The Life as a Mom of Four | KMP Ep.47

0:09Katie Miller:Hi, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast. We're doing our first ever solo episode this week where we're going to take some viewer questions and talk about some of my favorite topics of the day, starting with motherhood. About six weeks ago, I gave birth to my fourth child. And often now the number one refrain when people come up to me isn't, oh my gosh, your hands are so full. It's been, I wish I would have had more kids when I had the time. It's a lot of parents of two children saying they wish they would have had three or four children if they could go back in time.

0:43Katie Miller:More families now than ever are stopping at one or two children and not having four, not even having three. And what I could tell you about having four children is that the zero to one transition rocked my world, was incredibly hard. It changes the way you have meals, plans with your friends. One to two, I felt like got easy around eight weeks. And then my third child was difficult for about six months, I would say, only because my first two children are separated by 15 months of age. My second and my third child are separated by 18 months of age. And when you look at the time span is that my first two children were off at the park playing and I felt like I was missing out on their childhood while I was staying at home with a third child.

1:32Katie Miller:Now what have I done differently with the fourth child? Well, I wish I could say I'm a lot more free and go to the park with my fourth child. But what I would tell you is that with every newborn experience, for some reason I learned some radically new subject or radically new thing about motherhood. And what I've learned this time, and it's something I've talked about on the podcast quite frequently, whether that be with Jenny McCarthy, whether it be as recently as Riley Gaines, is vaccines. So we had not vaccinated our children for about two years. In between when I learned about the amount of lead in our dishes and underneath kids' water bottles and removing lead from every type of consumption, the lead in the paint under the Pottery Barn dishware you used, which is real.

2:25Katie Miller:And everyone should look at the dishware that they're currently using because oftentimes if you used it for a while, the varnish has degraded and what you're eating off of is actually lead plates. Your grandma's favorite plates are probably leaded and that's leaching into your brain and it's a neurotoxin actually, which is why you always have to sign lead disclosures for when you move into an older home. And so what have I learned about having four children? Well, what I would tell you is we got a new pediatrician. As I mentioned, we were fired by our old pediatrician in another episode. And this new pediatrician started talking to us about vaccinations.

2:57Katie Miller:And I always said I was never anti-vaccine. I was just vaccine hesitant. And I would say very hesitant. And I always found a sign for why I didn't want to vaccinate my children right now. And we would always, even when my first child was little, we would do one shot at a time, wait two to three weeks in between, and then give another shot. And so when we were fired by our pediatrician, I had pulled open our vaccination records. And what I had found is my first child was almost all the way up to date. My second child had stopped around two and a half. My third child never had his 12-month shots.

3:31Katie Miller:And then I was having a fourth child. And so what did that mean for us? So when my pediatrician came over and we were in my baby's second week of life, we had started doing his weight check-ins to make sure that he was transferring milk good because he is a solely breastfed baby. And he was slow to gain. And so the pediatrician and I would keep having these visits. And when my baby was only two weeks old, in that postpartum fog and postpartum haze, as we all have, when you give birth and have a baby, it's that incredible come down in hormones that is not replicable anywhere else in life, not for men and certainly not for women at any other stage in their lives.

4:13Katie Miller:that this pediatrician convinced me into giving all three of my children the MMR vaccine when my baby was two weeks old and they hadn't received any vaccines in two years. I felt pressured because my baby wasn't gaining weight. He was stuck at his below, well below his birth weight. And, you know, this new pediatrician who I wanted to trust and who was very nice and lovely convinced me to give my two older children an MMR booster and my almost three-year-old, his first MMR shot. If anyone ever has gotten a vaccination for a child, you know, they tell you, oh, well, here's a standard side effect you'll see, which was maybe in a week you'll see some side effects.

4:52Katie Miller:And meanwhile, from week two to week three of my child's life, all of my children, as my daughter sitting off screen and laughing because she knows what comes next in this story, they all got parainfluenza and were incredibly sick to the point that myself and my newborn we're quarantining away from my three older children. And anyone who's ever had a baby, or if you haven't, what you'll find out is that quarantining away your bigger kids, who you've had this picture of them hanging out with this newborn and being able to care for your children when they're sick, isn't possible when your children have a very serious illness that can cause hospitalizations of the newborn.

5:32Katie Miller:So fast forward, we quarantine my three bigger kids, get better. My younger child does not get sick. And on the 10th day of my child's illness, I get the parrainfluenza. And so now here we are, I think week four, Stephen's in Turkey with the president, and I am dying of some form of parrainfluenza taking care of three children and a newborn while sneezing, coughing. And it's rough. It's rough out there. And so what I would say for, as my child's sitting here, I'm just really crushing my soul, chewing. But here's where we are with parainfluenza. So I'm very sick. At this point, I'm kind of delusional and think my baby could be sick.

6:25Katie Miller:So I'm sitting on my bathroom floor crying as the baby's crying. And I'm thinking, how do you do this? Now, at this point, I call my husband, who's I think at this point on Air Force One flying home. And I say, when are you going to be here? I don't think I can go on, like literally dying on the bathroom floor. And on Thursday, he took the entire day off and took care of both me and the baby. And here we are fully recovered. And what I would say is the miracle of breast milk has something to be studied. For too long in our society, we were told that formula is equivalent to that of breast milk and fed is best.

7:04Katie Miller:And I totally agree. We should definitely feed our babies if you're unable to produce breast milk. But what I saw over those period of three weeks, my baby's now six weeks old, is that breast milk, as it's meant to be done in nature, truly is this miracle where I got sick prior to my baby ever getting sick, produced antibodies. and not only did he never get sick, it was never that severe illness that you would expect. And I lived through with my third child, him having RSV at seven weeks old. And at that point, I was pumping and giving him pumped milk. But what I've learned from this is directly breastfeeding my child gave him the immunity to prevent him from getting seriously ill at a time when his immune system isn't what it should be.

7:51Katie Miller:And so I don't understand as a society why we're not telling more women that you should breastfeed, that let's give you the tools to breastfeed. Let's provide lactation counselors and lactation consultants who aren't forcing you and telling you things are meant to be uncomfortable or who are looking at a newly postpartum mom and telling them to triple feed or telling them that, you know, let's use this nipple shield or let's do all of these crazy things that don't make it easy or convenient. We don't provide as a society enough resources for breastfeeding mothers, which leads me to my next point, which is why is the Leche League International have men as part of their groups?

8:34Katie Miller:In between when I gave birth to my child in 2023 and participated in a lot of some of the resources that they provide to women, and today here we are in 2026, my children are about two and a half years apart, my largest age gap between children. What I looked at when I went to go look for these resources is that they provided a lot of chest breastfeeding support. And as a mom, I'm a woman. Only women can get pregnant. Only women can breastfeed. But why is it that the largest international breastfeeding group in the world, why are they encouraging men to chestfeed? Why allowing men into women's groups?

9:08Katie Miller:Something that's so perverted and perverse. Because the only time I ever see a man put on a breast pump is when a woman is trying to tell her husband the pain of what it is to feel your nipples ripped at six to eight times a day, maybe sometimes upwards of 12 times. But it's never in a way that's sexualized or radical because men can't breastfeed. Women can. Only women can get pregnant. But yet here we are on La Leche League's International's website where you're being told that testosterone supplements may decrease your milk supply, where it's told that if you're getting top surgery, it may hurt your chances of breastfeeding, that if you're a trans woman that you have a chance to lactate and here's how.

9:50Katie Miller:That's disgusting, disturbing, and that's not what our society is today. I would say the number one perception I've had of having a fourth child versus having three children, my kids are now, I guess I should say six weeks, almost three, four, and five. What I've learned the most and what Steve and I have learned the most when we're sitting there is just how loud our house is. Last night, I'm sitting in our room breastfeeding our newborn to try to get him to bed at 7 o 'clock. And all I hear in the background is three different whistles going off on various floors because as we tried to replace a toy that had molded, the toy that got shipped to us from Amazon now has whistles to it.

10:30Katie Miller:These like elbow components, it's Picasso, but it's you attach one to another. And now suddenly I have whistles all throughout my house. And a baby can definitely hear a whistle as it's being blown. So now the baby's crying because the baby's distracted during breastfeeding. I have one kid screaming because he's fighting with another kid. and then I have one kid blowing a whistle. And I feel like that's the summation of my house last few weeks is it's just very loud. That's the biggest noticeable change from having three kids to four kids is how loud it is. I truly don't think in terms of parental resourcing or being in diapers versus out of diapers because we're still in diapers, there really isn't a change between having three kids versus four kids.

11:08Katie Miller:The biggest change is quote never being alone. One of the benefits, I should say, of having kids, and not to say that my kids are the most helpful because my oldest child is five. She turns six in November, is at least having a secondary resource to be able to use the bathroom. So when you have a newborn, very rarely can you put down the baby and say, I'm going to go to the restroom or take a shower, right? You're figuring out, how am I going to put that baby in the bouncy seat? How am I going to keep the baby calm while I go run off and go grab a new pacifier since this pacifier had fallen on the floor?

11:40Katie Miller:Or how am I going to go quickly pumped to be able to take care of myself? And I would say my greatest resource in this has been my five-year-old who loves taking care of her new baby brother, Hawthorne, who is fantastic at wanting to skip her nap time and her quiet time to instead help out with the baby. Because any mom knows as a, we still, I would say, we are religious followers of moms on call and have used that since McKenzie was, I think, seven weeks old. We still follow their nap times, their feeding times, their schedule times. So all of my children still take a nap between 12.30 and 3.

12:20Katie Miller:So if you know me, you always get a call between those times because that's when it's quiet in my house. But my daughter still does quiet time at least between 1.30 and 3. And so if you've ever tried to get a five-year-old down for a quiet time, they don't necessarily want to do it. So every day we start the, do I have to take my nap now mom time. And so instead of do I have to take my nap now mom time, we do play time with Hawthorne while he's awake. And so it helps to be able to create that difference between daytime and nighttime is just how purely loud it is in my house at all times.

12:53Okay. Hello.

12:57Katie Miller:Hello. Okay. You can only sit next to you for a little bit, okay? Okay. Okay, let's ask you this question. What's your favorite part about being a big sister?

13:09Helping mommy.

13:11Katie Miller:What's the best thing you're good at when you help mommy? Holding. You're good at holding the baby? What did we do last night for the first time? He took a bath with us. Did he cry? A little bit, right? Yeah, a little. the hardest part about having a newborn is how many people want to give you their opinions on how to handle a newborn so the latest one is nipple confusion or not to use a pacifier or make sure they don't have their day and their nights mixed up or make sure they're awake enough during the day make sure they're sleeping enough at night and what i find is the hardest part of having a newborn for me is still feeding i think no matter whether you bottle feed or breastfeed I think feeding times is by far the most stressful because when the baby's inside mom, I'm solely responsible for that baby's nutrition.

14:04Katie Miller:What I eat is what the baby eats, making sure I'm healthy for the baby to be healthy. And now it's saying that there are so many ways to feed a baby, whether that be through breastfeeding, formula, or whatever. And I should say that with my other children, we imported hip formula from Europe because there wasn't Bobby formula here in the United States yet. And I'm so excited that there's alternatives. like Bobby, that you can give your baby an organic whole milk nutrition formula, or they're gentle that's broken down, which is what we prefer. And I have that on hand in my house should we ever need it.

14:38Katie Miller:I'm going to detour and say how disturbing it is that so many of the healthy formulas or the organic formulas are completely being recalled and caused for so many infant issues in our country that it's not more regulated and that the FDA has not done a better job in protecting these infants over time. Because when I started importing our formula from Europe five years ago, that was because Similac had those issues in Michigan with their plants. And yet here we are providing better, healthier alternatives here in the United States. And yet we're not able to do so because the babies are being given dirty formula from coronabactors that is causing them serious illnesses.

15:21Katie Miller:And what I like to see from these companies is something that you saw Bobby do, which is provide these better label nutritioning for babies, that they're checking their lines more frequently without having the FDA have to step in. And so to me, that's why we keep Bobby in my house. I love that product. But one of the things that I find the hardest as a mom is still feeding. You have a baby who's fussy. Why is he fussy? Is it gas? Is it this? And so it becomes very stress-inducing. And then you have someone who says, well, it's the bottle you're using. Don't use this Dr. Brown's bottle. You need to tried this other bottle?

15:57Katie Miller:Have you tried a wide mouth? Have you tried this bottle? And I would say the number one thing as a fourth time mom, when I question myself, when I look at somebody else, I'm going to call it weird baby shit because babies just do weird shit for no reason. Some days they don't want to take a bottle. And why? I don't know. But if they could tell me, he'd tell me why, but I don't know. So I'm not going to change it. I'm not going to say I'm not going to stop using a pacifier today because he doesn't want to take the bottle this minute or because you're having a hard time with this breastfeeding. Emily also has tried to tell us to perfect which knobs to turn in which sections of motherhood to have maximal infant sleep at which moment in time.

16:33Katie Miller:And here's how you're going to make sure your baby gets four ounces. And here's how you're going to make sure you get six ounces. And here's what you should look postpartum. And if you don't look this messed up postpartum, then something must be wrong with you. And if you look this pretty postpartum, then you have too much help. And I would say is that for every mom out there, postpartum looks a little different for them as to even, I would say, the difference between my postpartum between baby one and baby four. This baby, I've been incredibly sick for six weeks. Cheers to me. The first baby, I had all the help in the world and I thought I was doing everything right and breastfeeding was the hardest part of that first six weeks.

17:08Katie Miller:For my third baby, the hardest part was learning that I had to be away from my other two children while I took care of one and how to divide your time because time is the most precious resource we have. And in my second child, I learned how it was to be dairy-free and why you couldn't have this specific food and how you had to do this. And at different parts, I had no makeup on and messed up hair, and I didn't fit into my jeans for weeks. But I think what I found is that it looks different every time, and that's okay. And it's okay that someone wants to go back at work at four weeks, and it's okay that someone wants to go back at work at 12 weeks.

17:43Katie Miller:and I think more women should have that flexibility to stay home and more women should be home with their children because when they're staying home it's those first three years that are so precious and I wish that society we could do more to encourage mothers and encourage them to stay home and encourage more young women to have children because what I found is when I brought my baby around my four-week-old baby and I walked him around to meet some of my friends it's the first time they ever held a newborn which is crazy is that in a society we have so many people and just not enough babies. Because if more young women held babies, they would see what a beautiful part of our world it is.

18:19Katie Miller:Here we are. Let's do my favorite baby products. What have I used the most? I would say this time I haven't used a changing table at all. I found that any type of blanket with a diaper and wipes are good to go. Let's see. I really haven't used a diaper bag at all. I've carried them. So my hand is a really good product. I'm very excited that I just bought the Duna X online. It just came in today. And it's much better than the original Duna. It has a longer handle. It has all these three reclines. Because I was the queen of judging other mothers for leaving their child in a car seat and using that as a stroller because that is not a positionally correct place for a newborn to be, especially with a head slump.

18:58Katie Miller:You read so many stories about a baby left in a car seat and then passes away. And so I was really anti-Duna for the longest time because I thought your baby should not be left in that car seat. And so I'm very excited to see the Duna X. We're able to recline the baby all the way down. My other favorite products, I should say, is shout out to my outlet. One of the things that we have not shared publicly is that of my four children, three have been in the NICU. Mackenzie was in the NICU for delayed transition TTN. She was there for about four days. My third child, Hudson, was in the NICU for about three days, delayed transition.

19:35Katie Miller:My fourth child, Hawthorne, was in the NICU for seven days from when he was born because he had respiratory distress syndrome. His lungs were not producing surfactant when he was born. And so by the time you produce that, around 48 to 70 hours of life, then his lungs were inflamed. And so we spent about seven days in the NICU with Hawthorne. And so when we got home, I opted out of really using a baby monitor this time around because nanets are made in China. And we do not have Chinese technology in our home. That is very important to us from a cybersecurity perspective. And so when we went to come home, I went to put the outlet on every night to ensure that his stats don't go low, which ensures that it monitors his O2 and his respiratory rate.

20:20Katie Miller:And I know it's not a medical device, but it's FDA approved. And it has given us the biggest peace of mind for having a brand new baby who was on respiratory support for the first seven days of his life. And the NICU was not easy. I was waking up at 4 a.m., staying there till 8, 9 p.m. at night, coming home for a couple hours during the day and seeing my other children. And it is just not the way you envision starting off a new baby's life. But doctors and nurses are amazing people. And you know that your baby's going to be okay because it's happened now three times for us. And one of the things looking back that I find most fascinating is all of my babies are O positive in blood type.

21:03Katie Miller:My first child, my third child, and my fourth child, all of whom much resemble me. My second child, who most looks like Steven, is actually B positive, which shares Steven's blood type. And he's the only one who didn't end up in the NICU, which is very fascinating. and surely some scientists out there are going to tell me why my child, who is most genetically not like me, is the only one who did not end up in the NICU upon birth, who is the same relatively gestational age as my other children. That is my one fun fact that I wish I could figure out one day. What's currently in my Amazon cart? Let's go through this.

21:41Katie Miller:What's in my Amazon cart that I haven't checked out? There's 27 items. orders. Nope. Click. Click. Okay. Well, this is actually really funny. So in my Amazon cart, I have$158 at Whole Foods, mostly primarily made up by Coconut Cult since I've really gotten into the coconut yogurt since I'm dairy-free now breastfeeding. The second thing in my Amazon cart is unicorn snot, antimatter, color shifting, glitter paste for your body, for my daughter. Because anyone who knows that when your child comes in, you're trying to keep everyone quiet and no one yelling while you're breastfeeding. I just keep saying yes, because I am the easy parent.

22:30Katie Miller:An easy parent just keeps buying stuff on Amazon. My last few Amazon orders that I've actually been influenced to buy is actually a new chewable postnatal vitamin and air purifiers. After, I would say before July 4th, we were very into air purification because we live in a very old home. And so the HVAC is very old. We have lead dust still throughout the home since the house still has lead paint on the exterior and the interior. And so we've put, in addition to numerous other wallpapers, lead encapsulation paint, ensuring there's no chip paint, using clorox wipes around the lead paint. We've done all of the things.

23:10Katie Miller:We also have air purification throughout the entire home. And so one of the things that I thought of after I've now purified my home extensively and gotten really into the air quality in our home is what the air quality looks like in the West Wing. Because when you don't have operable windows, you end up having a higher rate of CO2 than you would otherwise have since you're not burping the home or burping the office, so to speak. And so my newest purchase is I bought IQ Airs to go into Stephen's office. So that way, when he has meetings and at other times, his air quality is a bit better since that's where you're spending a predominant and most amount of hours in your day is in your office.

23:51Katie Miller:So that's my new big thing is air purification. That's what's in my Amazon cart. what shows are you watching well this is a deep dive okay i've actually this is so funny so what am i doing all day while i'm taking care of a newborn who doesn't talk to you who only screams at you and who is a tough customer i started watching season one episode one of gray's anatomy right after i'd given birth so i did not do that before i had a baby but right after. It's been the backing track of my life for now six weeks. And there's what, 20, 21 seasons? So with 24 episodes in a season, so that's a lot of hours of TV in a day.

24:34Katie Miller:It's taken me about six weeks. I'm in season 18, I think episode like 18 maybe. And I had actually done a deep dive on this, but when you watch something that began in 2005 that goes to today of Grey's Anatomy, you actually see very closely how Hollywood went woke and how it's become this liberal bastion of, like, honestly, crap. So when you're watching it, Shonda Rhimes, the creator, there's no mistaking that she wasn't conservative or wasn't at all woke when the show began, but it's more indicative of where Hollywood's gone and where Hollywood's become. So in the beginning of Grey's Anatomy, you have a gay actor, but you have no gay characters.