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On Unpredictable, Chaotic, hard fun magical.
The Baby Bubble with Claire and Jesse Stevens.
It's definitely not a parenting advice podcast. Jesse, something I've been really surprised by since having a child is how quickly you can tell their personality, like you know who they are pretty soup. Well, maybe it's like confirmation bias, but like Matilda's almost nine months now, and I'm like, oh, you were you when you came charging charging out of the van. You looked around and you said, to my the drama and everyone said a little bit, a little bit,
And that's why you're my everything. And we've often said that our two girls, despite being technically half half siblings because of their DNA with identical twins, as mums mums, they are very different people. And the thing about Luna and Matilda is that we are able to look at them and be like, Okay, in life, you have Lunas and you have Matilda's.
Yeah, they're only two types pop.
There are only two types people, and they are it and so one kind of litmus test I had recently was Matilda goes through a cafe. She gets a baby Chino four cream milk and a pastry.
That's the kind of gal. She is like a.
Croissan, like a brownie, like a brownie. Okay, all right, yep do Luna Luna? Yeah one, she's like Toserin or she was. She's working through it. So she can't have the foot greenment. No, So Luna has a long black which is wrong a lot for it's heaped because she's only fourteen months old.
I have a long black is you know? One a day? I'm sure it's fine. Yeah, it's not. And a cigarette. Yeah, she has sick because she's very her energy is very.
It is and she's also I've had this ye she I've spoken to some experts about it who've said she's just not driven by food. We've got some issues with her lack of enthusiastic. She's very like she's very Parisian in that way, whereas Matilda is like a cake.
How about pasta?
So hang on, they go out to a restaurant, like, is Matilda ordering a steak? So Matilda could order I think like a big creamy pasta, Yeah, a big creamy pasta and a coke, whereas Lunar has a glass of red wine. Yeah, and like she really likes a hot ship. Yeah, like definitely, just aside she's not ordering a mate.
Yeah yeah yeah.
And you were saying the other day just in terms of holiday preferences, you we used to play this game. Yeah, you can do it with celebrities, with people, you know, I highly recommend. It's called would they holiday to Kuda? And you would choose people in Australia and you'd go Kyle Sandalance for example, he'd love he'd love Koda. Yeah, Sofi Munk love Cooter And then you go, okay, how about I was going to say Larry Emda he'd love Cooda.
How about how.
About like then you go carry bigmore. She wouldn't love Koda, No, she's got other places she wants to be. So would Matilda love Cooter. So the thing this is the thing, Matilda would love Kuda. I think Matilda would buy a bintang sing she would, whereas Luna would not be caught deaddah nah, She'd hate it. She'd be like too much noise. I'm more of a Semenyak Galley, Yeah, or Changu.
I'll go to Changu. Yeah, but I'm not even passing through Kood.
Matilda's still stuck in Kuda having a dance, having the time of her life. Our guest this week is Sam Mack. You know Sam Mack as Sunrise's beloved weather man, traveling all across the country to wake people up in the morning. He's also an author. He has a debut book called Suddenly One and it is a celebration of the milestones from a baby's first year of life. It is out
now and you should definitely go and get it. And most crucially, he's very much back in the baby bubble with the arrival of his second daughter, Mabel, just this August. Welcome Sam, Hello, good, how are you really well?
Thank you very much for having me on today.
Thank you for joining us. Sam.
Can you please describe for our listeners what your family looks like now?
Chaos. We are in transition.
We've gone from one beautiful daughter to two beautiful daughters literally in the last couple of weeks. So it's a big adjustment and it's a bit of a mess, but it's a beautiful mess. Everything is great. Everyone healthy, mostly happy. Things are awesome.
So today, as we're speaking, how old is your elder daughter and how old is your youngest?
Margo is about to turn two in just over a week actually, so almost two, and Mabel is three weeks old, so.
Too under two.
Oh God, you're in the newborn bubble again right now.
I need to know what you had forgotten, because I wonder dies like the.
Trauma of being in the baby bubble, just to raise your memory. And then it happens again and you're like, oh, I forgot this was a baby. Has there been anything that has surprised you?
I've forgotten how tiny they are.
And a lot of people say this, you know, if you go from one to two, A lot of people say, you know, before you go in to have that second baby, take the time to really feel your oldest and get to feel every part of their size of their hands, the size of their feet, because suddenly they will feel like a giant.
And it's so true. As soon as soon as we brought Mabel home, like the tiny feet really get me.
It's now they are like minute like they pretend they pretend, you know, when like you used to have a packet of twisties and you put it in the microwave when they shrink down to it like it's shrunk feet, and they're delicious and glorious.
And I sound like a creeper, but.
I must ask you because I see on my Instagram and my TikTok, I see a lot of videos of siblings meeting for the first time, and there's romantic music. They walk in, they hold that even though they're tiny, they hold the new baby and they say I love you for ever, and they give them a kiss and they're so gentle. Is that exactly what happened when your two girls met?
Well, this is the great thing.
And I think a lot of what I'd love to chat with you guys about today is, you know, expectation versus reality, And you're totally right.
I had.
I think we all have visions of what that moment is going to be like, and I had all of those thoughts in my mind, and.
The reality is just not that.
The reality is people are stressed about how long they can park in the whole hospital car parks. Grandparents have forgotten to dress them and the thing you asked and to dress to me out to the grandparents. There's all of these things, and when it comes to like, I'm in the business like you guys, of making content like we make it for TV. I do live TV every single day, a lot of social content. So you've become a bit of a perfectionist or there's ways that you
like to do things in certain look. You know, you guys had me move my position of this camera because you can see the back of my head in the mirror right right before, you know what that So I went in with all that in my mind. But then the reality was Margot, who was almost inconvenienced immediately by the fact that there was someone else number one taking attention. But the first word she said when she held Mabel was stuck as she felt like, why am I stuck with this thing on me?
Like with the video thing.
And I definitely wanted to catch that moment because I know it's so important, not only for us. So I'm lucky enough to have a beautiful following who really loved to see what's going on in our lives, and we share little bits and pieces, and I love the idea of Mabel and Margo being able to watch this when they're older, and you know, eighteen twenty first all of that kind of thing.
So I wanted to have a nice video.
But I realized when I looked at the video footage a couple of days after it happened, that I had to make two videos to make reality. So expectation was, Yes, we had some beautiful tender moments, the kiss on the head, the classics.
You know, that was so sweet.
But then the reality, which was probably my favorite video because that's that's what actually happens is Margo tried to poke Mabel's eyes, Margot touching her lips, throwing toys at her, telling us that she's stuck into the portable bacinet, and have an absolute meltdown because she wasn't allowed in the bacinette. So eventually, like a lot of parents who just go
all right, we'll put you in outside. So Margot wanted to go outside into the main area of the hospital whilst holding her you know, one day old, and of course that I go out to do one little lap. The midwives start to walk past it like we are not seeing this, Yeah, So it.
Was just it was chaos.
But I think that's as I got home and thought about and had time to look at the video, I'm like, that's all we've got to look forward to. That's the reality of parenting. It's not what you've planned. You might have things in your mind, but they are their own people. They will make their own decisions and you just need to work around that, work with that to the best you.
Can, exactly, and in terms of those kind of expectations versus reality, you have a brand new children's book out called Suddenly One which made me cry. I had a rough week with my baby having a fall that was my fault, and I was looking at the book and being like, oh, this is so sweet. And then there's a line about babies first fall, and I.
Was like, I'm a terrible mother. They got me.
Was the one about the last and it said like the last time will swaddow you, the last time we'll feed you to sleep, And I was like, I do not. I haven't slept enough to deal with these emotions. It's just it's so beautiful.
How old are your little ones?
Mine's eight months, yeah, and Luna is fourteen months?
Wow.
Okay, okay, cool, Yes, I'm that book park, Yes, exactly. What we want to know is my little girl loves books, right, Like I think if I ever wrote a children's book. It would blow her little mind when you showed your daughter, look at what daddy has done. Can you even believe it was? She just blown away by your talent and skill.
Oh where do I start?
I'm glad we've hit on this expectation because well, I'll give you a little bit of.
The backstory first.
So the backstory is when we were approaching Margo's first birthday, and as you know, that first year of parenting, it's a whirlwind. It's you know, amazing at times, really hard, total adjustment.
You lose a bit of yourself.
You gain this thing that you know you never imagine was even possible and exceeds all of your expectations of love and care. And it is so emotional and so overwhelming. And I'm a writer. I've written a book. I like to put things into words, and I travel a lot with work, so I always do a lot of flights to do itbut one hundred and twenty flights a year with sunrise, traveling as the weather man who doesn't really know much about the weather.
But that's a different podcast.
So on one of those flights, I thought, Okay, her birthday's coming up. What do I want to do. And then I started looking through photos of you know, her first couple of months up to more recently, that last couple of months, close to one year of age, and I thought, oh my god, like, look at all these little things that she's a shed, these little milestones that we were more excited about than she was. You can't help but go, oh my god, Like she's fine with solids,
Oh my god, Like she initiated a hug. Like it's like wow, because they sneak up on you and they come out of nowhere. They happened yearly, expect them. So I started jotting down thoughts and I thought, this is its first and last. That's how I described my first year, because, like you say, it is emotional when it's for beck you know that last time that she was breastfeeding, you know, close to one year mark. And it became emotional for me as well because I know how how much of
a bonding moment that is for mum and baby. So it was so many emotions, and I just put it down and wrote it really within a couple of days, and then I thought, luckily, you know, I have one terabyte of storage on my iPhone, so I've essentially got video that matches almost every little thing that's happened.
You know, my daughter is really almost living the Truman Show moments.
I'm like, oh, you've got a second angle on it. Well done. Back needed the drone up for that one. So I put it on a video and really with the intention of I love the idea of her looking back on this, and I always worry about losing my phone. At least if I've put a couple of things on the internet. We've got some goods out there that I
overthink this stuff. But anyway, put it up and literally overnight it had over a million views, which was totally unexpected to me, mainly on TikTok, but then you know, hundreds of thousands on Facebook overnight, and now I think.
It's in the couple of millions of views.
So obviously a lot of people connected and resonated and really identified with yes, that they are big things in your world that first year. And so I was lucky enough to be contacted by Penguin reached out to me and said we'd love to turn this into a picture book. So then the process was finding the right illustrator, tweaking the words a little bit to get it to it's almost taken a year and Margo's about to turn two, and the book is ready to be enjoyed by grandparents
and little ones and what have you. But in answer to your question, it only happened two days ago where I finally shared the book with Margo.
So it was like, you know, unwrapping it, and my.
Expectation was she would go wow, because some of the drawings are loosely based on her and me in a couple of moments, like I played guitar and there was a moment where I had her sitting on the should that you see it in the book, and she could not have been less interested. Like she was so like before I'd even finished the unwrapping part, she was already not She was in a different room before it even opened the book. And I'm like, look, Daddy wrote this
about you. Suddenly, while this is this is how we felt when you came into the world. The only thing that managed to keep her in the room was the fact that Penguin, the publisher, the Penguin stickers that Penguin had sent through kept her attention for a matter of one minute, and that was enough to kind of go all right, we got a video of her looking at the book.
That'll yeah like what I expected.
Otherwise, I guarantee that there will be ten books for her to choose from, and yas will always be the last.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, who does dad thinking?
So first birthday parties are interesting right because they're turning one and it's not like the baby is going to remember. No, And I don't know about your child, but even at eight months, my baby can wake up and just be shitty for no reason. She's like, today is not my day. Today I am clinging, and I don't like anyone. Yeah, did you decide to have a first birthday party?
Yes we did, and yes, like a lot of I'm sure a lot of parents listened to this, we went way over the top. Yes, it was probably more about us than the child. Look, we went with a very hungry caterpillar theme because that had been her her first year. Beck and one of her dear friends, Bella Hamish Blake Style, were up to four am making a caterpillar cake. Not easy to make, I must point out, So after you know, three hours of sleep, they're obviously sprightly and ready to rock and roll.
On the day of the party.
It was more a chance for family friends to get together. You know, some of our friends into state hadn't even met Margo, so it was kind of more about that. And I don't want to get two down or too negative about first birthday parties because any opportunity to drink in a park at ten am and any repercussions is a beautiful thing.
For parents who are battling through parenthood.
Oh so true.
You've just really got your values in the right place. It's all about getting together. And also mummy and daddy want to see their friends. Yeah, and mummy and daddy want someone else to hold the baby while how about that, Well, mummy and daddy have some champagne and it's like, what a present for mummy and daddy on this day, which
is really more significant past Yeah, I did exactly. Can you give us a ten second play by play of the chaos of your morning when you're at home, So like the last few weeks when you've been at home newborn toddler, what do those mornings look like?
Okay, so Margo, we will actually hear on the monitor starts get a bit chatty at about a quarter past six six.
That's a little early Margo.
I agree.
Now that she's almost two, she's you know, got quite a few words. So she go Daddy, Mummy, Daddy stuck, Margo stuck, Margo start, and then it'll be Margo jumping high, Margot jumping high. So we'll just it's kind of like our morning entertainment. We'll watch it on the screen or ten minutes and then go, okay, time to go get her.
We'll bring herpect will feed Mabel.
We recently got a TV in our room, which is one of the greatest investments I've ever had, because Pepper Pig Slash Blue Slasher wiggles for twenty minutes, just while Margot has an early morning bottle.
You know, Mabel's being fed.
We kind of it extends your sleep, so it's not like the band aid where you're up and straight into the day. You've got that little buffer of twenty thirty minutes where you kind of ease into it. Then you get the showers and the get dressed, get changed, all that kind of thing. So that's really the first half an hour, and then it's you know, breakfast. Why does it take so long for breakfast? Why does it take so long to make breakfast? For as tiny human. Why does it take so long to eat it? Why does
it take so long to clean it up? Like breakfast is a two hourd.
Somehow, just he said to me when we started solids. I was like, so, I just I'm so confused. And Jesse said, my life became easier when I realized meal times for a two hour process.
And I'm like, okay, okay.
I don't eat breakfast, and now breakfast has become a real event in my day and so, oh my god, it's insane. You've got to make three different ones in case I don't like it.
Yeah, I true, And that's that's exactly what Beck does.
I kind of I'm more of the opinion of, like, you know, make one or two things, Max, and like that's your breakfast and if not, you have a bigger lie.
That's fine. Beck will literally put on a digust station.
Yes for Margo, and she'll be hand fed her peeled and cut grapes, and it's just like it's an experience. But it's great, she's eating healthy and it's awesome, but it is kind of like, wow, we you know, two hours, it's.
Almost lunch time. Now, now we're going to start prepping lunch, breakfast.
It's never not meal time. That is never, it is never not a meal time. That is the thing about.
As soon as they start solids like, oh, bottles were great, bottles were real easy. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It was so great to chat to you. And everybody should buy suddenly one. Just brace yourself because you may cry a little bit ugly cry.
That's what I like. The ones that are sentimental for me.
Yeah, there are ones that Luna loves, but I'm like, no, this like, guess how much I love you like the ones that you go No, this is making me feel reflective and cuddly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you very much, ladies.
I think that the great thing about it is that, you know, kids, I don't know if your little ones are already in that stage where they love seeing them pictures themselves on the mobile phone and they'll want to see more and definitely loves that. So they love hearing about themselves, their little megalomanias. You know, I love little egocentric twerks anyway, So they love that, so telling their story.
But this was the first time.
Well you haven't done this one yet, but soon you'll be able to do that at the park or so it's little milestones. But also I love the idea of grandparents going through it with their little ones or giving it to, you know, their children who have just had children as her first year of birthday present. I think there's lots of ways to kind of families to you know, take a little breather, read through the book and go, oh, we've achieved a lot.
We're doing all right in this field.
It's such a good point about birthday presents, because what you don't want is piles of plastic staff. I just feel like there's so much clutter. I love a book. A book is my number one present because I put it on the shelf and like it's also educational.
I feel like we can kick that off.
Matilda hasn't look if she slow to crawl maybe, but her one skill that I think she learned early, she knows how to turn a page.
Yeah, so she be very very.
Good at this one. She'd say this is lovely. She sometimes doesn't wait long enough for me to read it, but that's no. She'll point to the fall one. You be like, that's why I've got a booboo on my head. Yeah, yeah, I'll be like.
Shut up until I look forward to their.
They'll jump on good Reads, They'll have something to say as I always do.
Thank you so much, Thank you really nice to chat guys.
Thanks for having me on Crab Crap Crap Advice.
Jesse, it's time for our advice segment. Aham, are you ready?
Yes.
My sister looks after my seven months old three days a week while I go to work, and I've been back at work for a couple of months now. I'm so grateful for her help, and I genuinely don't know what I would do without her. But she doesn't follow any instructions about my baby's day. She feeds her whatever she's eating, which isn't usually appropriate for a baby, and won't put her down for a nap until she starts
crying and is clearly overtired. She also makes a huge mess in my house, and when I get home, I have to clean it up and deal with a baby who is out of her routine. How do I tell her I need her to try more? Just a quick question before we get into it. What do you think the food is it isn't appropriate for a baby? And why is the first thing that came to my mind o Porto. I was more thinking ogarlo. Okay, thinking like a burger. M. I think a burger is not appropriate.
KFC isn't fully appropriate. Yeah, yeah, I'm saying that because it's a CAFC near your place.
Yeah. I have gone to KFC while looking after litit.
Okay, okay, Look, this is actually a really easy one and I'm going to go full hure because that's what you need to do. You need to put your sister on what we call a PIP.
A PIP is.
A performance improvedment player gay and she requires one. So put a meeting in a diary. Don't say anything face to face, Just put a meeting in a diary via zoom.
Even if she's in the house.
You both have to join, yes, and you can be with your baby, and you can be with your baby and like change your background so it looks like you're in a co working spacestairs. It's very much you and your baby against her.
Yeah.
Well I think that a complaint has been brought against it. You're not there. It's the baby.
So then you talk about a PIP and you say we need to work towards some clearer KPIs, you're being performance managed because there are some issues with your performance, as indicated by my baby. I would also say that when you're being pipped, the surveillance really gets up. So I think follow her around yelling what am I paying you for? And from what I gleaned from this? But money is changing hands, so I think you make a
sign a contract. I think you need an official contract, and it's like remuneration, nothing but responsibilities.
Here are seventeen age.
And you're really exasperated all the time by your performance, and you call it her performance. And then you start, as you would in an office, giving bitching about her behavior to colleagues. And by colleagues I mean obviously a baby, but also like mom, dad, husband, friends. Yeah, start a group chat where you just kind of gossip. I've got real issues. I've got this employee who're okay, isn't it?
Isn't that your sister?
Yeah?
Yeah? Yeah, Really that.
In terms of surveillance, you've got a good point. So when you're on a PIP, that's when they're like, oh, we've got to keep an eye on this person to know whether they're filling their KPIs. And in terms of surveillance by cameras. You need cameras in every corner. But even if you've got cameras in every corner and you're sitting at work watching the cameras, at which point I would say maybe you should just be at home. But let's say you are just watching my cameras.
What can you do?
Oh, so you see her and she's not put the baby down, or it's like that thing some people have for their dog. Also, the baby needs a camera strapped to it so that when she takes the baby out, it's like from the baby's perspective.
It's like the dog thing.
Yeah, where you compress a thing and you're like God, and you yell give her her snack.
Yeah, you go put her to.
Bird, you idiot, like you really you're communicating, and your baby's gonna love that. She's where mummy, where's mummy? Where's mmy coming from?
Yeah?
So I think definitely buying cameras. The other thing is just your idea of obviously you're on a zoom call, you're having that HR meeting. I think baby needs to give some feedback. I think you're like, look, I've been as the both the complaints come to me yeah, but I don't want complaints because then I have to act on it. But I do want an open line of communication in this work Yeah, where people feel they can come to me. And so I'll give the floor to baby.
This is the complaint that was Because it depends on the policy. In some workplaces, you wouldn't show the complaint directly to the person that it's been made about. But in this case, I think it's relevant. And so Baby says, yeah, your baby would say My baby would say ga yeah, And you say, oh, oh she didn't.
Did you hear that?
She's like ga dad dah yeah, dadda interesting mathilda, interesting insight. The other thing is just you know, if we are going to make this about the workplace as a whole, if you've got a pet, the pet joins, you give them a mic.
What have you seen? Oh wow, wow, it's a full intervention. Actually it is. But you also need written warnings.
Oh great, quite publicly like a white Here's the issue with the written warnings. You get to three and you think still need it. It's time to go. The business can't a forge to keep her on. You're not paying her, you don't have a backup plan, No, so I feel like that's the tricky thing.
That is a tricky thing. It doesn't mean don't give warnings.
It just means probably have a plan for what you do when you've delivered seventeen of them and she's still not changing. Your sister holds a power, unfortunately, unfortunately. Yeah, but I do think the camera and you're just giving live feedback, Yeah, is a great thing for your workplace. We hope you enjoyed not just this episode of The Baby Bubble, but this season and didn't in this entire season of this podcast find anything that could pass as.
Helpful, because if you did, we failed. Yeah.
I was going to say, leave it complaint. Please don't leave it complaint. Only leave a five star review. Yah, that's the rules here. Thank you so much to all of our wonderful guests who have made this season of The Baby Bubble so ridiculously fun. We've touched on everything from traveling with babies to solo dadding, and even the existential crises of the very hungry caterpillar Claire.
Have we become wiser? Absolutely not? But did we have fun?
Yeah? All episodes of both season one and season two are ready for you to listen. Back to all in the feed right now. If you have someone in your life who's just had a baby needs a little bit of a relief, may we suggest you send it along to them. The Baby Bubble is produced by Taylor Strano with audio production by Teagan Sadler.
Bye Bye