Ep #100: Baby Sleep, Baby Clothes, & Baby Tips, Oh My! A BTS 100th Episode Celebration

Devon Clement: I will tell you, if you want to do a project and stick with it, like join forces with your best friend. It gives us, not that we need excuses to talk, but we get to call it work.

Welcome to Parenthood Prep, the only show that helps sleep-deprived parents and overwhelmed parents-to-be to successfully navigate those all-important early years with their baby, toddler, and child. If you are ready to provide the best care for your newborn, manage those toddler tantrums, and grow with your child, you’re in the right place. Now here’s your host, baby and parenting expert, Devon Clement. 

Margaret Mason Tate: First and foremost, I told Hamish that O’Charley’s has closed. Hamish has never been to an O’Charley’s and it sounds like you also have not been to an O’Charley’s.

Devon Clement: No, I’ve never even heard of it. What is it? Now I’m sad I’ll never be able to go.

Margaret Mason Tate: I also am sad that you will never be able to go. You’re never going to have the best baked potato soup that there is.

Devon Clement: Ooh. I love baked potato soup.

Margaret Mason Tate: It was like a Ruby, it’s like a mall restaurant. It was like a Ruby Tuesday kind of scenario. And I’m devastated that they have closed. They closed all locations overnight. 

Devon Clement: Whoa. That sounds scandalous.

Margaret Mason Tate: And my verbal stimming must be like on 11 lately because Hamish said, oh, is that oh, oh, oh, O’Charley’s?

Devon Clement: Not quite. But I could see the connection. I could see that.

Margaret Mason Tate: Let’s get these birthday presents opened. There we go.

Devon Clement: It is, in fact, a belated birthday present and not a hundredth episode present. I…

Margaret Mason Tate: Oh, no.

Devon Clement: …am not, I do not have that level of foresight.

Margaret Mason Tate: Well, I do, but you’re not gonna be in the country, so… 

Devon Clement: That’s fair. No, well, when the episode airs, I’ll be back, like, the next day.

Margaret Mason Tate: Okay, good to know. Helpful. Helpful, yay! Hey, I’m wearing this to school. I’m wearing this to school every day and I love this. I’m trying to will myself into being a nepo baby. Also can I just say it’s Victor’s birthday today and his present to me for his birthday is a life insurance policy. Let me tell you that’s some real adult shit right there.

Devon Clement: A life of Scientology.

Margaret Mason Tate: What I said was really close to that, but not that, because what I said was a life insurance policy.

Devon Clement: Oh, it does sound like that though. The cadence is the same. And…

Margaret Mason Tate: I played it back.

Devon Clement: You do really care about Scientology.

Margaret Mason Tate: I do very much care. I care about what they’re talking about. I care about who’s in there. I care a lot.

Devon Clement: Most of what I know about Scientology I’ve learned from you.

Margaret Mason Tate: But listen, it goes back so far because I remember in college, I remember…

Devon Clement: Bart Simpson, sorry.

Margaret Mason Tate: Right? The Ribicis.

Devon Clement: Well, that one I think I knew. No, Leah Romini. She’s like a big, she’s out, right?

Margaret Mason Tate: She’s out and she’s crusading and I love her. Very, very proud.

Devon Clement: So, sorry. So back at St. Andrews College.

Margaret Mason Tate: Back at St. Andrews, you could send off for information about it. And let me tell you…

Devon Clement: You do that other places too. 

Margaret Mason Tate: Do you remember when I said that I always bought Rao’s pasta sauce because you get a free glass jar with it. A free glass jar and other things too.

Devon Clement: You buy Rao’s because you get a…

Margaret Mason Tate: Free glass jar.

Devon Clement: Remember that thing I you know earlier when Poppy told you don’t assume other people are better than you by default. And I was like, yeah, you really shouldn’t do that. Sometimes. I’m just saying sometimes.

Margaret Mason Tate: This is the most thoughtful thing in the world. Bananas Foster candle is like super, super, super thoughtful. It’s two of my favorite things in the world together.

Devon Clement: Yes, you love bananas Foster.

Margaret Mason Tate: It’s one of my favorite flavor profiles. I’ve been saying it for 10 years.

Devon Clement: I bought that for you in Cleveland and brought it home on a plane and then promptly forgot to give it to you when I saw you in person.

Margaret Mason Tate: It actually says made in Cleveland. Okay. Shout out to Cleveland. We’re really going to have to do some more Cleveland…

Devon Clement: Yeah. Stay tuned for some Cleveland updates.

Margaret Mason Tate: Why would this have come from Cleveland? You’ll have to find out and you will.

Devon Clement: You’ll have to find out.

Margaret Mason Tate: Love this. Let’s smell. Let’s smell. Oh yeah. 

Devon Clement: What’s that one? What does that say?

Margaret Mason Tate: She’s sexy. This is you’re a badass bitch, keep that shit up. A unique blend of confidence, strength, and that unstoppable energy only a true badass has.

Devon Clement: That one I got you after your birthday, that’s actually a back to school gift.

Margaret Mason Tate: Ah, thank you. Let me tell ya, I’m the most tired that I’ve ever been in my entire life. It is…

Devon Clement: Yes.

Margaret Mason Tate: Uh, Cher, you’re a frickin’ genius. Cher, never leave. I mean, leave us when it’s time. Death is not the end. I understand that she’s bigger than death. Also never.

Devon Clement: Sure. Never leave us. That one, unfortunately got a little bit messed up because I put a piece of tape on it that said your name and then it took us so long to send it to you that the tape like took off some of the…

Margaret Mason Tate: I don’t care. It’s going right on my backpack because I need a place. I need a place to put my panther card.

Devon Clement: Oh, cute. So there’s some, there’s some stuff in there too.

Margaret Mason Tate: Oh, in the panther card. Aww, yeah, aww, thank you, aww.

Devon Clement: Well, read the note, but then the other thing…

Margaret Mason Tate: Yes I see that it says…

Devon Clement: Do you see the little things, the little rectangles? Are they in there? 

Margaret Mason Tate: Oh, yeah. 

Devon Clement: Maybe they’re just loose in the box. Nevermind. 

Margaret Mason Tate: They’re not in the pouch. 

Devon Clement: Read the note in the pouch later, but find the little, yes.

Margaret Mason Tate: You got it. I know just where it will go. I know just where it will go.

Devon Clement: But yeah, use the pouch for whatever you want.

Margaret Mason Tate: This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. My cat is here. I’m talking to you. I’m opening presents and I just got a notification and the notification says there’s a new episode of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu.

Devon Clement: This is your day, man. Happy thank you more, please.

Margaret Mason Tate: Happy thank you more, please. I will have a ball. You know that I love to do Happy Family After social media posts while I watch that show in particular. I don’t know what it is about just getting into it and really liking it. But it’s my favorite.

Devon Clement: Kara and Gavin were talking about Arcade Fire the other day, and I said ask Margaret about that. 

Margaret Mason Tate: Please do. 

Devon Clement: Yes. Those are Scotland stickers from the FIFA World Cup sticker book.

Margaret Mason Tate: I will, I know exactly where I’m going to put them. Because you know what? Let me tell you something. This might be unpopular, and I’m sorry to put this out there in your world when you may not want it there, this realness, but the people who were like, I don’t know, stickers, they’re scary because I don’t ever want to stick them on anything because then it’s permanent and blah, blah, blah. I’m 40 years old. Use them goddamn stickers.

Devon Clement: Use your stickers, stick your stickers. Honestly, my problem now is not that I am scared of not having the sticker anymore because I stuck it on something. Now I’m too much of a grownup to like want stickers on my shit. So I’m trying to figure something out like a notebook maybe where I can like stick my stickers on the cover and I’ll be like, Oh, this is cool. This is like my sticker notebook, but I don’t want to put them on like a water bottle. Like I like my water bottle plain, which, you know, I’m not a boring person. I like shit with like unicorns and glitter and mermaids and stuff. My water bottle is a beautiful seafoam color. I don’t want to cover it up with stickers that are going to end up looking shitty after a while. So.

Margaret Mason Tate: They do. They do.

Devon Clement: That’s my sticker dilemma is not that I’m scared to stick the stickers it’s that I’m scared to have stickers stuck on things.

Margaret Mason Tate: Now we’re, we’ve kind of transcended that in our style.

Devon Clement: You get so many stickers at Burning Man and I just don’t, I just don’t do anything with them. I believe was that all the gifts the hat is at…

Margaret Mason Tate: This is my, yeah, this is like my favorite thing that I’ve ever…

Devon Clement: Also walking around poetry graduate school as a 40-year-old woman wearing a hat that says put it on my dad’s tab is just chef’s kiss. They do not have to know that you are a single mom supporting yourself. They can absolutely think that you are a spoiled nepo baby who’s never had a job in her life.

Margaret Mason Tate: Correct. In my poetry workshop, By the by, there is a man who was a contemporary of my parents and asked me, when I introduced myself, I mentioned that my parents were, I said, comedic writers and actors. And I’m pretty sure I said past tense because, you know, but he said, what are your parents working on these days? And I said, being dead.

Devon Clement: Too bad they were writers and not classical musicians, because then you could have said my favorite joke. What’s Mozart doing right now? Decomposing.

Margaret Mason Tate: Oh, that’s your favorite joke?

Devon Clement: I mean, no, it’s why I have many favorite jokes, but that’s one of them.

Margaret Mason Tate: Production meeting comes to order.

Devon Clement: Yes.

Margaret Mason Tate: Hundredth episode.

Devon Clement: Hundredth episode.

Margaret Mason Tate: One hundred…

Devon Clement: One hundred.

Margaret Mason Tate: …episodes.

Margaret Mason Tate: When you buy a stack of note cards, they often come in packs of one hundred.

Devon Clement: I could write the title of a podcast episode on all of those note cards and I would run out of note cards.

Margaret Mason Tate: It’s a crazy situation. So here’s my pitch. I love this. If I had a director’s chair, this would be like ultimate. I’m very, I’m feeling very in the industry right now. 

Devon Clement: Okay, you’re like, all right.

Margaret Mason Tate: No. Okay.

Devon Clement: So we lightly touched, bandied about a few ideas the other day and you put your producer hat on, which you just got today, but you, you had it on and you, you did some producing, but we didn’t settle on anything. So we’ve got some ideas.

Margaret Mason Tate: I understand. I love the idea of top 100 babies because I think that the idea of ranking them is very funny. It’s just entertaining to me. And because there’s so many babies that I think that you might not even be considering. So I would like to…

Devon Clement: I, aside from like babies I know currently, like I could go down a list of our clients of the last year and probably name a hundred babies. I think it would take me a while to come up with a hundred babies if I did not have access to that information.

Margaret Mason Tate: Yes. And thank God for the spreadsheet, if I’m being real.

Devon Clement: I mean, I could probably think of many, many, many babies that I’ve taken care of in my 30 plus year career in baby care, but that wouldn’t be very interesting to the listeners if we ranked those.

Margaret Mason Tate: No, it’s not interesting. You know, what is interesting, Octomom’s babies. That’s eight babies of the top 100 right there.

Devon Clement: Eight babies. Yes.

Margaret Mason Tate: Octomom’s babies.

Devon Clement: Yes. Oh God. Do you remember that? I remember seeing someone at a Halloween party dressed up as her. With like baby dolls. just stuck all over them.

Margaret Mason Tate: Well, that’s grotesque. Yeah, I do remember that very vividly, remember that, in fact, it was a whole social thing for a hot minute. It was on every like sitcom had a set up about it. Or it’s not a set up like a mention, at least, you know, copper tone, baby.

Devon Clement: Well you know, wait with speaking of octamom, you know, that in my teens I was and this was the nineties, so this was a big thing that was going on. I was obsessed with like high order multiples, like there was an article in the newspaper about like quintuplets. I was all over that shit. I was like, give me five babies right now. What would you even do? And they had those dolls, the quints dolls.

Margaret Mason Tate: Oh, actually let’s do that. Quints dolls as the, as five of them, hold on. 

Devon Clement: Sure. And then there would be like on like news shows, like not to, you know, like, like 2020 stuff like the Dilley sextuplets and the McCoy seven, and I loved it.

Margaret Mason Tate: Kate and John plus eight, the eight…

Devon Clement: John and Kate plus eight rhymes, then maybe they should call the show that.

Margaret Mason Tate: This is why we do these meetings is to bunch things up.

Devon Clement: Okay? Bunch things up. 

Margaret Mason Tate: I think we know.

Devon Clement: I was watching a Knicks playoff game at a bar in New York, one of the third one or something. Everyone was very hype. And this family, East Asian American family, was in the back. And the like old grandpa type person, the coach of the Spurs, he starts screaming, John and Kate plus eight, John and Kate plus eight. And I was like, what are you talking about? And then I looked at the screen and the guy really does look like John Gosling.

Margaret Mason Tate: Oh my God.

Devon Clement: It was pretty funny.

Margaret Mason Tate: The Dionysus.

Devon Clement: Babies from Rugrats. The babies from Rugrats. They were, I mean, classic babies. They got to be top 30.

Margaret Mason Tate: Classic babies.

Devon Clement: Top 20 babies.

Margaret Mason Tate: Top quality babies. Quality babies.

Devon Clement: Very good babies.

Margaret Mason Tate: Diapers and a t-shirt with no bottoms. That’s the best kind of baby. Speaking of somebody who had a spring baby, that was the uniform. You know what I mean? And I mean, I’m in the south so we don’t really have to do super super cold, I mean it’s hot as hellfire down here y’all.

Devon Clement: Sure.

Margaret Mason Tate: So we didn’t have, we don’t have to do a lot of like loading up on the layers. So t-shirt and diapered baby combo for me. That’s classic. That’s really good.

Devon Clement: Top 100 baby outfits. I feel like there’s, I mean… 

Margaret Mason Tate: Sailor suit. Gotta be in the top five.

Devon Clement: Audrey has four.

Margaret Mason Tate: Oh, speaking of Audrey, Audrey Joan, number one, top one baby.

Devon Clement: Well, number one, obviously.

Margaret Mason Tate: That’s like, that’s no contest. And do you know who, who is right above that? Emma from Friends.

Devon Clement: Did she exist?

Margaret Mason Tate: No. We have, listen, we have Monica’s twins, Emma and Ben, and then Phoebe’s trips. As the Friends babies. This is… 

Devon Clement: Sure. I guess there were some Emma-centric episodes where you actually saw her and she wasn’t just sort of a concept.

Margaret Mason Tate: Concepts of a baby is still… It’s still appropriate. 

Devon Clement: Yesterday we were at a restaurant. We had Audrey with us. We were watching her while they got their windows replaced in the house and there was like lead fumes and stuff. And my mother was sitting next to her at the table. I let her, you know, be down at the end so my mom and Alex could take care of her. And she was drinking milk and she got like milk on her face. And I was like, mom, wipe her face, wipe her face. Look alive, Susan.

Margaret Mason Tate: Look alive, Susan. That’s exactly right. So yes, it is absolutely…

Devon Clement: Emma from Friends. Yes.

Margaret Mason Tate: Emma, Ben.

Devon Clement: Hugsy, Ben, Monica Bang.

Margaret Mason Tate: Monica Bang. So cute.

Devon Clement: Monica Bang, his first word was hi.

Margaret Mason Tate: 24 of them I got on here, one that you would not really think to put on here because they weren’t babies, but I’m honorable mentioning them…

Devon Clement: Not sure why they’re on the list of babies if they’re not babies but I’m ready to hear your argument. 

Margaret Mason Tate: This says not babies but exception made for contributions in the field.

Devon Clement: Okay, I’m here for it.

Margaret Mason Tate: The kids in Devon’s special education classrooms when you were teaching.

Devon Clement: Oh, yeah. No, they weren’t, they were my babies.

Margaret Mason Tate: The contributions in the field. I feel like the experience that you gained there and the kind of turn that your whole life took as a result of teaching them.

Devon Clement: Yeah, it was well, it was more than 24 it was 50 some total my brief career. Yeah, they were…

Margaret Mason Tate: As in, year one teacher. That’s how big the classrooms are…

Devon Clement: You know, but I’ll tell you they and their parents were a big part of my early experience as an advisor and a consultant and a coach in a lot of ways, you know when you’re a babysitter, you’re kind of learning from the parents. They tell you what to do how to do it. You learn from the kids, but like they’re not asking their babysitter for advice. But when you’re your kids teacher, even if you are 23 fiscal years old, people trust you to tell them what to do. And that was where I really had to build up my confidence in my own knowledgeability as it were.

Margaret Mason Tate: Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m driving at. I mean, these kids aren’t babies, but like what they contributed to the field.

Devon Clement: I feel like the noun, the noun knowledge and then the adjective knowledgeable, like it doesn’t go back. Like I think knowledgeability should be a word even if it’s not because being knowledgeable does not just mean having knowledge, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Anyway.

Margaret Mason Tate: There’s all kinds of rhetorical schools of thought that can back you up in this. I can, uh, I’ll send you a reading list later.

Devon Clement: You’re taking a rhetoric class. So you would know, you would know.

Margaret Mason Tate:  The single framework for anything that I know.

Devon Clement: Oh yes. My students. Cutes.

Margaret Mason Tate: Another idea I had, top 100 baby items.

Devon Clement: Like products?

Margaret Mason Tate: Yeah. Yeah. Like products.

Devon Clement: That I like? Can I say paper towels? Are there a hundred baby products that I like?

Margaret Mason Tate: Probably not. It’d be funny if I asked you to name a hundred and you were like, I don’t know.

Devon Clement: Well, I could name a hundred, but would I want them on a list? Like, no, there’s like six. One thing I probably could tell you is a hundred baby clothing brands because all I ever do is buy clothes for Audrey. We just did the clearance…

Margaret Mason Tate: Top 100 Instagram ads for baby clothes on your feed. 

Devon Clement: Correct. Correct. 

Margaret Mason Tate: Top 100 Sky Rizzy commercials. 

Devon Clement: Well, no, and listen, I have to add the caveat, caveat emptor, if you will. That’s what it’s short for. Up until they’re like six months, four months, like don’t even put them in clothes, like a t-shirt and a diaper, like a little sleeper suit, like legs and arms. Like they look stupid in clothes. Newborns, when people pick out like clothes for a newborn photo shoot, I’m like, you’re gonna hate these pictures. Their bodies are not, it’s like putting a cat in pants. It’s just like, it’s wrong. 

But once they hit that like four month, five month, six month mark, they’re starting to be like a little more, their legs and arms are like stretched out and they’re not curled up like a chicken all the time. They look so cute in clothes. Like I really started, I hit my stride with dressing her around, around that age.

Margaret Mason Tate: Four months old, we went to the beach for the first time and I put my little Southern boy in a collared shirt with a crab pattern on it and some seersucker shorts.

Devon Clement: Cute. Of course.

Margaret Mason Tate: And inexplicably, some fisherman’s sandals.

Devon Clement: Oh, that’s not inexplicable. Baby shoes are adorable.

Margaret Mason Tate: And yeah, that was just like one of my favorite outfits that Hamish has ever had, ever.

Devon Clement: Oh yeah. I could probably do like a top 100 outfits of Audrey’s first year.

Margaret Mason Tate: That would be fun.

Devon Clement: Maybe not that many, maybe not that many, but maybe also that many.

Margaret Mason Tate: But also maybe.

Devon Clement: I mean, they change sizes every three months, so it’d really only be like 25 per size. And if we go all the way up to 12 to 18, which she’s in now, I mean, that’s five rounds of sizes really. So I could do 20 outfits per size.

Margaret Mason Tate: Well, they change sizes, but they change outfits so often. This is something that I just genuinely…

Devon Clement: And she spit up a lot. So I got to change her clothes like three times a day. It was great. 

Margaret Mason Tate: Yeah. It’s a good time.

Devon Clement: It was great. Then you have a poop blow out, then it’s another one. Yeah.

Margaret Mason Tate: Speaking of, like, you know, 20 per season and 24, another thing that I thought we could do, because I was going through, we went through…

Devon Clement: Wait, I want to throw out a baby clothes tip that may appear in a future episode, because we are putting together some more tips episodes, but you heard it here first. Shop the clearance sales at the end of the season for the next year. I just bought so much 2T spring and summer shit for so cheap, so cheap, so cute. And honestly, like my mother’s like, well, I don’t know what size she’s going to be. I’m like, she’s going to be two years old. She will be 2T.

And at some point in the time where it will be appropriate to wear short-sleeved dresses and rompers, she will be, I don’t know if she’ll wear them in May or September, but she will wear them at some point in that range. And maybe the whole time, probably the whole time, like just add 12 months to your baby’s current age and get that size for the following year. I did it starting at Christmas. I got a whole bunch of like clearance Christmas shit for her and like…

Margaret Mason Tate: You have to get the family Christmas, family Christmas pajamas are a mortgage payment, Devon. They are a billion and a half dollars.

Devon Clement: I know, I was looking at my collection last night.

Margaret Mason Tate: You have to do it, especially Hannah Anderson, because you know that’s my preferred pajama brand generally, but especially Christmas pajamas. The Hannah Anderson sale, you have to plan it. You have to put it in your calendar and you have to just make it happen. It is worth it. Those pajamas are so good. And then you can get the Christmas pajamas for the next year, because you know generally, for the most part, we know what size we’re going to be or what size we can plan for whatever for us and for our partner if we’re going to order for other adults, etc. The kids, you know, just do the thing, do the thing. Oh, it’s so good. 

Devon Clement: Also, you know what’s great? One set of adult pajamas and then like three or four years worth of kid pajamas. You don’t need brand new holiday pajamas every year.

Margaret Mason Tate: No, you don’t need brand new holiday pajamas every year.

Devon Clement: I mean, I still get them, but you know what I do is I wear the ones from last year and the ones from this year. We do two, but yeah, I, they have family matching year round now, which is wild. So whenever I get us something matching, whether it’s for everybody, her dads and Alex and me, or if it’s just for me and her, cause some stuff is just for girls and that’s just how it is. I don’t know what to tell you boys. You’re screwed.

Margaret Mason Tate: You’re not invited.

Devon Clement: Lily Pulitzer did not see fit to include you in this particular dynamic. I don’t… 

Margaret Mason Tate: And we trust her. 

Devon Clement: And we trust her. We trust her. She knew what she was doing. I will get hers in multiple sizes because that shit’s going to fit me next summer. Lily Pulitzer, also a great sale. I mean, obviously not to the level of like Carter’s or Gymboree sale prices or Baby Gap sale prices, but like if you’re interested in some Lily Pulitzer, you can get a baby shift for like 20 to 30 bucks on sale. Which is very cheap,

Margaret Mason Tate: And you can resell that. I hate, hate, hate to be a shill for anything meta other than, you know, my whole job being Instagram free, but Facebook Marketplace really like you genuinely can recoup…

Devon Clement: Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark, I get some stuff on there too. Actually, this was funny. The very first matching outfit I got for the whole fam damnly before she was even born…

Margaret Mason Tate: I just wanted to be clear that I meant that you can recoup your cost that you have put in there by selling it.

Devon Clement: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cause they have another girl embryo and we have girl embryos. So all her shit gets stored.

Margaret Mason Tate: Stored away, baby.

Devon Clement: But what I was going to say was I got the newborn like zero to three month size for last summer. Then I got the one year size for this summer and that was it. What a sweet summer child I was because as soon as I put her in it one time, I was like, oh damn. But by that point they didn’t have it anymore. So I went on eBay and got like 2T, 3T, 4T, and 5. So now we’re going to do that picture every year for the rest of my ever loving life and Cher’s life.

Margaret Mason Tate: Correct.

Devon Clement: And beyond. Also, you know, at some point in there, somebody is going to have another baby and then they’re going to be in the little baby one and we’re going to be, you know, that was an emotional moment for me when I was like, Oh, this little baby one, she’s outgrown it, she’s ready for the next size. And then I was like, like, Oh, well, there’s, someday there will be another little baby to wear this. I don’t know who, but somebody will. 

Margaret Mason Tate: Yeah. Somebody will wear it. Hand-me-downs as it were.

Devon Clement: Yeah. We love a hand-me-down.

Margaret Mason Tate: I wanted to say, we went over the numbers. We ran the numbers. We crunched the numbers.

Devon Clement: Dr. Numbers.

Margaret Mason Tate: And he has, I call Devon’s fiancee, Dr. Numbers. Because he has a doctorate in math. And that is the nickname that came out of my mouth without any input right up here, just came right out at like 6:30 in the morning or 7:30 in the morning, the very first time I ever laid eyes on him because I was asleep in the living room and I had gotten in really, really late to their house, late flight. And he came out to go to work and I said from the couch, I think my eyes might have still been kind of… I said, Dr. Numbers.

Devon Clement: And he must have been, did he jump?

Margaret Mason Tate: He didn’t jump, but he, he whipped. He whipped like Dwight in that Angela meme. Anyway, we ran the numbers. And I don’t know if you paid attention to this or not, but we have a particularly large interest in Australia.

Devon Clement: I did see that. I was excited. 

Margaret Mason Tate: A lot of Aussie listeners.

Devon Clement: So many. Hello. It’s like more than half.

Margaret Mason Tate: It is so many Australian listeners. I’m just very, very excited and want to shout them out. So one of my, one of my pitches also was going to be top 100 baby names in Australia the year you were born. What do you think they are?

Devon Clement: I mean, Australia is not that different from here. There’s probably some Jessica’s and Jennifer’s and…

Margaret Mason Tate: Yes. Yes.

Devon Clement: Michelle. I cannot do an Australian accent. I lived there for a significant length of time and I could never even a little bit like cheerio. I’m British, you know, that’s fine. But Aussie, like the number of vowels they put into the word, no, what?

Margaret Mason Tate: Well I wanted you to say, I wanted you to say, I don’t know. And I wanted them to say they don’t know her either because they didn’t start to keep records, national records of that, like baby names, top, you know top 100…

Devon Clement: National records of people, of the citizens?

Margaret Mason Tate: I don’t know man, I don’t understand. But they didn’t, there isn’t like a tally for that.

Devon Clement: I mean, did they even have a hundred people back then? It’s so small. 

Margaret Mason Tate: That’s the issue. 

Devon Clement: It’s so big, but there’s so few people.

Margaret Mason Tate: You’re right. They said there’s not a record, but here’s people that, here’s a common names of people that age. And it is Jessica, Jennifer, Matthew, Christopher, et cetera. So not particularly interesting, but oh my God, if you are Australian and listen to this podcast, please, please, please go on Instagram at happyfamilyafter and comment on any posts. We want to know who you are. We love you. We’re obsessed with you.

Devon Clement: You know, some of my best baby tips come from Australia. I don’t know if they still do because I lived there like almost 20 years ago, they had sleep school for babies that you could go to for free. It was part of the national health and they would help you sleep train your baby at sleep school.

Margaret Mason Tate: So you’re saying, you’re saying that their national government took such an interest in sleep as a baby development boon that they said there should be so much more babies asleep in this country that we’re want to give it to you for free.

Devon Clement: Exactly.

Margaret Mason Tate: Come learn how to help. Oh my God, what would that world be like? Who knows.

Devon Clement: Well, and frankly, I hate to say this. I really do hate that this is true, but in a perfect world and even imperfect world, in a normal world that we should have in America, people would get a year of paid parental leave, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We don’t have that. So in the world that we live in, where we don’t have that, baby sleep contributes to worker productivity. 

Margaret Mason Tate: Oh my god, yeah. 

Devon Clement: Like if you are an employer of parents, you want those people to be rested at work.

Margaret Mason Tate: I genuinely can’t imagine any type of law office, any type of firm in this manner. Surgeons? Hello. Happy Family After serves so many surgeons and I just I think that that’s such a marker of how much you have to prioritize your brain health which is a solid 40% sleep, REM and deep sleep man you can I can tell I’m passionate this way. 

Devon Clement: So like, yes, your own health and whatever, but like, people are not going back. They’re extending their parental leave and stuff because their baby’s not sleeping. And I think that people should extend their parental leave. Like, stay home with your kids as long as you want. But if the reason you’re doing that is because you’re so miserable because nobody is sleeping, then that sucks.

Margaret Mason Tate: Yeah, under duress is not a great way to do anything.

Devon Clement: I’m too exhausted to go back to work is, is not… And that’s at like three, four months when we are getting better. A lot of companies have better leave policies. Not everybody. And it’s very, you know, stratified economically and stuff like that. But if you are not functionally getting a good amount of sleep at night when your baby is six months old, that’s a big problem.

Margaret Mason Tate: It’ll break you, man. It almost broke me. It was really, really, really not great. This was before my accident. And this was when my brain was at tip top, 100% shape. I do want to tell you, I do want to tell you that just yesterday I was at school doing work with my brain from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. And at this point it was like 6:30 in the evening. And I raised my hand, I had been contributing to this class and like really making salient points and et cetera, et cetera, engaging… I raised my hand at 6:30 and started to deliver what I had in my brain to say. And as I was saying it, I ran out of everything, all of it, all my energy, all my smartness, all of it. It went.

Devon Clement: Oh dear.

Margaret Mason Tate: And I, like a robot was like, you know what? I’ve been here too long. I don’t know what I’m saying. Pass. It just went.

Devon Clement: You get really good sleep.

Margaret Mason Tate: And I get such good sleep. I got two hours of REM sleep last night because you know I stay on top of my game.

Devon Clement: Yeah. You know, there’s that great marketing advice, help people get rich, get thin, get laid and sleep helps you do all those things.

Margaret Mason Tate: My favorite nutritionist, actually one of the best things that she ever told me that has really helped me a lot is if you have to actually choose, legitimately choose, not because you’re making shit choices, but like really, if your choice is between getting one extra hour of sleep or getting up early and doing a workout, she says, sleep every time, every time, just let that choice be made for you.

Devon Clement: Yes.

Margaret Mason Tate: Because your metabolism is so, so, so, so, so tied to that consistency. It’s crazy.

Devon Clement: Yeah.

Margaret Mason Tate: Which is why we see when babies start to sleep better, a lot of times if they’re having feeding issues, really a lot of different types of feeding issues they resolve. Hamish’s reflex resolved because of sleep training.

Devon Clement: Well I’ll tell you what that is, but also milestones, motor skills, like a lot of times after I’ll meet a baby that is not sleeping, that is not rolling, that is not reaching for things, that is not like doing anything because they’re so flippin tired and frankly so grumpy that they’re just held all day and like can’t be put down to be on the floor to learn how to roll and do those things. I’m not saying again, you don’t need to put your brand new newborn down ever if you don’t want to. I’m not saying that. But by the time they’re three, four months old, they should be spending time like playing on the floor because that’s where they learn their skills. And a lot of them haven’t done that. 

Or they’re so grumpy that they’re like in a chair all day. Like, you know, I’ve met six month olds who are not even close to rolling who by the time we’re a few days into sleep training, they’re rolling and they’re doing all this stuff. The reflux I think is partly the sleeping, but it’s also that a lot of times you’re feeding them overnight to get them back to sleep. And when they’re digesting, like parents always ask me, can you sleep train my baby? They have reflux. I’m like, actually, I would love to sleep train your baby with reflux because I want them to stop eating and digesting overnight and having their reflux triggered by the overnight feeding.

Margaret Mason Tate: Yeah. Time to heal. It was, we were off the, I mean, they don’t do the medicine that they gave to Hamish, so I won’t say it anymore, but off medicine and off like all of it, the change was, you know, in 72 hours was…

Devon Clement: I will also say too, reflux in my older age, my perimenopause, I’ve been getting it bad and I’m like, oh my God, if this is what babies feel like, this is awful. 

Margaret Mason Tate: Yeah. I also want to be held. 

Devon Clement: It’s not great. Yeah. 

Margaret Mason Tate: I also am grumpy.

Devon Clement: Right? Okay. So ideas. 100th episode ideas?

Margaret Mason Tate: Yes. 100th day of school adjacent. Get me a picture of Audrey dressed as a hundred-year-old. Please.

Devon Clement: Incredible. Oh my God.

Margaret Mason Tate: Just real quick. Make that happen right quick for me.

Devon Clement: Old lady costume for babies. And it’s Halloween time, so I bet I can find that. Oh my God. I’m just, I’m envisioning her with like a little curly wig.

Margaret Mason Tate: We gotta wig it up. We gotta get her looking old. I would like it to be known that Spirit Halloween stores are on Instacart, and so you can get all the face paint, wigs, spray stuff, makeup, costumes, all of that stuff, you can have it delivered to your house and you don’t have to go be in the melee of those stores, which is, I gotta tell you, nightmarish, no pun intended.

Devon Clement: Actually, speaking of dressing up as old people, Alex and I, a few years ago, this story starts out sad and then gets better. A friend of ours tragically passed in the fall with some unexplained heart problem. It was devastating. And we went out to California for his memorial, which happened to be on Halloween weekend. And we were like, well, this is a funeral. This is a memorial. Of course, you know, it is what it is. Come to find out there was like an event in the park during the day, the memorial. And then at night there was a night party celebrating his life. That was a fricking costume Halloween party. And we were like, what? We didn’t know.

Margaret Mason Tate: We were unprepared. Which is one of the irony of you not being prepared because you have like a costume closet. Let’s see what kind of flamboyant shit we can find. 

Devon Clement: Well honestly. One of the first things that attracted me to Alex was seeing that he had a costume box in his apartment. But we, you know, we jetted out there for the weekend. We didn’t bring costumes. Like so we went to Spirit Halloween on the Saturday of Halloween weekend, they had nothing. It might have been Party City or something. I don’t think it was Spirit Halloween. But like, they had zero things. What they had was an old lady costume in his size. 

Margaret Mason Tate: Which is absolutely enormous. Alex is 6’4.

Devon Clement: Giant. Yeah. And they had like a bow tie set or something. So what we did was I put on his shirt, his like button down shirt and jacket. And I was the old man and he wore the old lady costume with the hair curlers and the house coat. And you know, we went to the drug store and just got like gray like eyeliners and I just like drew wrinkles on our faces and stuff. And we were last minute old people for the Halloween costume funeral.

Margaret Mason Tate: R.I.P. to our friend, and please send me a photograph of that also with the Audrey photograph. 

Devon Clement: I will. Oh sure.

Margaret Mason Tate: Exactly. I will. I will make that into a thing. I will make that into a thing.

Devon Clement: Sure. Sure. Sure. And I guess if people are hearing this in the future, they’ve already seen it. I suppose.

Margaret Mason Tate: Yeah. It’ll be on the… 

Devon Clement: Time travel.

Margaret Mason Tate: Listen though, I’m very, very, very, very proud of you. 100 episodes is a big deal. We joke all the time about how there are a million podcasts and that’s, you know, podcasting is kind of a really easy joke to make anymore. But you have stuck with it for 100 episodes and so few people do that. And I’m so, so proud of you. It’s such a good resource for parents. It makes me so pleased that you’re getting out there. Here and in Australia.

Devon Clement: Should we do a tour? Honestly, we’re touring literally New York City and several cities in Australia.

Margaret Mason Tate: Yep, we’re going to…

Devon Clement: Hey I have tons of friends there.

Margaret Mason Tate: I feel like it goes New York City, Atlanta, and then we fly Atlanta to wherever you fly in Australia. So I guess it would be San Francisco and then…

Devon Clement: Sure. Yeah, or LA, Sydney. We could go to Fiji. That’s where I learned to scuba dive.

Margaret Mason Tate: Okay. Helpful for babies. Top 100 scuba diving babies. See, this is what AI is doing to us. Oh my goodness. Anyway, I am genuinely very, very proud of you and inspired by you. And this is something that you had been wanting to do and really wanted to hone the consistency muscles of like, it’s going to be hard and sometimes there are going to be episodes that flop and sometimes there are going to be ones that are amazing and will have technical difficulties and like all of these things, but sticking through it is so cool and so awesome. And I’m very proud of you and I love you very much.

Devon Clement: Well, thank you. I honestly, I’m pretty impressed with myself. I have to say, I have done a lot of things and I’ve accomplished a lot of things, but I have never been amazing at like doing my homework and turning it in and I have done these episodes like…

Margaret Mason Tate: You sure have. You got the capital P, a P plus my baby. You got a P plus in podcasting and I’m super, super proud.

Devon Clement: A hundred episodes. Of course, you know, there’s that voice in my brain that’s like, well, you’ve had some reruns. You didn’t actually make a hundred original episodes.

Margaret Mason Tate: I’m sure. I’m sure. 

Devon Clement: How about top 100 voices in your brain that should shut the fuck up.

Margaret Mason Tate: I know that’s right. That’s like, that’s pretty much it. That’s pretty much it right there.

Devon Clement: And you know, when we record or I record or we record together the 100th unique episode, I think all that’s worth a mention, but this is still a big deal. There are a hundred podcast episodes out there that I made, and that’s pretty cool.

Margaret Mason Tate: You stuck with it. I mean, I’d love to rock with you for another hundred episodes, my love. You’re doing great. I believe in you. I believe in what you’re doing and what we’re doing together, and I love you very much.

Devon Clement: I love you too. I couldn’t have done it without your encouragement, support, and actual producing. I will tell you, if you want to do a project and stick with it, like join forces with your best friend. It gives us, not that we need excuses to talk, but we get to call it work.

Margaret Mason Tate: Yes, exactly. And listen, I know that you’re traveling and I love that, but get me a present and put it on my dad’s tab.

Devon Clement: Oh, you know I will.

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Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Parenthood Prep. If you want to learn more about the services Devon offers, as well as access her free monthly newborn care webinars, head on over to www.HappyFamilyAfter.com.