- Hello lovely people. - Hi.
- Thank you so much for joining us.
And first of all,
thank you so much for the wonderful response
to our "We are having a baby" video.
Which, we're having a baby.
- Yay!
- This video is sponsored by Surfshark,
because babies are expensive.
It's kind of mind-blowing.
- Yeah, still. It's still.
I know how many times I mentioned in that video, like,
"I still don't really know if I'm actually pregnant."
- (laughs) Still not really sure.
- I've got quite a big bump.
- Yeah, I do unfortunately have this habit
of I keep forgetting that she is this pregnant.
- Yeah, Jessica does this thing,
I told her off last night,
'cause we were just both doing a puzzle
and we both stood up,
and then I think because we were so transfixed
on the puzzle,
Jessica kind of lost and like was in her own little world,
and we both stood up,
and then like Jessica looked at me and went
(laughs)
at my belly, and just went really like.
- I just keep forgetting.
I think I- - And she's like,
"Oh, I just don't expect you to look like that."
And I'm like, "Well, you know" (laughs).
- You're just one of those people, though.
Claudia has a body that
in the six years I've known you
really hasn't changed.
- Anyway.
Nobody asked about that.
- No, what we're going to be doing today in this video
is answering some questions-
- That you've actually asked.
- That you've actually asked,
that aren't related
to whether or not Claudia's hips have widened.
And these were all questions
that were asked on our joint Instagram @JessieAndClaud.
Which, if you don't follow already,
you can follow by going to the link in the description.
- So, I mean, these are kind of in no particular order.
"Will your baby have playdates with Rose and Rosie?"
- Yay!
- We hope so.
- My God, I hope COVID's not a thing.
Yeah, the funny thing is
that I was messaging Rosie throughout last year
when we were both trying to conceive,
and now, bizarrely,
our babies are exactly two weeks apart in their due date.
- It would be nice to have a little playdate eventually.
- Yeah.
- [Claudia] "Are we having a theme for the nursery?"
- Yes. - Yeah.
We're gonna go for like woodland theme,
which I think is quite a common-
- I doubt that's shocked you.
- Yeah, it's quite a common nursery theme, I think,
but especially for us.
We like the outdoors.
- We do.
- Nature.
And we wanna make it woodland
as in British woodland, as well,
like things that our child would find and see around them.
So if there are like little pictures of animals,
they'll be like real-looking animals,
rather than too cartoony, or-
- Yes. Which leads into another question, actually.
"Do we have any idea how we want to raise our baby?"
Which we do.
We are very keen on the Montessori style, which-
- I mean, when you say, "Very keen,"
you should look at the pile of books that she has.
Like, it's a little bit-
- Okay.
All right, just to be clear, this is not all of them-
- Not this is not even- - 'Cause I've lent
some of them out.
- This is not even all of the books.
Like, books, for the last two years-
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This one's really good.
"Understanding the Human Being."
Excellent.
Highly recommend.
Another good one.
"Emotional Life of the Child." Okay.
"The Montessori family"- - That's a pretty good one.
- This is a good one.
If you wanna do a really brief.
You know, I'm gonna make a video, explain this-
- This one's good.
(laughs)
This one's good as well.
This is "The Montessori Toddler."
This has got like activities and stuff.
Obviously we don't have a toddler yet,
but we're getting very prepared.
Anyway, the point is,
we're well-read in the Montessori method now.
We don't just read books,
we read all the blogs,
and we follow like Montessori Instagram accounts-
- Oh yes. Oh yes.
- We've researched-
- Very prepared. - Local Montessori schools,
Montessori nurseries.
Some people have been asking,
"Will you send your children to nursery?
Or will you have like a nanny?
How's it gonna work when you're both at work?"
We haven't like got a fixed plan on this yet,
'cause it completely depends on-
- I mean, I think if we've learnt anything from 2020,
it's that the best laid plans often go awry.
- Our hope, I think, would be to send our baby,
when they're probably about eight to 10 months,
from around that age,
to a nursery that's got Montessori-
- Methods.
- Yeah.
- We haven't at all explained what Montessori is.
(laughs) (needle scratching)
Hi.
I am inserting myself in here
because Claudia feels that we made a hash
of explaining the Montessori method concisely.
I feel she did a fine job,
but I know better than to argue with my pregnant wife.
The Montessori method is an approach to raising children
that emphasizes independence, cooperation,
and active learning
in harmony with the child's unique pace of development.
Think of a 1950s childhood,
minus the lead paint and strict gender stereotypes.
Lots of wooden toys, playing outdoors,
added respect for children.
Well, I have this aesthetic,
I have to see it through.
(pings)
So one thing
that I have become understandably obsessed with recently
is baby documentaries,
or more specifically,
baby developmental documentaries,
because babies are fascinating.
Did you know that babies can basically crawl from day one,
but their heads are just too heavy.
So you have to put them on a skateboard instead.
True story.
I'm a smidge obsessed with "babies" on Netflix,
and "The Beginning of Life," the series.
Honestly, Claudia and I have devoured
all of the developmental documentaries
on UK Netflix and BBC iPlayer,
and now we need more.
So please, leave suggestions below.
Let me know what country you're in as well,
so I can utilize the powers of Surfshark VPN.
This is an advert.
Surfshark is an app and browser extension
that lets you convince your device
into thinking that you are anywhere in the world,
allowing you to access content that you can't usually see.
Thank you to everyone who told me to watch "The West Wing."
I am very excited to get deeply sunk into it.
Since we're currently
still experiencing building-site living,
you may be able to hear various drilling,
we often snuggle in the evening with a laptop
to watch a show,
and obviously Surfshark works on that,
because it works on laptops, phones, iPads, desktops, iPods,
but it also works on Amazon Fire Sticks and smart TVs.
So, snuggling up on the sofa to use Surfshark
is something that I am really looking forward to,
once I have my house back from these random men.
Builders, they're not random.
And amazingly, it lets you have one account
on an unlimited number of devices.
I should probably also mention
that Surfshark makes your internet safer
by masking your IP address,
keeping your data private.
Allegedly, that's why people buy VPNs.
But in reality,
I think we all know that we're buying them
just to watch more content.
I mean, specifically, baby-related content.
Click the link in the description,
and use code JESSICA.
83% off Surfshark, plus three months extra for free.
They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so go, go, go.
Bypass the content throttling,
government censorship,
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You are.
No, really,
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and even those friendly-looking websites
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Sorry, that was miserable.
Let's go back to some baby questions to make it better.
Yay!
(thuds)
- I think that's our cue to be like,
"Shut up, stop talking about Montessori."
"Vintage baby stroller, or no?"
- (gasps) Yes! (laughs)
- A little bit of a debate about this one,
because I found the perfect baby stroller.
- I don't disagree.
Your stroller is perfect-
- The one that I think is really good-
- For our family.
It's perfect. - Obviously
we haven't seen it in person because of lockdown.
We can't go to any shops and try things out
and see what they actually look like, and feel like,
and what the weight of them are.
But I really like the Cybex e-PRIAM,
because it's an electric buggy.
It has like sensors in the handles,
and when it feels you moving,
either up a hill,
or down a hill,
or just walking along a flat, bumpy road,
it will help assist the load of the buggy,
with like a bit of electric power.
Really good for Jessica,
it's practical, folds up.
It fits like baby car seats,
normal bassinets from newborn age
up to like the age of four.
But Jessica wants
a really impractical- - I found this thing, okay.
- Massive bassinet,
like scary horror-movie-style buggy.
- Don't call it that.
She thinks that's a horror movie buggy.
No, no.
The thing I have found, okay, it's called the AngelCab.
- Yeah, okay, fair enough, that's quite nice.
(sighs)
- It's beautiful.
The bassinet is a wicker basket,
and it has a pale top.
And I know all the mothers are gonna tell me
that there is a reason for this,
but I really dislike
that so many buggies are very dark colors.
- Clearly my option is much, much more suitable.
- And mine is beautiful.
- "How do you feel your pregnancy differs
from a cis-straight couple?"
It says.
- Well, it does for me,
because I am quite mumsy,
I think it's fair to say,
but I'm not pregnant.
- It's like when same-sex couples do have children,
and a lot of people say,
"Who's gonna be more the daddy figure,
and who's gonna be the mummy figure?"
- Thank you for not asking that.
- Because I don't really think that needs to be,
'cause that's a bit like asking,
"Oh, which one of you is more like the man?"
- We're both mums,
but you're having more of like the typical mum experience,
because you're pregnant.
- Because it is made from us.
We've done this whole journey together.
I personally believe more in nurture than in nature anyway,
but then it's easier for me to say that
because obviously I am the biological,
and half of the genetics of this child.
- Yeah. I won't pretend it's not hard.
It is hard.
Definitely.
95% of me
is your loving and supportive partner
who is just going through this pregnancy with you,
and who is like,
"Oh, this is so great. Oh, just my pregnant lady."
And 5% of me is like...
- Next question is,
"How does the legality work in the UK?
Does Jessica have to adopt the baby after it's born?"
- Fortunately not.
In the UK, because we are a legally wed couple,
any child that is born to either of us within our marriage,
if we can show that we have planned
to have the baby together,
legally has both of us on the birth certificate.
- And we had to sign a lot of paperwork
at the fertility clinic-
- Yes we did.
- To state that we understood this.
- And we were agreeing to start trying for a baby together.
- But what is interesting,
which I think is actually the law everywhere,
is that the baby is legally mine, and only mine,
until it's born.
- Which is right and proper.
- Yeah, I think that just is like
that whoever carries- - As it should be.
- The child makes the decisions.
- Although the embryos at our clinic
belong to both of us. - Are the both of ours, yeah.
Which brings us onto another question people asked,
which was, "How many more babies are you gonna have?"
- Everyone keeps telling me like,
"Have the first one and then decide."
- (laughs) Meanwhile, my wife is like,
"So, I've been watching 'Bridgerton.'
How does eight sound?"
- I think three is a nice number.
Although I think I'd be very happy with two.
Anyway, we will see how it goes,
but we have two more embryos frozen.
- But it's always been in my heart to adopt.
And I'd love to also maybe foster,
if we're able to do that.
Perhaps that would be something for when we're older,
but I would really love to grow our family via adoption.
- Mm-hmm. Right.
Lots of people have been asking,
"Why did we get sperm from the US,
rather than in the UK?"
- That is a very good question.
The answer to that
is that not a lot of people donate sperm in the UK.
- There's not such a wide pool of choice.
- There are very strict rules-
- (laughs) Yeah, in the UK, the law is
that it has to be a ID-known donor.
Basically what that means is the donor has to disclose
that they are happy to be traceable to the child,
if and when the child turns 18
and wants to then know who the donor was.
- But just to make clear what "traceable" means,
it just means that the child gains access
to the same profile that we were able to see,
which has the sort of medical history and background thing,
but also gives them the donor's actual name,
which we didn't get,
and their address at the time that they donated,
which means that if you wanted then to track them down,
you'd have a bit of a headstart.
So we're not able to buy sperm
from any country where-
- The donor has chosen to be completely anonymous forever.
So they're anonymous to us, but not to our child.
We did have mixed feelings.
Jessica was very much just like,
"Oh I think I'd prefer a completely anonymous donor."
And I was on the other side.
I was like,
"No, I'd rather choose someone who doesn't choose
to be completely anonymous."
And my reasoning,
which then Jessica sort of started to-
- Came around to. - Came around to,
was I didn't wanna keep anything from them.
And if we raise a child in a loving home,
one, they might not have a desire to find out the donor.
And two, if they do,
we shouldn't feel threatened by that.
It's just perfectly natural
to probably wanna find out certain things
about maybe your heritage,
and ethnic background,
and things like this.
And I think if we had actively chosen
to not give that option,
then that would be a bigger hurdle with our child
than if we had just, if the option is there.
- Yeah.
It was kind of nice to have that taken away from us,
that we didn't have to make the decision
between anonymous and non-anonymous.
- So the US is one of these countries
that has one, loads of donors.
Secondly-
- They have lots of people.
- Quite a lot of the donors were like quite altruistic
and happy to be the non-anonymous ones.
- You have to think about finding a donor
who kind of suits me,
'cause you're only gonna find a handful of people
that do that.
- Also our number one,
we just wanted the donor
to have no complicated medical history within the family,
like even up to grandparent level.
Like if any kind of grandparent had any kind of condition,
like diabetes,
or heart problems,
we'd rather someone who came
from like good medical background,
because that was our deciding factor, basically, wasn't it?
- Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Because we had to make the decision,
which kind of answers
the question that comes up later on about me.
But we had to make the decision to not use my eggs
because of my genetics not being perfect.
So it didn't seem right to then go and
(laughs) non-perfect- - It wouldn't be really fair,
if we were like,
"Oh, we won't use your eggs, darling,"
'cause, you know,
but we'll go choose a donor
who potentially is also not perfect.
- Yeah. That would be harsh.
- I mean, there's no such thing as perfect.
That's the wrong word,
but you know what we mean.
A known anomaly to your genetic makeup.
That leads us on to another question of,
"How did we choose who was gonna carry?"
- I unfortunately have genetic issues
that mean it would be really difficult
for me to carry a baby,
because I have a thing called
Hereditary Neuropathy with Liability to Pressure Palsies,
which is painful for me to live with.
It means I take a lot of medication,
which I would have to stop if I was carrying a baby.
And I honestly don't know how I would be able to live
without my painkilling medication,
because it stops the pain synapses in my brain from firing.
So, cannot fathom.
- Also, you have a double scoliosis.
- Yeah.
- But I mean, imagine if you'd like stopped-
- Oh wait, I haven't even got onto the,
I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome as well.
So that's a connective tissue disorder
that makes it really difficult to carry children.
A doctor did once tell me
that if I tried to carry a baby I would paralyze myself.
And I was like,
"Oh, so that is why God blessed me-
- To be a lesbian. (chiming)
- To be a lesbian.
- And also, luckily,
I've always wanted to carry it myself anyway.
And if Jessica was able to carry,
I think we probably would take it in turns.
- Yeah.
I'm not gonna pretend I'm not sad
about the fact I can't carry.
I would absolutely love
to be pregnant. - Yeah.
I think it would suit you.
"What are our favorite baby names right now?"
- Oh my God.
- Well obviously we're not gonna tell you.
(laughs)
We don't even tell our friends,
because, you know,
you gotta keep these things quite close to your chest
because otherwise people pooh-pooh the name,
or they steal it.
We have, our name choices,
we have a list of boys' names,
list of girls' names.
They change.
For the last like few months
they've been changing quite a bit.
But now we've got our firm favorites.
- Yeah.
They do have things in common.
They're all quite long.
They're all generally names that everyone has heard before,
and can spell-
- They're all pronounceable and spellable names.
- I like names
that can be broken down into quite gender-neutral nicknames
because you just don't know what your child is gonna be like
or want to do in the world.
- We also have other like,
the other reason for also potentially having a middle name
is that because if they don't like their first name,
or whatever,
they can choose their middle name.
- I was not blessed with a middle name at birth.
- No, I have two-
- It's hurt me deeply.
But we are thinking of middle names
to go with something
that has a nod to Claudia's Chinese heritage,
because you have a Chinese middle name,
and so has your sister
- It's interesting, actually.
Someone asked,
"Did we choose a blond donor or a ginger donor?"
- Because we said in the video
that it looked like a baby me.
- Because also,
if you don't know,
Jessica's not really ginger.
She dyes her hair.
- I have blonde hair (laughs).
- Yeah.
I always think of you as ginger,
'cause I've never seen you-
- Yeah, me too (laughs).
- I've never seen you with blonde hair,
and you've dyed it this color since you were like 17.
And it suits you so much.
- Insert pictures of blonde me.
- And you're actually not really blonde.
You're like strawberry blonde, aren't you?
- Yeah.
- Okay. That's what she tells me.
- Sure.
- But anyway, like.
(laughs)
No, the donor is blond.
But the funny thing is,
it could come out blonde.
It could come out brunette.
It could come out a little bit ginger.
- Yeah.
'Cause of our nephews, from Claudia's sister,
the first one looks very much like you and your sister-
- Yeah, like mixed race- - You can really see
his Chinese heritage.
And the second one, strawberry blond, blue eyes.
- Yeah, my dad is strawberry blond,
and had kind of a bit more of a ginger color to his hair
when he was younger-
- Pale, rosy child.
We're like- - And our second nephew
looks just like him.
"Will we be hiding our baby's face and name
from social media?"
- This is a really interesting question.
A kind of an interesting debate online
with, I think,
people who've grown up with social media profiles,
and are now kind of at the age where we are having babies.
And we all now have to think about
how do we handle privacy when it comes to our children?
And what does privacy mean?
It can mean either,
you never talk about your baby's name and their face,
but you might talk about issues around them.
Like, you know, entire blog articles about them,
and really personal private things.
And to me that's more of an invasion of their privacy
than sharing their name.
So I'm really happy to share the baby's name.
That's perfectly fine with me.
I think we've kind of talked about photos,
and really happy to show photos
that don't have the baby's face directly in it,
and maybe to post pictures with their face,
but a long time after.
- Well, we haven't fully decided on that yet.
"Are we gonna find out the sex of the baby?"
Well, yeah, we are.
We can't wait.
We're just like, "We wanna know."
- Have we not met?
Yes, of course. - I can't keep any secrets
from Jessica.
Like even if I'm arranging a secret, I telling her,
I'm like, "I'm arranging a party for you, a secret party."
She's like, "Okay, don't tell me anything else."
I'm like, "Okay."
So we've always thought, even before we were pregnant,
that we would just find out the sex.
But we're not gonna tell you what it is.
(laughs)
We're not telling anyone.
So we're gonna keep that as a surprise to everybody else.
- So, yeah.
Until the baby comes,
you can expect to see
a few bits of baby content sprinkled 'ere and there.
I'm gonna make a video about the things that I'm scared of
about being a disabled parent.
And then in a year after that video is released,
I'm gonna make a return video where I'm like,
"Hey, don't worry.
I'm now a disabled parent.
Oh, I know, I didn't need to worry about these things."
She says super optimistically.
- No, I'm sure it's true.
- You guys can send us baby names and,
oh my God, yes. - Baby name suggestions.
- Everyone.
Get down in those comments of this video, immediately.
- I mean, ooh, I don't know though.
- Leave your suggestions.
- We've only just shortlisted our names,
and that took a long time.
So I don't know if I wanna throw any more into the mix
and confuse it all again.
- Please do it
But go for names
that you actually think we would name a child.
- Yeah.
- Thank you so much for watching,
and thanks so much to Surfshark
for sponsoring today's video.
Remember to click the link in the description down below
for 84% off with the code, JESSICA.
See you in the next video.
(smacks lips)
- Bye. - Bye.
(jaunty music)