Squirmy and Grubs Reveal They Are Expecting Their First Baby

Shane and Hannah Burcaw spent years documenting the difficult road toward becoming parents, including fertility treatment that ended in disappointment. Now, after keeping their biggest secret private for half of the pregnancy, the couple behind Squirmy and Grubs has finally revealed that they are expecting their first child.

Hannah is 20 weeks pregnant, with the baby due in January. Before the congratulations could arrive, however, Shane addressed the cruel criticism he knew would follow because he has a disability.

“There are going to be horrible, horrible people … telling us that we are making the worst mistakes of our lives, that I cannot and should not be a father because of my disability,” Shane said in the announcement.

Their Baby News Follows Years Of Fertility Struggles

Shane and Hannah have built an audience of more than a million subscribers through their Squirmy and Grubs channel, where they share their lives as an interabled couple. Shane has spinal muscular atrophy and uses a power wheelchair, while Hannah does not have the condition.

Their relationship has also been shaped by the assumptions strangers make about disability, intimacy and marriage. Shane has addressed many of those misconceptions publicly, including in his book Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse.

Image credits – Facebook @Squirmy and Grubs

Having children was something they had discussed long before the current pregnancy. In a 2019 TODAY essay, Shane wrote that he and Hannah were interested in having children together, despite viewers assuming otherwise.

“Many of our viewers have wrongly assumed that, by being with me, Hannah is signing up for a life of childless celibacy,” Shane wrote. He added, “We have a satisfying intimate life, and both of us are interested in having children together down the road.”

Their First IVF Attempt Ended In Failure

The couple began their first round of IVF in 2023 and decided to document the process for their audience. Their videos showed injections, ultrasounds and the uncertainty that came with waiting for results.

The treatment did not work, but Shane and Hannah chose to share that outcome rather than hide it from their followers. Shane later explained why continuing to document the difficult experience mattered to them.

“When you have a YouTube channel as big as ours, it can be scary at times,” Shane told People. He also said, “Now we get to be one more example that you can go through IVF and you can fail at IVF, but it will still be ok.”

Hannah acknowledged that sharing the failure publicly was difficult, but she also recognized that followers valued their honesty. “It’s a heavy thing to share, but people definitely appreciate it,” she said.

After that, the couple stopped publicly documenting their fertility journey, leaving their audience unaware of what would happen next.

Image credits – Facebook @Squirmy and Grubs

A Blue Hat At Target Became An Unexpected Sign

After discovering that Hannah was pregnant, the couple went to Target to buy additional pregnancy tests because the news was still difficult to believe. During the trip, Shane noticed a blue hat in the store’s $5 section with the word “dad” printed on it.

Shane later told TODAY that the hat “felt like a sign from the universe.” After years of fertility treatment and disappointment, the small moment gave the couple something joyful to hold onto.

They still chose to keep the pregnancy private for months. By the time they finally announced it, Hannah had already reached the halfway point of her pregnancy.

The Couple Kept The Pregnancy Private For 20 Weeks

Image credits – Facebook @Squirmy and Grubs

The announcement explained that Shane and Hannah had deliberately enjoyed the pregnancy away from the public eye. They also admitted that keeping such major news private became increasingly difficult because they had spent years sharing their lives with their audience.

“Hannah is 20 weeks pregnant, and although we’ve been thoroughly enjoying this special time in privacy so far, we’ve also missed sharing all the joy with you, and there’s SO MUCH to share,” the couple wrote.

They also acknowledged that pregnancy announcements can be painful for people who are still struggling to conceive. Drawing from their own experience, they sent a message to followers who might be facing that reality.

“After going through IVF unsuccessfully for many years, we understand all too well the difficulties that many people experience when trying to conceive, and how seeing announcements can feel,” they wrote. “Our hearts go out to you.”

Shane Addressed The SMA Question Directly

Image credits – Facebook @Squirmy and Grubs

Because Shane has spinal muscular atrophy, questions about the baby’s potential risk of inheriting the condition were always likely to appear. He chose to address the subject himself in the pregnancy announcement.

“Unless Hannah is also a carrier of the genetic traits that cause spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), our children will not have the disease,” Shane said. He explained that if Hannah is also a carrier, their children would have a 50/50 chance of having SMA.

The source article explains that SMA is a recessive genetic condition, meaning a child needs altered copies of the relevant gene from both parents to develop the disease. The couple have not publicly disclosed whether Hannah is a carrier.

For Shane, the genetic question is only one part of the larger conversation around disability and parenthood. He has spent years dealing with strangers who believe his disability should determine what kind of family life he can have.

The Cruel Messages Arrived Quickly

Shane had predicted that some people would respond to the pregnancy announcement with hostility, and the first hateful message reportedly arrived within a day. A direct message sent to him read, “Hope you die soon.”

Instead of quietly deleting it, Shane shared the message on his Instagram Stories and responded with a sarcastic line of his own. “Glad to see our content reach new fans,” he wrote, adding a heart-eyes emoji.

The message appeared alongside the congratulations the couple were receiving from supporters. It also demonstrated why Shane had addressed potential abuse before strangers had even started responding to the announcement.

For years, strangers have made assumptions about his relationship and his ability to participate in ordinary parts of family life. Now the couple are preparing for a baby while dealing with that same criticism all over again.

Friends Are Helping Shane Prepare For Fatherhood

Image credits – Facebook @Squirmy and Grubs

While the pregnancy remained private, practical preparations were already underway. Friends spent the summer helping develop modifications and equipment that could allow Shane to hold and care for his baby more easily.

“Figuring out how I am going to most effectively father and parent a child, you know, with my disability has been top of mind,” Shane said. The couple are therefore preparing for the everyday realities of parenthood alongside the excitement surrounding the pregnancy.

Shane also plans to document the experience through a blog hosted as a paid Patreon membership. The couple said they want to have greater control over what they share about their child and how much of the baby’s life becomes public.

They described their goal as being “thoughtful and intentional about what and how we share our child with the world.” That approach marks a new boundary for a couple who have spent years turning their own relationship into online content.

Shane Imagined This Moment Seven Years Ago

One detail from Shane’s 2019 TODAY essay now feels especially significant because he had already pictured what fatherhood could look like. While discussing his hopes of having children, he described a simple plan involving his wheelchair and a wagon.

“I cannot wait,” he wrote, “to pull our kids around in a wagon attached to the back of my wheelchair.” At the time, the sentence described a future that had not arrived, but today Hannah is halfway through a pregnancy and that future is much closer.

The couple still have plenty of preparation ahead before January arrives. However, the question Shane once answered for skeptical strangers has changed from whether he could imagine being a father to how he will care for his child.

After years of fertility struggles and a failed IVF attempt, Shane and Hannah finally have the news they had hoped to share. The blue “dad” hat that caught Shane’s attention in Target was only a small moment, but the baby arriving in January will make the dream he described in 2019 very real.

Featured Image from Facebook @Squirmy and Grubs