The Unplanned Parent

Season Two is here. 👶

Last season, we followed Ashley and Raman through the whole wild, beautiful, planned-yet-unplanned journey to becoming platonic co-parents — the IVF, the waiting, the figuring it out as they went.

Now Baby Zen has arrived, and everything has shifted. Season Two lives in that shift: the newborn haze, the questions nobody fully prepares you for, jaundice scares, feeding curveballs, sleepless nights, and the co-parenting dynamics that look one way on paper and completely different in real life. We're bringing some incredible guests along the way, and we're figuring a lot of this out in real time — right alongside Raman and Ashley.

If you've been with us since Season One — thank you, genuinely. This show exists because you showed up. If you're just joining us, welcome. Subscribe wherever you listen, and we'll see you in Season One.

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Consult your treating physician for guidance specific to your situation!

IVF gets thrown around as a catch-all term. Most people — including most patients — don’t actually know what it involves.

Dr. Rhea Chattopadhyay, reproductive endocrinologist and IVF specialist, joins Angel and Raman to walk through the whole process: AMH testing, ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval, embryo grading, PGT-A, expanded carrier screening, embryo transfer, and what the body still has to do after the clinic’s work is done.

She also covers the ethical questions that don’t have clean answers yet — what happens to unused frozen eggs and embryos, how many IVF cycles is too many, and what it’s like to have the crystal ball conversation with patients who want to know if it’s going to work.

A lot of people go through fertility treatment completely alone. This episode was made for them.

The baby is a few months away. Angel decides it’s time to talk about SIDS.

Episode 10 is the safe sleep episode — what SIDS actually is, what parents can control, and what the data says about all the things new parents worry about: belly sleeping, swaddling, co-sleeping, pacifiers, reflux, over-bundling, and breathing patterns that look alarming but are completely normal.

Angel also shares a Rutgers study on Indian American SIDS rates that complicates the co-sleeping conversation in really interesting ways. And confirms that your baby can sleep in a cardboard box if you’re in a bind. It’s AAP-endorsed.

Masha is back, and this time she goes all the way in.

This episode is Masha’s divorce story — why she ended a marriage that looked fine from the outside, how she and her ex navigated separation during COVID with her mother in the house and two kids under seven, and what she’d do differently if she could go back. She also talks about introducing Raman to her kids, how her son handled learning that his dad was dating, and the decision to stop drinking that she credits with finally helping her move forward.

Dr. Angel covers adverse childhood events, what buffers them, and what the research says about how kids from non-traditional households actually do. Plus: the surprising stats on how today’s 12th graders feel about marriage and kids.

Masha is finally here.

In this episode, Raman’s girlfriend joins the show to tell her side of the story — how they met, how she found out about Ashley’s proposal, and what it’s actually been like to be the partner in this particular situation. She’s an economics professor with a PhD, a mom of two navigating 50/50 shared custody, and someone who has consistently shown up for Raman throughout all of this.

Her take on his decision to become a dad is worth hearing in her own words.

Dr. Angel covers postpartum mental health (it’s not just for moms), shared custody statistics, and the research on divorce rates by education level. Plus: Masha coins the title Fanti, and it’s sticking.

This content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Consult your treating physician for guidance specific to your situation!

Dr. Samantha Johnston is back for round two. This time: early childhood vaccines.

This episode covers every question new parents actually ask — why hep B is given at birth, whether the ACIP changes affect anything right now (they don’t, thanks to an AAP lawsuit), what the autism data actually shows, why spacing out vaccines backfires, what aluminum in vaccines means in context, and why giving Tylenol before shots is no longer recommended.

Plus: kids today get exposed to 130 antigens through vaccines. Kids in the 1980s got over 3,000 — for fewer diseases. The episode reframes almost every common concern about childhood vaccines.

Angel admits the autism thought crossed her mind when vaccinating her own kids. She vaccinated on schedule anyway.

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Consult your treating physician for guidance specific to your situation!

Vaccines during pregnancy: what to get, what you can’t get, and why it all matters more than most people realize.

In this episode, Dr. Angel is joined by Dr. Samantha Johnston, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and longtime friend. Together they walk through the four vaccines recommended during pregnancy — Tdap, RSV, COVID, and flu — and explain exactly what each one is doing for the mom and the baby. They also cover MMR and varicella (live vaccines that can’t be given during pregnancy), herpes near delivery, and the new RSV monoclonal antibody for newborns.

The ‘Stuff You Didn’t Know’ segment covers measles immune amnesia — how the natural measles virus can erase up to 70% of your lifetime immune memory. The vaccine doesn’t do this. The disease does.

Raman ends the episode with Dr. Johnston’s number saved as Rash Samantha.

Ashley is 5.5 months pregnant, the baby bash is coming up, and Raman still doesn't have an apartment near the baby.

Episode 7 of The Unplanned Parent is the practical one. Ashley spent 15 hours on her baby registry and is overwhelmed by the options. Raman plans to go with the flow and is grateful Ashley did the hard work. Dr. Angel steps in with the information that actually matters: what to look for in a car seat, why Wirecutter and Consumer Reports are your best friends, what the stroller pram function is for, and why the weight of the car seat itself matters more than most people think.

They also cover breastfeeding — including what the data actually says about breastfeeding with breast implants, what to do when the latch doesn't work, and how pumping compares with breastfeeding. Plus sleep safety, co-bedding vs. bassinet, tongue ties, circumcision, and the two things you absolutely need to decide before you leave the hospital.

And: 70% of people make errors installing a car seat. Even experienced ones. There's a fix for that.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Consult your treating physician for guidance specific to your situation!

Ashley is 22 weeks pregnant. And she's finally telling her side of the story.

In Episode 6, she walks through how she got here: the deadline she gave herself at 42, the FaceTime call where Raman's name came up as a joke, and the morning-after text where he said he was actually considering it. She also explains why she chose a known person over a sperm donor — and why specifically Raman.

Then she gets into the legal agreement. What started easy became hard fast. Two things in the document made her cry. One almost made her call everything off.

Dr. Angel closes with why talking through the big parenting questions before you have a baby is so much better than after.

Ashley is finally here, and she's 22 weeks pregnant.

In Episode 5, she tells her own story: why she froze her eggs at 34, what it actually felt like to give herself daily shots for three weeks, and why she went back and did it again at 40.

She also shares the unexpected thing the egg freezing process gave her: a diagnosis of Hashimoto's thyroiditis that had been missed for years, and a treatment that changed how she felt almost overnight.

Dr. Angel walks through the science: thyroid hormone and fertility, how the egg-to-embryo attrition process works, what the data says about IVF outcomes, and the story of the first IVF baby born in 1978.

The first time we hear this story from the other side of it.