.

[00:04:33.740] – Dani Morin

And then TikTok came along, and I started just doing TikToks of my pregnancy. I was going to take it to the grave that I had ever lost a child because I was like, I don’t know. I saw how quickly some of these videos had taken off. And I had posted a video about how I had my son. So I DIYed my son. I ordered sperm from a sperm bank to my home and got pregnant. That’s a podcast on its own, if I’m I’m being honest.

[00:05:00.850] – Hilary Erickson

I really want to do a separate one about that. I really do. Yeah.

[00:05:04.590] – Dani Morin

Yeah. So that’s a podcast on its own. But I was met with three types of things, a bunch of people being like, this is wrong. I can’t believe you’re doing this, the American family. Everyone had so much to say. And I’m like, look, I’ve put so much thought into this.

[00:05:20.310] – Dani Morin

But I also didn’t think that people realized I was a single mom prior. I had been a mom before. And then I also had moms coming out and being like, I am 40 years old. I’m a lawyer. I thought I was going to have to go spend $40,000 on IVF. I didn’t know this was even an option. So I think I opened up a window of opportunity for moms that were… I had messages like, I was literally going to settle for the wrong guy because I wanted to have a baby. I broke up with him. I think I’m going to do this.

[00:05:45.020] – Dani Morin

And I made it very clear in that video, make sure you have the finances, make sure you have the means. I made it very clear.

[00:05:49.940] – Dani Morin

But I was met with a lot of criticism, and I was like, imagine if I come out and tell people that, hey, I was a mom before, I lost… And then the criticism that I would be met with.

[00:05:59.560] – Dani Morin

And I… Actually, there was a little bit of criticism.

[00:06:02.660] – Dani Morin

And now I post things for a certain reason. But there’s a lot of criticism when it comes to, I can’t believe that you put that around your child’s neck. Didn’t you read the studies?

[00:06:15.520] – Dani Morin

Or I got met with, I use this on my child and it’s perfectly fine. All three of my kids have used this and they’re fine. These actually really were. But then I was met with the most comments of, Thank you so much. This is getting removed right now. I would not have known this. How do you not share your story?

[00:06:32.180] – Dani Morin

And I realized then, I will continue to share my story for that third mom. You know what I mean? For those comments of, Thank you so much.

[00:06:41.510] – Dani Morin

Then it got into, well, if I’m talking about child safety and necklaces, what else should I be talking about? So I started sharing more baby proofing tips. I started sharing more on safe sleep, which is also controversial, which I did not realize was controversial.

[00:06:55.320] – Hilary Erickson

You get flamed for the safe sleep.

[00:06:56.740] – Dani Morin

Yeah, the safe sleep. And I think I was going to a TikTok actually this week. I think where it gets dangerous is there’s a lot of providers or sleep consultants and these experts where they do the meet the mom where they’re at mentality.

[00:07:11.390] – Dani Morin

So at some point in their motherhood journey, they have been told, I understand that you’re doing it. Let’s try to do it better. Whereas I would rather a provider come to me and be like, this is the statistic. If you sleep with your baby, this is the risk that you’re putting out there.

[00:07:27.390] – Dani Morin

There will never be a day that I’m going to tell you what doing is okay. I can feel for the lack of sleep. This has to be so difficult for you, and I could feel for that.

[00:07:36.780] – Dani Morin

But there will never be a day that I say this is okay because I’ve seen too many things. I think some providers are coming out and being like, well, let’s just try. They’re like, Okay, I’m being valid. It has to be okay, right? Because they’re like… So the meet the mom mentality, sometimes I… Even with the baby proofing and stuff like, Oh, okay.

[00:07:55.110] – Dani Morin

Well, just watch your kid then around that one if you don’t want to put the hole in the wall. It’s We can’t be doing that. I think the meeting the mom mentality for lactation consultants of really being like, I want you to breastfeed. I want this to be successful for you. We’re having some difficulty and your baby needs to be fed. So let’s meet in the middle here and come up with maybe a solution.

[00:08:15.780] – Dani Morin

But maybe that’s a situation. I’ve breastfed my kids for two years and almost three years, so it worked for me. But sometimes I think with the baby proofing and some of these other topics in the sleep where it’s like, we can’t just give you a couple of options and they’re all okay in some way.

[00:08:32.730] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, it’s tricky.

[00:08:34.510] – Dani Morin

It gets tricky. But I think validating a mom’s feeling of, yeah, I don’t want to put a hole in my wall either to put up a baby gate. This sucks. Or like, yeah, no, it sucks not sleeping. This stage of parenting sucks. Oh, my gosh. I totally understand where you’re at. You’re doing everything right now to feed your baby. I think validating them, but also giving out facts is also another thing.

[00:08:57.130] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, and there’s a big difference between how I share information on TikTok and how I talk to my singular patient that had a singular problem, right? Yeah. So it’s tricky. But TikTok is for everyone.

[00:09:10.960] – Dani Morin

And it’s so hard for me to remember that because sometimes I think that I will talk singular on some of my TikToks. When I became a CPST, so then I became a CPST, and I started working with moms in their car seats, we practice a good, better best. It’s what’s taught.

[00:09:28.790] – Dani Morin

And that is not on TikTok. I am like, this is how it is. So I asked them, how would you address this with a safe sleep thing? Like the good, better, best? They’re like, if someone says, oh, I’m doing the safe sleep seven, you could say, yeah, I guess that’s a safer way, but I will never say that it’s safe. It’s never going to be something that I say is safe.

[00:09:49.190] – Dani Morin

But yeah, is it safer than you sleeping on top of your baby? I guess. But I could never say that that is safe.

[00:09:55.150] – Dani Morin

So I’m like, okay, because how do you word that? But with car seats, you have a mom come in and she has her two-year-old forward-facing. And okay, so that’s good, right? And maybe the latches were a little loose, so we tighten those up. Okay, so that’s better.

[00:10:13.160] – Dani Morin

But then maybe the mom decides like, Okay, I heard what you have to say about rear-facing. I’m going to flip my car seat. Okay, that’s the best. But legally, she left maybe forward-facing with a tighter install. So that’s better than how she came.

[00:10:25.850] – Dani Morin

But by doing that, I’ve changed how I talk on TikTok. I think I was coming out like, there’s nothing you could say about teething necklaces that I’m ever going to be okay with. I still feel that way. But I changed. There’s nothing a mom could say to me that I’m not going to be able to have a comeback, especially on the teething necklaces. But I changed the approach, I feel like, or I’m putting in the effort.

[00:10:48.300] – Hilary Erickson

Well, I mean, we are not supporting parents enough in this world, right? I went back to work at six weeks with every single kid. First kid, I went back at five weeks. I was tired, and then I would go be a nurse somewhere. God bless those patients. Yeah.

[00:11:01.500] – Dani Morin

I mean, it’s so crazy.

[00:11:03.580] – Hilary Erickson

So we got to support mothers more. We have to be the village, including new moms. I see a lot of new moms who are like, well, I can’t support other new moms. I’m like, well, that is our village, is we’re all supporting each other. I’m not saying you’re two weeks postpartum taking a meal. I’m saying you have a one year old, you’re now part of the village that’s helping all these new moms. And I am old, so I’m definitely part of the village.

[00:11:24.520] – Dani Morin

Yeah, it’s crazy we don’t really have that. I’ve been blessed to have my mom in my life, but I know a lot of people live so far away from their families? You know what I mean? And I could not imagine that, but maybe it’s a military situation. So they have this great group of women that act as that.

[00:11:43.790] – Dani Morin

So I’ve seen different things like that. But I think really validating to moms, sometimes I just want my fiance to come home and be like, I realize you had a busy day. You did so much today. And I’m like, you know? You just want to be seen.

[00:11:55.560] – Dani Morin

So I understand that moms are like, I just want someone to notice that sleeping is really hard for me right now. And just say, I understand this sucks. You know what I mean? Or the breastfeeding, that is hard. Or just the sleep, and I miss my body. I’m in this awkward phase. And people just want to be validated and like, hey, me too. I’ve been there. You’re going to get through this. Today is hard. Even with grief, when people open up about their grief journeys or child loss and they’re like, hey, I’m having a day.

[00:12:28.810] – Dani Morin

I’m like, today is hard. I’m going to validate you. This has to be so hard. This is a hard day because it’s like, sometimes I think people just want to be validated. Yeah.

[00:12:38.280] – Hilary Erickson

Well, we should definitely say that upfront. There are things Dani is going to say on here that Hilary did not do as a parent because everybody knows my oldest is 24.

[00:12:46.030] – Hilary Erickson

So a lot of these things we didn’t even have or think about. So I’m not shaming you. There is no shame in this episode. This is like, you’re doing a good job. I think everyone that is listening to this podcast is doing a good job. Could we do a little bit better? That’s what we’re finding out today. This isn’t like, oh, I’m never going to make it. Yeah, you can make small changes.

[00:13:03.480] – Dani Morin

Small changes. And also, these are not things even that I’ve done. When I got my CPST certification, I had a CPST instructor check my own car seat and found mistakes.

[00:13:17.120] – Dani Morin

So I could go in here and find things that I didn’t do with my first that now I know better. So I totally… There’s just things that you’re not even going to know. I did a TikTok, yes, a couple of days ago about the kid in Utah that had the kernel that was playing in the pumpkin patch, and he got the kernel. I’m like, okay, here’s two videos of my son also playing in those year after year. I had no idea yet. I’ve made videos about why kids shouldn’t have popcorn. It’s just like, sometimes it takes other people’s stories to realize like, oh, my gosh.

[00:13:50.880] – Dani Morin

And I feel like the best form of parenting is listening to other stories and sometimes mistakes. And I shout out to moms that are willing to admit when they’ve made a mistake to help others because I wouldn’t be the parent I am today if it wasn’t for you guys and sharing your stories. Yeah.

[00:14:05.150] – Hilary Erickson

And shout out to Dani, because I’m sure it was extremely vulnerable to share that you bought the necklace.

[00:14:11.110] – Dani Morin

It was gifted to me, but it was on my registry. It’s something that I wanted. So it was the stamp of approval for the Crunchy Moms. If you didn’t have one, then you were science-based. That was not going to be me back then. Now-

[00:14:24.060] – Hilary Erickson

All my friends know I’m science-based, so they would just…

[00:14:27.000] – Dani Morin

It’s so funny, and I’ve made plenty of TikToks. The drastic change I went from making my own wipes in 2015 with, I think I was using like, grapeseed oil and like, lavender. I mean, I cloth-diapered.

[00:14:43.420] – Dani Morin

People like to throw in the breastfeeding as crunchy. I don’t. You know what I mean? But I did the barefoot thing, the cloth diapering, I did the essential oils. I did all of the the hand-making of everything. And it was so stressful to live that lifestyle, too. But that Baltic Amber teething necklace, that was a stamp of approval where you go in to Target and the other moms are like, yeah, I’m not toxic, too.

[00:15:11.090] – Dani Morin

But no, it’s just to look back. And now I’m so evidence-based, science-based. I follow people like you. I follow people like Dr. Frijes. I follow all the pediatricians, just thank God for them, right?

[00:15:25.680] – Dani Morin

So yeah, no shame here because I was that mom. I’ve done things right and I’ve done things wrong, and I continue to sometimes do things wrong, and I have to learn. So no shame.

[00:15:34.410] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, and I was the one shoving Highland’s teething tablets, which are no longer high.

[00:15:37.870] – Dani Morin

Yeah, I had no- So we…

[00:15:40.200] – Hilary Erickson

Shout out to everybody that’s just giving it a whirl. Yeah.

[00:15:42.440] – Dani Morin

Someone just did a video on teething and the science behind how teething happens and the discomfort and what it really is for babies. And it was pretty interesting. I’ll have to send it to you. But yeah, it was just-

[00:15:54.990] – Hilary Erickson

I am not sad. Not sad to not have teethers in my house.

[00:15:58.430] – Dani Morin

Yeah. I think the best thing I gave to Brett was a rolled up cloth. I would freeze a rolled up cloth. And that was the best thing. And I had the teethers and that was the best thing, I swear. People did the frozen-

[00:16:11.300] – Hilary Erickson

We did frozen waffles because it would catch the drool.

[00:16:14.360] – Dani Morin

I attempted the frozen waffle. The cloth seemed to work best, but the cloth also gets the drool, right?

[00:16:20.890] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, that’s true. Okay, so today we’re talking baby proofing. No shame out there if you don’t have these things done. And Dani and I were quickly talking about this before. And even if you have a teenager, there are different things I’m thinking when she was talking, I was like, I need a teen proof, my medicine cabinet, right? There’s a reason I probably shouldn’t have any Oxy anywhere near, right? Because you just never know. Liquor, things like that. So it’s a long range game. So let’s talk baby proofing or kid proofing.

[00:16:50.510] – Dani Morin

Well, I love that you started off with baby proofing for your teens. And the reason I like that is the one thing that I live by is baby proofing is ongoing. Now, I am not baby proofing certified. I work with them, but I’m not baby proofing certified. In order to do that, you actually have to own a baby proofing business.

[00:17:09.860] – Dani Morin

And in California, you have to have a contractor’s license to do that. So I’ll work with them on campaigns, they do like tip over awareness and stuff like that. And I’m involved with the baby proofers, but I’m not a certified baby proofer. I don’t go into people’s homes and baby proof them, but I can provide the information online. That’s what we’ll do today. But I love that you talked about your teens and baby proofing, because the funniest thing is it’s always ongoing.

[00:17:32.100] – Dani Morin

A perfect example of this is things that you would do before you come home from the hospital and things that you would do when your child steps up to that couch and does a little couch surfing for the first time is going to be completely different. A great example of this is you come home with your baby, you’re maybe six weeks in.

[00:17:52.610] – Dani Morin

All baby does is lay there in the bassinet and put baby to bed, mom and dad, grab a glass of wine and some popcorn. And have some time to themselves. But a couple months later, baby starts scooting around. So the best thing you could do is get down to the baby’s level. And what you might find under that couch where your little baby’s hand could fit is a popcorn kernel or something else that got under there that you couldn’t see, you couldn’t really reach. But when you get to their level, you could see that and you could reach that.

[00:18:22.360] – Dani Morin

So it’s one of those things to constantly do. And before you’re a parent, you’re like, maybe you vacuum under that couch when you move. That would be me. Or maybe it’s something you do twice a year. But when you have a scooter and a Crawler, that’s going to be something that you’re constantly doing is putting that vacuum device under there and really making sure that nothing got under there.

[00:18:43.340] – Dani Morin

But with an infant who’s just laying there, that’s probably something that you hadn’t really thought of before. When we get those babies who are couch surfing, if they could surf your couch, they could surf a toilet.

[00:18:55.600] – Dani Morin

And although we promote putting the toilet locks on the before you come home from the hospital, they’re a pain. You got to run to the bathroom. You don’t want to open it, but you want to make sure that those are on at that time. So I just put them on, get used to it. But if they could surf that couch, they could certainly surf your toilet.

[00:19:17.280] – Dani Morin

So it’s constantly ongoing. When they’re getting on their hands and knees, you should also get on their hands and knees. When they’re standing up, you should also stand up. And what are they reaching? What could they get into?

[00:19:27.400] – Dani Morin

Do you need to protect any corners at this time? Because now they’re hitting the tables or whatever it is. It’s constantly ongoing. So that’s my biggest thing.

[00:19:37.790] – Dani Morin

My second biggest thing is that every mom thinks we can’t fathom something bad happening to our kids. We see things on the news and it’s like, Hey, that could never be me. A kid gets hit on his bike without a helmet or something like that. Oh, my gosh.

[00:19:52.370] – Hilary Erickson

I’m the opposite of that mom.

[00:19:53.750] – Dani Morin

And I’m the opposite.

[00:19:55.450] – Hilary Erickson

I envisioned every single thing I saw bad in the hospital.

[00:19:58.520] – Dani Morin

I’m like, well- Because you have this personal tie to it, right? So for me, I’m like, I was the mom sitting in the comfort of my own home watching the news and being like, that could never happen to me. I feel so bad for that family.

[00:20:08.990] – Dani Morin

And until I was the girl on the news. You know what I mean? And then it’s like, wow. And I just did the Stop the Bleed class, and it was all nurses and doctors in there. It was so funny how desensitized… How- not desensitized, but that, Oh, yeah, we see this all the time. Like, oh, yeah, this happens. Oh, yeah. Then you’ll want to check a bullet wound, and I’m like, Oh, have you seen this before?

[00:20:32.510] – Dani Morin

Because as a normal mom, I can’t fathom. But our nurses and our doctors, when they see this stuff all the time, it is an automatic no-no, or it is an automatic pool gate, or is it automatic no trampoline roll? For our first responders that see this all the time, they understand. So I think for me as also a regular mom, but now I have the same mentality as you is actually, no, these things could happen because something happened to me before it could happen to me again.

[00:20:57.810] – Dani Morin

I try to put that mentality on the moms in TikTok. Please understand that this could happen to you. There are not rules. There’s no ASTM boards. There’s no CPSC for no reason. These things are in place because things have happened bad. Yeah.

[00:21:13.660] – Hilary Erickson

And a quick shout out for the fact that you literally can’t keep every accident from happening.

[00:21:18.500] – Dani Morin

You can’t. Exactly.

[00:21:19.460] – Hilary Erickson

Forever. You have to give your kid a driver’s license and let them drive. There’s parts of parenting where you have to let them try the bars, right?

[00:21:26.330] – Dani Morin

Well, it was funny because I think with my son, Deacon, And I was really this hippie mom and just free. And I think with my son, Rut, I was opposite, where I’ve almost sheltered him too much.

[00:21:41.400] – Dani Morin

I actually had a friend, her son jumped off the sink into a ball pit, and I about had a heart attack. And this is something that happens all the time. And she looked at me and she was like, has he ever in his life worn a bandaid?

[00:21:55.220] – Dani Morin

And I was like, he’s four years old, right? He’s never had a bandaid? I’ve never allowed him to get hurt. I’ve been scared for him to fall off his bike. And I’m like, a little bit, I have to let him inch out a little bit. And I have to let my paranoia like, oh, if my brother wanted to put him up on his shoulders, absolutely not.

[00:22:13.640] – Dani Morin

Because I just foresee all these things happening. So I’m getting myself to a place where I’m like, not let me let him get hurt, but it’s okay so that he can learn to ride a bike that he might get a couple of scrapes.

[00:22:27.850] – Dani Morin

I’m going to prevent it as much as I can, but I like to tell parents that think in my comments a lot of times, oh, just supervise your kid. You can do a teething necklace as long as you supervise your kid. You have to go to the bathroom. You have to. You have to fill up your water bottle. You’re going to have to mix that mac and cheese on the stove top. You have to change out your laundry. All of these things take 15, 20, maybe 1 to 2 to 3 to 5 minutes. And not saying that you’re a bad mom for doing those, you have to do those things.

[00:23:04.390] – Dani Morin

But that is just enough time for a strangulation to occur from a blind string. That’s just enough time for the baby to push over a baby gate because you didn’t want to bolt it into the wall. It’s just enough time for a TV to fall on a kid.

[00:23:19.660] – Dani Morin

So yes, we’re not saying you’re not supervising your kids, but nobody can supervise their child 100 % of the time 24/7. And these kids, they’re quick. They’re quick. So that’s just.. Understand that it’s like, no, we know you’re supervising your kid, but there’s the 15 seconds to a minute of time when you run out and you’re not. Not leaving the house, but run to the laundry room or turn around.

[00:23:51.910] – Hilary Erickson

Well, and I think there’s a lot of joy in parenting to know that you’ve created a safe space for your kids where they can explore every single DVD that I own, because back in the day, my kids wanted to pull out all the DVDs, all the books, right? They can explore that area and you know that you’ve baby proofed it as good as you could, and they can explore and do stuff. And you’re not constantly like, Oh, not that book. Oh, not that DVD.

[00:24:13.370] – Dani Morin

I love that, too. So We had done something in our house that a baby proofer had recommended, where I’m like, he constantly wants to be in the kitchen when I’m in the kitchen and play with the drawers. And she was like, find the furthest cabinet that’s not by the stove or anything and put his plastic plates in there. Let him organize those.

[00:24:31.520] – Dani Morin

So we did that where it’s like we moved up all the cleaning supplies, and that’s the one drawer that’s not locked because it’s baby proofed. He could pull it out. He could help mom put the dishes, his own things away. But Everything else I lock. And then I do like the magnet locks for the alcohol, for the medications and the vitamins, and those should be higher up.

[00:24:56.820] – Dani Morin

I do like the thought of pantry locks, and everyone will find one that they like. They really push those magnet ones, but I have lost the magnet key more times than I can count. No drinking in our house because you can’t even find the magnet key.

[00:25:13.250] – Hilary Erickson

Safety first.

[00:25:14.370] – Dani Morin

Yeah. So there’s little things that you could do in the kitchen. I think a big one that I think we should talk about is tipovers.

[00:25:23.700] – Dani Morin

I mean, the statistics on these tipover deaths and incidences is insane to me. I think it was America’s… It was part of the baby proofing group. They were running a campaign for Furniture of America or something like that.

[00:25:41.810] – Dani Morin

And the one rule, I think this is easy for moms to take with them is if it has a drawer, a door, or a shelf, it should be anchored to the wall. And it took them… So I was on a meeting with the baby proofing group a couple of weeks ago, and they were talking about that it took 20 years for the furniture to get in through, I think, ASTM to have the anchor things on the back of furniture sold.

[00:26:08.800] – Dani Morin

But with that said, a lot of us, if you’re like me, Hey, I didn’t have all this money to be getting new furniture. I got some from my mom. I got some from grandma. I got some from Facebook marketplace, where you’re not going to have those anchor things on there to remind you to anchor that to the wall. I did get a dresser recently that did include that. Now it’s in law, but a lot of us millennials, we’re getting our furniture wherever we can.

[00:26:32.480] – Dani Morin

So it’s still something that… And there’s a ton of different anchoring systems that you could use, you go on Amazon or whatever, that you could use to anchor.

[00:26:41.590] – Dani Morin

Even at Walmart, they have a whole baby proofing section to anchor anything. And this could be your night stand that weighs 20 pounds. 20 pounds and a 10, 11, 12 pound infant, that’s nothing to mess around with.

[00:26:58.110] – Hilary Erickson

Is there a height? Because I didn’t do anything that was below waist height.

[00:27:02.400] – Dani Morin

So they actually do. That was one of my questions, and they actually recommend if it lands with a drawer, door, or shelf that it’s anchored. Now, I was just thinking like, oh, these tall shelves that I have in my room. Like, oh, yeah, I’ll just anchor those.

[00:27:16.290] – Dani Morin

They’re saying there are some incidences with a night stand.

[00:27:22.370] – Hilary Erickson

Kids are crazy out there.

[00:27:25.070] – Dani Morin

So just anchoring them. And people will say, it’s a rental or it’s my new house. I don’t want to put it. You could fix a hole in your wall, but you cannot fix the hole in your heart if something were to happen, especially on your watch. So just anchor them.

[00:27:41.200] – Dani Morin

These anchoring systems are really not that bad in your walls. And they have them for the mirrors. A lot of us girlies on the internet love our mirrors for our selfies. They have them for the mirrors. The TVs are a big one. I know in California, I think last year there was four deaths just from TV tipovers, at least in my state.

[00:27:58.320] – Dani Morin

So I’m a big fan of anchoring your TV to a wall, pay the professional $120. That’s typically what it costs.

[00:28:05.560] – Dani Morin

Get that anchored to your wall if possible. If not, you have to have it stand on some shelving system or whatever, make sure that you anchor that to a wall. There’s different rope anchors and stuff like that.

[00:28:18.450] – Dani Morin

They actually come with the TVs, typically. If you have to do that type of thing, I’m a big fan of anchoring it to the wall or mounting it to the wall if possible. But I believe anchor systems come in the packaging now for people that are going to stand it on a piece of furniture.

[00:28:35.970] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. I will say that even with teens, they just love to roughouse, just anchor it to the wall. It’s never going to get better. For sure.

[00:28:43.760] – Dani Morin

Yeah. So the furniture, working with the-

[00:28:47.130] – Hilary Erickson

And we lived in California, so we were always like, earthquake, too. It’s not just a kid climbing on it. They can tip over in an earthquake, too, like those two ones. So we’ve always been anchor-

[00:28:57.390] – Dani Morin

Yeah, big fan of that. And I think more people are doing that. I think back in the day we had, and this is just why baby proofing is constantly changing, is back in the day, it was those big, bulky TVs.

[00:29:08.990] – Dani Morin

Now we have these skinny, tall TVs that just fall over on top of our babies. And I see it all the time on TikTok and people making jokes about like, Oh, this almost fell on my baby. And I’m like, No, that’s really serious. That could have been really bad. People have died that way. So I’m a big fan of anchoring. I was not a fan of anchoring.

[00:29:30.930] – Hilary Erickson

And if you guys are big question mark over your brain, especially new parents, go to Home Depot and look at these options or Walmart, apparently. We always went to Home Depot.

[00:29:39.980] – Hilary Erickson

Look at the options, see which will work if you’re in a rental or if you’re in a home and you’re planning on being there for a long time, then anchor the heck to the stud, right? Just look at your different options because there are different options out there for anchoring these different things. It’s not just like… I just like to feel them with my hands and see exactly what the hole is going to be or whatever. Yeah.

[00:29:57.850] – Dani Morin

And there’s plenty of options They’re getting more innovative as they come. Another one that I wanted to talk about when we’re talking about how baby proofing has changed is our… Let me pull this out of another computer. Is our cords from our phones… So our phones and our computers, the amount of voltage that is going through these things, right? Think about having to put this into your computer or your phone. The amount of voltage is insane.

[00:30:28.430] – Dani Morin

We’ve never talked about this before. I don’t know if you follow Getty’s mom, but she’s a dentist. And they’ve been seeing, the dentists have been seeing all these kids and babies coming in because they’re chewing on these things. And the voltage, even if it’s unplugged, the voltage is still… shoots through there. So they’re burning the inside of their mouths and stuff. So she actually, she came up with this product called Watch Your Mouth.

[00:30:52.810] – Dani Morin

But it’s basically a product that goes… I have videos on this, but it’s a product that goes over the top of it. So whether it’s unplugged or not, they put this in their mouth, they’re fine.

[00:31:03.860] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. So people that are just listening, it just looks like the top of a travel to fresh cover.

[00:31:06.840] – Dani Morin

It looks like a travel to fresh cover. That’s probably how she figured this out. And it locks over your phone charger. And then when you’re using it, it still stays on. It still stays on there. But then you could put it in. So it’s just a reminder, hey, lock it up. But I guess they were seeing all these injuries. And it’s like, this is one of those things where it’s like, I would have never thought.

[00:31:29.280] – Dani Morin

Because I’ve grown up in this digital age, but this digital age compared to our parents or even 10, 20 years ago, and even the phones now, like the new iPhone 15 takes the same voltage, or whatever one it is, takes the new… I don’t know. Takes the same voltage as a computer.

[00:31:46.830] – Dani Morin

And that’s just one of those things. It could be really dangerous, and we just don’t think about it. Another thing to think about when we’re thinking about baby proofing and the new age is a lot of the new homes are being built with pre existing safety things for the electrical outlets. So they’re built like that, where you have to jiggle the plug in there and it opens it up. But your kid can’t get hurt. They’re built like that.

[00:32:11.990] – Dani Morin

So I’m in a new home build. But with that being said, if I didn’t know that and I went to shove in one of those plastic things, they’re not recommended at all anymore, that could harm me. You know what I mean? So there’s all these new types of electrical options out there that are not the plastic ones. We’re trying to stay away from that.

[00:32:33.010] – Dani Morin

I wouldn’t even know how to explain this one, so I’m not going to try. But there’s a lot of new ones out there that aren’t the plastic ones that are safety covers for outlets just because of things that we’ve learned, how our electricity is set up, what’s safe and what’s not.

[00:32:49.610] – Dani Morin

Something to ask your contractor or when you buy a new home, hey, what outlets are these? What baby proofing electrical things can I use? They should be be able to help you with that if you’re getting a new home, which I think a lot of pregnant moms, what do we get? New cars and new homes when a baby comes? Yeah.

[00:33:09.300] – Hilary Erickson

And your realtor also might have an idea. They know a lot about electricity that I’m always like, I didn’t know about them.

[00:33:14.330] – Dani Morin

So when I got my home, they’re like, make sure with your baby, you do not put in the plastic things. This is already baby proofed. And then I guess another big one is falls. So this is anything from falling downstairs, falling out windows. A couple of things that parents can do to avoid this, even outside of the baby proofing, is don’t put furniture where your kid can climb on it and fall off a banister. Don’t make it easy for them.

[00:33:43.520] – Dani Morin

So think about what would be a fun jungle gym for your kid and avoid that away from places that they could fall or away from the windows where they could climb out windows. I’m always a big fan of the… I don’t have one over here, but the window locks where you could lock the window from above so they can’t open it.

[00:34:01.620] – Dani Morin

But if you quickly needed to get out in a fire or something, that you could push it and slide it open, but your kid wouldn’t be able to do that. There’s a ton of window options, but that’s something we just do not think about. There’s window barriers. That’s a big one where it’s these bar things that they put up so that they can’t…

[00:34:21.390] – Dani Morin

Only you could open the window. You don’t think about window falls, but these things happen. I would say the biggest nuance and the hardest thing where you would almost need a baby proofer to come in, and every single household, for every listener right now, every single person listening, would need a different baby gate for their stairs.

[00:34:39.140] – Dani Morin

Every single house is designed differently. So there is a baby gate for everyone. It is not a one-size-fits-all. I’ll tell you one business I would not want to be in, the baby gate business.

[00:34:50.540] – Dani Morin

Because there’s no universal baby gate. It is so different by houses, by the width of your stairs, by what’s on the other side. It’s so different. But I would say the biggest thing is you really want to bolt those in. Those kids can push them down. So the suction ones, I know people love that, the tension ones, but you really want to get the gates that are bolted into the walls. That’s going to be, I would say, just do that. But this may be a situation you may want to call out a baby proofer or someone that specializes in those gates.

[00:35:27.190] – Dani Morin

If you have a weird house where you’re not going to fit the universal safety first ones at Target. And don’t feel like if you go bring one home and you’re like, wait, this isn’t working for me, don’t call it quits and say, okay, we’re going to have to be careful.

[00:35:39.810] – Dani Morin

There’s one out there for you. You just need to find it. And sometimes it’s, ordering and returning 15 from Amazon. I had to do that. So that’s the hardest part of baby proofing, I would say, is finding the gate, finding the gate that’s right for your home. It is the hardest part, but you’ll figure it out.

[00:35:59.160] – Hilary Erickson

Or maybe just finding a single story home.

[00:36:01.460] – Dani Morin

That’s where I’m at. We’re trying to move right now. I’m like, let’s just single story. That’s where it’s at, right? Yeah. And look, as moms, my hips at the end of the night hurt so bad that I don’t want to be walking upstairs. I’m 37, but I’m acting these days like I’m 67. Yeah, we’re in the market right now for a new house, and I’m like, let’s do this single story. That is where it’s at for a multitude of reasons. Yeah.

[00:36:28.060] – Hilary Erickson

I think a lot of people just don’t think about stairs when you’re purchasing the home, how that’s going to end up. Because we had a single story 1,100 square foot house with three kids in California, and then we moved to the double story. But luckily, my kid was old enough that I just supervised.

[00:36:42.770] – Dani Morin

Yeah. No, I supervised. I love when I get the comments on TikTok of like, Yeah, so we do that, but we supervise. And I’m like, Okay. As if I was telling everybody else that they’re a horrible parent. They don’t supervise.

[00:36:59.950] – Dani Morin

Yeah, these things could happen so quick. Another thing is, and this is the American Cleaning Institute. They are doing a lot of work undoing a trend right now, which is very interesting. So On TikTok in the past couple of years, so they are doing a lot…

[00:37:18.950] – Dani Morin

They’re doing like an anti-influenced campaign because of a trend that happened on TikTok. And you might know what I’m talking about, but it’s filling up the glass jars with the pods and filling up the glass jars with all of the laundry detergent things.

[00:37:34.420] – Dani Morin

Those look like candy to kids. And from that trend happening on TikTok… Look at TikTok, we could do TikTok for good all day long. The work that you and I do on TikTok is it’s great. But the work that the fancy influencers with the nice homes in Utah, what they’re doing in their laundry rooms, apparently it caused a little bit of an uptick in calls to the poison control.

[00:37:57.430] – Dani Morin

So it looks great. And I’m one of those moms where I’m like, oh, but it looks so cute to have this esthetically pleasing laundry room. I don’t believe in esthetically pleasing laundry rooms.

[00:38:08.040] – Dani Morin

I believe in… Those are the rooms where everything gets thrown into, right? When you shut the door. But no. So apparently it caused all this uptick and calls to the poison control because these kids were babies, where they look like candy.

[00:38:21.470] – Hilary Erickson

Right. And the Tide Pod thing at the store anymore has a baby proof. Well, and that’s the thing. If my dishwasher detergent, it’s hard to get into. It’s Hilary-proof at this point.

[00:38:30.870] – Dani Morin

Tide and Cascade. They did a lot of work on their own to try to undo this issue, where the pods now, the Tide Pods, if you really were to… It’s hard to break those things. Even if you were to bite on them, it’s pretty hard to break those things, but you never know.

[00:38:48.260] – Dani Morin

And they make safety locks on these products for a reason. And it’s so that you use them, not take the pods out and put them in a nice open glass container where they look like Halloween candy.

[00:39:00.880] – Dani Morin

So they’re trying to undo this issue that our fellow moms caused through a trend that became a thing. So a couple of things is put those pods, store them high. Don’t store them in glass. Store not decor, okay? Store not decor. So store them not in glass. Put them high up. If your kid wants to help with the laundry, take the wet clothes out and let the kid put the wet clothes in the dryer, right? Let them fold the towels. Let them participate. I’m all about letting kids participate in what you’re doing. I think that’s great for growth, but in a safe way.

[00:39:41.640] – Dani Morin

We don’t want them to see those pods either. So keep them stored high. When you get home from the grocery store, so a lot of incidents were happening where mom gets home from the grocery store and leaves everything out for a little bit on the sink and the kids were getting to them and things like that. Just storing them.

[00:39:59.420] – Dani Morin

A dad came came through our county and I was working a car seat event, and he came in with his kids, and he had maybe two and four in his car. And in the middle, he had just gotten some fabric fresheners, some Tide pods, and they were just in the car, and the kids were trying to play with them.

[00:40:22.340] – Dani Morin

So I was just saying, hey, this isn’t something you think of. I throw all this stuff in my car, too. I’m like, hey, these things, don’t put them around the kids. It’s like, they’re so easy. They look fun for them. They want to pop them. They want to eat them. So it’s just I had to do a little education for him, which he’s like, I didn’t even think about that. And I’m like, no, I wouldn’t have thought about it either.

[00:40:40.870] – Dani Morin

But American Cleaning Institute is running a big campaign right now, trying to get the word out that we are no longer storing our pods in glass jars. Yeah.

[00:40:49.120] – Hilary Erickson

And I’m here to say that that doesn’t last forever, right? Because I need my kids to get in and do their laundry. So we don’t make them… If you love that look, there is going to come a point in time where you can then again do that look until you have grandkids, and then you’re totally screwed again. So I don’t know.

[00:41:03.500] – Dani Morin

And if you do have teens and you want them to do their own laundry, just make sure they’re not doing the trends where they eat Tide pods. That was a thing, I think, in 2021. Yeah, that was crazy. But that’s It’s just these little things that we just don’t think. We think, oh, this is cute. We just don’t think about. Yeah.

[00:41:21.850] – Hilary Erickson

And I think the other thing we can think about as moms, when we’re at each other’s houses and we see something, I think we should not be afraid to be like, hey, I just saw on TikTok that they’re encouraging us not to put them in jars because kids are so attracted to that.

[00:41:36.390] – Hilary Erickson

And your friend might not have had zero clue. And hopefully you have friends that are willing to say that, and you’re willing to take that criticism and then decide if that’s something you want to do in your house. But if we share with each other, oh, I just saw that that’s unsafe, maybe we can save a life.

[00:41:51.560] – Dani Morin

So I’m so glad you brought up this topic, and tell me if I’m rambling, because I could stop talking. But how do we talk to our friends about things about safety? This is a question I get all the time. One of my best friends is using a teething necklace, so to speak.

[00:42:05.750] – Dani Morin

How do we talk to our friends? Because as moms, you say one thing that’s opposite than what I’m doing, I’m feeling attacked. Or, Hey, I just wanted to… That voice, even like, I’m feeling I’m attacked. I’m a bad mom. I don’t like that. This is uncomfortable for me. So I tell people to do something called the Shit Sandwich, where you go in and let’s say it’s the Tide pods, right? Oh, my gosh, girl, your laundry room. This is a dream laundry room. This is literally so cute. I cannot believe it. I want to copy everything and then go up to the pods and be like, Oh my gosh, I just saw this video actually of these babies or toddlers, climbed up and ate one. One ended up in the hospital. They’re trying to warn moms about this. And I’ll send it to you because I don’t know if you’ve seen it.

[00:42:53.190] – Dani Morin

Where the mom’s like, you’re kind of just, and oh my God, I didn’t even think about that. That’s what you want to hear, right? Sometimes they’ll be like, Yeah, I supervise. And then you just got to let it go. And then you finish up and being like, where did you get these towels? Are these Nordstrom? These are so cute. Walk away.

[00:43:10.970] – Dani Morin

So the teething necklace, I always tell parents to be like, your kid is so cute. Is her hair naturally that curly? Oh, my gosh, I dream. That’s so cute. I love that. And then, Hey, one of my friends, I always tell people to say, I’m your friend. One of my friends lost her son in one of those teething necklaces. I don’t know if you heard that story? And then, no, what happened? Oh my gosh, I’m going to take this off right now. Or it’s like, I heard it, but it’s like one or two babies died. It’s not… It was probably something else. It was the daycare.

[00:43:39.740] – Dani Morin

You got to move on from there. They know the story, they know the dangers. They’re going to do it anyways. But that’s one way to do it where you’re not coming in and being like, oh, this is your new laundry. Oh, girl. Those are bad. There’s a way to come about it. So you complement, right? So the shit sandwich, complement, criticize, compliment.

[00:43:59.290] – Hilary Erickson

Right. Like in HR, like when you’re a manager.

[00:44:02.300] – Dani Morin

Yeah. Yeah. It’s the same thing. So that has seemed to, I feel, work really well. Is that way of providing information.

[00:44:11.230] – Hilary Erickson

Well, and I always just come at… This is the paranoid nurse in me talking. That’s usually how I start the thing, and then just be like, I think you’re a great mom. I made so many mistakes as a mom.

[00:44:20.580] – Dani Morin

I had a mom with Rhett. She… On TikTok. I was pushing him in the stroller. He was buckled into his car seat, but it was very loose. And she reached out to me. This was the best thing she could have done. She was a CPST, and she was like, Hey, I’m a CPST. I have this little PowerPoint. I just wanted to send it to you and just see if maybe… Go through it and just see if you’re… It’s like a checklist, just like if it’s all the things that you’re doing when you’re putting him into the car seat.

[00:44:48.930] – Dani Morin

I was like, Sure, send it. But in my mind, I’m like, Oh, she’s trying to call me out on something. Send your little PowerPoint, right? I will go through. This is so dumb. People on TikTok are just criticizing me for every little thing. So I’m going through and I get to slide number nine. And I remember one through eight. I’m like, Do that. Do that. This is so stupid. I get to slide number nine, and it’s something called the pinch test, which is what CPSTs check. And if you could pinch that strap, it’s too loose.

[00:45:17.280] – Dani Morin

So I am like, oh, my gosh, I never tighten his straps that tight because I’m worried about his chest. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And I was like, you know what? I was rude. I didn’t thank you for that PowerPoint, but I She was not doing the pinching. She’s like, oh, I was hoping you’d see slide number nine. So you know what I mean?

[00:45:34.070] – Dani Morin

But I’m like, oh, my gosh, we get so worried about doing something wrong, that we’re a bad mom. But I’m like, there’s mom shaming and there’s life saving, and we need to make sure that we could differentiate the two. So you want to go shame a mom because she can’t breastfeed or she’s choosing not… That is shaming. You are shaming a mom. You want to tell a mom, Hey, I notice that you’re maybe not tightening your car seat much, here’s a PowerPoint, oh, my God, you may have just saved my baby’s life.

[00:46:03.980] – Dani Morin

Those are two different things. You shame a mom for going to work or not going to work, that is shaming. So as long as we know the difference between two, and I think when child safety is in a parenting choice, as it should be a parenting mandate for a lot of these things, especially when it comes to car seats.

[00:46:23.060] – Dani Morin

And that’s my personal opinion of what’s a parenting choice. Yeah, a parenting choice is whether we’re going to homeschool or not. That’s a parenting choice.

[00:46:33.510] – Dani Morin

A parenting mandate is like, we’re going to follow the law and make sure that our kid is rear facing till at least two years old. These are things that should be pretty black and white. But I think sometimes we just put into this bucket of, you’re mom shaming. And it’s like, no, we’re just warning because this could be a life saving situation.

[00:46:51.900] – Hilary Erickson

You just never know. And we all got to put down our hackles when people are like, oh, maybe you could do it this way. I get it. You’re You’re already overwhelmed as a parent. You have so much stuff on your plate. Sleep is a huge issue for new moms. You’re just like, I’m just trying to make it work for us, right?

[00:47:09.140] – Hilary Erickson

And just put it into like, okay, that’s some good information. Same for your pediatrician. Pediatricians are not out there to shame parents. They’re just giving information, and then you take it and you use it in your life however you’re going to see it. Because it does look different for everybody, right? Everybody’s baby gate’s different. Everyone, how you’re going to cover your electrical outlets is different. Everyone, how you’re going to tell your kids you shouldn’t do that is different.

[00:47:32.810] – Dani Morin

For sure. And I think with the pediatricians, too. I was thinking about it one day. I was so worried. My son, Brett, was in the lower… He was a nine pound, two ouncer when he was born. Both of my kids were. And I was so worried about… But he lost weight.

[00:47:47.490] – Dani Morin

So he’s always been in… At one point, he was in the third percentile. But I was like, it’s not that she’s shaming me, right? This is his weight. She’s not shaming me. And I I would go and even now I go to his birthday checkups, right? And I’m like, oh, what is she going to say about his weight? And it’s just like, okay, am I feeding him? Am I doing my best to feed him? And I’m giving him the vitamins that I’m being told and I’m doing all the things. I’m doing my best. Whatever his weight is, his weight is.

[00:48:16.010] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, and maybe she has some great tips that would work.

[00:48:18.900] – Dani Morin

And that’s the thing. So it was like, let me just be open to the cottage cheese and more olive oil. She’s always like, cottage cheese, man. I’m like, we don’t even have dairy in our house because I have a weird dairy allergy.

[00:48:31.620] – Dani Morin

But it’s just things like that where I’m like, I became more open. So the pediatrician is not shaming me as she’s giving me suggestions. But it is hard as a mom.

[00:48:40.960] – Dani Morin

With my first, I had started off co-sleeping because why not. And didn’t know… That’s the natural way. And the doctor was like, there’s never going to be a day I’m going to tell you that that’s safe. And I have a lot of moms that are like, how do I unco-sleep? And I’m like, that is one of the hardest things to do. But the fact that it’s in your mind, you’re going to get this. I had a mom reach out and she’s like, I just came across one of your videos about bed sharing. I was talking about one of my friends who had lost a baby. And she’s like, I don’t even know where to start. I don’t even have a pack and play.

[00:49:14.880] – Dani Morin

I sent her a pack and play. I’m like, Start with a pack and play. Put it by the bed. You don’t need a $500 crib. It’s just one of those things is it’s something like it’s unlearning some of these things where it’s just like you didn’t know. And I was in… The Facebook Mom groups that I was in, the best option was bed sharing. We’re saying co-sleeping, but we mean bed sharing. But the Facebook Mom groups that I’m in, that’s the best option.

[00:49:40.400] – Hilary Erickson

Because people that are safety-minded just don’t hang out there. We’d lose our minds. Yeah.

[00:49:43.940] – Dani Morin

And that’s the I think we have to understand that I could find an article to validate… You could find an article out there to validate anything that you believe in. You want to do meth and breastfeed? There’s an article out there to support that. I am sure of it. And that’s why… That was extreme.

[00:50:00.920] – Dani Morin

But that is why… But I swear, I’ve seen some crazy stuff. And that is why we stick to our pediatricians, the AAP recommendations, we stick to the professionals that are doing the work. You know what I mean? And that are doing the studies, the studies and the numbers. We stick to those people, not we googled, hey, is it okay for me to take four shots of tequila and breastfeed my baby?

[00:50:26.480] – Dani Morin

Because you will find Emily Oyster, she’ll say that’s okay. But you will find somebody out there to say that that’s totally fine. You will find people say, hey, how you feel is how your baby feels. I mean, you probably know more on that than I do. I don’t drink alcohol, so it’s nothing that I’ve come across. But I see this stuff and I’m like, what is the AAP and the professionals saying?

[00:50:48.000] – Hilary Erickson

Well, and the big problem is sometimes I have AI write an article for fun. Drinking in pregnancy, they were like, do it, get in there, drink during pregnancy. So it created the article. I just had it write it for fun. Not the article I used in case it happens on my website. But yeah, it was just like, Drinking is going to be great. It’ll help relax you during your pregnancy.

[00:51:10.510] – Hilary Erickson

And I was like, There is not a single institution, the ACOG, AAP, any of those people that say any amount of alcohol is safe during pregnancy. So AI just was like, sure. And then one time I was like, is sour cream safe in pregnancy? He had it write, and he was like, it will cause miscarriage and your baby will die. Well, and that- The problem is, those articles are getting written out there because that’s how people write articles anymore, is using AI.

[00:51:33.580] – Dani Morin

And AI, I think, is going off of some of these bigger, more searched or read articles. So it’s saying like, oh, these are more viewed. This must be the appropriate information.

[00:51:43.940] – Dani Morin

Where I did a TikTok to show people, if you type in AAP, it’s 10 down on the list on Google. They’re not running ads so that they’re the first thing to pop up.

[00:51:54.920] – Dani Morin

So if we were to type in, I would wish if people were to type in like, baby proofing that the baby proofers of America would pop up. But what’s going to happen is someone that’s coming up with some product that they’re trying to sell that’s maybe not the best.

[00:52:10.170] – Dani Morin

It’s just you really got to know, I think, and you should probably do an article on that, who are the people that I would follow or articles that I would read when it comes to breastfeeding? Where are the articles I would read when it comes to baby proofing? That would be a great article for you to write.

[00:52:25.280] – Hilary Erickson

Trusted people to follow because you really have to find a source that is not going to give you just pure-

[00:52:30.750] – Dani Morin

Yeah, for certain topics. Right now, and maybe I’m just landing on the side of TikTok is the home birth of it all. And I saw a video. I saw a video yesterday, and this was a dead serious video, and everybody agreed with her in the comments. The video was, what happens if my baby is born not breathing? And the doula, big time doula on TikTok was like, we do a meditation over the bait.

[00:52:57.720] – Hilary Erickson

You didn’t watch the whole thing, Dani. I saw your comment because she  said, just kidding. She said, just kidding.

[00:53:02.360] – Dani Morin

They do use. Oh my gosh, stop. Okay, you can’t… Okay. Oh my God. Literally, I was going to stitch the video because I was like, no, immediately blocked her. Okay. Why are they doing that?

[00:53:16.470] – Hilary Erickson

She did say that they do different things. But then some of the stuff she was saying, I was like, okay, I’ve never seen a baby come in with a UBC from home.

[00:53:24.490] – Dani Morin

Well, I scrolled through a little bit to see if there was a joke. And then I saw she said meditation, and then we have the mom just talk to the baby. And I was like, wait, no, could it never be me?

[00:53:35.590] – Hilary Erickson

Well, let me like, look at it. Let’s talk about trying to get a secure seal on the baby while the mom is like, if the baby’s on, don’t. You can’t.

[00:53:42.920] – Dani Morin

Yeah. Well, I had my son, Deacon, was born with the low blood sugar. At that time, I wanted to do a home… That was going to be the vibe, is a home birth or something. But he was born with a low blood sugar. And I remember the nurse being popping a bottle of formula in his mouth.

[00:54:00.470] – Dani Morin

And I was like, I’m breastfeeding! The pitchforks came out. I have an epidural, and I’m like, I want to fight this lady. And she was like, if we do not give this to him, he will die. Well, he gets taken to the NICU.

[00:54:12.020] – Dani Morin

And I asked the doctor who was stitching me up. I said, what would have happened had I had a home birth? Because how did they test for the blood sugar? He just like stitching me up. He’s like, yeah, I would have probably done.

[00:54:23.970] – Hilary Erickson

There is stuff you can tell. They get jittery and stuff.

[00:54:27.170] – Dani Morin

Yeah. Okay. So I was like, wait, what? Anyways, after that, I was like, I guess there’s just things you wouldn’t know. I have a friend that had the shoulder dystocia thing. I never heard of that before, actually.

[00:54:38.670] – Dani Morin

And so I’m like, wait, what? And there was five nurses pouncing on her or something. Obviously, I wasn’t there. So I was like, what happens if you have one person in the house? How do they get the baby out? So these fears have been instilled in me. And for that reason, I will have the closest room to the NICU. And as many doctors that want to in there as possible.

[00:55:02.180] – Hilary Erickson

That might not be the best room for you. You just never know. What’s the angle trying to get out of that room into the NICU? Sometimes you want a nice large angle.

[00:55:08.860] – Dani Morin

Yeah. I’m going to go and just really, God willing, I’m getting married in a week or so, and then the baby making is happening. So send me all the baby dust. But I’ll have to go to the hospital and just see what’s the quickest route.

[00:55:24.910] – Hilary Erickson

Ask the NICU nurses, which is the easiest one for you to get to?

[00:55:28.100] – Dani Morin

Yeah. I’m going to request. I’m going to put in a request.

[00:55:30.590] – Hilary Erickson

The thing is, most people don’t need that. No. That’s how baby proofing works. That’s how the hospital works. Most patients don’t need this. It’s just when we do need it, that’s why you need all the things. That’s why you need the baby proofing, because you literally cannot watch that baby. You can’t supervise them 24/7.

[00:55:48.450] – Dani Morin

I like to tell people these things are an insurance policy, right? We’d probably be perfectly fine. And not every baby that bed shares dies, right? It’s an insurance policy to to do these things. And maybe you don’t need to use it. We don’t hope to get in a crash. We don’t hope to be in a situation where something bad would happen or our kid would climb on the TV. We don’t hope to get ourselves in those situations.

[00:56:11.890] – Dani Morin

But in the chance we get in a car accident, we have car insurance. And by chance, our baby walks up the TV, like, it was mounted. So it’s just these things are just all insurance policies that we invest into and just in case. That’s how I like to describe it.

[00:56:31.760] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. And somehow we all made it to adulthood, and I was laying on the bottom of the car as a kid. So I have no idea.

[00:56:38.040] – Dani Morin

Oh, yeah. My mom was like, we had these milk boxes and we just put the… My mom had one of eight. She’s like, we had the babies were put in the milk boxes with a little blanket right there, and we put them in the back of the Wagoneer. And we just put all the babies back there in the Wagoneer.

[00:56:54.820] – Dani Morin

And I’m like, okay, we have come a long way. So when people say, well, we’ve been doing this for ages. And I’m like, yeah, and for ages, people were dying. So for ages, we have been improving these things. But yeah, when my mom tells me the ways of how she grew up, I’m like, oh my God, this is crazy to me.

[00:57:15.850] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, that’s why we put them in the car seat, just in case. All of this car seat is such a normal thing now. I wonder what things were like when they just started using car seats. But yeah, car seat is just one of the baby proofing things we do. Yeah.

[00:57:30.060] – Hilary Erickson

Thank you for coming on, Dani. I think this is going to be super helpful for new parents, pre-existing parents, because a lot of times when you have that baby, that toddler suddenly has access to a lot of stuff because you’re so busy. So it’s a great time to think about, oh, what can the other one get into now that I can’t supervise as well, right?

[00:57:47.810] – Dani Morin

Exactly.

[00:57:48.700] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah.

[00:57:49.060] – Dani Morin

Exactly.

[00:57:49.980] – Hilary Erickson

So find Dani. It’s @DaniMorin, right?

[00:57:52.960] – Dani Morin

Yeah. If you just type in @DaniMorin on TikTok or Instagram, I’ll pop up. You always know when someone started TikTok, not trying to be an influencer, when they got numbers behind their names. So I’m @DaniMorin13, just regular schmegular, whatever TikTok gave me at the time. And I just never changed it because I think it keeps me humble.

[00:58:13.670] – Dani Morin

I’ve come up with all these names that I wanted to name myself, the child advocate and stuff like that. And I’m like, you know what, DaniMorin13, that’s the name TikTok gave me. I’m sticking with it.

[00:58:24.690] – Hilary Erickson

You’re sticking with it.

[00:58:26.390] – Dani Morin

Yeah. So you could find me on the IG. If you have If you have questions, DM me on the IG. I don’t know what’s going on with TikTok. You know this, actually. I am not getting DMs there. So if you have a specific question, you want to send me a link to a baby proofing thing that you’re thinking of using, just shoot it over to me. Via a DM.

[00:58:46.050] – Hilary Erickson

On Instagram, not TikTok.

[00:58:47.300] – Dani Morin

On Instagram. Yes.

[00:58:49.150] – Hilary Erickson

All right. Good luck with your wedding. Good luck keeping us all informed. This doesn’t come out till the spring, so maybe you’ll already be pregnant by then and people can find you stressing out about pregnancy on social media.

[00:59:00.100] – Dani Morin

Yeah, I’ll have you do an update. Yeah.

[00:59:04.120] – Hilary Erickson

All right. Thanks, Dani.

[00:59:05.440] – Dani Morin

Awesome. Thank you so much for letting me come on and do what I do. In my son, Deacon’s name, it means a lot.

[00:59:12.750] – Hilary Erickson

Okay. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. It was a little longer than our usual one, but since Dani and I are friends, hopefully you guys enjoyed the banter because I hope you’re just thinking, I’m just sitting there with a friend and we’re trying to make good choices for our babies.

[00:59:24.670] – Hilary Erickson

And sometimes we don’t have all the information, but maybe a friend has some of the information. Again, not here to shame anybody. You’re looking at a mom who had baby bumpers, mobile right over the crib, probably cords. Who knows? I’m saying that we can do better than we’re doing today, hopefully, and hopefully that inspired you to do just that.

[00:59:43.120] – Hilary Erickson

Stay tuned. We are talking about taking a hospital tour next week, and then the week after that, we are talking about your smelly fridge, and I’m going to have some tips on making it smell better. So stay tuned.

[00:59:53.800] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls Podcast today. If you liked today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow.

Keywords:

baby safety, car seat technician, Dani Morin, Hilary Erickson, Pulling Curls podcast, TikTok influencer, baby proofing, CPR for infants, Baltic amber teething necklace, child strangulation, parenting routines, Family Routines course, TikTok safety education, single motherhood by choice, pediatrician advice, NICU facilities, safe sleep practices, furniture anchoring, earthquake safety, kitchen safety, window barriers, bolted baby gates, parenting support community, teething necklaces dangers, anti-influencer campaign, laundry pod safety, childproofing electrical outlets, fall prevention for children, safe room setup for childbirth, validating parents’ struggles, good better best approach.

The post Baby Proofing 101: Dani Morin’s Mission for Baby Safety Awareness appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts

Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines moving your parents can take havoc on your family and having solid routines can make your life still happen. Couldn’t recommend them any more!

Links for you:

My post on moving to assisted living.

Timestamps:

00:00 Downsize, consider assisted living, wait lists fill.

04:59 Medicare assists short-term home health expenses.

08:40 Reasonable storage for family memories and history.

09:45 Downsize immediately; avoid unnecessary storage or sales.

13:17 Estate sale: necessary for selling the house.

16:53 Find experienced real estate agent for parents.

20:44 Fast decisions helped moving process efficiently.

22:44 Upcoming topics: women’s strength training, birth trauma.

Keypoints:

• Hilary discusses her experience moving her parents into retirement living and the challenges associated with it.
• The importance of planning ahead and considering different living options such as assisted living, nursing homes, and independent living.
• Routines can help maintain normalcy during the transition.
• Financial considerations for different living options, including costs for nursing homes, rehab, and assisted living.
• The process of selecting a suitable retirement facility and the benefits of getting on a waitlist early.
• Downsizing possessions and the emotional impact of sorting through a lifetime of belongings.
• The role of professional movers and considerations for hiring experienced movers.
• The estate sale process, its challenges, and financial implications for clearing out a large home.
• Selling the family home and the benefits of engaging a real estate agent experienced with senior moves.
• Reflecting on the timeline and process highlights the importance of starting early and maintaining less clutter for an easier transition later in life.

Producer: Drew Erickson

Transcript

[00:00:00.000] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 251, we are talking about moving my parents into retirement living. Let’s untangle it.

[00:00:10.300] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and the pregnancy nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop overcomplicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled, the Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:00:38.420] – Hilary Erickson

This episode of the Pulling Curls Podcast is sponsored by Family Routines. Guys, even though I was gone for so long Because we had great routines, somehow life kept going at my house. And I cannot recommend any more getting into awesome routines so that even when mom’s not home or things are just crazy town, you can still manage your life. So come join in family routine, you can join me for just a month and then leave when you’re ready.

[00:01:03.540] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, first off, I want to say that whatever you’re imagining moving your parents into retirement living, you’re right. It’s not fun. It was terrible, horrible, no good, very bad. It’s all the things.

[00:01:14.750] – Hilary Erickson

But I want to give you a few steps that you should be thinking about or going through as you’re thinking about this process. So my parents had been considering moving into assisted living. We honestly thought that that was the only option was assisted living. We’re going to talk more about that. For maybe the past, Probably since COVID, two or three years, they have a very large home. While they mainly live just on the main floor, that doesn’t mean you’d still don’t have upkeep on the other floors because things might flood or whatever.

[00:01:41.640] – Hilary Erickson

It just was too much house for them. Even with a housekeeper and someone doing the yard work, it was just too much. It was more than they needed, and they knew that they needed to downsize.

[00:01:50.200] – Hilary Erickson

So first off, you need to be thinking about where you’re going to go. And honestly, even if your parents are still fully functional, I think it would be a great idea to start thinking about where they want to go because a lot of these places are starting to fill up. We have a lot of, what are they, baby boomers out there who are going to need places like this.

[00:02:06.560] – Hilary Erickson

So getting on an assisted living waitlist is not a bad idea. Most of them, it was either free to get on the waitlist or very low cost, and you can say, I’m not ready. They can keep coming back to you and be like, Okay, there’s a room available, and you can say, I’m not ready, and then they skip to the next one on the list. So I think that’s something to consider. Now, there are a few different places that parents can go when they leave their large home.

[00:02:31.050] – Hilary Erickson

They can go to an apartment, and my grandma did this, and it ended up being great for her. My dad, they considered going to an apartment, but they felt like the apartment probably wouldn’t last long term, and so they probably needed an upgraded level of care. They could go to a nursing home. Now, I worked nursing home right out of college. That was my first job.

[00:02:49.730] – Hilary Erickson

This is for somebody who needs a lot of medical care. It’s expensive. I will say that when we looked into a nursing home, not for both of my parents to go to, my mom had some issues that she needed some for. It was about $250 a day. Now, this is for a Utah nursing home, but I like giving you guys the pricing because I literally had no idea. Now, my mom actually went to a rehab because she had broken her ankle, which you would go to a rehab, and that’s double the price of a nursing home. But you get more rehab care. There’s more nurses per patient to take care of you. So that’s a different option. You need to realize that a nursing home is also called a skilled nursing facility, and then rehab is an upgrade from that, and obviously, it costs more.

[00:03:32.070] – Hilary Erickson

So then we looked at assisted living. An assisted living is a downgrade from a nursing home. There aren’t nurses constantly there, but there are CNAs on staff who can come help you. You have a little button that you wear, like help, I can’t get up a button, and the CNAs can come help you. There are, I believe, LPNs, I’m not sure, RNs who divvy out the meds, and you can decide if you want to take care of your own meds or if you want the nurses to take care of it for you.

[00:03:58.070] – Hilary Erickson

When you’re admitted to an assisted living, apparently, they do an assessment on you and they categorize what level of care you’re going to need, and then you’re priced off of that level of care. So my dad, fully functioning, does his own meds, takes care of him himself. He’s still going to have some a medical charge in association with being there, but it should be low. Although you don’t really have control over that. When I pushed them to find out how many of their people were on the lowest level, I couldn’t really get an answer. So there you go.

[00:04:28.320] – Hilary Erickson

But there’s also something called independent living, which I had not heard of. So I would look at that as an apartment area. This is what my parents ultimately chose. It looks just like a cruise ship or a hotel with larger hallways than a cruise ship. It’s an apartment, but they have to check in every day. They have to push a button in their apartment that they’re up and that they’re going. Otherwise, they’ll come check on them.

[00:04:52.040] – Hilary Erickson

And there is a CNA service that works within the facility. It’s not the same facility, but they can come in and help you. Like when my mom came home from rehab, she had somebody coming in to help her shower through that CNA program, right? She didn’t need help every day, but because of the ankle and the thing that she has, there’s somebody that comes in and helps her shower that they pay through the CNA program, which is ultimately less than assisted living.

[00:05:17.390] – Hilary Erickson

So, assisted living looked to be about $8,000 a month for my parents, whereas the independent living was about $6,000 a month. And I think something that’s important to know is Medicare is paying for the CNA for a certain period of time as home health because of an issue she had.

[00:05:34.710] – Hilary Erickson

They will not pay for it long term, but they will pay for it initially. So if you have a short term issue, like a broken ankle, then Medicare can supplement some of these things versus if you were in an assisted living facility, they would not be paying for that because they don’t pay for assisted living.

[00:05:51.390] – Hilary Erickson

So, with assisted living, my parents would have gotten three meals a day, and with independent living, they got two meals a day, which my parents were happy about because they were hoping to go for some meals. But you’re understanding how many meals are taken care of, how much housekeeping, how much laundry. These are important things to look at as you choose which facility is best for you.

[00:06:09.320] – Hilary Erickson

I don’t know all of these things, but I have a basic idea of how they work, but I think it’s really important that you know that. I think A lot of people think that if they go to a nursing home, their insurance is going to pay for it, and that is not the case unless they have a short term problem.

[00:06:21.800] – Hilary Erickson

Rehab was paid for by Medicare for a certain period of time, but because she ended up having two issues, they ended up having to pay cash for part of it. So it’s just It’s really important that you understand these big finances that you’re going to have to look at.

[00:06:35.580] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, after you pick where you’re going, you’re going to want to put down a deposit or however it works. My parents found a spot that put them pretty close to the dining room, which because of my mom’s mobility issues, was going to be helpful. They just thought it was a good spot, and so they decided on that place. Then you’re going to want to downsize your life and pack. And honestly, my dad had been trying to downsize their life for years. We had been working through giving things away to the goodwill in their area and just working through it. But they had a lot of stuff. As you could imagine, they moved the day I graduated high school, and they left soon after my 30-year reunion. So they had been in this house for 30 years. My mom’s a buyer. I’m not going to say she’s not a buyer, but they had a lot of stuff to go through, and it is super overwhelming. So once they decided they were going, we started just having boxes that we were putting things that we knew were going to the assisted living with them.

[00:07:29.560] – Hilary Erickson

We started in the kitchen because that was an easier area. You’re going to not take as many things as you would if you were going to a straight-up apartment. While you’re looking at packing and putting your things in there, figure out who’s going to help you move. My parents have maybe the world’s heaviest furniture, so I was definitely not going to be moving it. Look into movers. And I got to say that when you’re looking at all this, there’s a lot of balancing how much money you have to devote to this, right? And money wasn’t too much of an issue for my parents. It’s always an issue, my dad is an economics professor, so there was always balancing out how much things were going to cost and things like that.

[00:08:05.610] – Hilary Erickson

But trying to decide how much money you have to devote to this, or if I had six or seven other siblings, maybe they could have come to help, but I only have one brother. So hiring movers was important to us. The independent living place actually had a place that they recommended, and we loved the movers. They were so helpful, so courteous and kind to my parents.

[00:08:24.820] – Hilary Erickson

I think they were more expensive than if I had just hired movers, but I think they were more careful of the stuff and of their feelings. It’s a big deal to be moving out of your house and do an independent living, and the movers were just great. So I would recommend looking for ones that maybe have done this or worked at the facility that you’re going to.

[00:08:40.460] – Hilary Erickson

At the same point in time, we were trying to decide, should we get a storage place, right? I think it would be really easy to think, Well, I’m going to want to go through these things later on. My dad was very reasonable and realized that he wanted to put some memories and family history in the storage facility so that he could go through them, decide he wanted to scan and what could be thrown away or what he just enjoyed looking at and draw a line. So he got one that is just the size of a good size home closet. We stored some things there that my mom wasn’t going to be using because of her broken leg for a little bit. A few hobby type items that they might want to get to, and then family history, and then that was it.

[00:09:19.610] – Hilary Erickson

I think it’s really smart to have one so you’re not throwing away things that you might regret later on, but also important to not have a giant one of things that I I would then end up having to go through later on. I could throw away all the things that are in that storage shed or look at them on my own. That wouldn’t be overwhelming to me. But I think a lot of older adults are thinking, Oh, I might want to save this, or my family might want it later, so let’s get a storage head. And I think it’s so much better to just make the choice and make the cuts right as you’re making the move out rather than having a storage facility that you are likely not going to use.

[00:09:55.600] – Hilary Erickson

Now, my parents were very clear that this was where they were moving, and they weren’t intending to go to a home. If your independent living state is planning to be short term, then this could look different for you. Then what do you do with all the other stuff? So my parents were moving from a 6,000 square foot home to a, I want to say maybe a thousand square foot apartment, maybe 1,100.

[00:10:17.520] – Hilary Erickson

So obviously, there were a lot of things that weren’t going to be coming to that assisted living. And so we looked around, we looked at the possibility of having just a charity come and clean out the house and then getting the tax deduction, and we looked at an estate sale. Now, I’ve got to say, I feel like estate sale people are shady like pawn shops. I think it’s a difficult job to make good money in, and you’re dealing with the subset of the population that’s overly emotional about their items and probably expects to get paid more than what you’re going to end up making them.

[00:10:52.710] – Hilary Erickson

But I didn’t love the person that we went with. I wish that we had interviewed a few more estate sales, but my dad was just ready to go with one that seemed fine. That’s who we went with. How an estate sale works is she took half of the proceeds. So she got half of the… We have a couch. We sell it for $500. She gets $250, we get $250. From when we sign the contract to when she did the sale was about a month, where people were coming in, they categorize things, they display them, they put them on tables, or I don’t know what else they do, because I did not go in that house once the estate sale people were there.

[00:11:28.120] – Hilary Erickson

I did look at the estate sale online, and even that was extremely painful. It’s like all of your things just out there needing to be sold. The initial sale, I get the feeling that it did not go very well, that not very many things sold at an estate sale. And as someone who garage sales shopped a lot. Whenever I went to estate sales, I felt like things were super overpriced. So after the estate sale, then she must have a list of people who are interested in couches or interested in yarn.

[00:11:57.370] – Hilary Erickson

My mom had a lot of yarn, things like that. And they come in and they probably either just bulk purchase all the couches and take them out, or she gives them a discount if they’re buying a bulk amount of these items, and they take them out. Now, when you sign an estate sale contract, you sign for the estate sale, But then there’s a separate contract for a cleanout. So she said that we could pay something like $650 per truckload that goes out either to charity or to the dump, or you could just pay $3,000 and they would do the cleanout fee.

[00:12:28.490] – Hilary Erickson

I literally had I had no idea what we would make from this estate sale. Initially, after reports of the initial sale and how much was left in the house, I was like, Wow, are we even going to make the 3,000? But he ultimately… Think of this. This is a house that is full of stuff, furniture, all those different kinds of things. He ultimately made $8,000 and paid her $3,000. So he netted about $5,000 in total from the estate sale.

[00:12:53.730] – Hilary Erickson

I could tell that it was painful to my dad. He had bought really high-quality furniture that was probably not sold for a lot. And I think we sometimes have this feeling like, Oh, well, someday I’ll be able to sell this and I’ll make some money off of it. And we need to just love the items that we have, not plan on them making money. That was something that I really learned from the estate sales. Remember that the big money came when they sold the house. We’re going to talk more about that in a minute. But you got to clear out the house in order to be able to sell it. And so the estate sale is almost just a means to an end.

[00:13:24.760] – Hilary Erickson

So you’re looking for people that will be helpful in the process, will help your items go to a good home, because I think my dad It would have been fine if they had all just gone to charity and he could have gotten a giant tax deduction. But also he needed it to be easy. So trying to balance all those different things. And I would encourage you to look for a few estate sale companies in your area and be aware that they’re all a little bit weird, and hopefully you can find somebody good. I did not enjoy the estate sale process, but it was a necessary evil just for how it was going to work.

[00:13:53.370] – Hilary Erickson

Could my nieces have maybe sold some of the stuff on Facebook marketplace ahead of time? Maybe they could have made a little cash on the side. But would it have really been worth it overall for my dad to do something like that? Absolutely not. So, yeah.

[00:14:06.730] – Hilary Erickson

Side note, you start the estate sale after all of your things are out of the house, which I didn’t know that either. Once you sign the contract for the estate sale, she owns all of the things in the house, and she was real adamant about all that.

[00:14:20.050] – Hilary Erickson

So you got to get everything that you want out of the house ahead of time. Or you mark the things that shouldn’t be sold. There were a few things that my dad didn’t want to be sold. I will say that there are a few things we didn’t think about, like his thing to turn off the sprinkler heads. Didn’t mark that, still got sold. So it’s a process.

[00:14:37.810] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, so back to moving into the apartment. There is a reality that was very similar to moving my kids into the dorms, right? When you were moving in, you realize that what seemed to look very big when no furniture was in there is much smaller than you thought. We had a blueprint of the apartment that they were moving into, and we had measured all the furniture. And then a few days before the move in, we realized that the Blue Parents number of inches was based on the outside of the room. So when you took off the drywall and the boards or something, we lost three or four inches, which was a big deal. We ultimately had tried to move in a bookshelf and had to take it back home because it wouldn’t fit.

[00:15:18.920] – Hilary Erickson

Measure, but also just be prepared for the reality of things are not going to fit exactly how you want. Hopefully, they can maybe downsize some furniture as they keep downsizing the things that they have. It’s tricky. There were a lot of emotions that day, and I felt like I hadn’t done enough, and he was frustrated. It was a lot.

[00:15:38.850] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, so once you’ve picked where you want, you’ve moved your stuff, you started the estate sale or the charity coming through. I didn’t talk about this, but there is a really nice benefit of being able to go through a room and just decide what you want to keep, and then you literally leave the rest. When we were going through my parents’ office, I literally just had a corner. I was chucking things that were supposed to go to the estate sale. That was probably one of my favorite parts of being able to do it this way because the estate sale just took care of that. So you really just had to focus on what was important. I, of course, had a lot of anxiety that we would somehow miss something that was important. But we, honestly, I feel like we did pretty well.

[00:16:16.630] – Hilary Erickson

Are there some boxes we probably should have labeled better? Yes. But you have the estate sale, you’ve moved into the assisted living, now you’re looking to sell the home. I know a lot of people might look to sell the home on their own, and my dad, I think, considered that because of the savings. But ultimately, having a realtor was super helpful because he didn’t live at the home at that point in time. He really didn’t want to deal with the buyers. They did not want to fix anything. They just wanted to be done with the house. And so we got a great real estate agent that actually happened to live in their neighborhood and was super helpful and got the closing at the assisted living with them and just really helpful. So I would say look for a prime real estate agent who is good at doing all of the things and maybe has done this type of sale before with older parents.

[00:17:03.320] – Hilary Erickson

As a side note, so my mom was living in the rehab for her broken ankles, not drug rehab, physical therapy rehab, at the same time that we were doing all this.

[00:17:13.040] – Hilary Erickson

And I felt for her, right? We were moving her out of her home, that they built this home. It was a custom home, and she had no control over it. So I tried to do everything that I could to give her as much control as I could. There was a lot of FaceTiming, going through her clothes, going through the memorabilia in the house, so that she could have an opportunity to have some control in this. However, I feel like I didn’t have very good boundaries during this process. There were times that I was overworked, just crying while I was working. So I think you have to balance those two different things. It was difficult, but I would encourage you to try and give if there’s a parent who can’t be there as much control as you can while also setting your own boundaries, which I did not do a great job at. Not unusual for me, though. Let me give you guys just an idea of the timeline and then share a few mistakes that I feel like we made. So on July first, my mom fell and my dad realized that it was really time to look at assisted living.

[00:18:13.340] – Hilary Erickson

But they went through a period with lots of surgeries. It was just too much for my dad to really look in a place to go. And I actually happened to be there at the beginning of July. And so by the end of July, he had picked the spot where he wanted to live. He had put down the deposit. And then August 1st-ish, I came and we started that initial move out.

[00:18:31.660] – Hilary Erickson

So we were just going room to room, picking out what needed to go to the assisted living that they weren’t using at that period of time. That’s when we started. I don’t live in the same state as my parents, so I was flying in to help do this.

[00:18:44.920] – Hilary Erickson

So I was there for probably five days that first time, and then the second time I came for, I think about a week, around August 10th. And that is when we were real serious about packing stuff up. About five days into that stay, we had the movers come, we got him into the assisted living and all those different things. On August 17th, he signed for the estate sale. I think he moved about the 15th.

[00:19:07.730] – Hilary Erickson

He signed for the estate sale on the 17th because remember, you got to have everything out before you sign for the estate sale. The estate sale started about September 19th, and by September 27th, the house was cleaned out and ready to be put on the market. The house was put on the market by October seventh because she had to finish cleaning the house and stage it for sale. And then October 12th, they accepted offer on the house, and I am recording this early November. They should sign really soon for the final sale of the house, and then they will be done with it. I always want to know a specific timeline, so if that helps you guys, maybe that would help you.

[00:19:43.340] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, what would I do differently Or what am I thinking that I should do? I’ve got another few years before I’m having to do this, but I am thinking about it. Less stuff, guys. We all need less stuff. There’s so many things that we’re not using. There’s so much stuff that we buy that we don’t actually need. And so I I am definitely, what is it, Swedish death cleaning? I feel like I am doing that as we move through stuff.

[00:20:05.920] – Hilary Erickson

But having less stuff is definitely a priority after I did this. Also, I personally always look, I try and get three quotes for everything. And trying to find the best people to help you in this process is so important because your parents are vulnerable, you’re vulnerable. There’s so many emotions for having somebody that is really good in this field, I think would be nice.

[00:20:28.320] – Hilary Erickson

I would also start early. So while your parents are still with it, no problems. You would say, What are your plans once things start to go downhill health-wise? Is there anything I can do? Is there stuff we can be thinking about? Have you looked at places around? Have you talked with friends? Just mention this. They probably have. But if you have an idea and they know that you’re thinking about it, it just opens up the communication lines.

[00:20:51.390] – Hilary Erickson

Obviously, you’re not trying to send them to an assisted living while they’re still doing great living at home, but it’s something to think about. In my head, if you look back at that, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is going so fast. We probably should have taken more time to do it.

[00:21:04.720] – Hilary Erickson

But ultimately, I was not sad that it was done quickly. When you’re going through rooms just looking for the things that you actually need, it was nice to have it done speedily because we weren’t having to take up the time to box up the items we weren’t going to use or trying to haul them down the stairs. We were just looking at what we needed for the new apartment.

[00:21:25.980] – Hilary Erickson

Ultimately, I liked the timeline, even though when it was happening, I was like, Is this going to work out? It seems so fast, right? So a lot of people go, Oh, are your parents happy now that they’re settled in the apartment? Maybe. They love that life is simpler. They love that somebody can haul them to appointments if they want. My dad still drives very safely. They love not having to deal with a giant house, but there’s a lot of things they miss. They miss not having some of the stuff that they left behind. It’s a small space, so they can’t have a lot of people in their apartment, although at the assisted living, there is large other places you can request and do family parties in.

[00:22:03.220] – Hilary Erickson

And as we’re heading back this Christmas for a family wedding, we are having to get a hotel, and all of that is just weird because we can’t stay at my parents’ house anymore, obviously. So there’s just changes, things that are different. There’s a lot of things that are better. I think the idea that that part is done is a huge relief because they knew that it needed to happen, and that was difficult for them. So there’s always pros and cons of different things. But hopefully this gave you guys an idea of what to expect or some things I wish different or some finances stuff. If you guys have questions, come find me over on Instagram. I also have a whole post about it with tons more information on Pulling Curls, and I’ll put that link in the show notes.

[00:22:44.800] – Hilary Erickson

Stay tuned. Next week, we are talking about strength training for women, which is so important in this whole process of moving my parents. I realized that I really needed to build bone and muscle better, so I’m working on that. And then the week after that, we are talking about avoiding birth trauma, so stay tuned.

[00:23:01.520] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls Podcast today. If you like today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you.

Keywords:

moving parents to retirement living, assisted living, retirement living options, downsizing home, moving into assisted living, independent living, nursing home costs, Utah nursing home, rehab care, skilled nursing facility, CNA services, independent living costs, Medicare coverage for seniors, estate sale process, choosing an estate sale company, selling family home, storage facilities for downsizing, hiring movers, downsizing furniture, realtor for senior home sale, financial planning for senior care, managing parent’s move, Swedish death cleaning, simplifying life for seniors, retirement community, emotional aspects of moving seniors, family involvement in senior move, senior meal plans, home health services for seniors, balancing finances for senior care

The post Moving Mom and Dad: Tips for a Smooth Transition appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Before we get started, one of your favorite memories may be hanging out with me during your pregnancy. I can’t tell you how often I hear “I was just wondering that and then suddenly you appeared with my answer” — I’d love to do that with you. Let me join you:

Pregnancy Memory Caveats:

The biggest one is that most of paper that hospitals use to print ultrasounds or other things at the hospital aren’t archival — meaning they will fade with time. They’re done on heat-transfer paper that just doesn’t hold.

SO, it’s really important that you transfer these ultrasounds into another medium.

If you want to stick with paper, that means scanning them and printing them archivally (honestly, just a xerox copy is better than those papers), or if you’re going digital, you’d scan them anyway.

What to Keep?

It’s really easy to think that the pictures of your pregnancy are what’s important to keep — but I’m here to tell you there’s a LOT more you’ll want to remember from this pregnancy.

Any Health Issues

This is definitely not glamorous — and while you might not want to put these exactly in the “baby book” you’re going to want to write them down somewhere.

It really helped on subsequent pregnancies to know that my blood pressure started to creep up at 36 weeks.

Also, especially if you’re having a girl, it’s important to have these things written down — give her a history that might happen to her as well.

Personally, I’d keep these more in a journal than a baby book — but just get them written down!

If you’re doing a traditional scrapbook you can keep things like this in a “pocket” that not everyone looks at when they’re flipping through, but someone can grab out and read if they’re interested.

The Numbers

Keep your weights, your blood pressures, and your lab values.

Once again — it may really be handy to keep these things for your next pregnancy, or even later health issues that you have going on.

You always think you’ll remember but I’m here to testify you absolutely will NOT. It’s such a pain to get those records later on — if you have your own of it, it’s going to give you some peace of mind.

Again, this can be in a file folder, your journal, or wherever — I’m just saying it’s handy to have later on.

What You’re Feeling

What are you FEELING? The pukes, the kicks, the food aversions, write it all down.

I’m here to tell you that someday your child is going to be AMAZED by the fact that they caused all those things as they grew inside your body.

And yes, once again you think you’ll always remember it — because it’s so amazing as you’re feeling it — but you just won’t.

Big plug for when you feel the baby move. Next baby you’re really going to wonder when you felt it on the first — and it’s always nice to know what you felt (and what’s normal for you — brings peace of mind sometimes).

Hopes and Dreams for the Future

What do you hope for this baby, your family, and your future together?

There is no better time to dream all the dreams then when you encapsulate this little human you already so love inside your body.

Dream the big dreams, you deserve them – -you’re creating a human.

Write them down, it will be fun to look back on!

I honestly don’t think there’s a better feeling as a kid to know that they were loved before they even existed. I think sharing these hopes and dreams with your kids as they get older can be a really positive things!

Photos

I know, you feel fat, and bloated and tired — but do the photos.

I desperately wish I’d done a maternity photo shoot, but I only have some really bad photos my husband took. Makes me sad, but it just wasn’t really popular back in my day.

Even if you can’t afford the maternity shoot, when you’re feeling mildly cute ask your partner to snap a few photos of you. Look for great maternity images on social media and share them with them, to give them an idea of what you’re hoping for.

OR, if you have a friend who takes great pictures on their phone, ask them. I think lots of people like to have fun with photos!

Will they come out perfectly, no — but your body won’t be like that again, and you need all the proof that you grew that baby INSIDE your body — so snap the pictures!

Be sure to get some with your partner too — some day you’ll look back and realize you were the baby too so young.

Ok, while we are here. What should you put all those memories in?

I am a huge fan of this planner that allows you write down a lot of this stuff, and also keep track of your to-do’s, appointment info and more. It would be an amazing keepsake. You can even have it printed on archival paper at a local print shop (just make sure you use a good pen when you’re writing in it — my favorites are here). I think we can all agree that price is right too!

But, if you’re looking for more of a ready-to-use type product — here are a few I like:

I really like the promptly journals — they have other ones you can move to as baby is bigger. This is more about WRITING than photos though (says the writer).

This one has spots for photos — but I must admit I wouldn’t know what to put on all the pages (which is why I prefer to only print what I want in that planner)… it can feel overwhelming to think you have a picture of you and your pregnancy test (but maybe you do!). Maybe you baked it in a cake….. {iykyk)

I like the simplicity of this one.

This one is sweet, and has a pocket in the back which I like (you can easily glue in your own pocket if you like another better though).

I liked the different options that this one had — like naming what’s important the year you were born.

There’s lots of cool ones out there. I think it’s nice to be able to thumb through them, but it may be harder to find them in stores.

Or, you can just go to town with cardstock and sheet protectors and just make it up on your own. That’s what I did.

OR, you can go entirely digital. There’s so many cool digital photo albums anymore. I’ve used Mpix and Shutterfly before. If you’ve used one that you find great — please tell us in the comments!

The Good AND the Bad

Before we end this, I want to really encourage you to write down both good and bad things of your pregnancy. Again, this might not be in the official album, but it’s so important for you to remember how tough it was. How miserable you were at times and how you wanted to magically just be NOT pregnant.

There is ZERO reason to leave rose-tinted glasses on as you preserve the memories of your pregnancy. That doesn’t really do any favors.

I remember thinking that pregnancy, birth and life with baby would be just magical. It wouldn’t be that painful (any of it), I’d be a Rockstar at all areas because I’d grown up wanting to be a mom so bad.

I was so wrong. I wasn’t prepared for any of it. I even took a (really bad) birth class — I did try!

Then, I found out about this class — and everything changed. Suddenly, I felt in charge of my pregnancy, and I knew that I could lead the team of my healthcare providers into a great birth. I also knew how to manage my postpartum so I didn’t end-up in a puddle of tears every day (true stories).

We all need as much help as we can get — so get your partner on board as you get prepared in The Online Prenatal Class for Couples. I promise, by getting prepared — you’ll have even better memories of your pregnancy, birth & life in that first year!

Not sure we’re a good fit check out my free class — It’s your first step towards being your own birth boss.

The post Pregnancy Memory Ideas appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Just remember that bundle of joy is going to grow up and go to school…. be an adult.

Before we get started I gotta say that baby names stressed me out BIG time. However, it really wasn’t anything compared to how nervous I was about giving birth, how bad I was about asking my provider tricky questions, or how woefully unprepared I was to bring that baby home.

Honestly, I should’ve stressed a lot less about the name and been more aware of how my life (and body) would change after this baby was born.

I wish I’d taken a class that actually prepared me. And then I found The Online Prenatal Class for Couples. It’s not a surprise that a nurse expert can really help you understand how to talk with your provider, or the basics of birth but most ESPECIALLY what to expect (and watch for) when you go home.

If you’d like to have a smoother transition into life with this new so far, un-named baby I can’t recommend this class any more. I can promise you that a baby name is just a tiny bump in a very long road that you are likely not prepared enough for. But it’s not too late.

Why I make a Baby Name List

Many of you might know me as The Pregnancy Nurse® — I do pregnancy all day every day all year.

I see a LOT of baby names as I interact with pregnant couples during the year. I just jot down some of my favorites throughout the year and then I consolidate to a top 10 for boys and girls. I just probably hear a lot more baby names than the average joe. I think these lists are fun to make and people really enjoy them. SO, here it is!

But first, a few qualifiers on names — these are a few things I think about as a mom to adults when I read the names people are choosing….

Kindergarten

How will this name be to spell in Kindergarten?

Will the teacher easily be able to say it without a pronunciation guide

Will the child easily learn how to spell it be mid-year.

As a mom to three and a former PTO president I have spent a LOT of time in school and I’ve seen these struggles first hand. It’s important to me that my child be able to hit all those three milestones.

And now, a word on….

Unique Spellings

I see a LOT of “unique spellings” out there, and as someone who’s name is spelled wrong about 90% of the time it ends up being awkward for all of us.

Honestly, I don’t care but sometimes people profusely apologize….

Ultimately, I think moving forward as a society we’ll have to ask everyone how to spell their names constantly, if we place value on spelling them right.

But, my question for you — why? My parents did that, because only one L in Hilary is the English spelling — then Hillary Clinton came along and wiped that out. They didn’t mean to be unique with it. Personally, I named one of my sons with an -ER — and everyone and their dog spells it with an -OR — which I never even considered.

My goal isn’t to have kids who have to spell their names every time they get on the phone. I already live on a street that absolutely no one can pronounce and it makes me want to move. That, at least, is easier than changing my name.

And finally….

The Yell Test

I’ve also heard this called the “front porch test” earlier this year. It was where you go outside and yell it into the front of your yard and see how it feels.

For me, because I knew I’d yell at my kids more than just asking them to come home when it’s dark — so I’d yell it out angry and see how it worked.

My uncle was named Randall Maynard and that is SUCH a good yelling name. It’s the standard for which I aim.

Oh, and while you’re here — can I just beg you to prepare a bit more for life after baby? Grab my postpartum plan right here:

If you’re pregnant and looking for more info on that, here are some of my most popular pregnancy posts:

• Signs Your Water Is Going To Break
• Gifts for Pregnant Women
• Did my Water Break Quiz
• What does a contraction feel like?
• Best Ways to Shave While Pregnant

And, with that — let’s get first to the Top Boy Names. Want to skip to girls, click here.

Top Boy Names

(in no particular order)

Joshua

I do like biblical names, but mostly because they’ve been used for a long time. This name is short, to the point. I am a fan.

Daniel

I picked this name out, and I just realized it is also my college boyfriend’s name…. which had no impact, just a fun aside.

Again, a solid name that’s been used for a while.

Waylon

Ok, here we step out a bit — at least in the United States. I don’t hear this name often, but I think it’s cute — especially with the right last name.

I definitely want you to say the whole name together a few times. See how it flows. For instance, my last name is Erickson so I tried to stay away from anything that ended in an -n sound. Waylon Erickson. Nah…. not the best.

Jayce

This could easily be a nickname, or an actual name for a baby. I feel like I and trending more towards the shorter, easily to spell names because I want that for my kid.

My last child has the shortest name, and I wasn’t sad about it. Much easier to teach how to write.

Tobias

This felt like an older name, and I was a fan. Plus, there was a nice kid with this name in high school….

I think we all have pre-thoughts about a name. I was trying to name a child as a labor nurse who’d seen hundreds of names, alongside a high school teacher who’d seen thousands of names and had very strong feelings towards some of them.

You gotta acknowledge that some people ruined names for us — and move on. Of course, some people made names better, so there’s that!

Elliot

I think this is sweet. However, I somehow have a harder time picturing Elliot as a C-suite executive going to a business meeting. I do think it’s a very sweet little boy’s name though.

Randall

Yup, my uncle’s name made the list.

May I offer Maynard as the middle name.

Seriously, pretend to yell it in your brain — it just feels good, doesn’t it.

Plus, I think it’s a very solid name that goes from infant to older man.

As a note, my uncle Randy was one of my favorite people in my life growing up. Funny as all get-out. I promise you want your kid to be like him.

Landon

I feel like I wouldn’t have liked this name as much last year, but somehow I like it this year. I honestly don’t know why.

Mason

This one used to be more popular than I think it is now, but I think it’s worth a solid consideration — except the fact that it’s also a jar, and I worry about that somehow becoming a joke….

BTW, you GOTTA think of all the jokes and rhymes with for your kid’s name.

My kids suddenly found Hilary Pillary (which is the stocks you keep someone in back in colonial America). They find it amusing, but prior to now Hilary really hasn’t rhymed with much — Hilary celery was about as bad as I got it in elementary school, and that felt pretty easy compared to what some people’s names rhymed with.

Jasper

I’m a huge fan of the town in Canada that had fire at it this year, but I just thought it was a cute name.

I do worry about Jasper the friendly ghost, but I feel like most kids have no idea who Casper is….

And, as a transition into our lady friends — are you making sure this baby is kicking? I’m a huge fan of kick counts but SO many providers explain them wrong to really help (for instance, 10 kicks in two hours is NOT kick counts). Grab my cheat sheet here:

Top Girl Names

Ok, onto the little ladies in our midst!

(in no particular order)

Judy

I just think this is a short, sweet name. Beyond Garland who I absoutely adore, you gotta hope she doesn’t follow that path — unless it’s the Yellow Brick Road.

Rebecca

There were a TON of Rebecca’s a few years after I was born. I have so many Becky or Becca friends… but I think there were so many that maybe this name has fallen out of favor.

Personally, I’d call her Rebecca, rather than Becky — but even if you THINK you’re going to call them xyz, sometimes that doesn’t end-up happening.

As a note — just because a name was really popular when we were kids doesn’t mean we can’t consider it now. And yes, every Jessica out there reading, I’m looking at you.

Stella

I just want to say Stella like a boxer every time I hear this name. I think it’s cute, and short — and you could add a fun middle name to it.

Autumn

Maybe because it is 100% my favorite season here in Arizona because we’re finally cooling down — I just like it.

Avery

I don’t hear this very often, but I think it’s short and sweet.

Nora

Ditty for Avery. Short and sweet, and I really think that it would be the sweetest little toddler. Can you just imagine her waking up with sweet sleep in her eyes.

Sweet little Nora.

Courtney

There were a good number of these growing up, but I don’t hear this name too much.

I feel like this was one of the first names I learned that could be used for a boy or a girl… in case that’s important to you.

Amelia

one word — Bedelia. She’s literally the best. I adore her. Anyone read those books?

Marianne

I also had a Marianne that was one of my favorite baby sitters growing up. I don’t hear many of this name and the ones I know have always been sweet women.

Hallie

A final H name… Honestly, there aren’t a lot of H names out there, so I’ve definitely been called Holly or Heidi because — H. I guess this could be like a Hay-lee, but I read it as a ha-lee.

But you do you.

That’s the thing with names. You always sort of think that it’s insane that they just allow you to just pick a name that your child is stuck with throughout the rest of their lives.

But we do — and somehow we all live with it.

I also somehow wish changing your name was an easier process, especially in that first couple of years. But, it’s not — it’s pricey and annoying, so pick one you love!

Want to see my names from 2024 — here are the boy ones, and the girl ones.

And, in case a name isn’t the only thing stressing you out about a baby — come join me in The Online Prenatal Class for Couples — the easy way to get prepared for birth!

Not sure we’re a good fit check out my free class — It’s your first step towards being your own birth boss.

The post Best Baby Names 2025 appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Whether you’re dreaming of a tidy gift wrapping station or need smart wrapping paper storage solutions, we’ve got you covered. From a DIY wrapping paper station to clever tips for organizing wrapping paper and gift bags, these storage for wrapping paper and gift bags ideas will transform your space. Say goodbye to clutter with these practical tips for organizing wrapping paper and gift bags organization ideas that fit your style and budget!

While we’re here, can we first start be decluttering that wrapping mess you have? We all know those bows from 2013 are ready to go to the trash, you’re never going to use them. Get started with my 5-word organization challenge right here:

Wrapping Paper Organization DIY

Let’s start with what most of us have (including me). For me — I have an old trash can that has our wrapping in it (so we can easily pull it out when it’s time to create a wrap station at Christmas). Our gift bags are in a plastic tote and our ribbons are in a cardboard box.

Honestly, this is probably fine for the rest of the year. However, I’ve gotten some good ideas as I’ve looked for some better solutions.

We do, however, have a row of curly ribbon set-up in our office. It’s an empty wall and it really makes it SO easy.

We just took some of these command hooks, a dowel cut to the size that fit, and we just string the ribbons on there. It’s really awesome, doesn’t take a lot of space and didn’t cost much to make (I know those say they only hold 2 pounds, but that’s exactly what we have).

However, our gift wrap and bags do stay in their garbage bin and a tote — we just don’t wrap enough year round to make a full station in our busy home, and it works!

Pro Tip: We actually have a gift wrap storage bag that holds our “everyday” papers that we can easily pull out at birthday time, and then our Christmas stuff resides in the bin that holds both the storage bag and the other stuff (a storage bin without a lid at the side of a closet).

Want more DIY organization tips?

• 5 Tips for Easy Kitchen Cabinet Organization
• 3 Kitchen Sink Hacks You Need
• The 4 Best Ways to Store Pots and Pans
• Playroom Organization Ideas: Toy storage hacks in small spaces

Ok, but let’s talk about some alternatives that you might be able to add to your current set-up to make it more manageable.

First off, because I know most people don’t have a whole room to dedicate to wrapping…. but you might have some space in….

Wrapping paper organization in a closet

Wrapping organization storage doesn’t have to take up your whole house. We definitely have it stuffed in a hard to reach closet because it’s not something we access frequently (and frankly, large rolls are easy to grab in a situation like that).

This is the one a lot of people think of…. but it’s not my favorite. The size can be an issue. Seems like those long rolls of gift wrap come in a variety of sizes and often that one’s lid won’t accommodate it, so be sure to measure your often used items to make sure they fit.

Also, if you only have a few rolls, that’s far too large. We actually have one like this. I think that it can collapse down to the size you’re using (and then you can shove gift bags next to it in your bin). It can have the same height issue though — so be sure this fits the sizes you most frequently buy.

I am a HUGE fan of vertical organization. I think it both saves space and also makes things easier to grab — so whenver possible I try to prop things upright like library books. This is pretty easy with wrapping paper.

BTW, I always feel like organizers always show people who have a TON of room (and seem to put pretty over organized). I needed organization for a TINY house that had to hold a lot. The Organized Home gave me ideas for every size, and budget-type out there. It’s so helpful!

Wrapping Paper Organization Behind Door

One of the spaces people don’t use much is behind their doors, and there’s actually a lot of great storage options like that. Like this one.

I love that it has spots for paper, ribbon and gift bags — it really is an all-in-one storage solution. You can obviously also use it in your closet. I think if it was me I might put it in my closet most of the year and then just pull it out and hang it on a door when I was wrapping a few presents.

I have also seen people just cut the pockets from regular behind the door shoe storage pockets (leaving it with long tubes they can use) — that might be a nice budget option. I’ve seen those shoe holders at big box stores for pretty cheap.

This just made me think of a few doors that we don’t have anything behind that might be a good fit for something like that — even if it’s not wrapping paper.

Wrapping Paper Under-bed Storage

This is a great option if you have some room under your beds. These boxes look sturdy and nice. They’d keep your wrapping paper dust-free in this dusty location.

The key is often using areas that aren’t used well — and using them for things you don’t access a ton — like wrapping paper! This gives lots of ideas like that.

Wrapping Paper Organization Station

Ok, this one’s for the people who have a spot they’d like to use for gift wrapping. I was surprised how reasonable the price was for HOW MUCH storage you get!

It has a spot for:

• Spools of Ribbon
• Good-sized drawers for pre-tied bows & gift bags
• Shelves for easy to grab items
• Spots for vertical paper storage

Honestly, I’m eyeing a few spots in my house this might work for…. it just looks super handy (and could be used for other crafty things too, not just gift wrap.

Portable Organization Station

Ok, if you’d like a spot you can just wheel out what you have and make a station when necessary I really liked this suitcase organizer. It’s like a wrapping paper organization cart.

Lots of room for papers, spots for gift bags (although not super large ones) — the only thing missing would be spots for large spools of ribbon — we like those multi-color curly ribbon spools. I think you could shove them up by the paper though.

Ribbon Organizers

Like I said above — there are a lot of great way to store thinner items, but large spools of ribbon are tricky. If you liked my system above but would like something less janky this one can hold wrapping paper and ribbon.

There’s also lots of options if you don’t want to put holes in your walls.

Wrapping Helpers

While we’re here, there are a few things that can make wrapping a lot easier.

This gift Wrap cutter has a lot of love lately. It can keep your wrapping paper “shut” but also cut it when you’re ready.

If you think that looks nice, but is kind of spendy — you can always use a nice sharp letter opener like this for the same thing!

Tired of wrapping unfurling and getting crinkled or ripped? These holders look so smart. Silicone slap bracelets basically — but they seem to stay put and work!

I think it’s so smart to find an option for your tape. I use a heavy duty dispenser (I have it at my desk normally) but this looks very handy too!

AND if you’re looking for something to cushion an item in a box I think this stuff is ingenious!

I’d love to know what’s worked at YOUR house — tell us in the comments if you have a great tip.

And, if you’re interested in organizing more of Christmas (or your makeup, or back stock of hand soap) come check out The Organized Home. It’s really there to help busy families let their house support THEM rather than the other way around!

The post Wrapping Paper Organization appeared first on Pulling Curls.