Dylan Dreyer‘s youngest son nearly went through a scary health situation.
As always, the Today host began the latest episode of her The Parent Chat podcast by sharing a recent story about her three sons — Calvin, Oliver, and Rusty. “It’s just, you know, a beautiful, sunny, warm day. The kids are playing outside in the water,” she recalled during the Thursday, May 7, episode. “And I’ve got the SPF 50, sprayed them all over, sprayed their scalp, just making sure they are totally protected from the sun.”
Despite doing her best to cover her kids in sunscreen, Dreyer admitted that she “forgot to spray Rusty’s feet.” She shared, “Later that day, [I’m] getting them in their jammies, getting them all cleaned up, and I noticed Rusty’s feet are absolutely fried. I mean, the tops of his feet were just red like a lobster.”
Fearing the worst, Dreyer went online to find help. “The first thing I do is go and Google, ‘Did I just give my kid skin cancer because I forgot to spray sunscreen on the top of his feet?'” she told listeners.
Rusty was ultimately okay, but the story made her excited to chat with her podcast guest, Emily Oster, about her data-driven parenting books. (Dreyer shares her sons with he estranged husband, Brian Fichera. She announced the pair’s separation in July 2025 and officially filed for divorce in March.)
During the podcast, Dreyer and Oster discussed everything from picky eaters to screen time to drinking during pregnancy, and more. While chatting about parenting expectations, Dreyer opened up about struggling with breastfeeding during all three of her pregnancies.
“I think back to my first son [Calvin], when I was breastfeeding and struggling, struggling, struggling at breastfeeding, I just didn’t produce enough. [I was] Googling all the time, like, ‘Should I keep trying this? What happens to his mental state if I don’t breastfeed him? What should I do?'” she shared. “So, I struggled for a full year, pumping all the time, just to try to increase production and all that kind of stuff. Then the second child, the same issue, [I] couldn’t provide. [I] had to supplement, which I felt so guilty about.”
When Rusty was born in 2021, Dreyer said she gave herself eight months to try breastfeeding before switching over to formula. “I hit eight months, and I [was] like, ‘I can’t do it anymore,'” she said. “And at this point, my oldest is five. I’m like, ‘I don’t really see a difference between the five-year-old and the three-year-old. I don’t know what breastfeeding did. I don’t know what formula did.’ And I look back now, and I’m like, ‘Why did I kill myself?'”
Oster, for her part, recalled going through a similar experience while breastfeeding her newborn daughter. “[I was] walking around the hallway at some hotel when she must have been, like, 6 weeks old. I don’t know why we were at this wedding. And [I was] walking around and bouncing, because the only way she would latch on is if you just bounced and bounced and bounced.”
She continued, “When I look back on that, I just want to be like, ‘Hey, stop it. You’re ruining it. This is not helping. You’re not going to look back in 14 years and be like, ‘Boy, I’m glad she got those two ounces of breast milk after I bounced her for nine hours in the hallway at the Marriott.” So, I think that there are those moments that many of us look back on and say, ‘Boy, I wish I had given myself a break.'”
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