00:06
Good morning moms. Today is October 27, 2025. I am Caroline Dettman. This is The Modern Mom and it is time to clock in and lock in  for a fresh new week. Joining me today  is Shannon from Parenting Products Guru. And with a name like that, you know this is gonna be a good episode.  Shannon, do you wanna introduce yourself to our friends here?

00:30
Sure, I'm Shannon. I am a mom of three. I had my third baby in February. And like very many other content creators got started on TikTok and Instagram at kind of the midpoint of the pandemic and found my niche of reviewing baby products and not doing those silly just walking through the island target and giving things yes and no responses, but really.

00:55
diving into why products work for our family, why they might work for someone else, and giving really in-depth  reviews on them, and have expanded recently more into just relatable mom moments as we're all looking for more connection and more humor in  the mess of motherhood. So thank you so much for having me, and I'm really excited to be here. Absolutely. And  I totally agree with you that being moms, especially, even if you're not a stay-at-home mom, can be really isolating. um

01:24
I was like the first amongst my friend group to have kids and kind of like  dropped off of socialization because of it. And  finding social media has really been kind of a blessing because finding moms like you who I can relate to  and even though we're not local to each other can,  you know, have a friendship,  it's really been nice. Yeah, absolutely. And being able to learn things from other moms and figuring out new ways or better ways to be

01:52
doing things. I Caroline, especially your like routines and the way that you kind of stack habits on themselves so that things get done better  and more efficiently  and more routinely has really helped me on my end of motherhood too. Well, thank you. Thank you.  I know I feel like as moms, we really do have a lot to offer other moms  and uh doing it in a kind  and uh productive way is

02:22
something that's really important.  Yeah, we shame ourselves enough as moms without needing to shame others and  really just need to be in a place where we can empower and support and encourage others rather than  placing blame or shame on each other.  Absolutely.  Let's jump into the break room brief, which is what we call trending topics to chat about  with a new mom you meet at the playground this week.

02:52
News in case you missed it while you were busy chasing those babies around. And starting off strong, Hulu released the season three trailer for Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Wednesday. There seems to be plenty of drama on deck for this new season. First off, they tease the fact that all of the castmates auditioned for Dancing with the Stars,  even though only Jen and Whitney were cast. Taylor has been cast as the new Bachelorette.

03:20
And it seems to be everybody versus Demi, except for maybe  Whitney. And I know we kind of touched on it before, but Shannon and I are both also on TikTok. So  maybe we have a little bit of a different insight into the show. Do you watch Secret Lives? um Every once in a while I do. To be honest, I don't have much time to watch TV other than like an hour when I'm folding laundry at the end of the day.

03:47
ah But it never ceases to amaze me the reaches  of  mom talk and the secret lives of Mormon wives.  It has just  blown up. And I think it's going to be a really interesting  sociology, cultural study in a couple of years when people start looking back on why was this such a big thing for our generation of moms and  these moms in particular.

04:15
in contrast to other moms. And  so it's definitely, it's an interesting study for sure. Yeah, and like,  I had followed Taylor for a long time before the show, but just because like, she just had a bunch of different storylines that she was  like, she had a storyline where her house was haunted. And there was another storyline where one of her, she was pretending that one of her friends was like her daughter or something.  And it was just,  oh.

04:44
It's that whole like  when you're pregnant with a girl, like their  eggs that would become future babies are already inside of them. So you're technically like carrying your future grandchildren, I think is how that all went down. ah Interesting way to put things. ah You know, they are amazing at getting people to watch their content.

05:11
and to comment and engage with it. And I think any aspiring content creator, it's a good study. It's a good study. It really is. seems kind of loosely following her rise to fame. It seems kind of like she was just kind of throwing things against the wall to see what would stick and gain traction for her. then once she found something that did, she just...

05:36
kept hitting that nail on the head until she built the house or whatever. That's not a saying.  Yeah. And I had never followed the  other girls, but  what is in the water in Utah? Why are  they all successful content creators?  It's interesting. And Utah as a whole, I think for entrepreneurs, whether it's on social media or creating small businesses.

06:03
There's a lot of kind of solo-preneur success out of Utah. If you look at a lot of your favorite like little baby boutique brands, a lot of them are based in Utah. That is so true. Yeah.  I forget,  I just ordered something and I saw that it was shipping from,  oh,  was Ballerina Farms protein powder. And obviously she's in Utah,  but still, same thing. Ballerina Farms, Lulu & Company, which is like some of my favorite baby gowns and blankets.

06:32
They're based in Provo. Provo is a big one for a lot of small businesses.  Yeah. Is it like advantageous tax-wise to  have your business in Utah? are they just all genuinely  Utahans?  I don't know. it's something in the water coming off the Rocky Mountains. I guess. Or in Salt Lake, I don't know.  Yeah. It just seems like every time there's a new hot mom creator,

06:57
you click through to her profile and she's in Utah. She's also like 23, but. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's been interesting to kind of like get well into my thirties and now feel like I'm on the older side of moms. Yeah. Like new moms. I had somebody tell me the other day that it was so refreshing to follow an older mom. And I was like, that's not a compliment, but thank you anyways. Oh, well, um,

07:25
I'm glad you find it relatable. Glad you're here. Thanks so much. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the new mom creators are all, like Kylie Pitts, she's 20, right? think. Something like that. Yeah. And she has like millions of followers. And if you don't know Kylie Pitts, she's a obviously young mom and she's in Mississippi. Right, sure. Yeah.

07:55
in the South, deep South,  very cute, great at making content and obviously has millions of followers, rose  to those millions of followers very quickly. She just started making like morning routine videos that caught some traction and she just like meteoric, like within weeks  shot to the top.  And a lot of mom creators kind of have been viewing her as a blueprint and like trying to, cause like she has a very thick Southern accent.

08:22
And I think that kind of works as an opening hook in some of her videos. And a lot of moms have been trying to find like  what  their Kylie Pitts accent is for their video. Yeah. But I think another piece of hers is she kind of did something different. Like she put a new spin on providing morning routines, which was kind of like, get your butt up and get stuff done. Like  it's kind of convicting to watch her content and be like, OK, I really, really should go.

08:50
clear off the counter with all the kids art clutter that came home from preschool this week and um get my butt into gear of, really could have a cleaner house  if I could put in the effort to it. But any aspiring mom creator out there really just needs to find  what their spin on things are. you can't. oh

09:15
You can't make a content career trying to simply emulate someone else and their success. You've got to find what's different about you  and what different thing that you bring to the world of social media.  And sometimes that's going to be a huge hit and help you go viral. And sometimes you'll just have a really great engaged audience that you love and you love to show up for and

09:41
They love you and that's as big as your network gets, but that's  okay at the end of the day. And I think knowing that it's not necessarily about how big your following size is to be a successful content creator, there are a million ways to be a successful content creator and achieve success more than just what that follower count number looks like.

10:03
Yeah. And like some of the moms on Mormon Wives started the Hulu show with less than a million followers, which I know if you're not a creator, having like a couple hundred thousand followers seems really lofty, these big creators kind of pop off when they hit a million. So it just goes to show you can have a Hulu TV show and Beyond Dancing with the Stars only a few months removed from having yours into social media fame.

10:33
Yeah.  And while we're talking about creators, content creator Bridget Ball was profiled by Vogue in this most recent issue  because it's breast cancer awareness month and she revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer while undergoing IVF.  And she was actually able to undergo her sixth egg retrieval just before starting treatment.  And now she has completed treatment and can resume her IVF journey as well.

11:03
It was an interesting read. have followed Bridget. She's just at Bridget and she's clearly been online for quite some time to have a handle like that. em followed her for a while  and she'd created like the aesthetic,  like New York girly content,  but watching her go through breast cancer treatment has been  really inspiring. She's tenacious and she's done a lot of

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research, like I learned a lot about like the cold cap so that she could keep her hair through her treatment. Yeah, just knowing that she had started IVF before and she'd created embryos. And now even though due to the treatment, she'd be unable to  get pregnant naturally, she has those embryos. So she is able to still pursue that. She just has to be cancer free for two years before she starts, I guess.

11:56
But moral of the story is that she's using the Generate Awareness for Breast Cancer Awareness Week. She's using her story, she's using her platform to encourage women to be proactive  in uh getting checked and  doing self-exams, making sure you get your annuals. And yeah, I think it's not just in October. This is a message that needs to be sent out all year long. um It's not every day, but it's definitely, you know, a few times a year where we see

12:26
young moms with really young kids that have lost their fight to cancer,  to breast cancer. And that's so sobering, I think, as a mom and just you've got to take care of yourself so that you can take care of others. And neglecting  your  checks to make sure that you can stay healthy is  something that we've got to prioritize as moms. You know, we make sure  our kids see the doctors, our kids get their vaccinations and all their tests. Everything's up to date.

12:55
I would think that a lot of moms, if you ask them, they wouldn't know when their last physical was themselves,  or  if they do their self tests for breast cancer every month,  or  things like that. I think moms need to remember that they are kind of the center of the family emotionally, and they need to take, it's the whole, like, you can't pour from an empty cup thing, but with your health.

13:22
sufficiently care for everyone else's health if you're not caring for your own health first. So whatever that looks like to you and your family should include breast cancer self-checks, mammograms if you qualify, and getting your physicals.  yeah. There was actually a company I did some content for, just UGC content,  where your tears can actually show your genes  and whether or not you are

13:50
at a higher risk for developing breast cancer. It was the craziest content, Caroline. Like I literally took this like little strip of paper and stuck it  in my eye to like soak up my tears until it hit this like indicator line. And then you put it in a tube, ship it off to the company and they let you know if you're at a higher risk for breast cancer. Like how wild. That's what I think anything that you can do at home.

14:20
is  incredibly beneficial to moms. The other piece I would put out there is if you own a drop-in daycare chain, put them next to OB-GYN offices. Whether we're going in for second or third baby appointment or we're just going in for ourselves, if you have a drop-in daycare right next to the OB-GYN office, telling you, you would make pink a killing. That is probably the hottest take from this episode, didn't he?

14:49
have some kind of childcare  franchise next to an OB office.

14:56
And finally, and probably what is the most interesting thing to talk about with a new mom you encounter this week, is that last week there was a jewel heist at the Louvre Museum. That's a tongue twister. The Louvre Museum in Paris. Investigators say the thieves entered and exited the museum in under four minutes on Sunday morning, escaping with eight pieces from France's crown jewels.

15:25
officials estimate the value of the collection at roughly $100 million. So there were four thieves, they were masked and hooded. They arrived on motor scooters, like electric scooters, and entered the museum just after it opened. And because they are doing construction at the museum, they were able to use like an electric freight elevator for moving furniture that was parked on the street. And then four minutes later, they came out and got away on their little electric scooters.

15:55
and they've got some surveillance  video of them, but  no  leads,  which is crazy.  It is wild.  I did see a video,  I think like two days ago, where someone said, you know, never underestimate the Swifties. Cause if Taylor Swift came out and said, hey, y'all, you got to find these crown jewels and I will,  I will release  the vault tracks of reputation if you do this. Someone was like,

16:23
maybe five hours,  maybe that's even too much, but they'd have this done. Yeah, that is a really, that is a really good point. Like the power of people with the internet, like everybody has that one friend who's like better than the FBI.  You mentioned something to somebody and they're like, oh, I know everything about him already. I found his Facebook.  That's a really good point. didn't

16:47
Kim Kardashian get robbed in Paris too for her jewelry? Wasn't  she in Paris and it was like her wedding ring or something? Something, couple of different. Yeah. And I think people question like, why are you traveling with that much  expensive jewelry? Yeah, no one thinks they're going to get robbed, I guess. Especially when you have the security detail of Kim Kardashian.  Absolutely. And I mentioned it on the podcast last week that she

17:13
spends over a million dollars a year on her hair and makeup alone. So like when you put that in context, like having  millions of dollars of jewelry on you is just kind of like a car payment for her.  And how many trips to Paris has she taken in her lifetime and never? Yeah, and never had that happen. And it's like this,  the crown jewels that were stolen were like yards away from the Mona Lisa. And if you've ever been to the Louvre or like seen

17:42
like wide angle pictures of it. The Mona Lisa, first of all, is like way smaller than you think it's going to be, but it's also like really heavily guarded. There's like sensors and like, it looks like one of those old timey like museum heist movies with like the laser beams and like, the like the National Treasure, where like a kid has a fever and it's gonna set off the sensors kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Like yards away were these hundreds of millions of

18:10
dollars and jewels that nobody was looking at? Like,  yeah, I don't know. need to reevaluate their security here.  I think so.  I  would be really interested to hear like, what went wrong? Yeah. could we have prevented this? What are we going to do in the future? Because that  was quick and it, I'm assuming it was pretty easy. Yeah.

18:36
Which is why I'm also wondering if one of them was like an inside person. That is a great point. Because four minutes is really quick. You have to like really know your stuff to get in and out in four minutes.  But on the other hand, like you gotta  take better care of your country's crown jewels. I mean,  I feel like CVS locks up the deodorant better than they did with the...

19:00
crucial to their nation's history. Baby formula. Yeah. If I have to have somebody like two people turn their keys to unlock the Neo Shore. Right.  You got to do a little bit better with the tiara that some  18th century queen wore.  Moving  on now, we are going to do the Mom Hall of Fame, which is a fantasy draft of our favorites in a certain category.

19:28
And as Shannon is a new mom herself, we are going to do our favorite baby products for the first year. I'm gonna go first and I have kind of a controversial take here, but it is probably my favorite and most used baby product of all time. If you don't know, I have three kids. The oldest is six and the youngest is two and a half. I used this with all three of my kids religiously.

19:58
and  I give a lot of credit  to using it. And that would be  the SNU bassinet.  It is controversial. It is controversial.  People love it or they hate it. um obviously I'm the former.  I am a SNU lover.  All three of my kids slept through the night by three months.

20:23
I'm a big time sleeper, I need my sleep. Like that was the only thing that scared me about having kids was not sleeping, because everyone of course is like,  and get your sleep now, because you're never gonna get it again. My kids were sleeping 12 hours a night from like four, five months maybe.  And  they still do. They still sleep 12 hours a night. They're fantastic sleepers, they always have been. And they gave a lot of credit to the SNU. And I mentioned it's controversial because the SNU,

20:52
has a mechanism where it rocks the baby all night long. And if the baby fusses or stirs, it rocks them a little bit harder to get them to go back to sleep. And people who don't like it think that that's replacing parenting. And I a lot of people think that like the baby is gonna be dependent on the SNU. when your baby gets beyond developmentally being able to use the SNU that they're gonna still want that constant.

21:21
rocking and kind of nurturing back to sleep that they can't get outside of the SNU anymore. Which is a great point and it was something that I was worried about kind of relying on when we got the SNU, but they have like a weaning mode which I ended up turning on like well before I needed it. I think I only had the constant rocking motion feature on for the first months or two even though we used it for six months with all of them.

21:50
I turned the content rocking off and I made the white noise  quiet after  they were sleeping pretty  good stretches just because I didn't want them to be dependent on it.  I do like the feature where you can rent them. So if you don't want to buy it outright, you can rent it. But if you  are interested in buying rather than renting, it does have really good resale value. Like if you look at the amount of time you're going to use it.

22:17
based on just some girl math here, and we call this mom math too, but the cost that you're gonna buy it for versus the amount that you can sell it for broken up over the time that you're going to use it, it is relatively cheap.  And probably cheaper than renting.  Yes, especially  seeing as I do have three kids and I used it for all three of them  for six months each. And then now that we're done having babies,

22:43
I sold it on Facebook Marketplace  for, you know, it was a good deal based on what they are sold at retail for now, but they were considerably cheaper when I purchased it. So  I really didn't lose much money on  having it and it was worth every penny in my opinion. So.  For sure. It's really funny because my  thought on like,

23:08
what the hall of fame or the one product I couldn't live without has definitely changed with each kid. ah And so with my third, my most recent, the bottle washer is actually our most used. And I almost nurse exclusively, ah but I do have times where my husband gives a bottle  or I pump because baby slept longer stretches than I felt comfortable for nursing wise.

23:35
It is one of those products where I wish I would have had it with my first because it has made washing bottles and pump parts so significantly faster because you're not having to wait on the dishwasher to be ready to be run. And I always felt weird having like the bottle nipple next to a plate that had raw chicken on it, right? Same, same. And I don't necessarily trust our hot water in our house currently because it hardly lasts for a shower. So how does it really?

24:04
get hot enough, long enough to sterilize things in the dishwasher? Not sure. But bottle washer has been huge for us. And I know there's a couple of different ones out on the market. The one that we have is by Baby Brazza. And  it has a clean water tank and a dirty water tank. So you don't necessarily have to be right next to your sink with a hose that drains into the sink. And that I really like.  Especially if you had like two levels to your home.

24:33
and you needed to some, for some reason, wash bottles in the middle of the night, especially if you had like twins or multiples. You don't have to be right next to a sink. You just have to be able to get the clean water filled up and dump the empty water out. But you could walk downstairs to do that if you wanted. That's great. I didn't know that. didn't. If they had bottle washers with my first, I exclusively pumped for my first and then exclusively nursed my second two. So if they had a bottle washer when I was feeding him with a bottle, I...

25:01
I didn't know about it. My bottle washer was my husband. But I'm sure he would have appreciated that. We had the Brezza sterilizer though, also dries them. So I would use that to dry them. Cause he was a big eater and I had to have my pump parts dry. Because as a first time mom, I knew that you couldn't give babies water, but I didn't understand that that meant like you can't give them a bottle of water. And so I was like meticulously drying every drop of water out of everything.

25:31
My saintly husband, bless his heart, never pointed it out to me. He just watched me maniacally with the paper towel, like getting every drop out of the palm. He's like, why don't we just use the dryer on the sterilizer? Didn't want to make me feel like I was completely off the rails, even though I was. It's okay. It's okay.

25:56
But I'll also say like as a now third time mom, the product that I use every day still with my older two children is the Hatch Sound Machine. They have a feature on those sound machines where I can program them to turn green when my kids can get out of bed. So my first is a very early riser. He's very good at staying in his room, playing with toys, listening to his yodo player, and just waiting for that green light to go off so he can get up  and start his day.

26:26
and they're off of school today. And so I was able to change our program, which it normally would go off at like 7.30 for them to get up on a school day. And they stayed in bed till eight o'clock this morning, which was phenomenal. It doesn't always work, but it is a huge, huge load off rather than the ones that like get out of bed. Cause they can't tell time at that age, but they can tell color and green. That is an incredible mom hack. have the,

26:55
Ours look like a stoplight,  but it's like, it's not on an app like the Hatch. So it's incredibly analog and it's the same time every day, but it does work. My middle kid is my early riser and she'll just, there's a nightlight in her room and she'll sit next to the nightlight and just like look through her books next to the light  until it turns green. And then,  you know, as soon as the light turns green, you can hear her feet hit the ground and she's just. uh

27:24
running down.  Yeah. For the day it is done. Yeah. But then I will say as a third time mom and even probably a second time mom, a good baby carrier made a lot of difference. And if you have like I think a lot of people assume that the infant carrier car seat that kind of snaps into the base, but you can also carry it around yourself, that that will last for a really long time. And I had small babies

27:53
um And  I still  buy like six months. like, we're not, we're not doing this. Like I'm not hauling around this car seat for a long time. And so being able to have two hands free is essential when you have two mobile children, but then having the third one strapped to you has been, has been awesome. And I've tried a lot of different baby carriers. I like them all for different reasons.  I really like kind of the more stretchy wrap, comfy fabric-y kind of ones.

28:22
and  the really newborn early stages and then the more structured carriers like the ergos, the maybes, the tulas,  those when they get a little bit bigger and a little bit heavier and you need them kind of a little bit more secured to you because they weigh more  and those fabric wraps don't last forever. So no, but they're so.

28:44
It's so nice, especially when you're like early postpartum and you have like a really little squishy baby and you get to put them in the wrap carrier and it's like they're back inside again and it's just so, so precious.  loved baby wearing. Kind of building off that, I think my next draft would be a  baby car seat travel system that works  for you.  And I say that because  as I learned,  not every

29:13
car seat is meant for every car.  I did not know that before I had my first baby.  My husband had kind of a finicky car that  did not like a lot of infant seats. It was not meant to be a family hauler. And at the time we had a local baby store where you could go and look at the car seats in person and they had a CPST who would put it in the car for you to make sure it fit well.  yeah, unfortunately,  just like Bye Bye Baby and  all the rest of them,  it has closed.

29:43
But it was really important to me that we found something that worked in both of our cars  and had a stroller that it could clip into.  And we ended up doing the  UPPAbaby,  the Mesa  seat  with  the Vista stroller.  And I wanted to get the Vista because I knew we were having more than one kid  and it has the capability to become a double stroller.  I did not know that I would not like it as a double stroller.  We had the same experience with

30:12
the baby jogger. So we got the the city select where, you know, it can be a single stroller, but then you can add on the extra seat. And we had a Nuna Pippa car seat. And I think what a lot of expecting parents don't realize is you don't have to get the same brand car seat and stroller. A lot of stroller brands will make adapters that work for the wide range of brands for car seats. Because if I'm a stroller company,  why do I only want to fit one brand?

30:40
of car seat, right?  I want to make it so my stroller can work for anyone's car seat. And so I think a lot of parents are struggling because they find a stroller they like and they find a car seat they like, but they think that they aren't compatible together. But a lot of them really are.  If you're listening to this and you don't yet have more than one child or a child at all, the car seat and stroller that you buy first is not the car seat and stroller that you're going to finish your parenting career with. You will end up with a stable

31:10
My husband, every time we have to like do something different, he's like, but we have a car seat, Caroline. Like, I know, but now he needs a high back booster. Uh huh. Yep. We just switched up to the harness booster for our first. And I will say we've stuck with the Nuna Pippa car seat all the way through. The way that that car seat base installs is there's no tightening that you need to do with, with adding like a seatbelt to, to, it just snaps into the anchor point.

31:40
but there's no strap to like tighten it down. it the rigid? Yeah, it's the rigid, or it might just be considered semi-rigid because they do kind of like flex up and down, whereas I think like the clex, they are like straight rigid, they don't move at all. But there was no adjusting or tightening. And so I felt like if it was my husband or one of our family members installing that base, there was a much higher likelihood it was gonna be installed correctly.

32:10
by somebody else that maybe didn't spend a lot of time studying car seat installation, erotically.  And that's why we've stuck with it is because no matter who's installing that base, like 10 out of 10 times,  I've watched it with my own eyes, they get it installed correctly.  that made so much, it gave me a lot of peace of mind that no matter who was installing the car seat  base was generally gonna get it done correctly.

32:38
As far as strollers, we've gone from the City Select to we used a summer infant one, just a very simple umbrella stroller. We've kept that one for a long time. Trying to remember what we used with our second baby. I guess we used the Baby Jogger City Select for a while and then it just got too bulky and we just sold it on Marketplace. We currently have the Zoe Twin, the second model.

33:07
That's a side by side. It's really light and easy to load and unload from the car. That is one that we actually rented through Babyquip when we went to Disney before our third was born. And my husband was like, I've never loved baby products, but I love this stroller. Can we please get this stroller? And I was like,  sure. Like,  yeah. When the husband feels strongly about the baby product, you listen.

33:33
Yes, they hardly ever care. They're not on board when you suggest getting a different stroller. So when it's their idea, you have to follow through because if they like it and they'll use it and they'll want to use it, it's a game changer because nothing was more humbling than telling my husband he was right about the Vista stroller being too big and too heavy. Yeah, he told me from the beginning.

33:59
He's like, this is going to fit in your car, right? And I was like, oh yeah, of course. And then like fast forward to me one year later, like Tetris-ing the pieces in the trunk and like slamming the door shut before. For the season I was in,  was great, but  we  moved on.  I know I've talked about a lot of baby products and trying to think of like things for moms  that I can't live without. And I'll be honest,  I  am a boppy pillow.

34:28
nursing mom. Like I will still pull out that nursing pillow and my son's eight months and now he's at the point where it's like he doesn't really need to be lifted that high but he he and I still still love it. It's just more comfortable for me  and that's definitely one product I've used every day all day. Yeah. Oh I know. I there's a lot of things I miss about having a little baby and like even even breastfeeding I missed but like

34:58
the  seemingly constant need to be doing it is  not part of it.  I had a boppy and I had the breast friend pillow too  and  I never ended up using them. I don't know.  I  breastfed in a recliner chair with my feet up and I think that the angle change  made it so that I didn't need an additional support.

35:27
on my arms, but the people I know like you who use it absolutely love it.  And I think my last pick is going to be the BabyBjorn Bouncer. I know that now  they have a bunch of like lookalikes from other manufacturers,  but I  haven't used them so I can't attest to those. But we had a BabyBjorn Bouncer  and we used it from very, like as soon as they could hold their heads up essentially.

35:57
It was like a safe third place. We also had  the Snuggle Me Organic pillow em that we used as like a third place to put the baby, but that's kind of fallen out of popular  use. They've  revised their design to be  safer. oh So yeah, I mean, if you're looking  for a  safe spot, I think  as parents, especially with your second or your third,

36:26
or  beyond that, having safe places to put a baby down when you have to  wipe a rear end or open snacks or fill up a milk cup.  You just have to have places to put the babies.  Yes. And for me,  that was  the baby born because not only was it a safe place for me to put them, but they  loved it. They enjoyed it.  It was a very slight amount of motion that they propelled themselves to make, so it wasn't like...

36:56
a swing or something battery operated. Because we also had the the Mamoru, we did those things and like, they preferred the slight motion and the little toy bar and it was worth the blowouts that it caused. Because also in those girls. baby's constipated, put them in a bouncy seat. There's just something about that angle and kicking their feet that just works it out. Put them in a white onesie and put them in a bouncy seat.

37:26
and make sure you're out of wipes and yeah. With the wrong size diapers or just  something like someone's coming over, like you have to set yourself up for success here.  Yeah. think for me, a diaper bag. I'm a big diaper bag person. I've carried a diaper bag as my bag for a really long time. I started with a pottery barn one that converted to a backpack.

37:53
I loved it, it was super cute, it had so much space. And I'm one of those people that it's like, I'm having a new baby, I'm getting a new diaper back because  that's just how this works. So with our third baby, we switched over to a Jujubee. I've heard a lot about those.  It's one that's actually kind of hard to find on their website, but it's just very simple. It has a big pocket in the middle and then two pockets in the front.

38:19
you know, little bottle pockets on the side. But it has a lot of interior pockets, which has helped me to kind of like organize things. The straps  are  the same material as the bag and they're padded, so they're actually really comfortable.  And  I use it for our toddler, I use it for the newborn, I use it for my stuff.  And it just holds  so much. Like I can fit a thick fuzzy blanket.

38:45
and a baby carrier in addition to all the diapers, wipes, bottles, sippy cups, snacks, changes of clothes, all in the bag. And that is,  I'm one of those moms that like, if we're leaving the house, we're bringing half the house with us. And that's a bag that can accommodate that.  That is so true. That's the way I was when my first kid, like the diaper bag was always on deck at all times with like everything possible.  I had like a single uh pack wipe  of like,

39:14
the boogie wipes, just like one little boogie wipe in a package in case I needed it.  But  after having my second, I was never a diaper bag mom again.  it just  never crossed my mind. I would put like two diapers of each size in my bag  and with like my regular purse and that was good. I don't know what happened.  I went from being like over the top, over prepared to being like, well, this will do.  Were there ever products that you

39:41
bought or someone gifted you as a first time mom that you thought you were gonna use and then you like pulled them out of that diaper bag  two years later and were like, I never used this.  Oh gosh. I was so sure that I was gonna have pacifier kids  that I had like, I had registered for like a couple pacifiers and then like a pacifier like caddy for keeping in my diaper bag. No,  no one ever took a pacifier. I wish they would.

40:09
Not just because it's been proven to reduce SIDS, but also even my bottle kid, he went hard on that bottle every couple hours, but never a pacifier. And my girls would just comfort nurse, self-soothe with me. And one of them's a thumb sucker now, but she never wanted a pacifier. I had two paci kids and then my third sucks his first two fingers.

40:38
I mean, it's nice because they don't get dirty. We don't lose them. We can't leave them at home. We can't run out of fingers.  But he does forget that they are there. And I like literally take his hand and like put it up by his face. I'm like, your fingers are still here. They are still attached to you. Just put them in your mouth.  Yeah. How about you? ah There was a product.

41:00
that I think I got in one of those like welcome, thanks for making a baby registry boxes with us. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be gold.  And it was a plastic bag that had a laundry tablet down at the bottom. So if your baby had a blowout and you wanted to like, you obviously like change the outfit, you wanted to put that outfit somewhere, cause you were on the go, you would put it in this bag.

41:27
pour little water, seal it up, and it would start working on the stains for you. Oh, wow. And I thought I would use it, and I always forgot that it was in my bag whenever we experienced a blowout. And I found it when I was unpacking stuff out of bag a couple years ago. like, I never used this. Excellent concept. Yeah. was going say that. sounds like a really good idea, like a million dollar invention.

41:58
But like, if I only had one of them, like you're saying, I think I would like hang on to it. Like, oh, this is a blowout, but like, it's not that bad. There's gonna be a worse one, I'm sure. When in reality, every blowout is a bad one. Yeah. And finally today, we're gonna do Mom Hack Monday. Friday this week is Halloween. And we're just gonna do some

42:27
quick, experienced mom tips  of how to do Halloween successfully with kids. um My biggest mom hack for Halloween  is gonna sound obvious,  but it's to feed them. Something  that's not candy.  Even if trick or treating in your town starts at four o'clock or whatever, feed them something at 3.30 that's  gonna at least get

42:52
some kind of balanced meal into them. We're gonna do pizza because it's gonna have like cheese and bread and like,  they'll still think it's a treat, but it's gonna have some like food groups in it that aren't a KitKat.  It'll help minimize meltdowns while you're trick or treating,  kind of keep the sugar rush capped a little bit so you have a hope and a prayer of getting them to bed on Friday night.  So yeah, it sounds obvious,  but.

43:19
it's not feed them something balanced before you go out. Yeah, I think I would add on um bring snacks with you. Yes. Because I was a parent where it was like,  I wasn't super comfortable with my kids just like opening up whatever candy they had, not being able to keep track of like how much candy have we consumed. Yes.  And so we were one that we brought the candy home, we made sure that things were still sealed up.

43:46
and looked safe. And then also, um you know, there would be like, they'd grab Jawbreakers  or other hard candy that they weren't developmentally ready to be eating. ah And so that was kind of helpful when it was, you know, we're gonna go home, we're gonna pick out two pieces of candy to eat,  but we fed them snacks  as we trick or treated so that they weren't hungry, we were avoiding those meltdowns.  But the thing I would add on also is glow sticks. um

44:16
because it gets dark pretty quick and being able to spot your kids because they are literally glowing, super helpful as a parent. If you're bringing a stroller, grab some battery operated Christmas lights or fairy lights and just kind of like run it around your stroller. One, it will help any cars driving by be able to see your strollers. Most of the time they don't have reflective material on them.

44:41
It also is a lot easier for your kids to spot you standing on the driveway to be able to come back to you after they grab their piece of candy. That's a great point.  My middle kid is being a black cat for Halloween. like that was my first thought.  Like she's going to run ahead of me. We don't have a lot of streetlights in my town. So was like, she's going to run ahead of me to the next house and just disappear into the darkness. Right. Yeah.  We actually have,  my dog has a light up collar for when  we walk her at night. But she's

45:11
eight pounds, so like it's a really small collar. So I was like, I'll just put the collar like around her ankle or something so that I can just watch her as she trots off. Like  have a general idea of where she is. Yeah, you could see if she, if they make like light up ears that she could wear. And then you can kind of see her head bobbing around. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah.  Or take a glow stick and try to like tape it onto the ear she already has. Yeah, we tried uh

45:40
putting a glow stick on like the zipper of my son's Halloween costume one year and it lasted like one house just because he's like,  he's too wild.  So we have like the glow stick necklaces now and  just put a couple on them and doesn't ruin the costume. He likes them. So Yeah.  That's a great point too. Taping them to their back. What are your kids doing this year? We are going as the Incredibles.

46:07
Oh, I love because we have family of five and our youngest is kind of spitting image of baby Jack-Jack and has kind of a mohawk of hair running down the middle. The big kids were on board with it. But if you're like me and one of your children came to you yesterday saying that they didn't want to be the costume that you literally had just bought earlier that day for them, I'm with you. I don't have any advice, but I told her you can be a princess any day.

46:37
You can't be the Incredibles with your whole family any day. I did add a tutu to her costume though. So we'll see if that works. That's a compromise. That's a compromise. And that's an important mom hack for every day. Just add a tutu. Come up with a compromise. a tutu. Make it feel like they're winning when really you're winning. Yes. If your sanity can win, that's the important piece. Yes, absolutely.

47:07
Okay, well I wanted to thank Shannon for joining us today. Shannon, where can everybody find you around the internet? Absolutely.  So Parenting Products Guru on TikTok and Instagram is the same handle. If you find one, you can easily find the other. They're linked together and that's  usually where you can find me. Awesome.  I will also have Shannon's  links directly  in the show notes today as well. ah I'll also have links to the products that we mentioned if we...

47:35
talked about something that sounds interesting to you. And also in the show notes, I have a new feature. You can send a message, a question directly to me via text at the top of the show notes. There's a link that says, send us a text. You tap it and it will open in your messaging app.  You can send me your thoughts and questions and I would love to include them on a future episode.  And if you have  thoughts about the show itself, I would love it if you could give us a five-star rating wherever you're listening to your podcast today.

48:04
that really helps other moms find our community here.  And I would love to thank Shannon again. We had a great discussion about lots of parenting products. And if that strikes your fancy, this is what she does on her channels all day, every day. So hop over and give her a follow and you won't be disappointed. Thanks so much, Caroline.