Now That's What I Call Parenting Hell - Volume 16

Hello, I'm Rob Beckett. And I'm Josh Willicom. Welcome to Parent in Hell, the show in which Josh and I discuss what it's really like to be a parent, which I would say can be a little tricky. So, to make ourselves and hopefully you feel better about the trials and tribulations of modern-day parenting, each week we'll be chatting to a famous parent about how they're coping. Or hopefully how they're not coping. And we'll also be hearing from you, the listener, with your tips, advice and, of course, tales of parenting woe. Because, let's be honest, there are plenty of times where none of us know what we're doing.

Hello, I'm Rob Beckett. And I'm Josh Whittecom. And you're listening to now, that's what I call Parenting Hell. And kicking things off, our first ever guest, Catherine Ryan, discusses her daughter's TikTok obsession.

My screen time at the moment is an absolute disgrace. Yeah. My screen time last week was eight hours and then it dropped to five hours this week and I genuinely felt like I had achieved. I'd like a climbed Everest to just do five hours a day on my telephone. Telephone? No, my Victoria.

What's your screen time at the moment, Catherine? It's bad, but I read. I don't think that I'm doing, you know, nefarious activities on the phone all the time. It's not all social media. I read all my news articles on there. I subscribe to all the newspapers. I am reading. I use it like a Kindle. I try to read, but then I just end up immediately going back onto TikTok. I can't. I can't with TikTok. I'm obsessed with it. I love it. And I don't know why. I don't own paper. I shouldn't. No, I don't know. I think it's about your level, Rob.

That's about my vibe, isn't it? Bit tick tock, bit of lag out bad.

I live like a teenage girl. Well, this is the other thing with TikTok that's so annoying. And you should like it. I mean, I love the idea that 10-year-olds are moving around and dancing, but it's constant. So they'll be on TikTok learning dances. But even once the phone is put away, my daughter will walk into the kitchen for snacks and she's TikTokking. All she wants to do is watch the older girls on TikTok and learn the dances that they're doing and then emulate those dances in a crop top. And I've studied TikTok because

I'm trying to bond with this child.

I used to have a two year old girl and she liked me very much. And now I have to reach out and basically watch these jail bait 15 year olds doing sexy dances, doing the splits. I have to learn those dances. I made a list of how to be successful at TikTok based on what I've learned. And I tried to feed this back to Violet, but it's a terrible list. All you want to do is you need good lighting, really nice, straight white smile, and you need to get your ass out and be flexible. And that's it.

Well, I want to ask away from being successful on TikTok by the sounds of that. What you don't realize is they are like proper celebrities in that world. So if they went to an event where there was loads of kids that age, there would be people all over them going, Oh my God, can I have a picture all that at 15? It's like they're mega stars in a cult. And I am ashamed to say that pre lockdown, I would travel around the UK with my daughter and go to a travel lodge in Milton Keynes.

to hang out with TikTokers for like a five-hour meet and greet. Oh, wow. How much would that cost? It costs, I think, £20 each, but then there's loads of merch there that your rail wrote it into buying. There's no performance element. They don't do anything, and they're lovely girls, but...

They just have like a step and repeat, you know, that branding board in the back and they stand there and the children cue to hug them and record a quick TikTok where they stick their tongue out. And then they resume and they cue again to do the same. And it's, it's really a weird, you wait. I don't know what it's going to be when your daughters are 10. I know. Well, it's only five or five years away for me, but it's like we're in black mirror.

I can't believe how out of the loop I am when you describe that. Am I old? No, you are peacefully unaware right now and enjoy this time because we all have different struggles at different stages of parenthood. And this is the one I'm in, right? I'm very ashamed to say that I paid a teenager 800 pounds to visit my house last June. Did you? Because she's not a fake talk. Yeah. I got it out of the papers.

So you paid a TikTok like a basic corporate appearance fee to come to your daughter's house. Exactly that. It was the only thing Violet wanted for her birthday. She said, well, you get this TikToker to come to the house. Wow. And I said, all right. So I reached out to this teen. It felt very dirty. Just teenage girls. I was like, how much is it going to cost me to get you come dancing in my kitchen?

I think there's, it's a weird thing where me and Joshua at the stage there where their kids are really young and we sort of feel, feel quite young still like that. Oh, we sort of know about cool stuff, but we don't. We're completely oblivious. It's only when your kids get a bit older, like your, your daughter's 10 now, that they're bringing into this new world. You go, oh, that's what's going on. We're in this weird fallow period where we don't know what is cool or what is popular and then you get brought into it by your kids.

Do you think my parents were thinking about like we're talking about tiktok and they were talking about that like about like gladiators or like. All Josh wants us to meet jazz in a mall. I spent 300 quid on getting shadow to come round the afternoon with a massive cotton bath.

The next highlight from the archives, the brilliant Ellie Taylor runs us through some questionable breastfeeding training advice.

It was pretty easy at the beginning and it came quite naturally and I was really chuffed but then I got a moustitis a couple of times which was like absolute hell. I don't understand what the fuck nature is doing so the first time I had it she was

She's seven weeks old, recovering from a cesarean still. Like you're obviously at the lowest ebb you can possibly imagine. And then nature decides to infect one of your tits. Sorry to laugh. I mean, it was always dark moments of humour in these situations. And I've never been in so much pain. And I was like hallucinating with this fever. And we got a breastfeeding coach to come around and try and sort of

work out why I got Mercedes and try and help the latch. And she was this strange Russian lady. And to try and sort of help me work out the latch, she got, she pulled out of her bag. Why? But I'm crying on the sofa in the most pain I've ever been in my life. She pulls out an Elmo hand puppet. And starts to sort of demonstrate the perfect latch with the Elmo puppet on my, on my infected tit. Oh my word. You showed this from us.

Oh, the days of pre-corona. I didn't mean it was disinfecting. It wasn't really a place for us. It wasn't really a place for us. It wasn't really a place for us. It wasn't really a place for us. It wasn't really a place for us. It wasn't really a place for us.

in that moment, Ellie, that you're just sat there. Because while I was, you know, very, I was very vulnerable at that moment, so I was like, hello, what do you have to do? Elmo will help me. It was like reflecting back on it that I was like, what the fuck is that for? Yeah. That Elmo's got some stories to tell us, isn't it? Yeah. Can I throw some other options at you of what you would be accepting? Do you accept an Elmo of sort of a cartoon figure? If she just went to have an Trilliquist doll, how would you feel?

Because it must be a level of the cuddly toy you'll accept to do that. You know, go, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Like, God, Cookie Monster stayed at home. Yeah. So it was like, I did like miss it though. When I stopped breastfeeding, I did miss it. But then I got really quite, I remember getting quite emotional. Like, it's the end of our journey together. I'm just going to feed her one last time. And then she started biting me and I was like, Oh, do you know what? I think we're done. And it was less, yeah, it was less, it was less sad to let it go. But I didn't, yeah, I did still kind of miss it in a way. Although when I hear about some of my friends who are still doing it and their kids are eating on cold and like,

They're not sleeping through the night and stuff like that. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm far from the balls now. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, that is tough. There's so much pressure, especially if they're starting to bite, just tap out. That's when Lou did, especially in my offspring. You can't have them nibbling away. Now it's time for comedy legend Jack D and his tale of the terror of twins.

And they're twins, aren't they? So you're two sons of twins. They're twins, so they're both 22 and they're non-identical, so they're very, very different. So it's not like you've got two kind of identical freaks going around the lake.

Couldn't have any telepathy and all that going on at the table. That would not work for me. If they had been identical, I think I would have just done any meaning, mindy, mowing, sold one of them. I just wouldn't want that going on, would you? They speak their own little language and everything. What was the moment like when you realised that you were going to have three, but now you're going to have four children?

Well, the news has broken to me actually by Hattie, who's our eldest daughter. Then she was, she was what, six. And I got paid, I was working in ITV. And I got paid to go to the front desk. And when I turned up, Jane, my wife was there with Hattie and Phoebe, our two daughters. My memory is Hattie running towards me with this photo, the scan photo.

saying, there are two of them, there are two of them. I'm really excited because she hadn't went and found out until it was about a 20-week scan or something. And the guy doing the sort of thing is that, have we told you if they're identical or not? James and what? And that's how we found out. What are you talking about?

Wow. We were lucky there because we'd already had two children. So we kind of knew a bit about how to look after babies and kids and stuff like that. I think I've got friends and you probably know people as well who have twins first time round. And I just don't know how they cope with that. It's a bad enough shot with one of them. One baby will ruin your life. What did two do at the same time? Two of them coming in. I mean, just awful.

So what's it like having twins? So are you putting them down to bed at the same time? Are you trying to bath? Is it all like you just try and double team them in that? No, they would never. They were never in sync. They would look with each other. They could never kind of like both be hungry at the same time, both be tired at the same time. They did shift work. They were shift. That's what it was.

So it was 24-hour foot long. You'd have one would fall asleep the other and wake up. So you have to get them out of the room in case they wake the other one up. It really was chaos. In fact, a couple of times we just hired a nanny, me and Jane, and just went away to a hotel for the weekend to sleep. You know, literally just a hotel down the road, just so we're just going to sleep. It wasn't even a nice hotel. Just don't down the road. It was an Ibis down the road, which is when there's sleep at 25 hours.

What's the point though where you thought they might be identical? Because I swear all babies are the same. Was you just looking at them going, are you sure they're not? And then eventually they look differently. One of them's quite a lot chunkier than the other one. Charlie comes out first and he's the big bruiser. He was taking up all the space. And then Miles comes out and he's a little bit more sort of petite and small. But I mean, it's great. And then the doctor goes, right? Let's see what number three is.

That is a great line though. I know the safe limits of humour in my household. You've gone way past.

do they get on well then? They do, they do get on well because partly they get on well because they're complete opposites to each other and that's I think is one of the sort of redeeming features if you have twins who decide not to be like each other or just aren't anyway and they right from day one would not do the same thing as each other so if they're doing the same homework

one would do colouring in and the other one decided not to colour in and just scribble over it or something. And it would just be, it was always, I will not do what he does and vice versa. So they never, they were never competing, never trod on each other's territory. So in that respect, it's quite good. And I always think if you put them together, you'd have the perfect human, but they just have very, very, very opposite you.

Next up, it's Daisy Makooper and her daughter's patriotic potty training. So Daisy, what's your setup at home? What's your kid's self? So it's me and my husband and our two-year-old daughter who's just become a complete nightmare.

I really. Oh my God. During lockdown or? During lockdown. It's just got naughtier and naughtier and naughtier and naughtier. What kind of things? I don't, it's so weird. So she's decided to use the shed as like an outdoor privy and taking, that's why I was literally what was so mental as I'm losing my mind so much.

that I was looking up to see, you know, if kids have been reincarnated from World War II, and that's why she's... Any evidence to suggest she has? Well, no, the only evidence I have is she's ripping her nappy off. She's done about three poos in the sheds. And the latest one, she was really proud of because

For a V-day, we had these kind of little cocktail sticks with little flags on them, and that we had in cupcakes, and she'd managed to find one of them in the garden, and put it in her poo in the shell. And then called me over to come and witness it, and I just stared at it for about 30 seconds to be baffled.

Are you doing potty training then? We tried. She was brilliant before lockdown. She really enjoyed it. But now she just doesn't give a fuck. She doesn't give a fuck about anyone or anything. It's just horrendous. What did you do with the kind of flag po? Did you say that it was good or did you... Well, did it have a British flag in it? It had a British union joke. Like we claimed it.

That's exactly what it was. I just, I stood in silence for about 30 seconds because it was like... In respectful silence to our flag. It's like something the far left would put on a poster about Brexit, isn't it? So you still working at the moment? Is your husband working from home? What's that? My husband's a landscape gardener, so he sort of could go out now and do sort of jobs and stuff, so I'm...

I've been left in at home with the devil child. I mean, I do love her very much, but it's just becoming because she just doesn't understand why she can't go to the park or why she can't go see Nanny. She's so sick of FaceTiming relatives. Now it's just, and I'm just putting Bing on and it's just on a constant, like a 24 hour repeat.

Big episodes. My daughter who's two and a half, she's got no interest in FaceTime. So it just, it just gets offensive to the relatives. Very quickly. It's so awkward. They go, does it speak to Danny? No. No.

Oh, your corporate job. And that needs it. No, corporate job. You're not. No. Which one? I'm going to go which one? I'm going to go, tell me so. Nah. What? Don't do that. Don't ask which one. And say, no, that's so true. And you're pregnant with your second as well, Daisy. I'm pregnant with my second as well. So I mean, I haven't even thought about the second one. So how pregnant are you at the moment? I'm over it just over halfway.

All right. Oh my God, I just want to drink. I want to drink so much. I can't. I was googling. How many? I mean, could I have three drinks if it was being pregnant? I thought, oh, no, I can't. I really can't. Your giggle history is unbelievable at the moment. Can a chubby ring on it? It's from World War II. And can I drink when I'm pregnant?

The penultimate track on this volume is the absolute banger that is milk tray moment by Shappy Cassandi. Look, we had this incident that we still talk about the kids and I. The first few days of lockdown was the milk tray incident. Oh, wow. What happened in the milk tray incident then? I was trying to make life golden and happy for my children still, because that's what you do as a parent, right? You just try and make everything magical.

And then the first few days of lockdown, I just, well, I've always started cooking and eating together, or stuff that I don't really do, because I'm always out of work. And I got this box of milk tray. And this milk tray box meant a lot to me, because I went to the co-op to buy it, where you felt like you were putting your life in danger, just stepping into a supermarket. Yeah.

and I bought it and I, you know, left it for a couple of hours so it, I don't know, the germs ran off or whatever.

So it stopped being a box of death. And then my son went to open it and him and my daughter were squabbling over how to open it. And my son's like, he's really clever. And he's normally really careful with things, but he just ripped the top of the box off so you couldn't close the box again. He just ripped it open. Next thing I knew, it was in the bin. Like I put it in the bin.

I just went, right, you're not having it. You don't deserve. You kids have had everything given to you on a play. I've never had no train when I was with you. My parents had nothing. We didn't have so many lessons. And all of this shit came out screaming at my kids at how privileged they are.

And how lucky they are to have a box of chocolates. You know, we had one chocolate once a year. I was, I was, well, not really one, go Charlie. I was like, Charlie, Charlie, the chocolate. Just, um, hellish, hellish. It was awful. How many days was this? I think it was day two. And, um...

How did they react? I mean, they realized they were dealing with a mad woman. Like, they understood that this wasn't normal. And my son just looked, he's so polite. And he's so calm. And he looked at me with, like, fire in his eyes. And he said, you are behaving really badly.

They went up to their rooms and then I had to call them down and I sat down and I said listen sometimes like thunderstorms happen in my head and I can't normally I'd go out the house or I'd go up to my room or whatever but there's I behaved very badly and of course I went out the next day and I bought another box of milk tray that we all quietly ate none of us enjoying it. And it's just so

Yeah, the milk tree incident was bad. And that's when I thought, right, I need to meditate. I need to, you know, really look after my head. And finally, playing us out this episode is Alex Brooker with the pros and cons of parenting with a disability. Today, it's been a big parent in day for me this morning. She's noticed my hand for the first time. It's the first time I've ever told you today.

And she was kind of like, she looked, she was going, daddy, you've only got two fingers. And I really want like, technically it's free to start together, but it's fine if you want to call it two. It's the first time. And like, like, it's one of those things where, you know, like, obviously for me, when I first went to, like, started thinking about having kids, it was like a really big thing. It was like, I wonder how they're going to find it.

She didn't give a shit. It was like, yeah. Obviously the youngest was the one that weren't having it because she let go of me and then ended up Facebook. And I feel like the oldest has seen that and thought, yeah, it's not an ideal hand to hold, but it's better than nothing. I remember we first, when Mia was like a day old, I kind of went and met one of my mates at the pub quickly at lunchtime and

I was like, how are you finding it? And I was like, mate, I just keep thinking I'm going to drop it. And he was like, well, everyone thinks that, don't they? What's the worst that can happen to you as you have a new kid? Is you drop it? And that's like, literally, everyone kind of worries about it, whether you've got

I'm sure David Seaman worried about it. Do you know what I mean? He was worried about being lobbed. He was worried about the baby going over his head. I used to have that really weird nightmares that I was holding the baby and then rolled over while I was asleep and slept on top of it. And then I'd wake up in the night and the baby was in the cot and I was nowhere near it. But these mad dreams, everyone feels the same. Do you know what?

As I said, the eldest, I feel like we're really making progress at the moment. She's got over the hand thing very quickly. I was surprised that was absolutely, you know, 20 years of my life worrying about nothing. But then... You know what? It was, as I said, it's like quite a big thing for me today, that. It's one of those things that, well, I'll probably think about it.

a bit more like later on. But yeah, it was like, I was genuinely up until today, like really properly worried. And also I have thought to myself more recently, it's like, you're nearly three and a half. You should have noticed you can count now. We've done a lot. You know, how many times have I sat you in front of the iPad and just put like the count in YouTube video on? Does she notice the lag?

Oh, mate, they love the legs. They've got three different ones, haven't I? So, today, I had my blue water proof on, and like... I was gonna say that in a stream, there must be a rust risk, but if you've got a water proof on... You know what, when I did that swim last year, they gave me one for getting in and out the water, so it's basically wood, which isn't the most flexible thing, but it was literally, for the first time I've got like a wooden leg. So, it's not like you imagine, it's not like a pirate, he does have a hook of foot on it.

Well, they got you a parrot as well, which is a bit interesting, but you were on the feet. She's obsessed because it's like really colorful and blue in that. And she just like calls it daddy's blue leg. I've taught her now to put my put my leg on sometimes when I'm like slobbed out on the couch and I've got my leg off. I've like started to teach him it took me a little while with my oldest, but I've taught her to like

what like different bits go together to where I think it's like a big bit of Juplo. Yeah. Yeah. You are really like a big bit of Juplo. That's how I view you. Yeah. Yeah. Best for under force. Alex, as your disability stopped you doing anything as a parent, like that you would have wanted to do, the one thing which I'm still always like

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't like a big thing. But the one thing I'm always slightly wary of is, you know, when you have parents and they have like their kids on their shoulders or something like that. I mean, we're not delving into that. We've given it a little go on the sofa.

and you just go this is the juice isn't worth the squeeze for I've got it I've got it Alex I've got all the necessary limbs to do that and it's still an absolute nightmare and they launch themselves off and I've been lost for all both my kids terrible shoulder accidents in the bar so it's probably best left

We gave it a little go and I just said to just make sure you hold on to daddy's neck and I don't think she quite realises how important that bit of it is because I'm not really holding on to her. She's carrying everything for us. We did it on the sofa. I just felt backwards on the sofa. I was like, do you know what?

Why don't we just move it? Let's give it something else. But do you know what? That's pretty much, if I'm being honest, the only thing that I've not really done. On the flip side, Alex, has your disability enabled you to get out of doing other things, but it's a bit of a relief. Do you ever play it up so you go, actually, I don't think I can do this, because the old hand and leg situation is probably best you do it. Have you ever got out of anything with that?

Honestly, if you ask my wife, it is literally every single week. I'll use it like my leg takes, I reckon, about three seconds to put on and the amount of times when like something will be happening, I'll be like, yeah, but I ain't got my leg on, have I? As if it's all right. Like, that's like the ultimate excuse and she'll be like, well, yeah, but you can get and put it on, can't you? And it's like,

Well yeah, but you're up and yeah, so you've got both your legs on.

Am I right in saying to Robin's lost, he lost his front teeth, didn't it? Oh, God. Yeah. So basically he had one of them, you know, the balance bikes where there's no pedals that just run. The basically running on a bike. He had one of them from, you know, as old as you're allowed one, I think it was two just before two, you're allowed them. And he had one and he was, he was amazing on it, but he was amazing at the point of he didn't understand fear. Like he got so good on this. And he was just like, everyone used to say, my God, he's fantastic on that.

And it's a really boner contention, right? So there's this place in South Shields called the amphitheatre. It's an open-air performance base down on the sea front that they do like little festivals there in the summer. And it's got an under-walkway bit that's covered over. Now, the floor of that is tiled, right? But there's sort of sand everywhere because it's windy, it's the north.

So he's coming down this hill that's paved and then it goes under the tiled floor bit and turns to the right, okay? And what did it? He's only little and I'm running alongside him on this bike and me heart and me heart and me through it. It's it's terrifying, right? And Rosie's just sitting watching. And he went down and I went right. I don't think we should do this again. He went one more. I went right one more. He did three times. Three is a magic number. I let him do three. I went there. Well, that's it. And he started crying and he went, I want to do it again. And Rosie went, let him do it again. And I said the words.

Nor he nearly fell, it's dangerous. And she said, and she said, do it again, go on, just let him do it again. And he did it again, and on that one, he's got too much sound on his wheel, he slipped, and his face hit the deck, and he fourth his front teeth, he snapped his two front teeth in half. And it was the worst.

One of the worst moments in my life like without a doubt like he just hit the deck and he lift his face up and it was just blood all over his face and two bits of his teeth were missing and Rosie handled it like a champ and I was flapping

God she was like calm down go and get the car and I ran like I've never ran at the car park got the car literally Scrooge down the corner the jump in the car were right were drove off She was like calm you driving down and we're gonna crash on the way to the hospital your idiot So we got we drove up there to the hospital I had a look at it went at the dentist the day after they sort of filled them in But then all these gums were like they went a bit black and all these gums were really lumpy and stuff So it was basically infected and he got them taken out. It was a

And does it affect him in any way? Absolutely not. They're just so resilient and I don't know where you get it from. I'm a wimp and he is literally the one of the hardest people I've ever met in my life. He's like nails. It's unbelievable. Does Rosie refute that story then? Is it given that she said one more time and you stopped all the years? All years I've known you and you don't believe me? Well, what is this?

If we get Rosie on the podcast will she say differently in the busy is busy she can't come on your podcast We're gonna bring her out now I can't surprise surprise let me just clarify the point here

If we had frozen on the show, would she say that she said go again and you said it's dangerous? She will. She will agree, but she will then probably put forward the point that I should have just caught him like I did the previous three times. Fair enough. Well, I mean, we've had that argument a lot.

What was interesting about what happened was, what we were talking to Newcastle at the RVI hospital to get the teeth taken out, right? And it was so strange, you had to kind of drop them at one door, and then he went in with the nurse and sort of put them under an aesthetic and pulled the teeth out. And we had to walk around this kind of one-way corridor, you kind of dropped them off, and then you walked around the other way, and then he came out with the other end, like a conveyor belt, like dropping a luggage at the airport, but like,

Did you tie something around him, so you recognise him when he came out? I cling-filmed him, like the people do.

I think I'm wrong, right? And honestly, right, we got around. We're so worried. I think I was probably crying. I'm a disgrace, but I will walk around. And he came out and he was sitting eating, both front teeth gone, sitting eating jelly on the nurse's knee. And she was like, I can't believe it. She was like, literally, we'll put a tiny bit of the gas to just a chat. Did they even do the gas? I can't remember, but they didn't have to properly put them asleep. They just did it. And it was out. And there's other kids screaming. And he was just sitting there eating a little tub of jelly, just buzzing.

And honestly, we hadn't realised, but he was a different kid once I got them taken out. He was all good. We need to ask you, Rosie, about... We asked Chris and he gave us his account of the day Robin lost his front teeth. Yeah. Oh, Betty did. Betty did give you his wrong account of the day of Robin lost his teeth. What did he say?

Just that you really went to pieces and he was heroic. No. He did say you were heroic and he went to pieces, but it was the discussion before the bike ride, wasn't it? I think Josh. He said that once the accident had happened, you absolutely owned the situation and he was a mess. But he said that it was your decision for Robin to have one more.

I can hear you do that. I can hear you do that. Did he fully blame me? Yes. He said he even warned you because he was going to take Robin on a bike down a slope and he went down a couple of times and he nearly fell off and then Chris called him. And then he said, let's not do this anymore. And then you said, give him one last go. And Chris said that he said no.

I don't think we should. And you said, do it. And then that's when the T facts didn't happen. Is that not correct? In my defense. Well, it kind of is, right? Because that did kind of happen. But in my defense, he was the one who was taking him down the hill. I couldn't see because I was at the bottom, probably on the phone, not going to lie.

He was the one who was doing it and taking him down. So he knew how fast he was going. He could assess the danger of the situation more than I could. So, and I'm sorry, but how spineless have you got to be for me to just go, no, do it one more time. And him to go, all right.

Even if you know it's dangerous, that you're so scared to say no to you. It acts like he's terrified of us. I swear to God. And you know what? I'm going to have to have a word with him because when we wrote the book, that went in the book and we decided to take 50-50 responsibility for that incident.

And I can't believe he's just chucked me under the bus like this on a podcast. So we'll be having a word. OK, well, I thought that would be resolved, but it sounds like it's just been opened up again. Of course, you've caused me. Yeah, we've got to do a podcast. You should be a feature in your podcast. You should do that. A private business questions where someone has to take the hot seat and just get thrown at them with backup documents. I'm actually after a new feature. So that might work.

Is Robin aware now? He's kind of four. Do you think, is he aware that you're doing a podcast in which he gets talked about? Like, does he understand stuff like the fact that you're on Instagram and stuff like that? No, he doesn't really know. Although he started when I was doing an advert the other day and I had my camera out and he gets really excited. He's like, are you filming, man? And I'm like, yeah. So he got the stuff out of the box and he was like, film this. And I went, all right. And he went, hi, everyone.

He started doing like a vlog and I was thinking, oh God, he's been watching it too much. But no, he knows that we do a podcast and he knows that daddy goes on stage and makes people laugh. But other than that, he's got no idea. Chris was on the one show last week, like I said, and we were watching it. And he's just not fazed at all. He was just playing with his toys, just like, oh, there's me dad on telly.

Can you imagine being a kid and your dad was on telly like, it would have blown our minds watching. Absolutely. You're mortified enough. There's going to come a point, I suppose, where, because you're mortified about your parents when you're a kid, when you get to a certain age, what about 10 or something like that, maybe a bit later. So he'll start by getting excited about the one show. And then in 10 years, it was like, oh, no, my dad's on the one show.

Yeah, not again. What's he going to see? Well, I think we had Alison Hammond's son's a teenager. And when we were doing the podcast of her, he could sort of overhear things that she was saying. And he was coming in. Don't pay that, Mum. And sort of dictating the terms. So you're like in a situation where you're trying to do a podcast of Robin or Walker to go, you're not saying that.

So you're all set up, Russ. You live up north now in Manchester, aren't you? Is that right? So it's your wife, you wife Lindsay and a new daughter, Minna. And how old's Minna now? Before. Good age. Horrible, isn't it? And that's the worst. Oh, mate, the worst. If there was a statue of Minna in the garden, I'd be tearing it down due to a fascist.

But you tell me stories about Minna, like where she always went to bed at the right times and very structured, scheduled and she was with good sleep and stuff like that. And then you tell me stories about like on trains, you just strip off naked and there's nothing you could do. So what kind of child is she like? How is it? I always say to people, even a serial killer is peaceful when they're asleep, right? You can walk into Ted Bundy's bedroom at 3am and go, what's the fuss about? But you won't want to be there at 8am when you woke up.

So I have, and it's particularly men that love to hear about this. I've nailed sleep, and I say I, even though Lindsay and I did it together, I was sort of the one that came up with a plan who said, what we're going to do, what we're going to do to get our daughter to sleep through the night. So I will admit we've got sleep, and I know a lot of people don't like to hear that, but blokes do, they like to perv in on my full night sleep and hear how I did it.

This is not normally going silent. It's like, oh, just tell me again, Russ. Just tell me again about your own brother. What was that? Eight hours for 40-week straight. Stop it. Stop it. So I'll tell you how I achieved that in a minute, because men love to hear I did it using nerdy charts. But it's when the eyes flick open. That is when the hell begins. But that also proves that regardless of the temperament of your child, whether you've got one of the laid-back ones dribbling on its bricks as it amuses itself,

Or whether you've got a holy water sizzling on the forehead, bastard like I have. I do truly believe if you want to, and there's no reason why you have to, there's no pressure to get your child through the night. But if it's something you both desperately want as a couple, it can be achieved. What was your method, Russell? The benefit I've got is I'm the last one out of all my friends to have kids, right? So the downside is I'm going to be on a ventilator when she's on sports day.

Hunter mate is going to come on

Do you remember the war? No, but the plus side is I was able to watch all my groups of friends and what went wrong most often, apart from all the usual childhood illnesses, was arguments about sleep, kids in the bed, sex life going down the drain, relationship going down the drain where the child's on the throne, ruling the house as soon as it was bought. So I was thinking to myself, do you know what, I don't want that to happen to me. Plus my mum was a child minder and a nanny, so she's a bit like bad ass with routine and sleep.

So I just, me and Lindsay, we were bobbing around in the pool on one of those all-inclusive holidays, and we're like, should we give for it? Should we, should we, should we, should we start training for a BB? And I was like, before we do, before that Marvellon pill packet goes in the bin, we are going to be in agreement on sleep. And that's the mistake that those problems make. They just, once they've got a screaming satanic object in front of them, that's when, should we have the chat now? The time to have the chat is before fertilization.

You need to agree about sleep and advance. It's really, really important. It doesn't matter if you both want to be bed-sharing hippies, baby hanging off the boot, boob and all that, and you're both in the bed together and you're going to do attachment and go be up all night and be baby-led. That's fine. No judgment from me and you shouldn't be judged by anyone. The problem is when you've got one person on one method and one on the other, if you've got a mum saying, I do want the baby hanging off my bootboy, I have marriage days and you went in the spare room. That's an idiot.

Have you been listening to my house?

No, but because I always think everyone's putting pressure on women. A breast is best, you need to do a touch. No, what's best is a really buzzingly happy, mentally stable household where the children are being raised in a positive environment. If that means slamming formula into its mouth on day one, so be it. Yeah. Do you, I mean, obviously you need to decide this before you get pregnant is of use to about 2% of our listeners. Yeah, it should be a filter on Tinder.

early doors, isn't it? But to be fair, for us, for the people listening, what age was a minute of sleeping through the night? So we did eight hours by eight weeks and 12 hours at 12 weeks. They were my targets.

It's like the wolf of Wall Street, I love it. Eight hours, eight weeks and 12 hours, 12 weeks, tell us how. A little bit of baby trivia, which anyone now who's had a kid will know, but maybe never realized it before. Most babies are born chronologically speaking, like daytime, nighttime speaking, back to front.

So anyone who's been lived with a pregnant woman will know, baby doesn't do much all day, sit down at 8pm, watch a bit of Britain's got talent or whatever, baby starts kicking every time. And then kicks are all through the night, I've had a rubbish night's sleep and then it sleeps all day. The reason for this is, as far as the stuff I've read,

is, of course, when you're walking around all day, if a woman's pregnant, she's rocking the baby effectively, and when she's laying down, the baby's not being rocked, and the baby's falling asleep, and they're rocked, right? So they think that's why so many babies are born awake at night asleep during that, and as you're so knackered, you just follow that pattern, and you end up two, three, four, five years of screaming baby all night, asleep all day.

So, contrary to what some people think about being some sort of sleep fascist and forcing a baby to sleep through the night, it's quite the opposite. You know, my daughter was never allowed to cry or self-super any of that nonsense that people hear. We just worked initially when she was tight, once she'd regained her birth weight.

towards keeping her awake during the day, which is much, much easier. So you're just stretching. We're talking about when they're really tiny, just like a game on the kick mat, a mobile and inviting the nanos over when they're due for their scheduled nap. So babies need 16 hours sleep. Babies need 16 hours sleep. So why wouldn't you squeeze 10, 12 hours of that sleep?

into a night time and had the four hours naps throughout the day so whenever she was due for a nap that's when i let my mum in start rocking her so she falls asleep fine otherwise i'd be getting like a vein in the side of my schedule head going in should be awake by now it's not about getting them to sleep it's about keeping them up indeed initially and then and then what you'll see is you can gradually stretch the periods at night

And people that you should never wake a sleeping baby, you should never fuck off out my house. What I would do is if Mina was due for, I don't remember what the timings are now, because it seemed like a lifetime ago. So she's supposed to have 90 minutes mourning that from 10 to 11.30, 11.31. I'm unswaddling that child.

getting ready, fed on time, awake on the kick mat. We were using like a cold flannel on her feet, anything to keep her stimulated and awake now. Friends, look, that'll never work, you guys. That's definitely prisoner of war, don't you? Have you thought about working in Guantanamo Bay, Russell?

Sometimes I just scream in the face. Just play loud, heavy metal for six hours. It was all done with like games. But it was our friends, every single one across the world, weren't they supposed to get out of it? But you should be on pole now, but 4AO played a game. And that's the other bollocks that winds me up, is that baby's white, 4A, 5A is nothing you can do. It's actually dog shit.

If you get on a plane to Australia, maybe it doesn't magically know that sunrise has changed. It's because people's definition of what they call a blackout curtain is pathetic.

It winds me up. I've got the blackout just like it said and you go in and you could kill a vampire within seconds in that room at six p.m. You shouldn't be able to walk across a blacked out room at midday. It should look like in Spanish and Italian people do proper blackout shutters and stuff. That's what we did. So instead of doing a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. date, what use is that to a stand-up? Because I want to be involved as a dad. I said to Lindsay, let's do 9 till 9 till she goes to school.

And we get a bit of an evening and we'd get a lane as well. So that's what my daughter sleeps. She sleeps from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Blimey. Jen, can you explain to us and the listeners you're set up at home with your kids and stuff? Yes, I can. I am sharing my home with my ever-patients girlfriend and our two five-year-old twin boys. And it's fun times all around. Oh, five-year-old, too. Sorry, because it's actually your life. But I shuddered.

Sorry. It's starting with the empathy that I love. I think a live version, you know when you've redid it, you go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go,

Oh God, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, I have and I am shit at it. I am so shit at it. It's just that they don't respect you, your kids. I mean, not your kids, my kids. They don't seem to respect parents and their homeschool. I spoke to a few parents and they're like, oh fuck it. I gave up after two days. Just trying to teach them stuff because they've got to teach them how to read. Everyone's going out five. You don't have to do anything, mate. Just wait until they're 10. They can't, they can't turn up at 10 and go, sorry mate, still can't read because my parents didn't bother homeschooling me when I was five.

So you've got to teach them things like Fonic, jolly, Fonic. I mean, the jolly bit fucked off a wild day, I'll tell you. It's just a horror show. And they don't, like, honestly, if I'm trying to tell them to do anything, they're like, I don't want to do that. And anyway, you smell of poo. And it's like, oh, they love you smell of poo. They love to say that. Do you think the fact you smell of poo is a problem, though, Jen? Maybe that's why you're struggling to home school. You didn't smell of poo. To be fair, I've seen your stand-up, Jen. And there is a routine about you actually smelling of poo. So I think they may be accurate in that.

Well, and who's poo is it? It's not my poo. I'm not like just slinging my poo round the house. It's their bloody poo. They are so obsessed with their bum holes at the moment. I made the mistake of saying bum hole to them and close like, we don't say bum hole. We just say bottom and I went was too late. So bum holes out. Yeah. And the great word though, isn't it? You forget how funny bum hole is. Could you use that to teach them all the different sounds? And you could say,

They want their phonics. It's been a great chance to teach them about the letter O, wouldn't it? You go... My daughter's starting to roll in September, and I don't understand this phonics thing, where you learn the alphabet, like ABCD, but you really didn't know what it was. That's the English one. I'm working on the Greek.

But you learn all those sounds for A, B, C, but it's actually Abba-Cuh. Is that right? Well, yeah, but it's also more complicated than that. So you're learning sounds when you say you've got I, G, H together, then they have to learn that that is, that sound is I. Or if there's an O and a W together, then that can be O. Or they've got to learn it like that. Or if there's an E at the end, like actually bumhole is a very good example.

Now, we've got, let's explore the bum hole. Let's explore bum hole, because there's a magic E at the end of hole. So the O is, instead of being an O, it becomes an O. So it's not hole, it's, what is it, kids? Hole, that's right, it's bum hole. So we're all learning something. We had magic E when I was growing up. Did you used to watch the look and read BBC TV shows at school? So it'd be like Badger Girl or Jordy Race or something. No, I'm like 10 years older than you. So... LAUGHTER

Badger Girl sounds like a TikTok star.

She just got, you know, who documents the badges in her garden, which is not a euphemism. Well, I struggled in reading, so spoiler alert, as a kid, to go to learning support. And we used to read the Biff Chippen Kipper books. My kids are reading those. Yeah. All I remember was, they went, OK, you're going to go for private one-on-one readings. You know, I struggled. I'm dyslexic. So I struggled with the reading. And the book was just bigger.

It wasn't an easier book or specialised it was just the same but with one person just pointing at the word. That's an optician's I needed.

Obviously, they're twins, Jen, but how different are those people in their reaction to it? Do you teach them together? Oh, they're completely different in every... They don't look at... Because they're fraternal twins, because it was IVF. So, well, obviously, it wasn't a natural conception. If it was for the same-sex couple, Jen, that would be the first question I'd ask, to be honest, if it did happen.

I want a lot of friction, Rob. Yeah, a lot of friction. A lot of things for us. How does that happen? Let's keep raving till we start. No. So what's the difference? I'm a bit ignorant to this. So what's the difference from an IVF twins as opposed to sort of a natural twins? Is it word? Sorry if that's the wrong terminology.

Well, no, it's completely, it's completely the right terminology. If you're having a sort of natural conception and you're having sex and that's how you can see. If you're doing it with IVF, what you do is you spend thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds and cross your fingers that something fucking happens. But it's a clinic and then we put sperm from the internet.

But you don't actually don't physically do that, right? You don't, it doesn't arrive, like Amazon Prime. Yeah, you've got to keep it free. Do you know what? It's not that different, actually. Really? No, no, I know you're okay. I'll come in. What did you do? What? Log on and then just buy some sperm. Yeah. Really? Really? How much? How much is it? Oh, litres of it. It's a litres.

It's been a long long time. Listen, we needed as much as we could get. No, there are lots of different sperm banks, and it depends on which sperm bank you go to, but basically they have an online, I suppose, I want to say magazine. That's not brochure, something. And you can pick... They have like star ratings. Trust pilot.

They kind of do. I mean, in as much as you can see how popular that sperm is. I mean, I'd get one off. I'd get one off checkered trade. So I've got somebody's Andy in the out. I've got to try. I've got enough sort of goby talking people in our family. We need some family skill. Yeah, but you'd get mixed messages, really. I've got three off this stone. The first one was an absolute dream. But the last two, if I'm honest, are a parapet. It's 50-50.

What did you know about your sperm? So what you don't get, you have no idea what your donor looks like. So what you will get is information, and again, this really depends on the sperm bank, how much information they get. They give you. So we went to the European sperm bank specifically because you get the most information about the donor.

And you get sort of information about their parents sort of health, you know, if there's any, I don't know, like dementia or cancer or anything like that in the family. So I think you go back like the parents and then the grandparents, and then you can what they look like, what they do for a living interests, all that sort of stuff. And then you'd get a photograph of them as a baby.

so you can kind of get an idea. So, I mean, we were a bit cruel because there was a couple of babies that were completely boss-eyed and we were like, oh, come on. Swerve that. If you're praying for it, you're allowed to choose as far as I can. I mean, the irony is one of ours is boss-eyed now, so that was karma.

There we go. You can spend weeks and months deciding and then in the end it's kind of, I don't know if other people agree with me, but it's kind of moot, really, because what you want is a baby. Whatever you end up with, you're not going to be like, oh, wow, wish we'd gone for, you know, Jeff, he was loving nicer eyes. You're going to be like, oh, this is my baby.

Yeah, I can't even, I can't even tell you how we chose our sperm donor. I think we just went, oh, fuck it him. You know, I think it was like that. And is it sort of with, is it just some call with IVF you sometimes is more chance of twins. It's not like an option you pick like twins in the family. Again, it is an option we picked because you can choose. I don't know if you can still do this. I'm not sure. But you can put two. I level by level while I get on free to help out. Well done.

So that's not true to me. Well, it depends how many you get, right? So you get to spend so many embryos you get. So once you go through the process of IVF, right, and then you end up with however many embryos you do, and then

We went through one round of IVF and it was, no, we'd been through two rounds of IVF and it'd be unsuccessful. And we were like, oh, fuck this, this is costing a fortune. So the third round, Chloe's like, I'm going to stick two embryos in. And I was like, that will drop it. It's that bit of festival. I'm not paying it. I'm not paying it. I'm not paying it. Come on, close on it and then I'm doing two. And if you just waited an hour, that one would have been fine. We've got two now. And I'm like getting your tits off there. I wish I'd just stuck to one.

So yeah, that's basically what happened. Yeah. That's it for this special best of episode.

I'm Natalie Cassidy and I've been wanting to do a podcast of my own for a very long time. And here it is. I'm going to be talking each week to family, friends, most importantly, you. I want to talk about the issues that are bothering me, things that make me smile and how we get through that washing basket without having a nervous breakdown. This is a podcast for the general public, for the normal people. So get on board, become part of my community, and let's have a laugh.

Hello, it's me, Jessica Knappett, and heh heh heh heh, brand new podcast alert. I've got a new show for you, it's called Perfect Day, and yeah, you've figured out the premise already, haven't you? Because you're so smart, and because it's obvious.

Every Thursday, I interview a guest about what constitutes their perfect day. So, if you like hopes and dreams, fantasies and sweet memories, you're gonna love this stuff. Ah, we have got so many lovely, funny, nice people on. You're Ramesh Ranganathan's, you're Dolly Alderton's, you're Jamal, you're Maddox's Arabella, where she's doing it. Don't worry about the quality of the guest. Just worry about when you're gonna listen to it.

Or don't worry about when you're going to listen to it, just actually listen to it. See you soon! Adjusting up it, signing off, wishing you a perfect day. Perfect day on all your favourite podcast platforms.