The best of the pick up
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This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. And this is our radio show where we package up all the best bits from the pickup throughout the week, our national radio show, and we bring it here so that you don't have to listen to the radio. We want you to listen to the radio though. Yeah, because, you know, there's ads and you should listen to those as well. Because we're on radio and that's also important.

I love this bit because we get to package up the ones that we like doing the best, like little bits and pieces and the stories that we don't share in the pod that are great. Yeah, and we had an important chat this week that I liked, but it was about my sister Sherry and the experience that she had going

being a new mom, breastfeeding on a train. And it was sort of off the back of a TikToker who was posting about her experience being heavily pregnant on a packed train and the idea of chivalry being dead and no one offering their seats anymore for pregnant women. And it is a very interesting discussion. Yeah. And I do think like off the back of that, the more I thought about it,

and I'm not saying this because I'm pregnant, I don't think that I personally have had any negative experiences, but I think that the pendulum kind of was in one direction. Like there was a lot of support and chivalry around women being pregnant and being helpful. And now I think that we are sort of as a society, we're a little bit more closed off to being helpful to people. And when you were talking about what Sherry experienced earlier,

It's a very sad outcome, but I also am not particularly surprised by it. Put it that way. Yeah. Well, I was surprised by it. I didn't think we'd gone down the gurgle like that. Anyway, that's all coming up. Well, look, I also shared a story on the show about something that Marley overshared at school about me.

So I had a very funny and interesting conversation with one of the after school care teachers about a particular picture that Marley had drawn, which was very generous and very kind. And let me tell you, it is not going on the fridge, that one. It's funny because you think that like the oversharing the situation is going to be

you, being on like national radio podcasting, but she trumped you. And you know what? I also think I've deserved this because I've told so many stories about my kids that she was just like, fuck mom, you know what? I've got one up on you. Well, not that she knows. She doesn't listen to the pod. Do you know what? She knows, but she knows that I know the limit. Mostly, I think I know the limit. I think you're giving her a lot of credit. All right, let's get into it.

There is an etiquette when it comes to Facebook Marketplace, right? Like it's kind of an unspoken etiquette about how you interact with the buyer and the seller and what you do when you've got to pick the thing up from their house and X, Y, Z. Like I think most people know how to be...

when it comes to Facebook marketplace. It's pretty annoying though. Like how many conversations you have about how much something is. Can you do a better price? You talk to them for like, where are you? When's a good time? You talk to them for like three days about picking up something for 20 bucks and then they're like, no, not for me. And then they go stupid. Yeah. And you're like, what? Just wasted my life. We were talking about funny experiences that we'd had off the back of it because everyone's had like a bit of a cooked experience if you've used it enough times.

I had something happen recently where I was, I wasn't even selling it. I was giving away a coffee table. I was like, just someone come and take this coffee table off my hands. And this man came into my house. I was there with the kids. Matt wasn't home. He comes into the house. 45 minutes later, he is still in my house having a chat. Lovely English guy. He's moving to Australia. Just giving me his life story. Maybe he's trying to make some new friends.

Maybe. He was talking about his wife. His wife was having a baby. Then he wanted to know about the dog. And I was like, please just take the coffee table and get out of my house. I'll pay you to go. Yeah. I was like, I'll give you the $20 to leave. Anyway, I had to pretend like I needed to go and have a shower and that the kids needed a nap. My kid's four. She doesn't nap. He's like, I'll watch the kids while you shower. But there was one story that came up. Producer Grace, here she is. I don't think that anyone could top this.

The Facebook marketplace story that you had. There was a lot of trust that was put in you. Yes, there was. But my wife, Diana, she is the sort of person that gets really into hobbies and just loves buying everything before she's even had a go at it. So a couple of weeks ago, she was like, I want to get really into surfing. Has never surfed in her life. She was like, this is my thing now.

So we organized this meetup to get this surfboard off Facebook Marketplace. The guy was like, you know what? I'm actually out for the day, but I'm going to pop it next to this table, blah, blah, blah, in the garage. And I was like, great. We're sweet. We drove an hour and a half there. How much was he charging for it? Where was the surfboard? In the garage. No, an hour and a half. Down south. Down south. But it was a good price. Good price. Worth the drive. Great surfboard. Looked good for beginners. We were like, we're set. And I was like, I will indulge you this once, but...

this will be the last surfboard you're buying. Anyway, so we get there, find the surfboard exactly where he said, next to the table. And then we're like, okay, it's not going to fit in the car. We're going to have to rope it to the roof. So we're in the kind of mentality of if you can't tie knots, tie lots. So we have like... Is that a real saying? It's a saying. So we've tied it all down. We're driving back on the freeway. We're like, we've nailed this.

But then the surfboard starts flapping. Yeah, the wind that gets underneath it. You've got a vertical surfboard on the roof of your car. We're about to lose this surfboard that we've just purchased for my wife's new hobby, who's so excited about it. It's flapping, it's flapping, and we're like heart thumping. You can't even pull over because it's like a busy highway. On a freeway.

So we get home and we just made it. There's like ropes flying everywhere and we're like. This is so dangerous. I cannot believe that we've made it back with this surfboard. Take a picture of it, send it to the guy and go, thank you so much. We just made it. I just feel like I know where this is going. He sent back, that's not my surfboard.

stole someone. We accidentally, we went into the garage. It was exactly where he said, but it was his roommate's surfboard. So you just stole someone's surfboard. So it was the right, I thought you went into the wrong house. Yes, no. I

It was the roommate's surfboard, much fancier than the one we were picking up. We were like, we've got to steal here. Did you have to drive it back? Had to drive all the way back. We'd learnt how to tie knots the second time around, so at least the surfboard stayed attached to the car. I'm just imagining you getting this surfboard back. It's so battered after being tied to a couple of roof racks. You're like, there it is. Give me the other one. It's a trade-up. This reminds me of when I stole that dog from the person's yard. LAUGHTER

Remember? You thought you were saving it. I thought it was lost and I took it from the lawn. I was like, don't worry, sweet angel, I'm going to save you. I had it for like two days. It turns out when I finally contacted the owner, he was so grateful. He was like, thank you so much for being worried sick. And I was like, tell me where you live, I'll drop it back. He gave me his address and I was like, pretty sure that's where I took it from. Yeah.

And I was like, you're welcome. Like, it's crazy out there. Be careful. Took the dog back mortified. That's so good. Grace, when you first told me that story, I thought you'd gone into the wrong house, but you didn't have a choice returning it since you so evidently took the wrong one.

Now, there is a debate that's erupting online at the moment. And off the back of doing my gender reveal on this show only a couple of weeks ago, I feel like the timing is quite interesting. Now, I understand that for some couples, gender disappointment is a very, very real thing. Mm-hmm.

And wanting to be able to choose whether you have a girl or a boy, in some instances, ideally would be something that some parents would like to explore. I know that when Matt found out that he was having, my husband, a third baby girl, there was a little bit of him that had a moment of sadness. And we spoke about it on the show. He's thrilled to be a dad to another girl. But at the same time, I think he always expected that he would also be a dad to a boy. And that's not

going to happen for him now unless he does it with another woman at some point down the track. But the reason why we're talking about this is because there's a content creator. Her name is Caitlin Bailey. She's a single mom. She's got three kids. Two of them are boys and she has one girl. Now she's just paid $45,000 to go overseas and do gender selection on an IVF treatment where you can choose the gender of your unborn child and

There's a lot of moral debate surrounding this because it's something that's currently still illegal in Australia. Yeah, and I think she was maybe a bit taken aback about the pushback against it because she was pretty open about her story, talking about it. And I think that...

the public's response has quite shocked her. She has said, if we've got the technology that allows us to do this and it's not hurting anybody, I don't understand why it's not an option here in Australia because sex selection of your embryos is illegal in Australia. It's not an option.

You can't do it. You absolutely cannot choose to test which sex you want and to implant it. But there are a lot of countries overseas, America, you can do it. So this is why she spent $45,000 to go and do it. She feels like she needs to balance her family. But the idea of her saying, I don't understand why it can't be done here, I do think she hasn't thought about the broader issues surrounding this. And there have been a few people off the back of this debate that have made some really good points about

There's no guarantee that you might have a child assigned female at birth who later identifies as trans. Totally. I don't know. I mean, there's other things in this as well. Obviously, in some cultures, having a boy is more desirable. So it might create like an unequal gender population, which would cause issues down the track. But also...

I mean, as a mum of two little girls and I'm now having a third little girl, even if I had the opportunity to select the gender of my children, I wouldn't. And the reason for that is because I feel as though it puts so much pressure on that child to be the specific gender

gender that you wanted. It puts so much pressure on whatever you thought that relationship was going to be or that dynamic was going to be. Like, just because you have a little boy doesn't mean they're going to be into little boy things, doesn't mean they're going to be a little quote unquote traditional little boy and vice versa, the same for a girl. And I

I guess I come to it now as a mum of two girls, both of which are completely different children. Like both my girls are so, so different. And so I feel as though I've had two different experiences of motherhood with them individually because they're such their own little unique people. 100%. That I don't feel as though I'm missing anything.

out on something by not having a boy. I guess the thing is, is in all cultures really, gender becomes something that people are so fixated on. And this idea of having a balanced family, to think that you have two little boys at home and a little girl at home, that that's something you can't be happy with because you don't have a balance. Like families aren't perfect. And I kind of hate the way that the terminology is being built around this. To be honest, it doesn't bother me that she's done it.

What else I found interesting is off the back of that, there's also discussions about the fact that a lot of people think you shouldn't genetically test your embryos. They think that even that comes down to like a type of selection, whereas I will disagree with that. I have my own embryos that I have genetically tested and there's a reason for it. I have had embryos that

had things wrong with them and didn't survive. And if they were implanted in me, there would have been a danger to us both and a high risk of miscarriage. So these kind of things, genetically testing is just doing the best thing for mother and child in the future and to reduce, help reduce things like...

risk of miscarriage. So I would like fight that argument. I agree, but I think these are two different things. Genetic testing is something that happens during pregnancy anyway. You know, you have your, I've just had my 21 week morphology scans, you know, so I'm going to find out if everything's tracking along fine. You have your NIPT scan to make sure that your blood works and everything's fine. And that's so that mums can have a greater control over the life that they're going to live and also over the quality of life that that child's going to have. But

But this conversation around gender and choosing a gender, that's not a disorder. That's not a chromosomal abnormality. That's not something that's where the baby's not developing in the way that it should. It's a family aesthetic choice. It's an aesthetic, yeah. Or it's an experience. Don't get me wrong. I'm not outraged by it. I don't care enough to be like jumping on the pylon of this. I just think for me, if I had the choice, I wouldn't explore it. I think it's a lot of money to pay for something that's very specific that you don't have control over anyway.

There's a video that came up on my feed that had been absolutely hysterics. I do want to preface this by saying I believed it at the start. I had to go and do a deep dive to find out it was a prank call. But it's this five-year-old Irish girl that calls a demolition company in Ireland to knock her school down. Have a listen to this. Hello. How are you? My name's Becky. Yes. I have a proposal for you.

Go ahead. Are you the demolition man? Yes. You're the top boss, yeah? Go ahead, what's the crack? Hello? I want you to help me destroy my school. Sorry. Do you want it blown up? Can you blow it up or knock it down? Whatever you want done. And you just make sure that they're all in the building when you knock it down. You put all their names on it? I give you a piece for each individual teacher. Brilliant.

It's like a 10-minute call where she's saying, like, my teachers made me do homework, knocked the school down, the demolition company is in, like, absolute hysterics. But it made me think, have your kids ever done this where they've called someone accidentally or they've gotten in trouble? I mean, my kids are not, like, they're not that age. They're not at an age where they can think. Yeah, but five is not old enough to be like, do you know what, I'm going to call a demolition company and get them to knock the school down. I also don't think my kids are. With the teachers in it. I don't think.

they're filled with that much hatred but look I do think that kids do things with phones and they'll call people but they don't always understand the repercussions of what they're doing. Yeah. We had one instance about six months ago so Marley would have just been five or five and a half

And she was with her cousins and they were playing on a payphone. Her cousins are all similar age. And I was like, what are they doing? And I could see that they were laughing really hard about it. And I was like, oh, I don't like that. I walked over and they just called triple zero and someone had answered the phone. And I obviously, I gave them the full schooling on why that was so problematic.

And she was so upset because she didn't really understand what it was that she'd done. Like, she had no comprehension about the magnitude of why that's a problem. Do you know what they were saying? She just thought it was funny. No, she literally, they just pressed some buttons and then someone answered it and they, you know, and she was like, it's the police. Like, she didn't know what was going on. But, like, I remember...

remember being a kid and doing prank calls and thinking I was so funny. I'd call my neighbour. I'd pretend to be someone. Really confuse Olga at the time. Prank calls gave me anxiety. I couldn't do them. I couldn't even do a knock and run. I was like a pretty goody two-shoes kid. We're one of those radio shows that can't do prank calls because everyone freaks out and freezes up. No, it's true. Well, look, actually, we've got some calls coming through. Speaking of, Nat, who did your kids call? Oh, my goodness. It was the most traumatic experience of my adult life, I think. Pat

Had at the time six and a half year old daughter and, you know, hashtag mom life. I hadn't been in the working game for a while. And I finally got a gig for this new job. And the first thing they asked me to do was a FaceTime call with about seven or eight other people, the HR team, the CEOs, the bosses, the

Like, there's some well-known people here in the mix who are, like, in the spotlight. I'll just say that. I won't give their names up. But had the FaceTime call. Everything was great. And then later that day, I actually went out and left the kid at home with her dad, and she asked if she could FaceTime all of her cousins. And I said, not a problem. It's the group call, the last group call on the iPad. And I had my phone, obviously. And...

And that was fine. And then I got home and my daughter said, mommy, I spoke to a really funny man on FaceTime today. And I said, what do you mean? What do you mean you spoke to a really funny man? She goes, when I called my cousins and I was like, was it your uncle? What do you mean? And I had a look and to my shock and horror, she had FaceTimed that entire last work meeting call and the person that she'd FaceTimed

who answered was the CEO, was the boss. And the call went for eight minutes. Why was he spending eight minutes of his day talking to a seven-year-old?

To this day, we have not addressed the elephant in the room. I have not discussed this with my bosses. My child can't articulate what was said and it's just this mystery and I'm happy for it to stay there because I don't know what happened in that eight minutes, but it was truly horrifying. That is hilarious. Also, like, why would you just be like, you got the wrong number, sweetie. Maybe he was like, go get your mum. Because it would have come up

With your name too. Give her eight minutes. That's a full conversation. That's longer than I speak to my own mother on the phone. Like that's a long time. Oh my God. Thanks Nat. We've also got Beck on the line. Beck, who did your kids call?

My son would have been about three at the time and my husband was working outside and I've just kind of needed a shower. Sat him on the floor of the bathroom, giving him my phone. Don't know what I had to do so I could have a five-minute shower in peace. And then my husband comes running through the door about five minutes later and snatches the phone out of his hand. I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, everyone's just called me. He's gone live on Instagram and he's still with me with the shower. Oh my God.

Yeah. Your three-year-old went live on Instagram. It was free only, fam. You didn't even get money from that. I know. That's absolutely devastating. No one wants to be shot from the ground up, goddammit. No one wants to be shot naked when they don't know either. I was mortified. That is so funny. Not a voice call, but yeah, probably a little bit worse.

Oh my God, Bec, that's amazing. I reckon that's my favourite. You just never want to have kids. Imagine. No, it doesn't. I see my kids find the right buttons at the right time to open the app and oh. This is my fear. Like my kids often take my phone and they like record funny videos on like the video app or whatever. But my fear is, is that one day they're going to either accidentally post something to Instagram or they're going to

You know, open it up and just like have a chat online. Like I live with this fear. I think that that's warranted. Yeah, maybe I should stop letting it go. It's a real fear.

There's a woman named Frankie. She's a TikToker, 35,000 followers. She posts a lot. She's heavily pregnant and she's posted a video that's gone bonkers, started a pretty heated debate online. She recently was on a train that was absolutely packed to the brim, like people sitting everywhere, people standing in the middle of the train and she herself was standing.

In this video, she's sort of filmed herself standing up, heavily pregnant, filmed around, shown everyone sitting down and she just said, chivalry for pregnant women doesn't exist anymore. I still can't believe not one person even offered, as in even offered to stand up so she could sit down. Which the ridiculous thing about this is like usually on trains, there's usually a separate part of seats which are for people who are, have, you know, poor mobility or needs assistance or whatever. Like there's seats there that people know to get up from. Yeah, and I think about when I grew up,

It was always taught if I was ever in a position like that, that you would always stand up and offer your seat to elderly, somebody disadvantaged or pregnant women. Like that was just what I learned as a child. And I thought that was a really standard thing. But some of the comments in this TikTok are so disgusting. I want to read you a few.

Why is your pregnancy anyone else's issue? Why is your pregnancy my problem? I hate this societal expectation. I mean, it was your choice to get pregnant, not theirs. Hey, you wanted equality, you got equality. Y'all, they're American. Sorry, I really went into that.

Y'all, what is with the I'm a mother, I'm more important than you, bow down to me attitude and things like I don't care that you're pregnant, I care that I've had a long day, my back and feet hurt, blah, blah, blah. Like this is just the theme that was on this TikTok and I was actually disgusted. You know what? Look, I mean, I had something happen to me when I had Lola. She was only little and she was in the car. It was Christmas time. We were going into the shopping centre and you know how like in big Westfields they always have like the pram section. But that's not even true.

Even big Westfields, every shopping centre now, even the little ones have like parking with prams. Yeah, so it's parking prams. It's just an area where you can, you know, easy duck in if you're a mum. Anyway, it was Christmas time. It was hell busy and I had already had my indicator and I was waiting to go into this parking spot, which was right in the prams.

And as I was waiting to go into the parking spot, someone else had pulled up so they kind of had blocked me from going in, which meant that this woman took advantage of it and she snuck in and took my space. Didn't have a kid. What a mole. Took my space and I wound down my window and I was like, dude, come on. I've got a baby in the car. She's been screaming for 20 minutes. We've been driving around this car park and she yelled out the window, it's your choice, you decided to have kids. Oh.

That grinds my gears. Like I would have been absolutely furious. Oh, I did. I was like, I wish your mother didn't have any kids.

And then I was like, oh, my God, I need to stop. But do you know what I think? I'm not well. I think that the people that are making these comments, assumption, haven't been pregnant or they're men who's maybe their partners haven't had a baby or maybe they don't know the impact on the body. I don't know. I also think perception around pregnancy has changed a little bit. Also, like the perception to kids on planes. Like a lot of people have issues now with children flying on planes and the expectation that maybe parents –

expect too much when actually like other people around them shouldn't have to bend to the kids on the planes, you know? This happened to my sister recently. So I was over visiting my fiance in Italy a couple of weeks ago and my sister was overseas as well. She's got a, at the time, like six month old baby and she was preemie. So she's actually a very small baby anyway, like a tiny little thing.

And my sister was on the train, had to travel two and a half hours to where we were. The train was packed like sardines, right? And so Sherry's standing up holding this baby because there's no room to put her in a pram for two and a half hours. Fine. Not fine. Well, no, but Sherry, that's what Sherry said, right? Her words. She's like, fine, I get it. Did I choose to have a baby? Yeah, I'm happy to stand up. I'm not going to ask anyone to sit down, whatever.

But then she had to breastfeed. No one moved. No one offered. I've seen the pictures. She's sitting on the ground in a corner with all these men standing over a big, not for any other reason than it's sardines, right? It's just packed. Standing over a while, she's trying to breastfeed a baby and protect it from being like bumped by luggage and bumped by people. And she's like, people were looking at me on the ground.

in my situation and not one person offered. And I found that so sad. And Sherry's like, I didn't want them to give up my seat for the rest of the trip. I'd obviously been standing for an hour. I just wanted somewhere safe to breastfeed for 10 minutes, then I would have gotten back up. But everyone just looked at her blatantly in the eye and looked away. And I thought, what kind of a world are we living in where

there is not one person on that train that would see someone in a more vulnerable position and offer to help. I think that that's a really, really such a shitty example of people being selfish, really. I mean, and also we can sit here and be like, yes, of course, someone decides to have kids. Guess what? Someone decided to have you. Totally. At the end of the day. And you wanted your mother.

mum to be able to sit down. Your mum was pregnant once upon a time too. I don't know. I read these reactions and apart from that woman who yelled at me in a car park one time, it was Christmas and she was just full of holiday cheer. I feel like most people are good people. Like I've not had experiences where people haven't been helpful. I've had loads of experiences where I couldn't get a pram up the stairs and someone stopped and helped me carry the pram or carry things because I had too much. Like

I would say overwhelmingly my experiences have been good. And so it's really sad to me to hear specifically Sherry, who's a new mom who experienced something like that, because that's just really shit. Well, I think that's the difference, right? They're the quick little things that not really inconvenient to anyone, but people have this really weird attachment to their seats when it involves giving up a seat for something. But you guys remember, if you're listening right now, a woman carrying a baby, it's like they're running a marathon every single day. So throw them a bone, give them a seat.

Britt, I feel like being a parent is hard. Sometimes it's really hard, actually. And that's it from us today. Enjoy the show. We have discovered it is indeed hard. I feel like it comes part and parcel that sometimes your kids are going to do stuff that embarrasses you. Oh, yeah. And you just got to take it on the chin like a champion because they don't really know. I don't think they do. Sometimes maybe it's malicious, but other times I think it's really innocent and they just don't know that what they've said or what they've done is kind of not

Yes. It's like when you see those videos go around where like the little kid goes to school and tells everyone that they heard mummy and daddy screaming in the room in the night. Like, you know, when they get... We were playing gorillas. Yeah, we were playing wrestling. Yeah. Look, I mean, we've all got our own version of that with our own kids.

But I went in to pick up Marlee May. She's five. She's in kindergarten. I went in to pick her up from school the other day and she goes to after school care. So I walked into after school care and there's all these lovely, really young, beautiful young girls who like work in the after school care center, right? Got it. And they're gorgeous and they take such good care of the kids. I walk in and the girl who's like the main director, she just starts giggling.

I was like, oh, nice to see you too, darling. And she goes, I've got something for you. She's like, Marley's been drawing some pictures. Cute. And let me tell you, like my kids draw a thousand pictures. We have drawers and drawers and drawers full of drawings that we keep. You keep them all. Well, no, I don't keep them all. I only keep the good ones. We've had to start culling. Like the Monet. Yeah, I'll tell her. I'll say that one's not good enough to keep. And she was like, I wanted to put this aside for you. She's like, because I think you'd really like to keep this one. And I walk in.

And I get this picture and I just want to show you what it's of, Britt, because I think she's captured me in my raw and beautiful essence.

We can say it's raw. So Marley has started to revert to drawing me pregnant now because she's really excited about being a big sister. Wow. She's so thrilled. She got the details amazing. So she drew a picture of me and my pregnant belly and she drew the baby inside the belly. It's kind of like a cross between an X-ray because you can see inside me. A cross between an X-ray and porn.

Well, an X-ray and just a really graphic detail photo. You can see inside me, but you can also see the outside of me and I'm completely naked. She has drawn boobs with nipples, very big nipples. We all understand why. And she's also drawn me with a full bush. Okay, so then what happened is she drew this

And some of her friends were confused. They were like, what's going on here? Because mummy's lasered. So then it turns out that my daughter had a full-on debrief with all her friends about whether their parents or their mummies do or don't have hair on their downstairs. Oh, that is so funny. So when I picked Marley up. Did anyone else's kids draw nudes? No one else drew a nude, but I know what every other mum's downstairs looks like. So three kids came up to me and they were like –

Marley told us that you've got hair down there. My mummy doesn't. My mummy doesn't have any hair. You need to put that in that WhatsApp group chat, the school group chat. That's so funny. Be like, hey, ladies, what's everyone doing downstairs? Just like throw it in there. I was like, surely. Hey, Sharon, what lazy you go to? So I don't know what to do with this picture now. Do I put it on the fridge? It's really a beautiful work of art. Do you want me to take it? I reckon there's somewhere prize pool. I've gotten a bit lazy.

Lazy, all right? It's quite hard. When you're pregnant, you don't want to reach down there. Just let it go. No one's seeing it anyway. There's a bit of like hyperbole here. I don't know what's going on, but yeah, you need to get that tended to. I reckon I could get my gardener to come over. Go get a wick whacker anyway. A what? Like a whippersnapper, not a wick whacker. Wait, what? Are we talking about the same thing?