- Henry, you ready to party?
His eyes are gross!
I decided to step out of my comfort zone a little bit
and let the boys plan Henry's first big day out.
We're here!
Snack break.
Oh yes, he's fascinated.
Hi, I'm Hannah, I'm the world's okayest mom
and for the past month, we have not left the house.
This is because I have
(Henry sneezes) oh, sneezes.
And I have postpartum anxiety and it's hard for me to leave.
But we're gonna let my older brothers plan my big day out,
so hopefully it's not too crazy.
Okay wish me luck.
I should start off by explaining
how postpartum anxiety manifests for me,
it's different than postpartum depression.
Both are very serious and both should be discussed
with a doctor because it is more common than you think.
So for me, postpartum anxiety,
it's a lot of intrusive thoughts.
Most of it is germaphobia.
It can snowball into something really crippling
where I become afraid of interacting with people
because they're just walking germs to me.
It's not logical.
No reason.
I think I'm just tired.
(sighs)
And so I'm actually in therapy for it.
I'm not ashamed to say that I am seeking help,
I really need it.
What I've quickly realized this time around
is my postpartum anxiety is not only affecting me,
it actually affects my entire family.
My older boys wanna go do stuff on the weekends,
they want to take Henry places,
they want to get out of the house.
While the boys understand, I can also tell
that they're disappointed
that I'm not participating in family stuff.
So I decided to step out of my comfort zone a little bit
and let the boys plan Henry's first big day out.
It's hard to plan a day for a one month old
because they don't really do much,
so the boys pretty much picked activities
that they wanted to do and decided
that they would show Henry how to enjoy these activities.
The plan was pretty standard for my kids,
start the morning off with Starbucks, move on to mini golf,
then the park, then pizza and frozen yogurt.
It's all the things that my kids love in one day.
Henry pretty much, he's got the same cycle.
Eat, sleep, poop, eat, sleep, poop,
cry, cry, cry, eat, sleep, poop.
Okay today is the day of the big outing
and I'm gonna be honest, we had pretty much the worst night
sleep-wise of all time last night.
I'm quiet 'cause I'm trying to get him to nap.
One night of bad sleep can completely derail
an entire weekend.
One noisy man can completely derail an entire nap.
Getting shoes on! - Come on, Wyatt.
- Are you ready to go Henry?
You ready to go?
We are on our way to our very first stop, which is what?
- Starbucks!
- [Hannah] Henry, what will you have?
Tall milk? - Steamed milk.
- Warm milk?
Now again, we are not sponsored by Starbucks,
I love Starbucks, I used to work there,
I wish they would sponsor me.
#starbuckssponsorhannah
- I think Henry likes Starbucks.
- I think so, he woke up,
he smelled the food and he woke up.
Henry!
Can you smell the food?
It was almost like Henry's rite of passage.
Once you've gone to Starbucks with our family, you're in.
You're in for life. (laughs)
Our next stop is mini golf, which I don't really know
how well you're gonna play, Henry,
but the boys really wanted to go.
It's very important that he do this
on his first day out they said, so mini golf it is.
It had been a hot minute since I'd been mini golfing.
I have never been very good at it, but the boys love to go.
They've gone with Matt several times
and so they were really excited
to show me how skilled they are at all of it.
Wyatt in particular is very intense about it.
- Hey, Jackson, you're cheating!
- He, I think, could be a very good golfer at some point
because he is so intense.
- He can't put it in with his hand!
- It's so funny to see tiny humans
doing grown up human stuff.
Please let me know if you've experienced this,
but whenever my kid is seated in the car seat and poops,
the poop ends up not in the diaper at all
and just immediately goes all up the back.
So straight away at the mini golf place, we had a blow out.
In true third kid fashion,
I just changed him right in his stroller.
I don't care.
You gotta do what you gotta do
when you're out with your baby and you have your older kids.
I'm not gonna take him back to the car
and lay out a bunch of stuff to change him.
Now Matt had a very special job this day,
he was my official sanitizer.
So I dealt with the mini golf very well, but I know myself
and so we came armed with lots of hand sanitizer,
wipes and all of that,
and so before anybody touched anything,
Matt had to fully sanitize every piece of everything
in order to keep me comfortable.
Which, that's marriage, baby. (laughs)
Turns out mini golf is actually the perfect activity for me
with my postpartum anxiety
because I could control pretty much the whole situation.
I could sanitize all of the parts included,
it's outdoors so fresh air, and people are taking turns
at each hole so it's not super crowded,
you're not in close contact with other people.
However, before we left,
the boys wanted to go to another part of this park
that completely sent me over the edge.
Don't get me wrong, this arcade was very nice,
I'm sure it was very clean,
this whole place was really amazing, it's just me.
Literally every button on every machine
looked like 45 different people's germy hands
coated all over everything.
I just.
We're gonna wait outside while they do that.
Yuck.
Okay we made a pit stop to change because it's getting cold.
I mean cold for LA, but it's a little chilly
and we weren't dressed warm enough,
and now we're headed to the park.
You guys ready for the park?
- Oh yeah!
- Do you know what a park is?
Yes I do!
Poor Henry can't talk, so we have to talk for him
and everyone pretty much has their own Henry voice.
Henry, are you excited?
- You know what he said? - What?
- I wanna go to the park and play with Jackson.
- Oh yeah, Jackson! - Is that what Henry said?
I think the appeal of a park with little kids,
I mean my kids always wanna go to the park
and it's the open space, they can run as fast as they want,
there's so much room, there's so much stuff to do
like climbing and sliding and tumbling
and all of that stuff.
- Henry, are you watching?
- Yes he is totally watching you guys.
Oh yes, he is fascinated.
At the park, Henry got very hungry.
There's a lot of debate around nursing in public
and how you should nurse when your baby is hungry
and you're out in a public space,
so what I ended up doing was kind of hiding in the corner
behind some trees and I nursed Henry under my sweater.
Snack break!
I tried to be discreet, but it's a part of life.
This body part exists to feed humans,
it doesn't exist for people to obsess over it.
So if you can't differentiate,
then maybe you should cover your own face.
Boom.
Breast feeding, not sexual. (laughs)
All right that was some good play time.
Did not take Henry out of the stroller
because there were so many kids on the playground
and I am terrified of germs
and I literally heard like 45 sneezes
in the time we were there.
So he stayed in the stroller,
but the boys taught him everything he needs to know
about playing and that's all that matters.
So the sun is starting to set
and it's getting chilly outside
so we have a plan B for pizza and frozen yogurt.
We had been calling it the three P's,
we have the three P's left of the day,
park, pizza, pozen yogurt,
but now it's gonna be four P's,
park, pizza, party, pice cream.
And we're gonna have to do it at home
because it's getting chilly.
Henry, you ready to party?
His eyes are gross!
We just walked into the house,
we're gonna do collective bath time,
I'm gonna order the pizza,
got a bunch of ice cream sundae stuff.
The minute I walked in the door to my house,
I just felt overwhelmingly better.
It's always good to try new things
and I think it was important for me to test my boundaries,
but at a certain point, it becomes detrimental
and a little too much for me to handle,
and so I was really glad
that we decided to take the pizza party and ice cream party
back to our house.
So the boys wanted to show him out to eat pizza
and let him smell it, so we'll see if he wakes up
and he'll come party with us.
The boys got their pizza, we developed a method for Henry
to try it which is through wafting the scent over to him,
so we wafted some pizza smell over to Henry.
Everyone just had a great time,
we got our ice cream sundaes.
I have dried strawberries, chocolate sauce and marshmallows
for toppings, three kinds of ice cream and for Henry--
- Some milk. - Some milk.
And I let the kids serve themselves
because I was holding Henry and so they took full advantage
and scooped like 5,000 scoops into their bowls,
but that's okay it was their day.
Well, don't mind if I do.
Adding a baby to the family really changes the dynamic
and in those early stages, my time is super monopolized.
I am with the baby pretty much all the time
because I am his food source and he needs constant care.
And so it's really important to involve the older kids
in a way that is fun for them
and they feel like they're really a part of things.
Wyatt, how did Henry do?
- So good!
- [Hannah] So good, who's team was he on?
- Me!
- So they don't feel like the baby's replacing them
in any way.
They don't feel jealous about the baby
taking up more of my time.
So my anxiety leading up to the day was really high
just because I was nervous about leaving the house.
Having that day out didn't cure my anxiety or anything,
but it was definitely a big step in figuring out something
that I can do that I'm comfortable with
and will help me healthily cope with the anxiety.
If you feel like you might have symptoms
of postpartum anxiety or postpartum depression,
definitely check out this link below
and talk to somebody about it.
What did you guys think of today?
- Mama, he's mad. - It was amazing.
- He's mad, Mama. - He's mad?
Oh yeah.
But of course, the day wasn't over
until Henry once again made his mark.
He's pooping a lot, I can't tell if it's poop or farts.
(Henry farts)
- Baby! - Did you hear that?
Okay there's no way this isn't leaking up the back right now
Oh yeah, oh my God, it's all over my hand.
(laughs) That's the second one!
So that's all I got for today.
I'm Hannah and what did you think of Henry's day out?
What would you have done with him instead?
Let me know on Instagram,
and if you'll please excuse me, I am nursing.
Till next time!
(happy music)