337: Aaron Weber and the 48 First Cousins

Summary

Episode Title: 337: Aaron Weber and the 48 First Cousins
Release Date: June 2, 2025
Podcast: The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler
Host: Ryan Sickler
Guest: Aaron Weber

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1. Introduction of the Guest: Aaron Weber

In this poignant episode of The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler, comedian Ryan Sickler welcomes his first-time guest, Aaron Weber. Aaron brings a heartfelt and candid perspective to the show, sharing his profound journey into fatherhood amidst challenging circumstances.

Notable Quote:
Ryan Sickler (03:06): "I'm very excited to have this guest on with me today... First time on the Honeydew."

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2. Background and Family

Aaron hails from Montgomery, Alabama, representing what he refers to as the "real South." He details his large Catholic family, boasting an impressive 48 first cousins, a testament to his parents' extensive families. His upbringing included moving to Nashville during high school, a transition that initially sparked resistance but eventually led him to remain in the city.

Notable Quote:
Aaron Weber (05:27): "My mom's one of seven, my dad's one of five, and they've all got kids."

---

3. Journey to Parenthood

Nearly six months prior to the episode, Aaron and his wife, Lucy, welcomed their daughter. Aaron reflects on the timeless adage, "The days are long, but the years are short," highlighting the swift passage of time since becoming parents.

Notable Quote:
Ryan Sickler (10:54): "If you really want to appreciate the passing of time, have a child."

---

4. Pregnancy Complications and Ultrasound Scare

Aaron shares a harrowing experience from his wife's pregnancy when a routine ultrasound raised alarms. The baby was not moving as expected, leading to an urgent decision to deliver the baby prematurely. Despite initial fears, the situation improved when a device was used to stimulate the baby's movement.

Notable Quote:
Aaron Weber (12:50): "We went in for that routine ultrasound, and they could not find the baby... we're gonna have to deliver the baby right now."

---

5. Birth and NICU Experience

The birth resulted in a C-section due to complications, and their daughter spent approximately three weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Aaron vividly describes the emotional and physical challenges faced during this period, including witnessing other heartbreaking situations within the NICU.

Notable Quote:
Aaron Weber (18:27): "I was like, what is happening right now? It was such a blur."

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6. Coping and Support Systems

Throughout their NICU stay, Aaron and Lucy navigated the complexities of their daughter's health, including a diagnosis of hypotonia and the implementation of a G-tube for feeding. The support from family, particularly Aaron's in-laws, and the evolving role of technology provided crucial assistance during this tumultuous time.

Notable Quote:
Aaron Weber (30:57): "She's got a little third, second belly button there on her stomach. It's the rest of her life."

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7. Genetic Testing and Future Concerns

Aaron delves into the stress of awaiting genetic test results to understand the underlying causes of their daughter's condition. The uncertainty and the daunting list of potential genetic disorders weigh heavily on him, emphasizing the emotional toll of parenthood in such trying circumstances.

Notable Quote:
Aaron Weber (43:49): "We're still waiting on the results back of that."

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8. Bringing Baby Home and Reflections

After a rigorous car seat safety test, Aaron finally brought their daughter home. He reflects on the blend of relief and ongoing challenges, portraying parenthood as a continuous learning experience where milestones are celebrated amidst daily struggles.

Notable Quote:
Aaron Weber (45:29): "By the end of it, I was feeling good. I was like, we're about to get her home."

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9. Advice to Younger Self

Towards the episode's conclusion, Aaron offers heartfelt advice to his younger self, emphasizing the importance of taking things seriously and valuing relationships over achievements. This introspection underscores the personal growth he has undergone through his journey into fatherhood.

Notable Quote:
Aaron Weber (58:18): "I wish I would have focused more on relationships with people versus, like, achievements and success."

---

Conclusion

Episode 337 of The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler presents a deeply moving narrative of Aaron Weber's path to fatherhood, marked by unexpected medical challenges and the enduring strength of family support. Through laughter and vulnerability, Aaron and Ryan navigate the complexities of life’s lowlights, offering listeners both empathy and inspiration.

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Connect with Aaron Weber:

• Website: AaronWeber.com
• Tour Dates: AaronWeber on Comedy.com
• Special on YouTube: Signature Dish by Aaron Weber

Follow Ryan Sickler:

• Website: RyanSickler.com
• Social Media: Ryan Sickler on all your social platforms

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the episode's meaningful discussions.

Transcript

[Aaron Weber]

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[Ryan Sickler]

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[Aaron Weber]

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[Ryan Sickler]

We're gonna wrap the Live and alive tour up Saturday, June 28th at the Horseshoe Casino. It's going to be a great night. I got Justin Schlegel from 98. Rock gonna be out there with me.

[Aaron Weber]

Rock.

[Ryan Sickler]

We're going to have some surprises. It's going to be a really big deal. Get your Tickets [e-mail] what's up, guys? Thank you for supporting the Patreon. We promised you guys some bonus content. We wanted to get you involved on the new tier. And after the Chelsea Lynn haircut thing, we were laughing so damn hard.

[Aaron Weber]

Oh, God.

[Ryan Sickler]

This.

[Aaron Weber]

Okay, hold on. That's you.

[Ryan Sickler]

Where the did you get this? This is my Chris Farley. Kirsten and I started talking about it and we were like, why don't we ask people to send in their worst haircuts And I'm not gonna leave you alone. All right, I got two of them for you. How about this one and this one? There you go. Those are mine. We'll clown them on the show. But submit your bad haircuts or your worst haircuts to the waybackpodmail.com that's the waybackpodmail.com Send your name and any you have, what year it's from, where you're from at the time, whatever. We'll show the pictures. We'll have fun making fun of all our worst haircuts.

[Aaron Weber]

The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler.

[Ryan Sickler]

Welcome back to the Honeydew, y' all. We're over here doing it in the night pants studios. I'm Ryan Sickler. Ryancickler.com and Ryan Sickler on all your social media. Thank you guys for supporting this show. Thank you for supporting anything I do. All right, make sure you're watching the way back as well. We got two great shows for free right here on this channel. Check them all out. Support everything. All right, that's the biz. You guys know what we're doing here? We're highlighting the low lights. I always say that these are the stories behind the storytellers. I'm very excited to have this guest on with me today here. First time on the Honeydew. Ladies and gentlemen, Aaron Weber. Welcome to the Honeydew era.

[Aaron Weber]

Excited to be here, man. This is where I throw some stuff out there. I plug some stuff right here. You tell me. Did you say right away?

[Ryan Sickler]

You did. You did.

[Aaron Weber]

I was afraid to just go right into it and you'd be like, what are you doing? So I just gotta.

[Ryan Sickler]

I'll lead you to. Okay. I promise.

[Aaron Weber]

My bad.

[Ryan Sickler]

Could you imagine if I was like, everywhere, like, follow me on all social media.

[Aaron Weber]

I was about to do. I'm glad I asked. Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Well, it's nice to. I've never met you before. It's nice to meet you. Turns out I do know your wife Zani's. I had no idea you. To the 2 and 2. Because we were talking about what we're going to talk about and now I actually know the lady.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Who were. Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

You got some context for.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah. So it was nice to say hello to her. What's up, Lucy? I say to her before the show.

[Aaron Weber]

She doesn't watch anything I'm on. Oh, I'm kidding. She'll watch this.

[Ryan Sickler]

Well, before we get into your story. Yeah, right there, brother. Plug it all.

[Aaron Weber]

Aaron weber, comedy.com. my MySpace page, I got all my tour dates on there. You can check that out. I'm going all over the country in 2025. Going to be going to a lot of clubs I've never been to, and pretty exciting at Real. Aaron Weber on everything. You can hear me every week on the Nateland podcast. And I have a special out now on YouTube called Signature Dish. 30 minutes, half hour. Just go, you know, put it on while you do the dishes. That's it.

[Ryan Sickler]

All right.

[Aaron Weber]

I kind of trailed off there at the end.

[Ryan Sickler]

You did good.

[Aaron Weber]

I had a good energy up top and then it faded out.

[Ryan Sickler]

You're also trying to remember everything, too. Like, a lot of people are going through that Rolodex and you have a different tone when you're thinking and talking then just fucking spitting it out.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

You did good, bro.

[Aaron Weber]

Thanks, dude. Appreciate it.

[Ryan Sickler]

Let's get into, first of all, your background. Where are you from originally?

[Aaron Weber]

Montgomery, Alabama.

[Ryan Sickler]

You're from the real South.

[Aaron Weber]

From the real South. Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

So. But here's the thing. You don't have the deep Southern accent.

[Aaron Weber]

Okay.

[Ryan Sickler]

To my Ear. You don't depend. People tell me I sound like I'm from the south all the time. Like, because you've never met someone or spoken to someone from the south, you.

[Aaron Weber]

Do have a little bit of a draw. I remember years ago listening to you going, I got to find out where he's. Because it might be something. You don't sound like you're from New York or la, is what I'm saying. No, I'm from Maryland, and that's a good thing, I think. Yeah, well, depending on where I am, people will go. You have thick accent. And then, like in Nashville or Montgomery, I don't at all. At all, because neither of my parents do. I think that's where you pick it up from.

[Ryan Sickler]

Where are they from originally?

[Aaron Weber]

My dad's from Mobile, Alabama, and my mom grew up in Montgomery, so they're local.

[Ryan Sickler]

All right.

[Aaron Weber]

About as Alabama as you can get, I think. And then I moved to Nashville and I was in high school, and I've just stuck around since. So my whole family's gone. They've all spread out now. But I'm still. I'm still.

[Ryan Sickler]

How many siblings?

[Aaron Weber]

I got an older brother and an older sister and then a younger brother. So I'm the middle of four. Okay. For big Catholic family, I think I have. I was just looking at this. I think I have, like, 48 first cousins, which I think is pretty. Pretty high.

[Ryan Sickler]

How many? Well, you also got to have at least a. I mean, unless one aunt or uncle went ham over there. Like, you gotta have a good set of siblings.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. My mom's one of seven, my dad's one of five, and they've all got kids, so. Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Are you all close? Like, is there. Was everyone down that area when you grew up?

[Aaron Weber]

They were all pretty close. And then as we've gotten older, we've all spread out a little bit. Even my siblings are all across the country now. They're in Tucson, Arizona, Columbus, Ohio, and Dallas, Texas. So.

[Ryan Sickler]

But your parents, are they still together?

[Aaron Weber]

Parents. Parents are still together.

[Ryan Sickler]

And they're still in Alabama.

[Aaron Weber]

They're in Dallas now. They've been moving around. They're about to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. Wow. They've been good for them forever, man. But, yeah, 48 first cousins. I was just thinking. I didn't even register to me that that's like a high number.

[Ryan Sickler]

That's. That's almost one estate, bro. You got the continental US covered, dude. You got the continental US coveredS, bro. That's crazy.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, because we were doing. When we Were doing, like, the guest list for our wedding. Holy. It was like, my wife, I think. I don't know, like, maybe 10 first cousins. And then I. I counted out almost 50. She's like, what is going on, dude? So.

[Ryan Sickler]

So what do you do in that situation? You have to invite everyone or you have to tell everyone. Look, man, you all have to. You'll get there one day and you'll understand.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

These budgetary things are going on here.

[Aaron Weber]

Huh? Huh?

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, zoom in. You can zoom in.

[Aaron Weber]

A lot of people did zoom in. Because that was 2021. People are still do that now, though.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, I'll zoom in that. Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

No more.

[Ryan Sickler]

I'm done with your I talked to a doctor wedding, and I'm zooming, bro.

[Aaron Weber]

I zoomed a doctor yesterday.

[Ryan Sickler]

Did you?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, I broke my toe this week.

[Ryan Sickler]

Telehealth.

[Aaron Weber]

A telehealth. I'd never done that. It's just a guy just talking to.

[Ryan Sickler]

Me and what did he. How the hell is he to see?

[Aaron Weber]

This is.

[Ryan Sickler]

These are the things, like, I can get. If you're saying, like, I'm. I'm congested or whatever, but if they need to put hands on you.

[Aaron Weber]

Well, I needed somebody to go. You need to go get hands put on you. Because I would have felt dumb if. I don't know, I got, like, an infection and I died because I didn't have a doctor look at it. So I'm literally with my laptop, like, holding my foot up to the camera. Some old man. He goes, yeah, it looks fine, man.

[Ryan Sickler]

He goes, keep it up. Oh, man. That's what an old doctor would say.

[Aaron Weber]

He goes, yeah, it's gonna be. There's nothing you can do. Just deal with it.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

I was like, all right, thanks, man. That's all I needed.

[Ryan Sickler]

Quit being a.

[Aaron Weber]

All right, next.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, I sit next. Oh, dude. Okay. So you mentioned you split high school to Nashville.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, between my sophomore and junior year of high school.

[Ryan Sickler]

So my.

[Aaron Weber]

My dad is a high school principal.

[Ryan Sickler]

Okay.

[Aaron Weber]

That's. That's been his job my. My whole life.

[Ryan Sickler]

Real quick, what was mom. What did mom do?

[Aaron Weber]

She's a teacher.

[Ryan Sickler]

Okay. Is that how they met?

[Aaron Weber]

Yes.

[Ryan Sickler]

That sounds like.

[Aaron Weber]

So my dad. Yeah, my dad was. Got his master's degree, and he was going to go get his doctorate, and somebody recommended, you know, go. Go teach at a high school for a year or two and then go back and get your doctorate. So he took a job at a Catholic high school in Montgomery, Alabama, because it was close to where his parents lived, and my mom was A teacher there, and they met, and they got engaged within two months. And then. And then got married. And he stuck around for almost 30 years after that.

[Ryan Sickler]

At that school.

[Aaron Weber]

At that same school. Yeah. Never went back and got his doctorate. I was gonna ask.

[Ryan Sickler]

No.

[Aaron Weber]

He met my mom, and he was like, all right, I guess this is what I'm supposed to do, so. So he got. He got a job at a different high school up in Nashville. I did not want to move. Nobody wants to move in the middle of high school.

[Ryan Sickler]

Okay. So the whole family's going.

[Aaron Weber]

The whole family.

[Ryan Sickler]

Okay. I didn't realize.

[Aaron Weber]

My bad. Yeah. It was like. Yeah. I was. When I was 16, just doing whatever your parents are telling you to do. So moved up there to the last two years of high school in Nashville, and then I'm still there, and everybody's gone. It's so funny. I put up such a. A fuss about moving, and now I'm the only one still there.

[Ryan Sickler]

And they're all over the place.

[Aaron Weber]

They're all over the place. Yeah. Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

All right.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

So. And now, recently, what, six months, eight months ago, you become a dad?

[Aaron Weber]

Almost six months. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Thanks, dude.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, it is.

[Aaron Weber]

Appreciate it, man.

[Ryan Sickler]

Person into this world.

[Aaron Weber]

It's so funny. All the things you hear before you have kids that sound so cliche and lame, they all. They all make sense. Like, I remember hearing the. The days are long, but the years are short. And then it's like, even just saying six months now is like, it's crazy. It's been almost half a year.

[Ryan Sickler]

My daughter's 10, and I'm telling you.

[Aaron Weber]

Wow.

[Ryan Sickler]

You know?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

That's the other thing I hear a lot. If you really want to appreciate the passing of time, have a child.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

And you're like, yeah, it's 10 years already, huh? I was just sitting next to her in the car the other day. I let her sit in the driver's seat, and I sat in the pasture seat, and I looked over, and I was like, this is going to be happening for real in 10 seconds. And I just play around.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. I can't even imagine that, dude. That feels like.

[Ryan Sickler]

I'll see, like, it feels like 300.

[Aaron Weber]

Years away, one or two year old. And I'm like, that kid's enormous. My daughter will never be that big. She'll never be that old. But it's coming, man.

[Ryan Sickler]

So talk to me about what happened with the birth and everything.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. So it's interesting. Watch it. The special that I just put out, there's so much going on at the moment I recorded that. That. It's kind of fun to watch. So what happened was the morning we were recording my. Which we taped at Zany's in Nashville, we had a routine ultrasound at our ob gyn. I think that's what. Obgyn. Yeah. The doctor and baby wasn't moving in the ultrasound.

[Ryan Sickler]

And how far along are you at this point?

[Aaron Weber]

We're supposed to have about another month.

[Ryan Sickler]

So you're way into the pregnancy?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, we're way. Yeah. Eight months. And the baby had been measuring small the whole time. She was in, like, the one or two percentile and everything. We're like, it's just going to be a small baby. When she gets out, she'll start growing. We'll catch her up. Right. But we went in for that routine ultrasound, and they could not. They couldn't find the baby with a heartbeat monitor or. Or a movement detector. So then we did an ultrasound, and the baby's just still, and they're trying to get it to move, and it's just. It's not moving. So I was like, oh, man.

[Ryan Sickler]

Are you in the room for this?

[Aaron Weber]

I'm in the room with my wife. Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Do you sense a little bit of panic from them or.

[Aaron Weber]

While you start.

[Ryan Sickler]

Are they speaking out loud? Are they saying this so you know what's going on?

[Aaron Weber]

She did a good job. I wish I remembered her name because she was so great our whole pregnancy. But she did a really good job narrating it in a way that we weren't really panicking. She was like, we're just trying to get her to move. We were playing music on her stomach. Couldn't get her to move. So our doctor comes in and goes, listen, we can't. We can't detect movement on this. So we're gonna have to deliver the baby right now. We're gonna have to go to Vanderbilt Hospital downtown. We're gonna go deliver the baby.

[Ryan Sickler]

Because their fear is.

[Aaron Weber]

The fear is they thought maybe the placenta was no longer working. The baby's not growing, and it's not moving. So they're like.

[Ryan Sickler]

And they don't sense a heartbeat.

[Aaron Weber]

They can detect the heartbeat, but it's. The baby's not moving. They can't. It's not moving at all. So I'm sorry. I should have made that clear. She's alive, but just not.

[Ryan Sickler]

I was worried that they were thinking she might not be, and maybe that's.

[Aaron Weber]

Why they got to get out thinking all that stuff. Totally thinking.

[Ryan Sickler]

I'm already thinking it's not even My situation. I'm already there. Like, what's going on?

[Aaron Weber]

So it's Bruce. I remember going very selfishly, I'm like, all right, we're delivering the baby. I'm like, I'm recording a special tonight, so I gotta, like. I gotta figure out what to do with that. Right. But I go, let's go. Let's go. Make sure this is happening before. Before I cancel everything, because this is like 8 or 9 in the morning. So we head down to Vanderbilt, and they came in with this device that, like, sends acoustic waves through the stomach. And that woke the baby up. And the baby's moving. So we're like, okay. But now I got. My wife's crazy.

[Ryan Sickler]

They have that.

[Aaron Weber]

I know. Like, what a crazy device. Somebody.

[Ryan Sickler]

Anyone survive in the Wagon Wheel days.

[Aaron Weber]

Exactly. Exactly. I think I thought about that a lot through this whole process.

[Ryan Sickler]

Me too. When I had a bit. When we had our baby, I'm like, how did they ever do. Do this?

[Aaron Weber]

Why they didn't. I think a lot of them just.

[Ryan Sickler]

Died or they're dying at like, 22.

[Aaron Weber]

Exactly.

[Ryan Sickler]

That's old age.

[Aaron Weber]

That's an old man at 22. So my wife's at the hospital, and I had to. I left my wife at the hospital to go record the special you did that day.

[Ryan Sickler]

So was she okay with it?

[Aaron Weber]

She was, yeah, she was. Here's what happened. She was bummed because she was excited to be there. She ended up getting discharged between the two shows, and she surprised me at the. She came right from the hospital. Yeah. So it was just so much going on at. But I watch the special, and there's like a section of it where I talk a little bit about the. The baby that's coming, but you don't know is. I'm on stage thinking, like, I could be having this baby. Like, I have no idea. The baby could be. While I'm on stage, I could be having. Having the baby. So it looks almost like a different person telling. Telling all those stories. But that's. That's why all that was happening. Anyway, it all ended up being good that that happened because. Because of that.

[Ryan Sickler]

Sorry, can I just ask you a question?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Ryan Sickler]

What was it? Did they tell you why the baby wasn't moving or.

[Aaron Weber]

So my wife had pretty crazy pregnancy. Towards the end. She had two things going on. She had gestational diabetes, which means she couldn't eat anything she wanted to eat the whole pregnancy. And she had something called polyhydramios. She had high fluid level because the baby was not Swallowing the amniotic fluid. So. So Lucy, my wife, presented as, like, a month or two more pregnant than she actually was.

[Ryan Sickler]

Okay.

[Aaron Weber]

Because she had a surplus of amniotic fluid. So there's just a lot going on. We don't have a diagnosis or anything. We're just like, let's just get the baby out, and we'll take a look. But because all that happened, that forced us to have the baby at Vanderbilt, which is, like, the best hospital in the state of Tennessee. So we're all really lucky that happened because she was at Vanderbilt. That's where the NICU was, and that's where she spent the first month of her life was there at Vanderbilt. So it's all good that we did it there.

[Ryan Sickler]

How much longer after that incident does your baby come into the world? Two or three weeks naturally at that point, then?

[Aaron Weber]

No. Well, they ended up. Ended up doing a C section, I guess.

[Ryan Sickler]

I don't mean. I apologize for asking that way. I don't mean no naturally, like natural. I just mean they didn't have to induce or anything because of this incident. Like, they weren't saying, hey, we got to get her out of there earlier.

[Aaron Weber]

Trying to remember, or just like, this was so contractions.

[Ryan Sickler]

And then, like, all right, we got to go.

[Aaron Weber]

I think we did end up. Yeah, I think we. We ended up inducing a little, like, a week or two early because they just recommended we should do that. So a lot of this is. I haven't really talked about this stuff publicly, so I'd like. I'm trying to get the timeline of everything in my head, but the birth process was brutal for my wife. Dude, they. We kept losing the baby on the monitor and then have to come in and, like, rotate her so that we could hear. Yeah. Because where was she?

[Ryan Sickler]

Where the she going? In there for real, dude.

[Aaron Weber]

How are they losing her? These heartbeat monitors, and. And. And then they would stop, and so a nurse would come in and go, let's just turn her. And then it come back. And then once it didn't come back, and they hit some magic button. I remember it was like, three in the morning. They hit some magic button. Like, the Avengers showed up. Like, 40 doctors just, like. Is that right? Swarmed in because they couldn't get the heartbeat.

[Ryan Sickler]

How terrifying is that?

[Aaron Weber]

It was like. I was like, what is happening right now? Cow is such a blur. It was. My wife was in labor, I think almost 30 hours of just, like, continuous. Just, like, brutal pain. And I'm just there feeling as helpless as you can possibly feel.

[Ryan Sickler]

I'VE always said that too. After that, you ever want to feel like less than nothing, like you think you're a man and you matter? Watch a woman have a baby?

[Aaron Weber]

Yes.

[Ryan Sickler]

You don't even need to be there. You don't matter at all.

[Aaron Weber]

And it's all. I don't know if this is common. Every hospital, it was all women in there. All nurses, doctors, everybody. It's all women. And I just feel like an idiot just in the way, just standing in the corner, you know? But we ended up doing a C section. We had the baby. It was awesome. It's awesome. Still awesome. That night. So we had. We had the baby back at the. In our room and my in laws are there and it's all great. And then that night, I. I look at her and she's kind of like blue in the face. I was like, yeah, God. I think she's like cold or something. So nurse comes in, they take her to the nursery. They can't really warm her up, so they take her to the nicu. That's just like a phrase you don't want to hear, right? The nicu. But she's there, so they determine she has something called hypotonia, which is like low, low muscle tone, basically. She's just. She's just laying there like, no. No muscle strength, no flailing around. Just kind of rag doll syndrome is what it's referred to.

[Ryan Sickler]

Is that right?

[Aaron Weber]

Sounds kind of brutal when it put it like that. But yeah, yeah, she. She's got a little bit of. She's moving around a little bit, but she's not like she's supposed to. Right. So they put her in the NICU because she can't breastfeed or take a bottle because she's got no strength in her neck.

[Ryan Sickler]

Right.

[Aaron Weber]

She can't. She can't suck or swallow or anything. So they have to get an NG tube. They put it down her nose, and that's how we had to feed her for a long time. So she ended up being. We weren't able to take her home until we could feed her on our own, obviously, like. So, yeah, it was, I think 20, 23, 24 days in the Nikki before we're able to bring her home. So it's, it's. It was, it was tough, dude. That first night, leaving the hospital.

[Ryan Sickler]

That's what I want to ask.

[Aaron Weber]

Without your kids. It was awful, man.

[Ryan Sickler]

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[Aaron Weber]

So my wife had the C section, so she's in the hospital recovering from that, right?

[Ryan Sickler]

That's what I want to ask you. You go home by yourself that first night.

[Aaron Weber]

I did a couple runs to like get stuff from the house, but I didn't do a night away from the hospital for a while.

[Ryan Sickler]

But once Lucy's ready to go home, they basically are like, you guys gotta go. Baby stays here.

[Aaron Weber]

Exactly.

[Ryan Sickler]

And you both together go home. Yeah. Tell me what that is.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, you get in the car and the car seats there empty. Oh, brutal, dude. It was awful. It was awful. Then you get home and you're like, I mean, we did like a little photo shoot at the house before we left, like last day without the baby and now we're back, you know, without the baby still. So that was probably the toughest stretch. Was like all the, the days after that, waking up in the morning, just driving to the hospital, staying there all day and then just driving back and then you're home.

[Ryan Sickler]

What are the hours? What are you allowed to get there?

[Aaron Weber]

And we're the parents. We can be there 24, 7.

[Ryan Sickler]

Okay.

[Aaron Weber]

So, but we ended up by the end of it, we were leaving at like 7 or 8pm and driving home and then getting there first thing in the morning. So it was a tough, it was a tough stretch.

[Ryan Sickler]

How long, how long is the, how long is your daughter in the nicu? When you guys finally Go home. Like, how long I think you have to do this?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, 20, 23 days before able to take her home. One thing being in the NICU for that long will do. And I'm realizing that just talking about this out loud is. It really puts your suffering in perspective. Because as tough as it was for us, it's like we saw so many horrible things in there. Like, very early on, I walked out in the hallway to use the bathroom and a baby had just died. And they were walking it with the parents through the hallway. Oh, I'm just standing there and I'm like, this is the same part of the hospital my kids at, like, that was jarring to see or. And some of the babies that we'd share rooms with, you know, we go over and look at them and read their write up and be like, oh my God, this is terrible, dude. Now we were also lucky. You know, I don't have a real job. I'm a comic and my wife.

[Ryan Sickler]

I.

[Aaron Weber]

Have a made up job. So I can just be there, right?

[Ryan Sickler]

And. Right.

[Aaron Weber]

Well, no one's dependent on us for.

[Ryan Sickler]

We don't need to be anywhere.

[Aaron Weber]

No, no, no. I'm the least essential worker of all time.

[Ryan Sickler]

And you're a dude in that hospital. They hate you, bro. They hate you. They go home at night on you, dude.

[Aaron Weber]

Like this guy, this guy's doing nothing. Professional clown. Yeah. So it was. But dude, I was, you know, at first I was very naively. I was kind of judgmental of these other parents, these babies just in these rooms. And I'm like, they never even show up to where are these parents at? And then you realize, dude, a lot of them live hours away and the baby's been in there six months and like, at a certain point they got to go back to work, you know. So I started to be. Be lust less. Less judgmental those parents, once you realize that's going on. So all of that having all that going around is like, you start to really be appreciative of, of the little. I was like, okay. Nothing our daughter ever had was super life threatening. There was never like, our daughter's about to die. She was never on an oxygen tank or anything like that. Never had heart surgery. And all these babies around us are having all this. So that really put everything into perspective now. It was tough not being able to take her home. And it's still, you know, we still got a lot of stuff that we're waiting to figure out. We got some testing that we're waiting to hear back. We don't really. We really don't know what the underlying cause of all this is. So that's another struggle. It's just the not knowing what the deal.

[Ryan Sickler]

The waiting, you know?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. Yeah, dude.

[Ryan Sickler]

What about. Have they said, like, I know the nicus are amazing these days. Yeah, they're so incredible. Are there any. Have they said, hey, you might want to watch out for this or any of this down the line. Is she. Where is she in her height and weight percentile and all that?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, she was. She was one percentile in weight. One percentile in height.

[Ryan Sickler]

Listen, I have a kid, and I still don't understand what the fuck that means. And I talked to her pediatrician and she tells me, and I look at her, I go, it still doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, 1%. Then what does that mean?

[Aaron Weber]

There's.

[Ryan Sickler]

For her. What. What do we categorize for her age? For her age. Only 1% of the babies her age are that weight or smaller or smaller.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. So 99 of babies are bigger than. Than her.

[Ryan Sickler]

And how much are we talking about? How much smaller? Is it significant?

[Aaron Weber]

I think early on you're talking about a pound or two. So it's not. It's not a crazy. It's not like she was a pound. I mean, she was five pounds when she was born, but. But wasn't growing that much.

[Ryan Sickler]

And did she grow in the NICU enough?

[Aaron Weber]

She started to graft after we figured out how to feed her. Right. She started to really grow.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

So we ended up getting what's called a. A G tube. We had a. We made the choice to have the surgery. She's got a little button in her stomach that just goes right into her stomach now still. Yeah. No, they make you leave it in for at least a year.

[Ryan Sickler]

It comes out. Out.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

I can take it out if you see it. They told me. I haven't been, but they tell me if you go to, like, a kid's pool, public pool, you'll see some kids. It looks like a different belly button.

[Ryan Sickler]

The last thing you and I need to be going is going to a kid's public pool and squinting anywhere near their belly button. It's the last thing we need to be doing. Don't go looking for one of these.

[Aaron Weber]

I like squinting across the way.

[Ryan Sickler]

Right above the waistline.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

So what? It looks like another belly button.

[Aaron Weber]

That's what it looks like when it's removed now. It's like a little plastic thing. You just open it up. Now you pump. Pump food right into the Stomach.

[Ryan Sickler]

It's pretty amazing how like when you say pump food, is it a little tube you put in there and you're liquid.

[Aaron Weber]

Hook a hose up to it and you can, you can just let it drain in with gravity or you can use an electric pump that just pumps the formula and breast milk right in, right into the stomach.

[Ryan Sickler]

That's how your daughters had to eat.

[Aaron Weber]

That's how she has to eat. Yeah, we, we, we're. Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

What's it called?

[Aaron Weber]

It's called a G tube. A gastronomy.

[Ryan Sickler]

Like a gastrointestinal something like that.

[Aaron Weber]

A lot of this terms are.

[Ryan Sickler]

And it goes where.

[Aaron Weber]

Right into the stomach.

[Ryan Sickler]

Right in like the intestine and stuff?

[Aaron Weber]

No, right into the stomach.

[Ryan Sickler]

Get the.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, you just drop it right in. So.

[Ryan Sickler]

And then her body from there is good to process it and everything else.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, they. The stomach treats it just like you swallowed it.

[Ryan Sickler]

So.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Okay. In the old days, she would have died, definitely died.

[Aaron Weber]

100. Well, I think about when you mentioned that earlier, I was like, there's probably like nine different times where my wife or baby would have died. I mean even like 100 years ago.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, easily.

[Aaron Weber]

They weren't doing C sections 100 years ago, I don't think.

[Ryan Sickler]

I don't know if they were.

[Aaron Weber]

They were pretty risky.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, I would imagine they weren't.

[Aaron Weber]

I don't even know. They were washing hands 100 years ago. So that dude. C sections and then. Yeah, my baby would have just died because it wouldn't. Wouldn't drink and I wouldn't drink breast milk at all.

[Ryan Sickler]

So she can swallow on everything now though, right?

[Aaron Weber]

We're working on it. We've got like four or five different therapists that come to the house and help out with different.

[Ryan Sickler]

How old is she?

[Aaron Weber]

She's almost six months now. Okay, so we've got physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. Speech is the one who helps with drinking the bottle. So we're working on getting her my speech on that. That I don't know why they call it that. I remember when they go, we're gonna hook her up with some speech therapy. I think it's a little early.

[Ryan Sickler]

It's a lot early.

[Aaron Weber]

She's not even smiling yet. But speech is just the all encompassing term for everything with the mouth, I guess. So we try to do what we can through a bottle and then we give the rest through the G tube. So.

[Ryan Sickler]

So like let's say how much of a bottle was she? You know what little baby bottle right now.

[Aaron Weber]

145 milliliters. Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

You're on the middle.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. 155 milliliters is what we're shooting for every feed.

[Ryan Sickler]

So then the rest goes through the tube.

[Aaron Weber]

No. 155 total. So we'll try to. Maybe she'll take 65 through the bottle, and that's a good one.

[Ryan Sickler]

Okay.

[Aaron Weber]

Then we'll give her 90 through the G tube. So the goal, obviously is we get to a point where she can take everything just through a bottle. Yeah. And we get that G tube taken out, we never have to use it again.

[Ryan Sickler]

And then she just has a little, like, belly button.

[Aaron Weber]

She's got a little third, second belly button there on her stomach. Yeah. The rest of her life. But yeah, dude, it's. It's a whole. These terms. It's like a whole world. I knew nothing about my family. We had no health issues. Nothing, Nothing like this growing up. And now you're just dropped in this world of like, medical equipment around the house and changing dressing on her. You know, all this stuff that you're just kind of thrown into, it's. It's become part of the routine now. We're in a bit of a groove right now. But, dude, at first it's like it was. It was so much. It was so overwhelming, all the stuff being thrown at you.

[Ryan Sickler]

I mean, just being a new parent is overwhelming. If everything goes perfect, you know, like, that's overwhelming enough. And then you have to become a doctor now. You know what I mean? Like, you're like, I don't. Again, I don't have a. I'm not qualified for this. I shouldn't be able to even have a real job. I shouldn't be doing anything medical to anybody.

[Aaron Weber]

You know what the real tough part is of now is it's. It's tough to. We can't get. Because of all that. You can't really get like a normal babysitter because you'd have to train them on all this equipment and stuff. Even a lot of nurses don't know how to use the specific.

[Ryan Sickler]

Is that right?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, like G tube and pump that we have. So that makes a little harder to find. Find people to watch the baby. We've trained our. Our in laws, and my parents know how to do it all, so my in laws are there right now in Nashville, actually.

[Ryan Sickler]

Oh, good.

[Aaron Weber]

Helping out Lucy, taking care of the baby.

[Ryan Sickler]

Good.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, man. It's been a. It's been a. I was thinking about this earlier because we don't know what the underlying issue is, but she's starting to kind of miss some Milestones, some stuff. Holding her head up, rolling over, stuff like that she's behind on. But now, like, when she meets one of those milestones, it's unbelievable. It's like, you really appreciate it, dude. You know, like, no, we don't take anything for granted, so obviously you wish. We wish our daughter was perfectly healthy and not in pain and everything. But it really makes you appreciate the little thing. I remember the first. First time she took any of the bottle. It was like a miracle. You're like, oh, my God.

[Ryan Sickler]

Doesn't it also feel good to see it working too? Like your hard work is paying off and helping this kid.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

You're not just like. You're like, what do we. It's not working. You know what I mean? You're feeling helpless.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. Yeah. She wasn't holding her head up for so long. And they're like, just keep doing tummy time. Keep doing tummy time. And you feel like nothing's happening. And then one day, she just kind of held her head up, and we were like, oh, my God, they throw.

[Ryan Sickler]

Throw Torticollis at you.

[Aaron Weber]

What is that?

[Ryan Sickler]

Torticollis.

[Aaron Weber]

Torticalis.

[Ryan Sickler]

I. I used to make. I used to. Only reason I remember what the it's called is because they would try to tell us that our baby. When my daughter was born, like, she would lean to one side, like, oh, her necks. And I was like, oh, this is where the insurance and stuff comes out. And she's got torticollis. And I'm like, what the. They call. And the only reason I remember it is because it was 50 bucks every session. And I used to sing to her, and I go, cost $50. I used to sing that to her all the time. So that's why I know what to call. This is bullshit. This is a bull. I'm just gonna move your neck over here. That's all I'm gonna do. And I did. And I got a circle pillow, you know, so her head didn't get the flat slope and all that. Especially when your baby's laying a lot.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. They say when your baby's in the NICU for a long time, she's just on her back the whole time, right? So they got these special pillows that they have they can, like, reshape. So they position her head to try to alleviate some of that. But it looks like her head heads. She's got a little misshapen. And I'm like, ah, she's. Who doesn't. She's a girl. Just get long hair. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I'm looking at my own head, and I'm like, yeah, this is hell.

[Ryan Sickler]

Rough.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Smooth. Perfect.

[Aaron Weber]

No, no.

[Ryan Sickler]

Your siblings have kids.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. So.

[Ryan Sickler]

And do any of them have health issues?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

So I'm just wondering if there's anything genetic that you're just, you know, maybe skipped. Your parents, maybe.

[Aaron Weber]

And we talked about all that because once. Once they call the genetics team in at the hospital, they ask you everything. I bet they ask you everything, dude. And then they'd get, like, a hunch, and they come. I remember the guy came in. They have a bit of a reputation around the hospitals being, like, kooks. Because the. The joke is like, oh, you met the genetics doctor, what he diagnosed you with? Because, I mean, if you go crawling through anybody's DNA, you'll find we all got weird stuff going on. Right? But, like, the genetics doctor would come in and be like. Like, can I shake your hand? And, like, shake our hand and be like, okay, and then leave. And you're like, what was that about? Like, he's. He wanted to see, like, our grip strength or something. Packages. By Expedia. You were made to be rechargeable.

[Ryan Sickler]

We were made to package flights, hotels.

[Aaron Weber]

And hammocks for less. Expedia, Mr. Made to travel. So my. My sister has five kids. My brother has four kids. So in the middle of all this hap. Like, not.

[Ryan Sickler]

Not how many second cousins y' all have, too.

[Aaron Weber]

I don't really. What is a second cousin.

[Ryan Sickler]

I just. I just watched the explanation on this. Okay, so our dad's first cousin. Yeah, our dad. Your. His son.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Our dad's first cousin is our first cousin once removed.

[Aaron Weber]

Once removed.

[Ryan Sickler]

That guy's cousin, or excuse me, kids are our second cousins. Okay, so it's first cousin once removed, then those kids are second.

[Aaron Weber]

It's your parents, cousins, kids.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yep, our second cousins. That's the way it was explained on this.

[Aaron Weber]

So removed is generations. Right?

[Ryan Sickler]

It's still. Even though it's not our first cousin, that guy is still a first cousin.

[Aaron Weber]

Okay.

[Ryan Sickler]

Once removed. A generation from us.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, they're.

[Ryan Sickler]

His kids are second cousins.

[Aaron Weber]

Okay. I probably got 300 of those.

[Ryan Sickler]

I'm saying you probably got a. I.

[Aaron Weber]

Need to sit down and add it all up. Have you ever done, like, an ancestry. None of that.

[Ryan Sickler]

Me, I'm not putting my DNA out there and having anybody show up in my life.

[Aaron Weber]

You know what, man? That was one of the. I'm usually resistant to that kind of thinking, but that was one of the things even in my brain, I go. I Don't know if I want to spit into a thing and give my DNA to a company. I don't. I don't know. And then it came out that they were selling all of it and there was like a huge data breach.

[Ryan Sickler]

Wait, is that right?

[Aaron Weber]

23Andme. I think that's all.

[Ryan Sickler]

I think when I hear this. I'm not giving you my DNA.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. But I would like to do. I would like to sit down and like, have somebody do it. Just like paperwork.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yes, yes. Without having to get on a website and open yourself up to freaks and whoever out there. I would love. Yes. No. I've had the genetic testing, so I know I've got two diseases. I've got one called Charcote Marie tooth disease. Those are the doctors that discovered it. And I'm missing, basically, it's, it's pretty common, but I'm missing like a layer, and my brothers have it too, of muscle in our legs from the knees down. So my calves are a little bit twiggy. Instead of I played soccer and sports my whole life, I should have tree trunk calves. But I'm missing a layer of muscle. Wow. So. And then also people who have it worse than me, like my. I have crazy high arches in my feet. My ankles sit back a little farther.

[Aaron Weber]

So that's all related to that.

[Ryan Sickler]

It's all from that. Yep. And they say your. You know what they say your legs look like inverted champagne bottles. That's exactly what they look like.

[Aaron Weber]

Wow.

[Ryan Sickler]

You ever see that and you think, oh, that guy skipped leg day. He might have what I have. And then the other thing I found out at 42 that I have is a blood disease called Factor 5 light. And my blood is prone to clotting. And I'm lucky because I've now clotted twice under 50 and made it it. But my dad died at 42, my grandmom 69.

[Aaron Weber]

And.

[Ryan Sickler]

But, but everyone back then in the 80s, they're just telling you, oh, it was a heart attack. Everything was called a heart attack when you were young back then. Now they're realizing that these younger people were probably actually victims of clots or something more like that. And I end up making it through this ordeal and getting these tests done and family tests done, finding out that the dead guy gave this shit to me and I'm the only one in the family that has it.

[Aaron Weber]

Wow.

[Ryan Sickler]

So now I gotta spread that to my daughter because if she has it, then birth control is out because that makes girls prone to clotting.

[Aaron Weber]

Wow.

[Ryan Sickler]

Something like a bed rest Anything lying dormant will clot and kill.

[Aaron Weber]

Have you done the testing on that? Do you know if you're. Did you pass that? No, I haven't.

[Ryan Sickler]

I ain't passing it.

[Aaron Weber]

Okay.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, I got it.

[Aaron Weber]

Okay.

[Ryan Sickler]

I haven't done it for her, so it's sort of controversial. Maybe that's not the right word, but the doctor said, like, look, you don't want to open that can of worms until we need to. So if you're considering at some point putting your daughter on birth control, I suggest testing then. Okay, if she's gonna be. You know. But also I want to know, because if she gets into a car accident or something, is in bed for a month, that can kill her, all because we didn't test. So it's coming. And she hates needles, so I'm not gonna make her do it right now because I'm like, it's. That's the only way to do it. They're gonna prick you or stab.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, dude, I had. Because we just did some. We just had some blood drawn for my daughter to do some of this genetic testing. And. And we get there, I'm holding her in my lap, and they can't find a vein on her arm. So they go, sorry, what we have to do is we have to prick her heel and kind of squeeze her foot and get the blood that way. So it takes like, five minutes. She's screaming bloody murder in my lap, looking at me. You know that look your baby gives you? Like you're just letting this happen. And they're draining, just drop at a time, and they fill up one little vial of blood. And I go, are we done? And they go, we got seven more of those to fill up. So it was tough, dude. Yeah. And she cried the whole time. And they got. They got it. Yeah, they got eight. I think they ended up getting six or seven of these. And they're like, that's it. We're good. The next day they call and they go, the blood was damaged during transit. We got to do it again.

[Ryan Sickler]

Nah.

[Aaron Weber]

So my wife and I are furious, dude. We're like, come on. Damage during transit. Like, what, do you lost it? You forgot to label it? Like, just tell us that. Anyway, so we have to go back in and do it again. And about one vial in, they go, her heel clotted up. We can't get blood from it. So the nurse goes, well, let's just go do a cheek swab.

[Ryan Sickler]

No.

[Aaron Weber]

And I go, that was an option the whole time. You could just take a little Q.

[Ryan Sickler]

Tip, put it on her cheek.

[Aaron Weber]

So that's what they do.

[Ryan Sickler]

Did.

[Aaron Weber]

I mean, my wife and I were driving home, we were like, why is that not the first first? It feels like what we did is the absolute last resort of what you have to do.

[Ryan Sickler]

You had to go through extremes to get the blood. It wasn't even a regular vein draw.

[Aaron Weber]

Exactly. Yeah. And they just took a Q tip. So we're waiting.

[Ryan Sickler]

That was their third option.

[Aaron Weber]

Third. It's crazy. Yeah. All that genetic testing stuff. Stuff is. They said to me at one point, they're like, you know, we'll do a round of tests, and we. We might get the results back and we don't have answers. And then you have a choice to make of, like, do you want to keep looking or do you want to just chalk it up as, like, we're all a little bit different? So we're still waiting on the results back of that. Of that. The cheek swab that we did. And then we'll. We'll go from there. But I've been, you know, I've read up on every possible genetic disorder that our daughter could have. I've read. I've read it all. And one of the things they tell you is they go, stop reading this. Yes, yes.

[Ryan Sickler]

Because your daughter's gonna have 46 different diseases. By the time I've been convinced of.

[Aaron Weber]

That one, that one I'd be convinced of so many. I look at her and I go, oh, you've got it.

[Ryan Sickler]

How's our daughter?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. And then they tell you, I got really good advice from my sister. She said, what you should never do is when you land on a diagnosis, actual or possible, don't go look up pictures of kids with it. Because then. Because you're only. You're only. You're only going to see your kid as that. You know what I mean? And, like, you want to look at your kid as. That's your baby. It's not. The disease is just something they have. You don't want to look at it as. That's, like, part of them. So, yeah, it's been stressful. I mean, you're still waiting to hear. Hear back about what it could be. It could be a range of things.

[Ryan Sickler]

You know, talk to me about the first day you finally get to actually drive your daughter home together.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember it well. So we had to pass what's called a car seat test before we could take her home. We had to sit her in the car seat for 90 minutes, hooked up to all the monitors and stuff, and.

[Ryan Sickler]

They sat her in your car with monitors? No.

[Aaron Weber]

Oh, no. We brought the car seat up to.

[Ryan Sickler]

Like, what just out there, like, idling and like, I didn't fill up enough for this. What about all the exhaust? My daughter.

[Aaron Weber]

We brought the. That's so funny.

[Ryan Sickler]

I really said that. Your doors open for 90 minutes. God. Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

So they got a lot out back for that. We. I made. So by the end of it, when I felt like we're about to get her home, I was making a lot of jokes in the nicu and, I mean, I was bombing left and right in there. Nobody.

[Ryan Sickler]

I hated you.

[Aaron Weber]

The big. The big joke I have, and I'm trying to, like, talk about this on stage now. When that. We brought the car seat into the room, we sat her in it. She passed the test. The nurse comes in and goes, oh, she passed. She's pretty comfortable in that car seat. And I go, yeah, she better be. That's her crib too. And she goes, I know you're kidding. Legally, I have to tell someone. You told me that. I was like, oh, brutal. So she had to tell like the charge nurse. And then they just came and made sure it was a joke. But that's the kind of. By the. By the end of it, I was. I was feeling good. I was like, we're about to get her home. So. Yeah, dude, that's a report. That's a road war.

[Ryan Sickler]

You said that somewhere.

[Aaron Weber]

We're gonna get a follow up from some agency soon to make sure she's got a real crib at the house.

[Ryan Sickler]

Look, man, you're just making my day harder. I gotta go tell the charger. She just said that. Okay, all right, all right.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, yeah. But it's. It's like. And I've heard it from every parent, that moment where you're just like, driving away with the baby was crazy. It's terrifying. It was insane terrifying.

[Ryan Sickler]

I'm slowing down at green light lights, dude. You know what I mean?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. And I got my wife in the back. I goes, it too hot back there? I don't know. Is she choking in the car seat? Is. Is crazy, dude. Especially after we've been given false hope so many times. Like, you can take her home tomorrow. And then we didn't. So by the end of it, I was convinced, like, man, maybe this won't happen. And then about 10 minutes later, like, she's just in the car.

[Ryan Sickler]

Crazy. Also, even if, again, your child's perfectly healthy, whatever that is, they just give you this person I know, and they're like, good luck to you guys out there in that bar. Yeah. Do you ever.

[Aaron Weber]

This sounds like so mean, but you ever see, like, you get people in your lives that are like idiots that have kids and you go, all right, well, if they can all thought about that all the time.

[Ryan Sickler]

I've always litmus tested everybody that way. In my, in my own mind, I'm like, if this motherfucker can do it, I know in college, I'm like, this guy's doing it. I know I can do.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

And I'm like, this dumb's got four kids.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. He's actually like a good parent.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

I'll be unbelievable.

[Ryan Sickler]

Maybe he is dumb. He's got 41 of them's enough.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, it's, it was pretty surreal. And we got, I mean, I drove. Yeah. The most cautious I've ever, I've ever driven. And then you bring her in the house and finally got to put her in the crib and everything. It was pretty, it was kind of a triumphant infant day. It felt like a real. And that's what I mean, like a lot of the stuff that would have felt kind of. This is supposed to happen once that's taken from you or at least delayed. Like, when it happens, it feels like, wow, what a great thing. We got our baby here.

[Ryan Sickler]

So how long were you guys together before you were engaged?

[Aaron Weber]

Oh, man. Maybe three or four years.

[Ryan Sickler]

And then how long were you married before you had the baby?

[Aaron Weber]

We got married May of 2021, had the baby September of 2024. So, yeah, you're about three years.

[Ryan Sickler]

Y happen pretty quick too. That's the other thing is like, I, I, I talk about all the time on this show. Like, you would think with the gazillions of people on this planet, it'd be so simple. And it is if you don't want that baby. But when you're trying, there's a lot of complications and then other things happen and it's just not as simple as you think it is.

[Aaron Weber]

And also just the constant worrying and thinking about it.

[Ryan Sickler]

Tell me about how you watch Lucy, first of all, just as a girlfriend and then a wife, but now you're watching her just. I mean, do you marvel over, like, watching this lady take. Put food in a tube in your. I mean, that's crazy. Yeah, it's, it's signing on to something you don't even know you're signing on total. You don't know you're going to be doing that as a parent.

[Aaron Weber]

We were thinking about that on our first date, you know, but even as.

[Ryan Sickler]

Even when you're pregnant, you're having good times and you're thinking about being a parent, whatever that is, Future trip down the, down the road. What, you don't think you're gonna be a nurse?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

You know what I mean? Or a fucking doctor putting a tube in your kid's stomach.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's pretty special. It's pretty special. I remember had a moment even during her pregnancy where she had the gestational diabetes and it was, there was a point where like anything she ate would spike her blood sugar and it basically told her the only way to get that blood sugar back down. You gotta go on a walk or something. But she's in pain, she can't walk much. So what I did was I a. A little walking pad, a little treadmill and I put it up in the living room and I set it up in front of the TV and I put a chair on either side. And then if her blood sugar spikes, you'd have to walk on this treadmill to get the blood sugar back down. And I did have a moment where I looked at her, she's super pregnant and she's struggling to walk on this treadmill to get her blood sugar back down. And I remember thinking like, I will like this kid better not ever disrespect her in some crazy way because this is like, this is unbelievable what she's doing for this baby that we haven't even really met yet but is still already so loved in all these ways.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

You have a lot of moments like that. I think a lot about. You're saving Private Ryan, the movie, you know at the end when Tom Hanks grabs Matt Damon and he says, earn this, earn this, earn what we've all done for you. I have that moment with my daughter at one point, like, earn, earn what your mom did for you. Because it was nine months of a tough pregnancy and then you know, three weeks of, of hell for her essentially. So like you gotta, you know, earn this. Think about that a lot now.

[Ryan Sickler]

How about your parents? Grandparents? They stoked on it.

[Aaron Weber]

They're stoked. It's my in laws. First grand. First grand.

[Ryan Sickler]

Their first one.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, they're so, they're very excited. It's mine. Parents. Exactly.

[Ryan Sickler]

What took you so long?

[Aaron Weber]

Exactly. My mom's retired now, so she's full time grandkids. So she, she loves mapping out the year going, I'll go spend a week with those grandkids and help out. And so she's hopping around, she's going to Be at our house for a week or two. Coming up soon. Yeah, it's the best, dude, just having them there to do, even just to like just hold the baby. Let me go do something real quick, stuff like that.

[Ryan Sickler]

I know it's a lot, it's six months in and everything, but are you, are you. Would you have another. Would you think of it? Would you consider it? Would Lucy? I mean, it's her body going through. Yeah, yeah, it's easy for us.

[Aaron Weber]

Again, we genuinely have not thought that far ahead yet because there's still so much up in the air about what our daughter's life is going to look like and what our life is going to look like moving forward. So I think once we have a better understanding of that, we can start to talk about that. But we genuinely have not had a conversation. But we love it. I mean we, we talk about all the time. Like it's pretty crazy. You didn't know you could like love and care about something so much as. Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Also that's what I wanted to ask you next is how impressed are you with yourself? Because that, that's a. You don't know you can love and take care of something either. Yeah, look, I, my daughter was healthy, but at one I split with her mom and we're. I'm a, I'm a new dad still and I'm a new single dad at 1 years old. I have this kid myself. That's when she's with me for 50 of the time doing it all myself. And I look back now like a photo pop up 10 years ago and I'm like, how the did I do?

[Aaron Weber]

How did I do that?

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, how did I take that little tiny ass baby razor, do right by her, feed her, clothe or get her here on time, there on time. Like, like be this responsible person. How the did I do it? Yeah, you blow yourself away with that and then on top of it, you're doing all the medical stuff.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thanks, man. I haven't, haven't. I haven't really taken a step back and thought about all that's because you're.

[Ryan Sickler]

In it, you know?

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, we're in the thick of it.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah, for sure. But I don't, I didn't either.

[Aaron Weber]

I didn't either.

[Ryan Sickler]

It was a, it took a photo pop up thing for me to go, yeah, I did that.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Oh my God, you don't even realize how little they are too. And then you look back, you're like.

[Aaron Weber]

Like, oh my God, dude, we're doing that for Six months where we see old pictures and we're like, golly, dude. First of all, she's not as cute as I remember being that first week. I remember in earnest, having conversation with my wife being like, it's crazy. Like, our baby's like the cutest one in the whole nicu. Like these other babies. And now I look, you know, you're like, oh, she looked like any other baby. But you know, I think about with golf. Do you play golf at all? I don't, I don't really. I play every now and then. But it was so intimidating to me to start because I knew I'd be horrible. And in your head, you think, everybody at the golf course is good at golf. They've been doing this forever. And then I showed up to like a public course.

[Ryan Sickler]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

And I'm like, I go, dude, everybody sucks.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

None of us know what we're doing out here. And that's what parenthood feels like to me. There's nobody who's like, I know exactly what I'm doing all the time. I've got all the answers.

[Ryan Sickler]

Well, here's the thing I was going to say to you too. Like. Like, everyone's parenting is set. It's their set. How am I trying to say this? It's what they have to deal with.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

You know what I mean? Like, your parenting doesn't apply to my kid. Cuz my kid isn't. And vice versa. I. I always say to anybody, they're like, do you have any advice? Yes. Listen to everyone and listen to no one.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Whatever works for you. Your wife, your family, your unit, your whatever you. Some people work graveyard shifts.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

That life is different for someone. Like, whatever works best for you and your unit that is healthy and good for everybody is what you do.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

And that advice does not apply to every single parent out there.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. At all.

[Ryan Sickler]

You know, like, that's what I always say. Don't listen to anybody.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. Get through the day, hear it all.

[Ryan Sickler]

And then, you know, figure out what works for you. And then someone's gonna be like, what advice do you have? And you're like, I don't know, do you, you know, do you ever have to feed your. Does your kid have a second belly button? Have you been in a public pool staring at little boys belly buttons from a distance intently? Have you done that? Granted, you can only do it once. Yeah, twice. It's a problem.

[Aaron Weber]

Well, my wife's in all. My wife's in all these Facebook groups with other moms.

[Ryan Sickler]

That's the other thing we didn't. They didn't have back then either. You just knew a neighbor, and you're like, well, Linda does this. You're like, well, Linda, man. Don't know what the she's doing.

[Aaron Weber]

I don't even. Dude, that will. My parents will come to the house, and, you know, there's just all kinds of technology and things that we have now that they did not. Oh, yeah. And. And my parents are trying to wrap their head this tech. I just got a baby monitor that will, like, text me if something covers the baby's face.

[Ryan Sickler]

I didn't even have that.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, this is, like. I think it's all pretty new even now, but I'm crazy explaining this to my parents who did. I slept, like, in a crib on my stomach with stuffed animals and all the stuff they tell you not to do.

[Ryan Sickler]

I say I found an old picture of me in the crib. And I'm like, there's 10 things in this crib that shouldn't be in here. It could kill my.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

And I'm getting. You know, you can't have the mesh net or. You got. It was the bug bumper, baby bumpers.

[Aaron Weber]

Can't have the bumper now.

[Ryan Sickler]

And it was mesh before, so they could breathe through it. Now it's no bumper, I believe. Like, no bumpers.

[Aaron Weber]

No bumper.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah. They went mesh for a minute.

[Aaron Weber]

No blanket, no pillow. Literally just the baby.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yep.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. So, yeah, all that's new. My parents don't. They don't know about any of this stuff. So that's kind of fun, seeing them see all this.

[Ryan Sickler]

But also, too. What. What is it called that your daughter has again?

[Aaron Weber]

So a G tube is the equipment that she uses.

[Ryan Sickler]

Imagine, just in the 80s or the early 90s.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

You're the only people in the neighborhood that has a kid with a G tube. Now your wife can go get on a Facebook group. There's 20 people that have dealt with this, and they already did. And they can tell you this and this and this.

[Aaron Weber]

And we've already in the area. We've already met up and met some of these other parents and stuff.

[Ryan Sickler]

And you would have. They could all. Back in the 80s. They're all in the area. You would have never known it.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ryan Sickler]

And they're right there with answers and help. But that's great.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, exactly. And we've had a couple. Like, we ran out of some equipment, and I had to drive, like, 45 minutes outside of the city to go pick up, like, some special tape from this random person my wife met on Facebook. So there is this little community of like, we're all going through the same thing, which is kind of fun. I don't like being in those groups, though. I don't like reading. I put pictures of their kids and some of these kids are so banged up, tough to look. I just. My wife's in there.

[Ryan Sickler]

Well, dude, I'm glad everything's going well.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, we're getting there, man. I appreciate it. It feels like there. We've had really great days and it's like I remember thinking, not knowing if we would have those, you know, days. And now it's like, things are going well, so it's awesome, man. I appreciate it.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yeah.

[Aaron Weber]

Thank you for letting me. This is the first time I've kind of talked about any of the. Any of this stuff, so I hope it kind of made sense.

[Ryan Sickler]

It totally. We're dealing with.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah.

[Ryan Sickler]

Before we wrap up, advice you'd give 16 year old Aaron Weber. Let's hear it.

[Aaron Weber]

Dude, I. I wish. I wish I would have not been afraid to take things seriously. What do you mean? Sometimes, because I feel like, you know, that part of you that and I still have. And I think it's good to have a little bit whenever you do something like, sincerely, there's a little party that's like, this is stupid and lame. I had a lot of that in high school. And that I think that prevented me from doing. From doing, like, taking things seriously. I think about that sometimes.

[Ryan Sickler]

Because your friends would be like, gay 100%.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of that.

[Ryan Sickler]

So over here, what I'm thinking in my head, I think. I think I know what he's means.

[Aaron Weber]

Yes.

[Ryan Sickler]

Yes.

[Aaron Weber]

So I wish I would have just.

[Ryan Sickler]

Been, like, allowed yourself to be softer, kinder and gentler than other idiots calling you.

[Aaron Weber]

But you need a little bit of that or else you become a nightmare. You need a little bit of a guy going, all right, shut up. Yeah, you're being lame. And the other thing is like, I focus on. I was just thinking about this actually too. Like, I worked. Worked really hard in high school to get to the college I wanted to go to, which is what Notre Dame is where.

[Ryan Sickler]

Oh, wow.

[Aaron Weber]

So by the time I got to Notre Dame, I was. I was not working hard at all.

[Ryan Sickler]

But I.

[Aaron Weber]

But I guess I wish I would have focused more on relationships with people versus, like, achievements and success. In a lot of ways it was a focus more on relationships because I've got probably only a handful of friends from high school that I still talk to that I'm like, close with or see once a year. And I know that's not the case for a lot of guys. They know a lot of. They still hang out with a lot of guys from high school. So I wish I had to focus more on relationships and not achieve.

[Ryan Sickler]

That's the first time I've heard that on here.

[Aaron Weber]

Yeah, it's kind of resonating.

[Ryan Sickler]

I mean, you're. Yeah, that's great, dude. Thank you. Thank you for doing this.

[Aaron Weber]

I appreciate it, man.

[Ryan Sickler]

One more time. You're welcome. Please promote everything and anything you'd like. You're special.

[Aaron Weber]

You got a special out now. It's fun. It's not like what I've been talking about. Signature dish. It's on you. It's on Nate Bargetzi's YouTube. He produced the special. He put it out. So go check that out. Signature dish at real Aaron Weber on all social Media. Aaron Weber, Comedy.com for all my tour dates. Thank you, dude. Thank you for having me.

[Ryan Sickler]

Thank you.

[Aaron Weber]

Appreciate it, man.

[Ryan Sickler]

As always. Ryan Sickler on all your social media. Come see me on tour. Tickets are at my website, Ryan sickler dot com. We'll talk to you all next week.