In this heartfelt episode of Shit That Goes On In Our Heads, G-Rex and Dirty Skittles delve into the emotional complexities of mental health and parenting. Our special guest, Jeff, shares his and his wife Jenna's touching story through their podcast, The Real Life of Parenting. They discuss the trials and triumphs faced during their child's premature birth and the subsequent NICU experience. Jeff offers an honest account of balancing parenthood and mental health, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact it had on their lives.
Key Topics:- Parenting in Crisis: Jeff recounts the initial shock and challenges of having a child in the NICU, dealing with strict COVID-19 restrictions, and the emotional toll of a premature birth.
- Mental Health Awareness: The conversation underscores the importance of mental health support and breaking the stigma around seeking help.
- Practical Advice: Jeff and the hosts provide valuable insights into managing medical appointments, advocating for your child, and finding personal time amidst chaos.
Jeff shares stories from his parenting journey on The Real Life of Parenting podcast. While they are currently on a short hiatus due to Jenna's new work schedule, they plan to resume episodes soon. You can connect with them and follow their updates on Facebook at The Real Life of Parenting podcast, where they are most active.
Sponsor:Heather Grace Skincare sponsors this episode. Treat yourself to natural, rejuvenating skincare products, and use the code STGOIOH for a 10% discount. Visit Heather Grace Skincare to pamper your skin!
Call to Action:If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can call, text, or chat with a counselor ready to listen and help. Remember, it's OK not to be OKâtalk to someone today. Visit 988lifeline.org or Find A Helpline for more support.
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Acknowledgments:Special thanks to NJz Audio for ensuring top-notch sound quality.
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Hashtags: #MentalHealthAwareness #ParentingPodcast #NICUJourney #SupportAndStrength #STGOIOH #HeatherGraceSkincare #988Lifeline #PodcastCommunity #BreakTheStigma #GRex #DirtySkittles #TheRealLifeOfParenting
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Music.
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Hey there, listeners. Welcome to Shit That Goes On In Our Heads,
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the podcast where we normalize conversations around mental health.
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That's right. I'm Dirty Skittles, and alongside my amazing co-host,
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D-Rex, we're here to share real stories and tips from our incredible guests.
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Each episode, we deep dive into struggles and triumphs of mental health,
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offering practical advice and heartfelt support.
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Because no one should feel alone in their journey. Join us as we break the stigma
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and build a community of understanding and compassion.
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Tune in and let's start talking about the shit that goes on in our heads.
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Three, two, one.
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Well, welcome back to another episode of Shit That Goes On In Our Heads.
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I am Dirty Skittles and I am joined by fantastic co-hosts, Jay Rex.
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And we have a special guest today, Jeff.
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Hey Jeff, how are you? Hey, I am doing pretty well. It's been a wonderful Saturday.
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So it's been very nice and sunny here. It's like 25 Celsius.
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So I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, 80 something.
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Close to that. So it's been really nice, which has been a great time.
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We had the kids out this morning, running around and keeping us busy.
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Nice. Do they get along? I know they're young, but do they get along?
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I think they tolerate each other.
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They have moments of where like this is the cutest thing ever.
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And then you have moments where one's trying to take the other one down. So it's just a game.
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It's survival of the fittest. Exactly. Yeah.
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So right now our oldest is going through a little sickness and then the youngest
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is teething. So they're just switching off who's getting angry.
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And the youngest, she's got a personality on her. So she's very,
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very adamant about everything.
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Are they both girls? No. So the oldest is a boy.
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That's perfect, right? Isn't that like the dream? One boy, one girl?
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Yeah, I think they call it the million dollar family.
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We're missing the million dollars, but it's still a family that matters, right?
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I love that though. That's pretty cool. Man, so what time did your morning start?
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Today was... We slept in till about 6.30am.
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And then get up and take care of the kids, feed them, all that good stuff.
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Just a pretty standard morning.
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Yeah. Yeah. Do you tag team them? Just them being so close in age?
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Or can you do it all on your own?
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It's great to have the tag team and the help. So right now with the wife,
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Jenna, she's not home for most of the week.
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And then she's back on the weekends just with work and stuff.
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So I'm single dadding it through the week right now. and work,
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taking the kids to daycare, picking them up, doing dinner, doing everything.
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So doing everything while she's away working.
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And yeah, that's pretty much it. So it's a bit of a combined effort,
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but a lot of it's on me right now.
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Yeah, that can get tough. Do you set aside time for yourself during it all?
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So my time alone is usually in the car for about an hour.
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And then usually when they go to sleep, it's about seven o'clock at night.
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So I get about two hours before I decide that I should go to bed,
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get ready for the next day. So it's very busy.
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Yeah, I can relate. I feel like the time I get to myself is like when everybody else is sleeping.
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So it's either like 4 a.m. or 9 or 10 when I'm debating.
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Do I watch? Do I start Bridgerton now? Or do I just go to sleep?
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I don't know how long I'll stay awake for. No, it's definitely a struggle trying
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to find that alone time for yourself.
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Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Tell me, I don't know. Tell me what your fun things
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are to do when you do have that alone time.
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Right now, just because usually the day gets pretty stressful.
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So it's like, it's like one of those, a lot of the time I just end up like,
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like I got a plan of things that I want to do. I want to clean up, whatever, do whatever.
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I've got my planner set out, but a lot of the time it's just,
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I'll put them down and then I'll go and sit on the couch and just,
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just decompress for a good half hour and literally have something on the TV,
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but I'm paying attention to nothing. I'm just literally decompressing just...
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Especially when they're having a bad night. So mostly yeah. And then lately
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it's just been watching whatever's on TV or cleaning up.
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But yeah, not a whole lot of free time for hobbies at the moment. Yeah.
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What about you, G-Rex? How do you manage with... How do I manage my downtime?
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Lately, just been like vegging in front of the TV. I also do a lot of journaling.
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So when I have some downtime, I write in my journal in hopes that it will help me finish my book.
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Why do you chuckle why do you giggle why do i giggle
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because like i have that
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like first part of the book written right where all
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this shit started to go down at the end part
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of the book written where everything got better it's
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that middle part trauma block and like
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every now and then like a little idea will like pop in my head and be like oh
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i should write this down so one of of the ways that i journal now is i talk
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into my phone and i record it because i find that it's a lot more fluid that
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way and then i just like transcribe it out but it's still a karma block,
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i've been trying to write this for a year now eventually it's gonna come to
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me and i can finish it but the other thing i do for decompressing and now the
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summer i will go outside i will enjoy Enjoy the green grass,
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see the animals, look at my flowers, pray that my tomatoes are going to grow, all those things.
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It's important to get outside. It is. To touch grass, as I would say.
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It is. It's very important.
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Like, I love where we live. Like, we couldn't do this when we lived in Florida
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because it was so ungodly hot all the time.
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But in upstate New York, I get off for seasons. So the only time I really don't
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go outside is in winter because it is ass cold.
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It is so cold and icy and dangerous and still pretty up here.
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But it's not like spring, summer, and fall.
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Like fall is my absolute favorite time of the year here. It's usually my favorite as well.
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Because it's stunning, right? It's absolutely beautiful.
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I grew up in Colorado and I saw fall, but I didn't realize how beautiful it
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was until I moved up here.
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It is fantastical.
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Where are you located? I am just outside of Ottawa in Ontario.
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Ontario so I get probably pretty similar
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wet like weather all four seasons winter everything
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we had a pretty mild winter now it's gonna be a pretty hot summer
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I think so yeah I'm afraid of that too that's right you know what thank god
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for air conditioning we had that put in last year I'm super excited about it
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yeah don't be afraid to use it no not at all so do you think you're done on
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now with the two kids or do you think they'll have one?
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Yeah, we're done. So it was busy enough. I would imagine.
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It's very busy. So we were like on the fence before like, oh,
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we could have like another one if we really wanted.
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And then we ended up having a second one so close. And I was like,
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no, no more. Like we're done.
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So yeah, I did what I had to do and yeah, no more kids now. So that's it.
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Rolling the dice on the two of them and we're gonna train for the best. Yeah, that's it.
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No i can relate to that statement so
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much though praying for the best the whole thing yeah we have a six-year-old
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he's about to start first grade and i'm like what is that like what is that
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even it just feels like every milestone i it trips me out so it feels like it
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was like you know the first day we brought him home from the hospital so yeah
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time flies when you're having fun,
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yeah something like that yeah no i was just thinking when we were talking about
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like what What do we do in our spare time?
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Whenever that is. And just vegging out on the couch.
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It took me a while. I think it was actually not until I went to therapy to realize
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that it was okay to just veg.
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You don't have to be productive every minute of every day.
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And giving yourself that time to just do whatever the hell you want is...
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That's just as valuable. That is the best kind of self-love right there.
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Just do whatever the fuck you want to do. Yeah. Within reason.
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Fair enough. Okay, fine. There's still lies. Yeah. I forgot we have a dad on the call. Yeah.
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I don't know if I want to call it a guilty pleasure. It's a confession time.
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What I've been doing with my spare time lately Lately is I have been totally
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diving into building houses on the Sims. I don't want to play the Sims.
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I just want to build a house and decorate it and just zone out on that.
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And I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's like 1030 and I don't keep building a
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house, putting in all the hacks and cheats and stuff for Sims 4.
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That's been my... Years ago, I used to do that. Like when I was younger,
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I played Sims on the computer and just spend all the time building the houses
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and the families and just leaving them. What was it? Next one.
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Just some weird compulsion, right? So I wasn't any good at like design or anything.
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So all my houses were just the same square setup with like the ugliest things that you could imagine.
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I love it. It's my favorite thing. I was talking to Valerie.
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She alluded to the fact that you guys had one of your kids in NICU.
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Yeah. So our first one was, yeah, he was born early at 33 weeks. I want to say it was.
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And so he ended up spending three months in the hospital just
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because he would a lot of times like
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his oxygen levels would desaturate and so they just kept him in there till he
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got strong enough and they were doing all the tests to try and figure out why
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it was an ongoing basis and eventually we got to go home but yeah he's definitely
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healthy now but the journey in the NICU is quite an experience.
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How stressful was that like wow? Yeah.
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So it was quite stressful because not only is it like your first kid and you
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obviously don't know what to expect to begin with.
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And then a child, which it's supposed to be like the most magical moment,
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you'd be able to hold your child, all that stuff, ends up coming early.
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And the first time I actually get to see him, he's hooked up to pretty much
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every single machine and being monitored constantly.
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Can't even really hold him. You can touch him, but you can't pick him up or
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anything. And definitely stressful in that aspect. That's what the hardest part was.
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It was not really being able to hold him a whole lot longer.
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And were there other parents in the hospital that were going through the same thing?
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And were you able to gain support from them or maybe a social worker?
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Yeah, there was quite a bit of other families. We were moved around quite a
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bit in the hospitals. It was through COVID time.
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So the first hospital we were at where he was born, we were allowed to both
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go in there at the same time and we could go see the baby.
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But usually we didn't really see any parents or interact with them much because
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COVID, masks, everything, all that.
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Great fun stuff that they did and then we got moved from that hospital went
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to another one and in that one they had even stricter policies but they were
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supposed to be like a lighter unit so only one of us could actually go into
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the hospital room at a time to go see the baby.
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Yeah so but he was like in a whole incubator and
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everything so i'd take him out change him every once in
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a while give him a bath and like i think the hardest
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part is that you don't really feel connected like
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you don't get that connection right away and that was hard and
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it's just like yeah this is our baby and we're taking care of
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him and we're seeing him but like it doesn't feel like he's
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your baby at the same time and it was just a weird out-of-body
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experience that you can't really put your thumb on it's
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weird and then we finally get sent to CHEO
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which is in hospital which is the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario so
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they do a lot of the stuff and then And there was like the long-term stay and
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it was a much different setup where we were in a room with someone with a couple
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other people and we weren't as heavily monitored, but we were still quite monitored.
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And then we got to, yeah, just kind of, we connected a bit with our neighbors
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that we had and yeah, it was just a slow process until he finally got better enough.
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Essentially we did go through a ton of different tests though, like every single day.
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And it was just a kind of like you just entered like
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a fight or flight mode almost and you dealt with
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day by day each problem each situation and it
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was a lot to take in at the time and I don't think either Jenna or
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I really was processing in the
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moments what was actually happening we didn't even talk about it
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for quite a while like we till we sat down and decided
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that we would share our story and then we actually started talking to
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each other actually it's almost like two years from
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when it actually happened to when we were in a comfortable enough
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space to feel like opening up about it yeah how long was he in the hospital
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for like how long until you got to bring him home so we were about three months
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four months something like that jenna knows the numbers unfortunately she's
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not here right now but yeah so it's between three and four months.
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And every day I would imagine it was something different. Like nobody prepares you for that.
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So you get told like every day the doctors would do like rounds and they would
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come through and they would talk to you about what the plan is or what they're
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thinking of doing. And it's usually just for that week.
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So at the beginning of the week on like Monday, you might get an idea what they're planning to do.
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And then each day it was different. and it was like oh we're
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gonna go for an x-ray now or we're gonna go send them down to check out his
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tracks and stuff to make sure everything's moving through we're gonna make sure
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we're gonna check this we're gonna do this test and then and then they were
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always doing the co2 tests where they actually have to poke the heels the babies
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and they were doing that like every day so there's,
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yeah so there's there was a lot of tests and it's a lot of it was like it was
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daily almost like the the stuff that was happening.
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So what did you guys do for your own mental health when you were going through all that?
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In all honesty, I don't think we did a lot in the moment.
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We definitely could have done more to make it easier for us.
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But for the most part, we just had each other.
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We had our parents too to talk to a bit. But for the most part,
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no one really within our family understood.
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And both Jenna and I are more reserved people.
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So we have a harder time actually connecting with people and talking to people.
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And so I just didn't feel comfortable talking to anyone else really.
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I'm used to just keeping things inside mostly and trying to work through it.
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And then Jenna would always vent to me and so I could help her.
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But a lot of the times, we probably didn't do enough to actually help with our
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mental health at the time.
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It's brutal. Yeah. I can't, I cannot even imagine because as a parent,
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like how are you not protective of your child, right?
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And I understand like being in a hospital and tests to figure out what's going
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on. I get why it's happening.
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But if you see your child like in pain, like would he cry when they would prick his heel?
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Like I don't think I could manage myself. Every day.
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Yeah. That's brutal. And yeah, they do things to help.
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Like they would do like, there was like a sucrose type stuff they would give
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them that It was supposed to help none of pain or make their brain forget about
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it essentially. But you just understood what that meant.
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And it was just that, but that would be every day. And then you get whatever
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tests or whatever other things going on. There was a lot of stuff.
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And I think a lot of information, I'm sure tons of information.
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You'd get that. We, I think we were, when we were talking with Valerie, we described it as like.
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We described it a bit of flight as fight or flight, but basically in that moment,
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you're not really feeling,
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focused on everything you're only focused really
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on your kid and you're focused on getting them better and so
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you got blinders on and you're not really paying attention to all
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the little details not all the other stuff outside
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of essentially the hospital room yeah and
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you're probably not thinking about yourselves no not a whole
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lot like i think like i was definitely eating like crap every day we weren't
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really cooking food at home because the way it worked was one of us would stay
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there overnight and then the other one would go home get some much needed rest
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and sleep whatnot we also had our dog who was completely out of sorts because
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we weren't home during the day,
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and then yeah so i definitely
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wasn't taking care of myself physically i don't think i was taking care of myself
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mentally like i wasn't doing anything when i was home i was just going home
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to sleep essentially and then going right back to the hospital so we were yeah
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we're spending spending at least 12 hours in the hospital a year. And then...
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Yeah, that's brutal. And then the other one would, so either Jen or I would
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sleep overnight kind of thing.
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So we'd spend the whole day at the hospital and then go back home.
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And most of the time you're just eating whatever hospital food's there or the
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fast food that they have in the hospital.
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Yeah. Yeah, I was just about to make the joke like, so how is the food at the
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hospital? It was all right.
00:17:35
It was shabbable. Fair enough. Yeah.
00:17:38
Yeah, that's tough. Huh. So in between, I guess, basically, I would imagine
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y'all were just seeing each other in passing and maybe at times together dealing with this.
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Once baby is home, how long would you say it took to decompress and then start
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talking about it with each other?
00:17:57
It's a good question. So I remember when we got home, so he came home and he
00:18:03
had a feeding tube still.
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And luckily it didn't last long. I think we were like less than two weeks and
00:18:08
it was finally the out but had to be trained how to put it back in
00:18:10
case he came out or anything like that so that was fun
00:18:13
but our literal first night we wake up in the
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middle of the night he's screaming we flip the light on he
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had pulled out the feeding tube well not like
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100 but he pulled and like we're both like fun just
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you couldn't believe it we're like the first night
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i'm like we can't just have like a peaceful night kind of thing so we
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end up fixing that and then from there we didn't really have any
00:18:34
hiccups really after that he was
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slow to to get to eating to walking
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to crawling all that stuff but eventually he got onto it all
00:18:44
and i think for us to
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feel decompressed i think for the first couple weeks we were still stressed
00:18:50
out because he still had that feeding tube but i would say after a month or
00:18:55
two we finally started to i think come down off the stress from the hospital
00:18:58
and it's it was hard because we would have a ton of follow-up appointments back
00:19:03
at the hospital And so we had to constantly bring him back,
00:19:05
constantly reminded of being at the hospital.
00:19:09
And he had to get blood work taken lots and all the different specialists following up kind of thing.
00:19:15
And it was, those would bring back memories and let's bring back like almost
00:19:19
like PTSD type feelings.
00:19:21
And we would always be stressed out having to go back.
00:19:25
I know Jenna was always really affected by that. And I was too, but not as much.
00:19:29
We had to do sleep studies quite a few times at the hospital.
00:19:31
So I don't know if you've ever seen a sleep study but they put a shit ton of
00:19:35
sensors all over the head and the body and all that stuff and just on this little
00:19:39
three month six month old baby and you're doing like a full,
00:19:44
sleep study overnight and you're trying to get them to sleep and yeah it's brutal,
00:19:50
different but so I think now we're obviously way better now but I think it took
00:19:56
like a good year before we were really like Like,
00:20:01
like de-stressed like from it like we weren't feeling the
00:20:04
impacts as much so then your second yeah
00:20:08
you have your second child i would imagine it just re-triggers
00:20:11
everything all over it did yeah that's correct but she was different everything
00:20:17
was 100 different with her she was like the like perfect like pregnancy she
00:20:24
was the perfect being born no complications nothing we're home in under three days kind of thing like.
00:20:32
She was the complete opposite but we were she was stressing Jenna was stressing
00:20:35
for sure but with Liam he was a complicated pregnancy so he was going to be
00:20:41
small to start and then Jenna got hypertension and she had,
00:20:46
preeclampsia at the end and that's why they end up delivering him early so she
00:20:50
was worried the whole time she was pregnant with Lily that all this stuff was
00:20:53
going to happen but luckily Lily was just perfectly fine and normal and,
00:20:58
yeah yeah i can't imagine because like
00:21:01
oh my gosh you're you gotta
00:21:05
have felt helpless with the first so now you're having the second and all of
00:21:10
the fear and anxiety that would go along with like just if you are traumatized
00:21:15
from something to be back in that kind of a setting but it's fine like how does
00:21:20
one's mind adjust to that it was a weird change so So...
00:21:27
Like the like we're obviously trying to
00:21:30
stay positive the whole time and obviously like you start
00:21:34
thinking you start getting like those barriers and everything starts
00:21:37
again like what happens if this happens again kind of thing
00:21:40
like i'm in the i'm in the military and i was supposed
00:21:42
to go on they wanted to send me on deployment when jenna
00:21:45
was supposed to be delivering the second baby and i was i had to
00:21:48
say like no i can't like i have to be home just in
00:21:51
case right because if like that happens again like
00:21:54
I can't be away from that so anyways
00:21:58
so that that was definitely a big thing it's
00:22:01
a lot of mental it's a lot of stress and it's just
00:22:05
it's hard to explain it's hard to put a finger on it but after
00:22:09
about like halfway through but maybe about four or
00:22:12
five six months like everything was going smooth and
00:22:15
so it felt a lot better yeah with Liam it was early on there was
00:22:18
issues so yeah wasn't like that
00:22:21
and were your employers like sympathetic
00:22:24
with like what you guys were going through or did they like give you a hard
00:22:28
time with Liam because he was born so early they were very helpful very sympathetic
00:22:33
yeah so they were they gave me lots of time to take care of what I needed to
00:22:38
take care of it was definitely extenuating circumstances for them so.
00:22:42
They let me do what I need to do and then I finally got to I have some parental
00:22:47
leave too after he came home.
00:22:48
So that was nice. But with Lily, they were like a little not sympathetic and
00:22:54
pulling me off the deployment.
00:22:56
So they made me jump through that. So I had to go through all the military stuff,
00:23:02
all the mental health stuff to be like, I can't go.
00:23:06
But yeah, so it is what it is, but.
00:23:10
Did you eventually start seeing a therapist or did you just like deal with like
00:23:16
all your mental stuff on your own?
00:23:18
We dealt with our mental stuff on our own. We never went and saw a therapist.
00:23:22
Jen and I are usually quite open to each other. We talk about a lot of stuff.
00:23:26
And I think that helps a lot. Like we can both vent or at least understand what each other's thinking.
00:23:32
And we always have each other, which is super helpful.
00:23:36
Yeah, you're bonded now more so than you were before. Definitely an experience.
00:23:41
Yeah to both be going through the same thing
00:23:44
just maybe on differently right like a mother father
00:23:47
but yeah i can't imagine and it's
00:23:50
good that you have that communication sorry and well i was just
00:23:53
gonna ask do you think it would have been different if liam had been
00:23:56
born outside of covid don't know
00:23:59
to be honest but covid didn't help within the
00:24:02
fact of like it made it
00:24:05
difficult with like having visitors with basically
00:24:09
both of us being there sometimes with having to
00:24:12
interact with a lot of people it made it difficult in
00:24:16
the sense that with all the restrictions it just made that makes everything
00:24:19
just a little bit harder but it was the two hospitals like the first ones that
00:24:25
we were at because they were NICUs we couldn't like go in without the masks
00:24:29
we couldn't going together or have anyone come see them early on.
00:24:34
It wasn't until we got to CHEO where there was like a little bit better with
00:24:37
restrictions, but yeah, COVID didn't help for sure.
00:24:42
Yeah. And you mentioned like being there, were there other parents there towards
00:24:46
the second when they moved you from NICU?
00:24:48
Yeah. So there was other parents. So we had some roommates there, so they had a little son.
00:24:53
He was cute, but they were from, I think not like Thunder Bay,
00:24:59
but they were up from like Northern Ontario.
00:25:00
So they were like a good 8 or 12 hours from home. So definitely a shock for them.
00:25:06
Yeah, they definitely went through a lot for sure being there.
00:25:10
But they knew they were going to have to be when he was born.
00:25:13
So like they did x-rays and they're like, he's going to need to go to CHEO and
00:25:16
get additional help once he's born.
00:25:19
So they actually knew.
00:25:22
So it wasn't like a surprise to them when he was born that they had to go.
00:25:25
But basically they got born and they got airlifted essentially and that was it.
00:25:30
Yeah, for them being so far from home. So far, right? Yeah.
00:25:36
And does like Liam remember anything that happened or?
00:25:40
He doesn't remember, but he has zero trust for doctors.
00:25:45
I can imagine why. Yeah, he doesn't like doctors. He doesn't like anyone in a lab coat.
00:25:51
Our doctor, she's usually like, our family doctor, sorry, is usually,
00:25:54
she's usually plain clothes.
00:25:57
She's really nice. And then Liam still knows, but she even did like push on
00:26:02
his tummy or anything like that.
00:26:03
He just loses it, just hates it there kind of thing.
00:26:06
Yeah doesn't trust doctors or anyone in scrubs i guess is the best way to put
00:26:10
it because he's got lots of needles so yeah for how long did those doctor's appointments.
00:26:17
Happen once you were home so for the first like
00:26:21
we had like just regular doctors like
00:26:24
they go i think like every three months for like immunizations and
00:26:28
all that stuff so he hates that and then obviously
00:26:31
checkups and then we also had also had a pediatrician who
00:26:35
saw them every couple months and then we also had specialist
00:26:39
appointments with all the other types of doctors like respirology oncology
00:26:43
and different all the different doctors and then they also want to do blood
00:26:47
work more often so it was i would just remember we were yeah he just knows you
00:26:53
know i think we were probably one one to two appointments a week kind of thing
00:26:56
just for like after being at the hospital so it was let's say we were reminded the hospital it.
00:27:02
Was every week like it wasn't just yeah like
00:27:06
a once a month kind of thing yeah and do you
00:27:09
do something special with him after those appointments to
00:27:12
either calm him down or let him
00:27:15
know it's okay and so usually during
00:27:19
the appointment we try to keep it light and try to
00:27:23
take his mind off of it but he still ultimately knows
00:27:26
where we are and what we're doing and then with
00:27:30
the appointments like if there's anything that he needs to like
00:27:33
if he needs needles or anything like that we should get the needle right away at
00:27:36
the beginning of the appointment instead of at the end so he doesn't have to sit
00:27:39
there and worry about the whole time and then
00:27:42
usually once that's done like he starts to get a little bit better like a backwards
00:27:46
thing but it helps him a bit and then afterwards once in a while we may take
00:27:51
him to get some chicken nuggets and something like that but maybe now But it's
00:27:58
summertime, it might be ice cream.
00:28:01
Yeah, because chicken nuggets and ice cream are the cure-all for everything.
00:28:05
Even for adults. It helps with me. I don't know.
00:28:10
I love that. I think I can't imagine going through that.
00:28:14
So for any parents that are out there now, is there any lessons you learned
00:28:19
or anything that would be...
00:28:22
Something for them to keep in mind should they find themselves in a similar situation?
00:28:26
Yeah, like a couple of things I could think of right off the top of my head.
00:28:30
One would be try to make friends with the people that you're with,
00:28:34
or at least people that are around you, especially in the hospital.
00:28:39
I only made friends really with the one family and we didn't talk to too many people.
00:28:42
We were pretty withdrawn at the time and it's really hard for us to break out
00:28:47
of that bubble and out of that shell.
00:28:49
But yeah talk to whoever's around you because chances are they're experiencing
00:28:54
something very similar or they can relate to it and you guys can just bounce
00:28:58
off each other and talk and.
00:29:00
Get out to that talk to any family you can
00:29:03
relatives it's hard especially if they don't they
00:29:06
can't relate it can be hard to talk to someone like that but keeping people
00:29:10
in the loop and talking to people what else
00:29:13
was i gonna say i had like two other things i was gonna say yeah
00:29:16
sorry yeah so talk to people basically you're your child's advocate so a lot
00:29:25
of the times there can be a lot of testing there can be a lot of things that
00:29:29
they're doing but if you know it's too much for your child like you got to tell
00:29:33
them we had an experience where,
00:29:35
basically liam end up becoming quite lifeless then
00:29:39
i think it's just they end up taking way too much blood like a
00:29:42
couple days in a row and he was just like white as a ghost and
00:29:45
you need to get like a blood transfusion essentially to
00:29:48
get them back to normal so understanding the
00:29:51
limits and understanding your child's advocate
00:29:54
and you can say no you can be like no we need he needs a break like you can't
00:29:58
do this that's a that's something else and then if you don't understand something
00:30:03
question it yeah yeah i think that's super important it's really hard in the
00:30:09
moment to get your head on straight and it's really hard to,
00:30:13
be moving forward and it's very important to be able to step back yeah and like
00:30:21
handle your emotions inside and emotions outside too yeah.
00:30:27
Wow. See, these are good lessons for you. If anything ever was to happen to Nugget.
00:30:33
Yeah. Just saying. Yeah. My mom is, she's our family nurse and I could only imagine she'd be.
00:30:40
That was one of the things I was going to ask, but I felt like it might've been a silly question.
00:30:44
Like, was there not anybody there at the hospital for you and your wife to advocate.
00:30:49
For you or to talk about or translate even like what is happening?
00:30:52
And for the most part
00:30:56
they're pretty good at talking to you they're they
00:30:59
can couple the doctors are very
00:31:02
doctor-y and talk very doctor-y and you're like
00:31:05
i don't know what you're saying a lot of the time you would like just get
00:31:08
that like i think i said earlier with the blinders and
00:31:11
you're just you're not really taking the information and
00:31:14
you're not really understanding what's happening and it's not until
00:31:17
afterwards that you start thinking about it but getting
00:31:21
that moment of getting them to stop and
00:31:23
tell you what's actually happening and being very
00:31:27
plain with you is super important i think like
00:31:29
every once in a while we would see like a
00:31:33
girl that would come by and she was i forget
00:31:36
what the team was called that she was but she was basically just like a
00:31:39
social worker almost and she could go and talk to you if you needed to
00:31:42
talk or anything like that but other than that
00:31:44
there wasn't a whole i think there was like some sort of chapel
00:31:47
service was they had but other than that there's not a whole lot of
00:31:50
yeah like a program or something
00:31:53
yeah because that's that's exactly what i
00:31:55
would go to first but she's in that industry so she would be
00:31:58
my what the fuck is happening person so
00:32:02
and we were when we were in geo we were in a room with it was one nurse and
00:32:06
then the three of three of us so there was us and one other family and another
00:32:10
girl had been there for a long time and so that nurse that would be on there
00:32:15
every day you get You're used to seeing them almost every other day or every week kind of thing.
00:32:19
And you could actually talk to them and they keep up with them and they would
00:32:22
explain things a little more in depth to you than the doctors might.
00:32:27
And so that was super helpful. So we did have that.
00:32:31
Wow. Yeah. Wow. A lot of stuff that I'm just...
00:32:36
So helpful to like other listeners that may be going through something like this, right? Yeah.
00:32:43
It makes sense to me. We had, I guess, on a while back and her son,
00:32:48
I'm talking about Jen, she has like literally, it's like a book this thick of
00:32:53
all of the doctor's appointments and things that basically anybody would need
00:32:58
to know to take care of her son should anything happen.
00:33:01
Right. And it makes sense because I think that if this was like a reoccurring
00:33:07
thing, like what else is left?
00:33:09
Right. Like you're gathering documentation, but you need to also understand it.
00:33:14
Yeah. And then once you have that, it's like, how do you stop from being that
00:33:20
advocate for your child?
00:33:21
And yeah, it becomes your life.
00:33:23
It's very hard, especially when the child's young and especially when they're
00:33:27
not speaking. Right. So only you can really know what's happening.
00:33:31
Someone had said, I think it was you're the best doctor for your child,
00:33:37
like your child the most.
00:33:38
And if something's not right, what's not right, you should advocate for that.
00:33:43
And it's very hard and it's a very hard lesson to get through.
00:33:47
And it's very hard to understand what that actually means until you're in that situation.
00:33:51
Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Jared. I was just going to ask, So do you think like the
00:33:56
whole experience brought you and Jenna closer together?
00:34:00
I believe it did. Yeah, we were very connected through that time, I think.
00:34:05
We were both going through quite a traumatic experience at the same time.
00:34:09
And so I think we got closer.
00:34:11
I think she thinks the same thing. So I'm thinking for her when she's not here.
00:34:15
But yeah, I think we've talked about this before where it did feel like we got
00:34:20
closer together and we have a stronger bond together.
00:34:25
Yeah, for sure. So his name is Liam? Yeah. What are, what's like his favorite things right now?
00:34:31
He is, he really likes books. Like he likes anything with books,
00:34:36
anything like trucks, anything like that.
00:34:38
Depending on what we're watching. Sometimes he likes watching the Miss Rachel
00:34:41
stuff. He likes watching. Do you like watching?
00:34:46
Do y'all got Cocomelon? No, we're not doing the Cocomelon. We tried that when
00:34:50
he was younger and I was like, I can't do it. It's just horrible.
00:34:54
Some people love it. That's all my son would watch. Yeah. That's brutal.
00:34:58
Yeah. Me and my husband would start to develop stories for the parents in Cocomelon
00:35:04
just to make it somewhat...
00:35:07
Yeah. It's bad. It's bad. He's a wedding DJ and she's a photographer.
00:35:13
We had a whole story because it was just brutal. That's how they met.
00:35:16
She was taking pictures for his wedding. Exactly.
00:35:19
Yeah, we had to. We definitely had to come up with it.
00:35:22
Yeah. So he likes going outside lots now, especially since the weather is a lot nicer.
00:35:27
It's great the winter time was a bit of pain in the butt you didn't like getting
00:35:30
cold or getting the snow on him so you would just lose it but yeah he loves being outside now,
00:35:37
that's good he likes the swings that's his favorite oh yeah
00:35:41
i love that and he's health-wise he's good or does he have any yeah he's pretty
00:35:45
good he's got a bit of a speech delay and so that's something we're working
00:35:49
on with him and we're taking him to speech therapy and stuff like that to get
00:35:53
him up to snuff and he's doing okay with that and so developing in his own way
00:35:58
but he's getting there good,
00:36:01
I'm glad he had you guys in his back pocket so you guys really advocated for
00:36:07
him and made sure that all the right stuff was being done yeah now we're trying
00:36:11
to really make sure that we're keeping on that trend but,
00:36:15
some days it's a different battle now yeah yeah.
00:36:20
Well, thank you. I appreciate you sharing your story. Yeah. You're welcome.
00:36:23
Being vulnerable. Yeah, super vulnerable. And thank you for just the lessons
00:36:28
that you gave our listeners.
00:36:30
Because like I said, there's probably somebody that will be listening to this
00:36:33
episode and be going through something similar.
00:36:36
Yeah, that's part of the reason we started ours.
00:36:39
We wanted to share our story. And then we really want to resonate with some
00:36:43
people that maybe don't feel like they resonate with anyone, really.
00:36:47
Yeah. That's basically the only goal.
00:36:50
Yeah. And even if our listeners themselves aren't going through it,
00:36:53
somebody who is just knowing, like, I had a friend that went through something
00:36:57
similar, but they had two premature babies and they had twins that were born.
00:37:02
And I probably would have reached out more to them just as a friend to make sure.
00:37:08
I think that's something important would be to reach out if you know someone's
00:37:11
going through something like that. But even if like you can't relate,
00:37:15
just reaching out to be someone to talk to or someone to have a quick little
00:37:20
event session or something, I think would help a lot.
00:37:23
I can't count a lot of how many people actually reached out to us at all and
00:37:28
saw how we were doing kind of thing.
00:37:30
But you do feel alone. You feel isolated when you're in that scenario.
00:37:34
It's hard to not feel that.
00:37:36
Right. Yeah. That's I think would have been, I would say like just speaking
00:37:40
for myself, right? Like when you don't understand completely what somebody is
00:37:43
going through, you shy away from reaching out because you don't know what to say. Yeah.
00:37:47
But just letting them know you're there if they need it. I think that's super important.
00:37:52
And I love the fact that you guys are sharing your journey. Right.
00:37:56
Normalize in talking about this because a lot of people will just like curl
00:38:00
up in a ball and be like, fuck it, I'm done. And I don't want to talk about this again.
00:38:05
But you're doing a huge service out for those parents. and you give them an outlet.
00:38:12
And what's sad is this all happened, all went down during COVID.
00:38:19
My only hope is that for parents that are going through this now,
00:38:23
that they've lessened some of those restrictions and things like that.
00:38:27
But man, I'm super proud of you guys for doing this and getting it out there.
00:38:32
And where can our listeners find you guys?
00:38:36
So we've got our podcast, The Real Life of Parenting. So we tell some of our stories.
00:38:42
We've taken a short hiatus at the moment with Jenna's new work schedule.
00:38:46
We haven't been finding too much time to do any podcasts lately,
00:38:50
but we're probably going to set it back up shortly.
00:38:53
And then on Facebook is where we're most active. It's the Real Life of Parenting
00:38:58
podcast. It's a Facebook page.
00:39:00
That's our most active spot where we are.
00:39:03
And we're more than happy to have you listen or reach out to us if you need
00:39:09
to talk, anything like that.
00:39:10
We're pretty happy about it. it so yeah and
00:39:13
that's the main place is basically where you can find out more about
00:39:16
us we do share a lot of our story and a lot more details on our
00:39:20
podcast itself awesome thank you i appreciate you taking the time to share your
00:39:25
story with us and i really appreciate you having me on here and let me speak
00:39:30
and share everything jenna's taking care of the kids right now so that's why
00:39:33
it's just me at the moment so bye.
00:39:38
Well go enjoy your babies and the beautiful weather before it gets too hot all right we plan to,
00:39:45
all right thanks a lot Jeff thank you so much I appreciate you thank you very much,
00:39:50
bye guys bye all thank you so much for listening to this episode I'm G-Rex and
00:39:56
I'm Dirty Skittles don't forget to subscribe rate and review this podcast we'd
00:40:01
love to listen to your feedback back. We can't do this without you guys.
00:40:08
It's okay.
00:40:09
Music.
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