IDK who needs to hear this...

Nurture: The Radical Choice in Infant Care — Part Two In Part Two of our conversation with  Dr. Anita Vasudevan, MD, MPH , we continue exploring what happens when medicine, motherhood, infant feeding, sleep, and informed consent collide. This episode begins with a conversation about the power dynamic between parents and physicians—and why “my pediatrician said it was okay” does not always mean a r...

Nurture: The Radical Choice in Infant Care—Part One In this episode of  IDK Who Needs to Hear This… , Lauren and Gabrielle are joined by  Dr. Anita Vasudevan, MD, MPH , a family medicine physician and mother whose own pregnancy, NICU, and breastfeeding experiences reshaped the way she thinks about infant care, postpartum support, and the parent-baby dyad. Together, they discuss why nurture, proxim...

In this episode of  I Don’t Know Who Needs to Hear This… , Lauren and Gabrielle sit down without a formal agenda and unpack several conversations they have recently encountered online—from the way educators speak about overwhelmed parents, to the idea that “Velcro babies are made,” to crying at daycare drop-off, to sleep-training advice given to parents of very young infants. What connects all of...

Beyond the High-Needs Baby Label Part Two: On the Other Side of High-Needs What is on the other side of a season that felt impossible? In Part One, Lauren and Gabrielle unpacked the “high-needs baby” label—what it can explain, what it can obscure, and why some babies may need more because of temperament, sensory differences, medical concerns, nervous-system differences, or simply because babies ar...

Beyond the High-Needs Baby Label Part One What does it actually mean to have a “high-needs baby”? For many parents, finding this label can feel like relief. Finally, there are words for an experience that seems profoundly different from what everyone around you is describing. Your baby needs constant proximity. They wake frequently. They struggle to settle. They want to be held all day and all nig...

The Back-to-School Reality Check Back-to-school season is often framed as exciting, empowering, and developmentally necessary—but for highly sensitive and neurodivergent children, transitions into preschool, daycare, kindergarten, early childhood special education, therapy, or other unfamiliar environments may be significantly more complex. In this episode, Lauren and Gabrielle discuss what happen...

Social media has transformed the way parents access information, but it has also transformed the way parenting advice is created, shared, and consumed. In this episode, Lauren and Gabrielle explore what happens when nuanced conversations are reduced to sound bites, blanket recommendations, and viral posts. They discuss why parents are increasingly caught between conflicting expert opinions, how al...

Content Warning:  This episode includes discussion of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, OCD, postpartum psychosis, suicidal thoughts, birth trauma, and other sensitive mental health topics. Please listen with care. When mothers struggle postpartum, one recommendation seems to rise above all others:  sleep train your baby. What if we've mistaken a default recommendation for a comprehensive...

The 30% Misunderstanding In this episode, Lauren and Gabrielle are joined by therapist, maternal mental health specialist, and attachment-focused, Nurtured Neuroscience practitioner Natalie Bowler to unpack a frequently misunderstood concept in parenting: the idea of the “good enough” parent. Together, they explore the origins of D.W. Winnicott’s Good Enough Mother theory, Edward Tronick’s researc...

Episode 2: The Sleep Industry, Regulation, and Who Gets a Seat at the Table In this episode, Lauren and Gabrielle discuss the recent BBC investigation into the sleep industry and the growing calls for regulation. While both agree that dangerous advice should be addressed, they explore the potential unintended consequences of broad regulation and ask an important question: who gets to decide what c...

IDK Who Needs to Hear This... Welcome to IDK Who Needs to Hear This... — the podcast for parents who are done with one-size-fits-all advice. Hosted by Lauren Sloan and Gabrielle Ferrara, this podcast explores the realities of early parenting, child development, sleep, neurodiversity, attachment, maternal wellbeing, and everything beyond and in between. Through honest conversations, personal storie...