So you're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mom and Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded.
On the second day with tits A rock Hard is absolutely horrible having a midwife milking my nipples and doing all the stuff.
The baby Bubble with Claar and Jesse Stevens. It's definitely not a parenting advice podcast. Claire, I've got an issue that I need to help you. Yeah. You know how Luna loves being mood. Yeah, it's like I think she's always naked and I love that for her. After her bath, she crawls around, she wiggles her little bottom, she climbs, she loves doing a downward dog with a I can't remember what it's called, but it's when you stick your leg up too. Ah. Yeah, no, I can see it.
I also do not know the word. Yeah. So she's into her yoga poses when she is nude, and I just say to her, interesting choice. There's not an angle of you I haven't seen. No. No, look, that's not the issue. The issue is that her other obsession issues. Yeah, and who bought her two excellent pairs of shoes for her birthday? Three dollar kmart leopard print trainers. Yeah, who
bought them? They would, that would be you. And my issue is that when she's nude and she's doing her down with dog and her happy baby, and it's like just all the bits, she walks over and she taps on her shoes and she taps on her foot. She goes, put my shoes on, and it's like, with all due respect, you're not going anywhere and you can't walk, and you can't walk. But I think the people look more naked
when they're naked with the shoes on. It's really Yeah, it's like it makes the genitals more pronounced, and it looks quite predatory. Because I was even at the gym recently and there was a woman who walked out of the shower with full runners on but otherwise nude, and I went, it's one of the worst looks in my opinion. It's like a man with a top on and no pant he looks more naked than if he had. It's like a choice. Yeah, yes, you made the choice to
have your bits out. Yeah. And I don't know how to tell her that no one looks good nude with shoes on. It's not flattering to the leg and she's stomping around like she has somewhere to be in these shoes. She's rolling around on the floor. It's absolutely not lady like. But I can't pribe them from her, I know. And you don't want to make her feel ashamed of her outfit choices. No, she is who she is. Yeah, And
like sometimes I'm like, I don't know. Sexy movies, They're like, it'll be a woman in like a bikinian heels, yeah or something. Yeah, And I'm like, well, you just wouldn't wear shoes with that outfit. It's a barefoot outfit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And Luna, I just look. I do feel like she needs some feedback about that look. Yeah. I feel like I need to take a photo yeah and show her. Do you think it looks good? Do you look ridiculous?
You?
Do you look really silly? Our guest this week is Veronica Milsen, loved radio host, actor, comedian, writer, and mum of two. Veronica is the former co host of Triple j's Drive program. She's been a cast member of Sean Macrliff's Mad as Hell, and the creator and host of a brilliant podcast called Zero waste baby. After giving birth to her first baby, Veronica was on a mission to
reduce the waste for her second, tiny newborn. We are simply obsessed with zero waste baby because it's something that both of us would have loved to do, but we were both and are both incredibly lazy and lack initiative. Before we start, how old are your two now?
Yeah, so mine are four and six. And by the way, I never could have done it with my first. It was only possible with my second.
And why is that?
I think you need to go through just being terribly wasteful and feeling bad about it and come out the other side. Now. I think it was just about knowing, Like first time is just so scary in every single way. And so once I got the hang of it, I was like, ah, fine, your baby can put up with heaps of you know, it doesn't have to be wearing the best possible type of nappies or whatever, chucking in a cloth nappy. It'll be fine.
So your first baby was what will refer to as a full waist baby. Your second one, you try to go full zero waste. My big question is around nappies, because nappies can be messy when you're using your disposable, your wipes, your everything. Just how does it, how does it even work when you're trying not to be wasteful? Please explain? Well.
I ended up discovering and spoiler from a podcast that came out quite a while ago, that the first six weeks I reckon you just have to use disposable nappies because the tiny little baby like I found in my personal experience that a cloth nappy was just not going
to cut it. It was leaky. So in the first six weeks I found that I've we should have just used disposables, and from that point on, that's when cloth can really take over and just going into like the nitty gritty of like I ended up renting cloth nappies
so that then I could give them back. Yeah I know, it's like a very extreme and then would wash them not on a pot because that uses too much energy And it would have been fine if I had renewables, but I didn't renewable energy, so I had to dry them too outside because I couldn't use a dryer because that also used too much dirty energy, So that was quite tricky. But then I also experimented with completely getting rid of nappies altogether, which was a technique called elimination communication,
which lots of people have great success with. I didn't necessarily. It's the idea that you can potty train a baby from like six weeks old.
Talk me through elimination communication. I have an eight month old and I love her unconditionally, but she is hopeless, Like please, she didn't. Yeah, So talk me through this theory of elimination communication.
So the idea is that you It happens in stages. The first stage is that you put your baby on like a mat, and you wait until they do a we or a poo, so they've got totally pantless. You sit there with them for like hours on end to see if they do a we l a poop. And when they start doing a wei, for example, you choose a noise in advance, like shh, that's a common noise that people use, or you could go or something. It's
basically it's treating a baby a bit like a dog. Yeah, you make a noise and then they associate that action with the noise, And if you do that enough times, then you will soon be able to like hold them over a piece of tubwear or a sink or a toilet and make the noise and they automatically do it.
Oh my god. Yeah, So what's the plan when you go up the road to the cafe for a coffee? Do we just take the baby to the toilet and say sh or does the baby maybe shit and it's pressed?
Well, you kind of complain in advance and hold the baby over the toilet and hope that you can just get it to we in advance of going to the cafe. It's certainly not perfect. Even like the expert that I talked to about it was like, there will be accidents galore. You just have to be ready for that. The strangest thing for me, apart from anything else, was just such a little bottom without big patting on it. Yeah, just carrying around your baby without any you know. It was
such a weird change. But I was like, oh, this is so odd. Lots of people that you wouldn't expect have tried it, like Alice Slavski, you know her, the chef, the.
Cook Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
She was one of the people that I talked to on the podcast about having done it.
That's so interesting that people do this with their children. I'm very impressed. I'm very impressed as well. And I need to go back to the clock nappies for a sec because you just said you rented, which to me is so another baby has shotten that nappy, it's been washed, maybe imperfectly by the former parent, and now it's on your baby. Do these cloth nappies, I've always wondered this, Do they have stains on them?
No, they sort of weirdly don't seem to. I think that the rental company must just do a really great job of cleaning them before they rent them out again. Plus I actually do wonder if they don't have that many rounds of being rented, which I guess is besides the point a bit. But yeah, it still seemed like a cool idea. Lots of other people do things like nappy washing service, which is good. Yeah, the whole cloth
nappy thing is so good. One thing that's a bit stinky and weird about it is that you've got to put like the pooh nappy in a bucket in the bathroom and let it soak. And once you've scraped the pooh off and popped it in the bin, this is a very glamorous time.
Oh, Wow, a glamorous podcast. In my head, I was picturing the poo in the washing machine, yeah, going round round, and I had questions about it, but I wasn't gonna ask, Okay, w what do you do about wipes?
So I was the biggest offender with wipes with my first baby, Lilah, because I just became obsessed with them. I was like, why have wipes not been in my life before I started like mopping the stairs with whites. Like if anyone was like dirty in a cafe, I'd be like, I've got a wipe. I've got heaps of them, dozens. As long as you're just using like reusable flannel wipes, it's great. You just whack them in the washing machine
as well as everything else. So I actually ripped up old flannel shirts of my husband's that I didn't like, but also bought some from the op shop and just as long as they don't have buttons or whatever.
Yeah, Or you could if you had a flannel shirt of his that you didn't like, you could also just not rip it up and just use it as a wipe and then just put it back in his wardrobe. Yeah, to try that's true.
Oh my gosh, I'll have to have another baby had such a cruel technique and my husband it's really crazy though, once we go to a baby store and realize how shamelessly wasteful it is and how much like no one really cares. Like in i'll say one of the big baby stores, because it's probably going to be the sponsor, a whole aisle is called disposables, and I was like, oh wow, we just don't care. No.
And there's something about having a baby where you then become obsessed with the idea of disposables. When we were going traveling, I was like, I need disposable bottles, and then and then I was like I need collapsible disposable and I went down this whole rabbit hole that made no sense at all. But I'm like, I'm coming up with inventions for what I need is a mum. Maybe it's because we're just so ty, Yeah, we just want to throw everything out and not planeing on.
That's definitely one of like the undoings for me was cloth nappies and not being able to use a dryer on a road trip that we went on because there was no time to dry the nappies, so you just like wash them or whatever and the sink of the motel that we were staying at, and then I would have to wind the window up while we were driving along and they would just be flapping along next to the car because I was like, there's no other way that these are going to get dry and tie for ound next stop.
You're so resourceful, I'm so impressed. But nappy cream surely that trips you up. Okay, you need nappy cream, you go and you get your whatever from the chemist, Like, is that naughty because it's in a naughty container.
Well, they do try very hard to do reusable nappy cream tubes and containers. A lot of them are just very disposable, and so I ended up making my own nappy cream, which was it did feel a little bit like dangerous in it, Like you wonder about putting something that you've made and concocted on your own baby's bottom sensitive area.
That's how I feel about cooking for my baby. I don't.
So there are lots of people who do it though. So there's lots of these recipes online and then you can go to like a bulk store and then they just sell a lot of the things that you need all the ingredients and you can cook up like you're a witch making a magical potion and then get it ready and pop it in your own little reusable containers.
That's incredible. What else did most of us not even think of that? Are just ruining the environment? Yeah? Like, how else are we bad? People? Go on?
Well, the biggest thing that I felt like I did with my first baby that I with my second. I was like, oh man, that was so silly? Was you just it's such a big deal to be pregnant for the first time. You kind of think, oh, I just need all the best things. I need a brand new cot, I need a brand new pram. And as much as you hear people say it a million times, you know, just buy stuff off gum Tree, You're kind of like, I'm not going to buy a pram off gum What
if the break doesn't work? That's my little precious angel. But in reality, I just wish that I had done that, Like, nothing really needs to be new. Everything already exists, and then we should just be sharing them amongst it, you know, ourselves as a community.
Okay, but don't you think that maybe like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, maybe they can save the planet, and maybe we can feed our baby with the packet food and buy the clothes from the cheapest place possible. Do you think that that's okay?
Yes? Yes, I mean, can we guarantee that will happen? I would love for that to happen. I just feel like Bezos particularly is making the problem much worse. And at least Elon's trying to find a new place for us to live. I guess that's somewhat helpful. Do you guys feel like you're wasteful or is it not cross your radar?
Oh?
Yeah, what's your vibe on?
No? No, no, totally, And even like the big things I feel are I think it actually makes you feel a bit physically sick. The toys, the clothes, even the food. I'm actually with you. I hate, hate, hate waste. I've joined toy library. I feel like that might make you like me. So I have joined a toilet.
We've got a toy libraries.
They're so good, they're so good, and it helps with the clutter. And the other thing is, oh, just all the hand me downs. And I've also accepted that our clothes have stains on them. Oh yeah, because I got to a point. I do all my spraying, which not good for the environment, but stain remover makes no difference, and so now we just get dark colors and we just live with stains and we embrace it. Have you had to do that because they get stains a lot.
And then I think, oh, she looks like no one loves her.
Yeah, you just end up feeling okay about having a kid that looks so gross. Yeah, all the time. I think I've made peace with that. Particularly, my kids make such a fuss about me brushing their hair, and so they just always look like these wild little children that no one takes care of.
I love those kids, though, they've got character. See, I think I've done pretty well purely out of laziness. I've actually bought very little because I got everything from you. Yeah, because you had a baby that was six months ahead, so literally a pump. You had a pump, all the bottles, Like I just have a house full of your stuff, which was incredibly incredibly convenient. We deserve a gold star as well.
I think, Yeah, you guys together are doing like half waste exactly.
Honestly, were two babies for the price of wine after doing zero waste? Baby did you a little bit feel like your baby was the waste, not in that sounds rong, but the baby. Like I look at Matilda and I'm like, you are just like you create waste everywhere you go. Yeah, And does that feel like a little bit overwhelming and you think, actually, by just having a baby, I'm creating problems for the environment.
Yeah, honestly I did. I mean that's how the whole thing started. I was like, my husband and I were sitting in bed and we were just both looking at the news and every story that came up was like, there's floods, there's bush fires, there's this, you know, the Amazon is burning. And I looked at him and I was like, oh my gosh, should we be even having a baby? And he was like maybe not. And I was like, Oh, I'm six months pregnant.
It's like going yeah, And I like.
The final episode is should we have babies at all? And I end up talking to this guy who oh the words just slipped out.
Of my brain the name of seven something.
Yeah, okay, how done? Yeah ball Snipper. So I ended up talking to like the world's most busiest sectimist who goes around to underprivileged countries like people in third world countries, and gives them the option to snip if they would like to snip, basically as a free as a gift to society anyway. And I was talking to him and he was like, we'll just hold your horses because you might be all excited about the environment now. You never
know if you want another baby. And as it turns out, I see babies now and I want to weep with joy. And I think you're nearly forty. You can't have an other baby. I don't know.
I need to ask, does your second born have a superiority complex because she was a zero waste baby? And does she walk around with her keep cup like metal straw And does she tease and perhaps belittle her older sister for being such a drain on the site?
Yeah? She does, And that's part of the joy of seeing her grow up as a zero waste baby. Is that whole part of her personality. It's really shone through as being on her high horse at all times and very superior. Yeah. I do have a whole great hopes that she could eventually be someone who saves the word. Though I think that's like the one justification of having children when the world is going to shit, you're like, oh, well, at least maybe they're the one that's gonna maybe. I know.
I looked at Matilda and I was like, you know, she could be the one who changed it all. And now she's eight months. She's not hitting her milestones with gusto, I will say, And I'm like, maybe not. Maybe she's just here for a good time. I think she's here for a good.
Time, which I think is totally valid too. You know, good on it, I think.
So. Can you give us a ten second play by play of the chaos of your morning before this chat? Like, what was your morning like with your daughters today?
Well, every single morning, my daughter comes in at about five thirty, This is the zero waste one, and she just wants to like cuddle real close, like up to the face. You know, do you think that this is like an exciting thing when you first have a baby,
but then you realize everybody's child does it. They're like face against face while you sleep, and then the other one comes in and whenever I'm having a coffee, she's like like jumps on top of me and my coffee spills, and I go every day, come on, and then we madly try to get them ready for school, up and about whilst also like multitasking, going so, how many people did you want for your birthday party? Right down the list? I'm booking it today and thinking about the like crazy day.
You've got a head. It's an intense time. Yeah, of life, isn't it. I mean you guys haven't reached the school bit yet, but yeah.
No, you live a whole life before you come into work. And I've just got My fourteen month old is just learning her words, which is exciting, and then you go, oh no, no, no, Now she can communicate and express her needs and she is very stubborn. Yeah, she's like, now, yeah, she well, she just her big thing now is that she wakes up. She's in bed and she says but, which means book, Like I want a book always, yeah, And I'm like, now I have to just ignore your wants.
Is part of my job is your mother, which is a whole other phase that I'm ntoring.
Yeah, as soon as they say will you play with me, You're like, oh, I can't say no to right, And they're like, I just have to put it put aside five minutes to run around behind you like I'm a wolf and you're a little rabbit that I want to eat with that for five minutes and then you've got a brush your teeth and go to school exactly.
Well, thank you so much for talking to us today. Really appreciate it.
Oh that's a pleasure. Love you guys. Crab crab crap advice.
Okay, Jesse, it's time for our advice segment. People wait for it. They count down. They got to understand how to pair it. Yeah, and we read to that, read some journals, spoke to some experts, came up with some pretty good answers. Because this is a thorny one. Hello, I have an eighteen month old girl, and whenever we're out in public, people will comment on want a handsome
little man I have. I was in a shop the other day and a woman came up and said, aren't you cute, little sir and patted him on the head. That's I think she means patted her on the head. I never know whether to correct them, and when it's been in the company of friends or even family, I do have to say, oh, actually she is a girl. I feel embarrassed for them and wish I didn't even
have to think about the correcting. My question is, is there a way I can make it clearer that Sophie is a girl so people stop greeting her as a little dude? Jesse, any advice, Oh, how to relate for both of us? I think I we're both in the same boat. We have little girls with masculine energy. Yeah, I say, quite androgynous energy. Yeah. I think both our babies are genderleist. Matilda was about two days old and her midwife came in and was helping me feed, and
she did keep saying, oh, he's not wanting to feed. Oh, he's a spirited little guy. And I was in a daze, so I didn't speak.
Well.
You were probably like, ah, I have a boy. Yeah. I was interesting, and my partner had to say, I'm so sorry, but it's a girl. It's the confidence for me that I want to stop and go. I'm not upset. I think a lot of gender is a construction. Yeah, but what makes you But what makes you sure this is a little dude. It's wet in Matilda's wearing pink and purple and someone calls her little man. That you go.
The energy is so strong that it is undoing. It's really clear social cues by sending out yeah exact, because I'm betraying my sense of what a girl is by just going full, just just to clarify, And still there's confusion bubbling. Yeah, well Luna does get little Sarah lot or men will exclaim in the lift, as often happens, he's staring at me. Okay, and in such a case, I don't know what they want me to do about that. She's a stare. Yeah. The first issue is the hair.
It always is. It's a hair. It's that your baby looks like a lad. We say, a bit of a mallet. Yeah, she looks like she's a British football fan who's about to start shit. There is someone who was apparently on Love Island UK who bears a striking resemblance to Matilda, and it is the fringe that goes halfway down the forehead, and it's the blondness. She's so blonde, yes, and Luna also has that. But again it looks like a choice.
It looks like she's made a choice to get sort of a new town edgy short fringe and it's boyish. There's a lot about Luna that's boyish. So we know it's the hair. So the answer is really obvious, and that is invest in a wig. Oh baby wigs that needs to be in an industry, and I'm talking you need to glow it because they pull it off. That's a great point. I'm thinking of Victoria's secret style, big
wave like Toddler's and tiaras except for three months. And yeah, you know what, maybe it doesn't even need to be a baby wig. Maybe just get an adult wig. Maybe get an adult wig and you just go, Yeah, the fringe will kind of cover the face a bit, but just clip it. Probably clip that out of the way and have a few highlights. Might really emphasize that it's
a girl. Yeah. I also think that there are clear signifiers that you're not going with, which is when Sophia leaves a house, Sophie wes an apron okay, yeah, really just a wig, a wisk a whisk an apron, a heel. I also think fake nails, fake like an acrylic right, like, that's clearly signifying she's a girl. Jewelry, a chunky necklace, a Tiffany bracelet, a spray tan, let's get the eyelashes done,
fake clashes, fake clashes. I was also thinking that because this often happens when I'm out at the shopping center with the lunars, that people say, oh, hey, little dude, what's it staring at me? And I think if I just went to Mecca and said, can we do a quick full face, yeah, that would be clarifying. Yeah, yeah, because then we'd go around. She'd have a cutcrease, she'd have her bronza and contour, she'd have a fake eyelightd Maybe would say weird, weird choice for a baby, but
it's a girl. But I'm gonna go it's a girl because it's got all the fucked up socialization cues of being a woman at just fourteen months. Mm hmm. Okay, what's your advice? Okay, so obviously gender cues, Yeah, there's something in that. I'll give that to you. Yeah, but I'm going to take another approach, lean into confrontation. Okay, So when somebody says, hi, little dude, you a pretend you don't know who they're talking about, even if they're
staring at your baby. Correct, you are silent, and then you say who and they say, little man, little man, I'm pointing out, and you say why, are you pointing at my daughter? Oh that's rude. Yeah, especially if you're stuck in a lift. Yeah yeah, So I really want this mum to lean into start and shit and unnecessarily combative and defend it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I think maybe it's a combo of the two. It's going very gendered and then when there is confusion, just absolutely losing
one's shit. I reckon losing one shit, but also dressing your child gender neutral is a bit of fun. So I think that you dressed them in green, in mustard, in black and white things that you can't really tell, and then lose your shit when people get wrong, and I reckon you demand to know what made them think? Yeah, that your daughter was a little sir, what made you say that? Go on, why don't you describe her features through your eyes? Because I'm going to be offended and
yell at you about it. Very true. We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Baby Bubble and didn't find anything remotely helpful. Next time on the Baby Bubble, we're catching up with one half of the Two Doting Dads podcast, Ashwicks. Be sure to keep an ear out for that, or, better yet, subscribe to the podcast and you'll never miss an episode. The Baby Bubble is produced by Taylor Strano with audio production by Teagan Sadler. We will see you next week. Bye bye.