Speaker 1: Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda Land Audio
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio. Hi everyone, and welcome
Speaker 1: back to Katie's Crib. This week, I'm rereleasing one of
Speaker 1: my early interviews back from We'll have a brand new
Speaker 1: episode up for you on June. Enjoy the conversation by Hi, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Katie's Crib. In this episode, we are
Speaker 1: talking about babies and sleep, sleep training scheduling on demand.
Speaker 1: We are going to investigate this big and for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, a very controversial subject. We have here
Speaker 1: a friend of mine by the name of Susie Menkes,
Speaker 1: and she works with a company that she started called
Speaker 1: Healthy Little Sleepers here in Los Angeles. She's the founder
Speaker 1: and she's going to talk to us about sleep training. Hi. Susie, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you for
Speaker 1: sharing your knowledge with us. I never heard about sleep training.
Speaker 1: I never knew what it was, and then I had
Speaker 1: a baby, and then it was all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: all everybody was talking about. Can you walk us through
Speaker 1: the very simple question of what is sleep training? What
Speaker 1: is sleep training? Such a good question because oftentimes people
Speaker 1: don't know about it until you actually have a baby
Speaker 1: and there's this thing sleep training. You have to train
Speaker 1: your baby to sleep. Um. So it's basically just making
Speaker 1: changes in your baby's sleep habits so that they can
Speaker 1: learn to sell soup. So a lot of times we
Speaker 1: come home from the hospital they're newborn, we're there for them,
Speaker 1: we're doing it for them. But at some point, and
Speaker 1: it's typically around four months of age, is when there's
Speaker 1: circadian rhythms start coming into play. What's that. Basically they're
Speaker 1: the word circadian rhythms, you're smart circadian rhythms. Okay, they're
Speaker 1: sleep rhythms. Um. And it's set by the rising and
Speaker 1: setting at the sun, and so that's where you get
Speaker 1: kind of those sleep schedules that people talk about, that
Speaker 1: nine and one nap and things like that, um. But
Speaker 1: really what happens is that four months of ages, they've
Speaker 1: become already accustomed to some associations to sleep. So whether
Speaker 1: you're nursing them to sleep, whether you're rocking them to sleep,
Speaker 1: whether a dark room dark room, there's a sound machine
Speaker 1: on all of it. So there's associations of all involved
Speaker 1: with sleeping that they may need to unlearn and learn
Speaker 1: to self soothe, and so that's where we come in
Speaker 1: and try to do sleep learning for them and by
Speaker 1: self soothing. To clarify that, you mean, like the baby,
Speaker 1: he or she has her own tools to put her
Speaker 1: or himself to sleep. Right. So sleep is a science, right,
Speaker 1: So it's a balancing of hormones. Melatonin is a sleep
Speaker 1: hormone that we produce um and we don't really start
Speaker 1: producing it until we're three or four months of age.
Speaker 1: So that's where you get that day night confusion. Before that,
Speaker 1: they're up during Yeah, it's in case you didn't know
Speaker 1: where you're freaking out. Babies come out and they lived
Speaker 1: in a dark place for ten months and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden we're telling them like, oh the sun's down,
Speaker 1: the sun's up, but they have no idea, and a
Speaker 1: lot of babies even when the first come out, which
Speaker 1: I didn't know until I was going through myself, it's
Speaker 1: reversed so they could be up for some reason. Wow,
Speaker 1: they are napping the hell out of this day. But
Speaker 1: at nighttime it's like the most energy you've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And it's because, like you're saying, until month three or four,
Speaker 1: they don't know, They don't go by the sun. Yet
Speaker 1: they don't go by those rhythms. Yet they don't produce melatonin.
Speaker 1: The one thing that we do is produce melatonin, and
Speaker 1: so melatonin in our breast milk is actually highest in
Speaker 1: the evenings. So if you are nursing, you have that
Speaker 1: benefit to give them nighttime breath smelt I am rather
Speaker 1: than night mind blown right now again? Oh God, I
Speaker 1: love Katie's grib selfishly because I get lessons like in
Speaker 1: Motherhood on the regular, which is so great. Um wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: why do you think sleeve training is such a controversial
Speaker 1: and heated topic amongst parents. It is. It's often misguided
Speaker 1: sometimes times by um like a fear tactic don't let
Speaker 1: your baby cry um. And there is that kind of
Speaker 1: almost like breastfeeding. There's that controversy of to breastfeed or
Speaker 1: not to brescie pressure attached judgment. It makes a move. Now,
Speaker 1: this makes you a bad mom. S If you're gonna
Speaker 1: let your baby cry, you're harming your baby. Right. There's
Speaker 1: a level of stress that's involved in learning a new tactic.
Speaker 1: But the American Academy of Pediatrics is something that we
Speaker 1: follow as sleep consultants, and they actually put a framework
Speaker 1: together of stress. That's really a good guideline to think
Speaker 1: about stress and what you are doing or not doing
Speaker 1: for your baby. Right. So, there's a positive stress response,
Speaker 1: which is a typical frustration, struggling, starting daycare, All those
Speaker 1: are typical stress responses. There's a tolerable stress response, which
Speaker 1: is more of something that's not every day, maybe a divorce,
Speaker 1: a death in the family. And then there's toxic stress
Speaker 1: response where, um, you don't have a loving caregifter, there's abuse,
Speaker 1: there's neglected right. So those are the love That toxic
Speaker 1: level is what we're talking about, being harmful and damaging
Speaker 1: to the brain. That's not what sleep training is about, right, Um,
Speaker 1: And you're not equating sleep training with abuse, right right.
Speaker 1: So that's where this kind of misguided information comes from.
Speaker 1: Of sleep training is involved with levels of stress. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're learning a new habit and it's hard for any
Speaker 1: of us to change something. So it's kind of dealing
Speaker 1: with that. You have a stable environment, you have a
Speaker 1: loving caregiver to help you cope through that stress. Right.
Speaker 1: We don't say here, go go learn how to sleep
Speaker 1: and walk away, right one. We do it for them first,
Speaker 1: We do it with them. We watch them do it
Speaker 1: and then they do it on their own. Whoa, guys,
Speaker 1: that was just like a real SmackDown. Yeah. I definitely
Speaker 1: personally had you know, I went back to work when
Speaker 1: Albi was seven weeks old, and for me, sleep was
Speaker 1: literal really like a number one priority list because I
Speaker 1: couldn't memorize my lines, show up at work, look remotely
Speaker 1: like I was a sane person and not like a
Speaker 1: garbage bag and not get my sleep. And so I
Speaker 1: remember the first times I, you know, was told it's
Speaker 1: okay to let him make annoyed kind of cry as
Speaker 1: sounds for two or three minutes. Wait a minute, let's
Speaker 1: see what he does. And he's going to start to
Speaker 1: teach himself, find his thumb or if you're a pacifier
Speaker 1: person or whatever it is, find tools with which to
Speaker 1: put himself to sleep. And I did have those thoughts
Speaker 1: for a minute of like, am I subconsciously damaging my
Speaker 1: baby that he's going to be in therapy for a
Speaker 1: million years because of me? Because I let him cry
Speaker 1: for three minutes And you're saying that is a stress
Speaker 1: that is not damaging. No, Plus he's in a stable environment.
Speaker 1: I was watching that monitor hawk and counting down the
Speaker 1: second and you're there when he wakes up, or you're
Speaker 1: there to feed him, to love him, to play with him.
Speaker 1: You know, he's in that environment he is. You're building
Speaker 1: that secure attachment in those first form four to six months,
Speaker 1: So that's what you're doing. It's good to hear that.
Speaker 1: I And there's also controversy. And I think there's also
Speaker 1: controversy and that if you do sleep train around four
Speaker 1: between four and six months, that there is that stigma
Speaker 1: of um, that you're harm and your baby. It's too soon,
Speaker 1: he's not enough. Wait, what do you say about those
Speaker 1: sort of situations? Is there a set rule of when, how,
Speaker 1: how much weight? All these things? And again I don't
Speaker 1: really know what I'm talking about. These are like literally
Speaker 1: rumors that have flown into my head. Typically PD I
Speaker 1: always say, go by your pediatrician. Where are they on
Speaker 1: the spectrum in terms of weight wise and are they
Speaker 1: are they gaining weight? Um? You know, if they're born early,
Speaker 1: sometimes you have to wait a bit longer because you
Speaker 1: really want to go by their developmental age, which is
Speaker 1: based on their do date, not when they're born. Um,
Speaker 1: so if they're early, you might have to wait another
Speaker 1: two weeks or three weeks sure, UM. Pediatricians often have
Speaker 1: kind of a fourteen pound rule. UM. If I get
Speaker 1: a client with a twelve thirteen pound baby, but they're
Speaker 1: feeding well, they're gaining weight, I'm not gonna turn them away, UM,
Speaker 1: because they are developmentally ready, they are producing melatonin, they
Speaker 1: are their circadian rhythms are in place. They do have
Speaker 1: social smiles, UM, which develop around six to eight weeks
Speaker 1: of age, which is a prime example of when to
Speaker 1: set routines in place because social smiles is a connection.
Speaker 1: They are making connections and associations. Interesting. Can you, UM
Speaker 1: talk to us about some of the different methods of
Speaker 1: sleep training that parents use. Is there a particular one
Speaker 1: that you recommend as a dependent on the baby and
Speaker 1: the issue at hand, um, So, there's no one particular
Speaker 1: method that I use. I often take a look at
Speaker 1: the baby, and you know, the parent is the expert
Speaker 1: on their baby, so I get a lot of information
Speaker 1: from the parents, UM, their age, what's been going on before,
Speaker 1: anything has been tried before, how long have they tried it.
Speaker 1: I've been trained by the Family Sleep Institute, which doesn't
Speaker 1: have one particular method that they were trained in. All
Speaker 1: of them, UM, and it's sometimes a combination of them.
Speaker 1: There's a Ferbor method, which is like a check and console.
Speaker 1: There is the sleep wave by Kim West. I believe
Speaker 1: there is cried out, which is extinction. Where is the
Speaker 1: true cried out? You put your baby in your bed,
Speaker 1: in their crib, you leave the room, you come back
Speaker 1: the next morning, assuming there's no night feeds. Assuming but
Speaker 1: you still can do sleep training with a night feed.
Speaker 1: And that's the one that moms say like they did
Speaker 1: that for two or three nights and then they never
Speaker 1: did it again. Like is that true. I didn't have
Speaker 1: to do that, so I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: even be built of the stuff that could do it.
Speaker 1: It's not for the faint of heart. I did it
Speaker 1: with my first um. How many nights did it take?
Speaker 1: And how long was the grind? Do you know? Thirty minutes? No,
Speaker 1: I opened a bottle of wine and I cried and
Speaker 1: watched the monitor and thirty minutes he was asleep. Wow.
Speaker 1: The next night it was like maybe ten minutes. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's the cryed out method. What's the verber berber
Speaker 1: Ferber method? What is that? So that is a check
Speaker 1: and console. So you put your baby down to sleep.
Speaker 1: He starts crying. Five minutes, you go and check on him.
Speaker 1: You don't pick him up or her up. Um, you
Speaker 1: say a little it's okay, we're here, it's time to sleep,
Speaker 1: and you leave the room. And then you can wait
Speaker 1: ten minutes and then you go in after ten I
Speaker 1: mean it can be another five. You can do lights
Speaker 1: of like going in every five minutes and just using
Speaker 1: your voice and your presence to console them, but you
Speaker 1: don't touch them. And then the next two nights or
Speaker 1: whatever it is that's comfortable for you, then you might
Speaker 1: extend to you wait ten minutes before you go in
Speaker 1: the room. I have a friend that did that exactly.
Speaker 1: And then what's the other method that you said. There's
Speaker 1: a chair method, which is a little bit more gentle approach.
Speaker 1: So you're in the room with them. Um, it takes
Speaker 1: a little bit longer in terms of, you know, getting
Speaker 1: out of the room and being at So you start
Speaker 1: next to the crib in a chair or on the floor.
Speaker 1: It's like the chairman um, and you're there. You can
Speaker 1: first couple of days, you can use your hands on them,
Speaker 1: but you don't want any like any other rhythm involved,
Speaker 1: because you don't want to start another association for them
Speaker 1: to get attached to. So you keep it minimal interaction,
Speaker 1: but you're there for them. And when they fall asleep,
Speaker 1: you leave the room. When they cry again, you come
Speaker 1: back into that position and you do the same thing
Speaker 1: without picking your baby up. Wow. And and then you
Speaker 1: slowly move the next two days or maybe in the
Speaker 1: middle of the room. Then you're not doing touching, it's
Speaker 1: just your voice. The next two days you move again,
Speaker 1: and maybe your three quarters the way of the room.
Speaker 1: Then you're at the door. Then you're outside the door,
Speaker 1: and then kind of like slowly, slowly introducing that they
Speaker 1: are safe in this space, that you are here. Until
Speaker 1: I'm not here physically, but I am here to hear me,
Speaker 1: but I am here. Whoa, that's this is all God motherhood.
Speaker 1: You've got to be a beast, Like this is so
Speaker 1: so fascinating. Um, do you have any advice for what
Speaker 1: parents can say when I don't know? I do feel
Speaker 1: like this is like breastfeeding, like you brought it up already.
Speaker 1: It's just a very judgy topic. UM. I can remember
Speaker 1: very early on, like my baby was sleeping to the
Speaker 1: night at eight weeks, or like the other version, which
Speaker 1: is like, oh my gosh, I I honestly do not
Speaker 1: believe in sleep training until they are six months of
Speaker 1: age and fifteen pounds, and that is cruel to be doing.
Speaker 1: I've heard all sides of the spectrum, and people are
Speaker 1: not afraid to give their opinion and their advice. So
Speaker 1: what would you suggest for parents that are I don't know,
Speaker 1: I might have that are picking whatever it is they're
Speaker 1: picking and how to stick with it, or I think
Speaker 1: finding the support, um, whether it's their husband, their friend,
Speaker 1: their family. Sometimes family has different opinions though. UM. I've
Speaker 1: had clients who was like, I didn't tell my mom
Speaker 1: I was doing this or my dad I was doing this,
Speaker 1: And there's the mom and dad calling and I'm at
Speaker 1: their house and they're not picking up. And then she's saying,
Speaker 1: oh shoot, my sister probably told them and that's why
Speaker 1: they're calling. You know, they know you're here. UM. So
Speaker 1: they got to find where they can find that support.
Speaker 1: And sometimes that's me right. UM. I work with families
Speaker 1: on a two week period when they hired me, so
Speaker 1: I'm there for them for two So that how it
Speaker 1: works with a sleep consultant. You get hired for a
Speaker 1: two week period. And you work with that family closely
Speaker 1: and hopefully in that two weeks you see a bunch
Speaker 1: of improvement as far as sleep is concerned. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have to say sleeping even to this day is probably
Speaker 1: the only really touchy subject where Adam and I, my
Speaker 1: husband and I, we really sometimes butt heads, which is
Speaker 1: when we put the baby down and he's making fussy sounds. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like someone screaming in my head, Like it's so
Speaker 1: loud to me that I'm not going in there, and
Speaker 1: the seconds go by like years, and my husband just
Speaker 1: has a way higher threshold for like it's only in
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. He's going to put himself down. He always does.
Speaker 1: He does it every night. He's gonna put himself down,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, no no, no, no, no, no no no, no,
Speaker 1: tonight is different, It sounds different. It is just it's
Speaker 1: just taking forever. And to be clear, he's going he's
Speaker 1: not screaming crying at all. He's either has gas or
Speaker 1: he's like getting tired and expressing himself. But I have
Speaker 1: to say even to this day that that is a
Speaker 1: husband wife dilemma for me, for our family absolutely, and
Speaker 1: I work with family couples that way. Because there are
Speaker 1: differing opinions about what to do and kind of coming
Speaker 1: to an agreement in the middleground and having that plan
Speaker 1: and being able to have that plan for both of
Speaker 1: them to work off of, and then caregivers too. So
Speaker 1: you're like a therapist to the middle woman. Um So,
Speaker 1: at what age would you say a sleep routine is established?
Speaker 1: Um So I touched on this early around six to
Speaker 1: eight weeks. Um. Just a routine, right, not sleep training. Right.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to get them to sleep on their own, um,
Speaker 1: but they are. When you see social smiles, they are
Speaker 1: making connections. So when you put those pre bedtime teens
Speaker 1: in place, it's their sense of routine and structure that
Speaker 1: sleep is around the corner, right. And that's when I
Speaker 1: was told like, this is when you might introduce a
Speaker 1: bath routine and then like a song or a book
Speaker 1: or the lights change or the white noise sound comes up.
Speaker 1: But you get into this like sort of ritual routine
Speaker 1: that they can associate with, Now, I'm going to sleep
Speaker 1: for the night, right, and and and naps too. You
Speaker 1: can do a shortened version for now do and it
Speaker 1: helps so helps increase that melotonin levels because their bodies
Speaker 1: and their mind are already getting ready for sleep because
Speaker 1: those routines are starting, and so that melatonin is starting
Speaker 1: to get produced. Great. Um, is it ever too late
Speaker 1: to start? Like do you ever get phone calls from
Speaker 1: babies that are are not sleeping through the night at
Speaker 1: one and a half too? It's never too late. It's
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier when you start early because you
Speaker 1: just have certain pattern patterns and rhythms, um that are
Speaker 1: in place. Um. So when you start sleep training a
Speaker 1: little bit later, um, there's just a little bit bigger
Speaker 1: of an adjustment. Um, maybe a little bit more protest
Speaker 1: because they're verbal. Um. So you put, so, what are
Speaker 1: the benefits of sleep training? And you know, if I
Speaker 1: was playing Devil's advocate, here are there benefits to just
Speaker 1: reading the baby's cues and just letting the baby sleep
Speaker 1: when they're ready? That's probably like nails on a chalkboard too.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean for our listeners and viewers who
Speaker 1: are like truly because there are so many stigmas attached.
Speaker 1: So sleep training is important both for the parents and
Speaker 1: for the child because sleep deprivation is hard on us.
Speaker 1: We can't function as well. We're going to fight more
Speaker 1: with our partner. We're going to be testy during the day.
Speaker 1: We won't remember things as well. We don't have pregnancy,
Speaker 1: it's going to be like rain mom, right not yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the same thing. Um yeah, continuous um. So. And what
Speaker 1: happens in sleep, especially in the first four to five
Speaker 1: hours of sleep, um is non ari em sleep. It's
Speaker 1: the most important sleep we get. It's when our brain
Speaker 1: shrinks and our toxins are flushed out, so that sleep
Speaker 1: is most important to get consolidated, which is get them
Speaker 1: to sleep from like seven to twelve. And then that's
Speaker 1: when we say, if you're still having a feeding at night,
Speaker 1: have it after midnight. Whoa, Okay, I was doing that
Speaker 1: in the early days. Okay, okay, okay. So sleep training,
Speaker 1: you would say, is so beneficial because it's important to
Speaker 1: get them to have quality, uninterrupted sleep that's where their
Speaker 1: brain develops. And also so that we don't just jump
Speaker 1: off a crazy drain of insanity because it's just so
Speaker 1: hard to be I mean, I've never been so sleep
Speaker 1: deprived to my whole life. I thought I was gonna
Speaker 1: lose my mind. Um. And on the flip side, right,
Speaker 1: just following your baby's cute right, Yes, So that works
Speaker 1: great if you have a flexible sleeper, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: just fall naturally into that pattern and that's when you
Speaker 1: get like, oh yeah, my baby sleep. And at eight
Speaker 1: weeks you're like, great, you have a uniform baby. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, you know. Um, But it goes hand in hand, right,
Speaker 1: So the parenting style and the baby's flexibility just matched
Speaker 1: up and they got into a good rhythm um, and
Speaker 1: it just it happens naturally, and so they're able to
Speaker 1: follow those babies cubes. Sometimes babies have colic, sometimes they
Speaker 1: have reflux. Sometimes the parents are working, so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other things juggling and to follow your baby's
Speaker 1: cues um necessarily doesn't always work. And that was yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my case. Like I remember going back at
Speaker 1: seven weeks to work and emailing my nursing schedule to
Speaker 1: carry Washington work because she was the director of the
Speaker 1: episode and I had to feed albeit six nine twelve
Speaker 1: three six, and I had to know that he was
Speaker 1: going to be waking up from his nap at that time,
Speaker 1: that I was going to be allowed to go back
Speaker 1: to my trailer at that time to feed my kids.
Speaker 1: So for me, it really helped knowing that he naps
Speaker 1: from a thirty to ten in the morning. At ten,
Speaker 1: I feed him, then he naps again from eleven to one.
Speaker 1: At one, I feed him, and then he naped again.
Speaker 1: So in the more, you know, so the early stages,
Speaker 1: it was very helpful. Now it's funny that I find
Speaker 1: that I'm off and he's in a routine already. His
Speaker 1: naps are sort of changing, and I've become far more
Speaker 1: flexible in sort of experimenting, like not waking him up
Speaker 1: from a nap and seeing how long he goes because
Speaker 1: I think he's trying to tell me something that his
Speaker 1: naps are. Maybe we're going to drop the nap maybee,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to go from four naps to
Speaker 1: three naps to two naps, you know. So, But I'm
Speaker 1: also off, so I have some of the you know it, really,
Speaker 1: you're right. It depends on the schedule and what your
Speaker 1: baby thrives on, right, And he's already in a great
Speaker 1: routine totally, so you have that kind of Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: he knows when he needs time to go to so,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a whole setup, the whole aura
Speaker 1: vibe of his room is totally set and ready for shades.
Speaker 1: She's got a mark pac don't. Oh yeah, guys, we're
Speaker 1: in Albie's crib right now, micrib Albie's nursery. But yes,
Speaker 1: and I do carry those things around with me. Now.
Speaker 1: I've gotten so confident that we've um that he's a
Speaker 1: good sleeper right now that we are able to. We
Speaker 1: black out his stroller and we haven't traveling sound machine,
Speaker 1: and so if I am on the go and can't
Speaker 1: move my schedule things around, he will take his nap.
Speaker 1: It's on as good. And I don't want to do
Speaker 1: it all the time, but when I do, it's he knows.
Speaker 1: It's like he knows it's time. Um. Can co sleeping
Speaker 1: be a part of sleep training? Are the mutually exclusive? UM?
Speaker 1: Closely being is another controversial topic. Um. There it CO sleeping,
Speaker 1: so you guys know, means sleeping the same bed as
Speaker 1: your parents as the mom or dad, correct or or
Speaker 1: and the baby. You get me. So again, we go
Speaker 1: by what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, and part
Speaker 1: of their role of having the baby in your room
Speaker 1: till one year of age UM was to encourage you know,
Speaker 1: the ease of breastfeeding and taking care of your baby
Speaker 1: and reducing the risk of SIDS. Co sleeping with a
Speaker 1: newborn and a baby under a year of age is
Speaker 1: not safe. Um So instead of co sleeping, we want
Speaker 1: to think of it as room sharing. Right. You can
Speaker 1: have a co sleeper that's attached to the bed, but
Speaker 1: you're not going to roll over onto the baby, right.
Speaker 1: Um So it's really about reducing the risk of SIDS,
Speaker 1: and that's something we can control because there's other things
Speaker 1: that we can't control, like developmental periods and maybe something
Speaker 1: they're thinking about about SIDS is that it is biological,
Speaker 1: so we can't control that, but we can control all
Speaker 1: these external factors. So if I have a co sleeping parents,
Speaker 1: if they're over one year of age and the baby
Speaker 1: and you know there that's the setup they want to do.
Speaker 1: I can work with them, but I really try encourage
Speaker 1: room sharing. And sometimes room sharing is a necessity because
Speaker 1: of another baby, or they live in New York's, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, so kind of working around maybe they're in
Speaker 1: a studio apartment. I've done that too. I just took
Speaker 1: my first trip where Albie as in my room in
Speaker 1: a long time. He's seven months old and he was
Speaker 1: in my room and every two minutes, I heard a
Speaker 1: sound and I thought something was happening. It was insane. Um,
Speaker 1: you say you do a two week period with the family.
Speaker 1: Is that how long sleep training typically takes? Again, depends
Speaker 1: on the method, right, So the chair method will take
Speaker 1: up to ten to fourteen days, just in terms of
Speaker 1: your process of removing the room. Right. Um, but that's
Speaker 1: not to say your baby might be sleeping way before that.
Speaker 1: You might sit there for five minutes and then leave
Speaker 1: by the All right, it could be all done in
Speaker 1: two days, three days, and five days. It's wow. It's
Speaker 1: a case by case basis and how long it typically takes.
Speaker 1: And it also depends on how consistent the parents are.
Speaker 1: So consistency is a real, real, big component. Because maybe
Speaker 1: there are visitor comes and I always say no visitors,
Speaker 1: no traveling, no this, but things life happens, Right, I
Speaker 1: always get called like, oh no, I messed up. But
Speaker 1: well that's okay, let's reset. Right, it just might take
Speaker 1: a little bit longer. Right, How do you wean a
Speaker 1: baby off of nighttime feedings in order to get a
Speaker 1: longer chunk stretch of sleep. So again, so the first
Speaker 1: feeding we want, we want it after midnight because their
Speaker 1: brain is going to develop. If they go down at
Speaker 1: seven pm and they sleep till midnight, that's a great
Speaker 1: five hour developmental chunk. Okay um. And then you can
Speaker 1: do it a couple of ways. You can push the
Speaker 1: time out. So let's say two nights in a row,
Speaker 1: they made it to twelve thirty, Okay, tomorrow night, let's
Speaker 1: try and make it twelve forty five or one o'clock.
Speaker 1: So you can push it out that way. You can
Speaker 1: also reduce how much how much time wise or that's
Speaker 1: what I did, um, and kind of push it out
Speaker 1: that way so they get their stomach is less full,
Speaker 1: so they're not used to sleeping on a full stuff.
Speaker 1: That's what I did. It took forever, but it was
Speaker 1: like what worked for me, which was I would pump
Speaker 1: and then that bottle that would happen at one o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. It was five ounces, then four and
Speaker 1: a half for three nights, then four for three nights,
Speaker 1: and three and a half for three nights, and three
Speaker 1: for three nights and two and a half into than
Speaker 1: gone exactly. Um, okay, great, thank you I have I'm
Speaker 1: not like a freak about sleeping, but I'm always like
Speaker 1: he's not eating enough, Like there's this weird you'll see
Speaker 1: like as Mom's just every single thing is like anxiety.
Speaker 1: It's like he's not working, he's not eating. It's like
Speaker 1: he's not eating at one am. And I had to
Speaker 1: do that for at first, I dropped the four am feed,
Speaker 1: then I dropped the one am feed, and then magically
Speaker 1: it happened. Um, and then I felt like a human being.
Speaker 1: Is nap training and sleep training same different? Do do
Speaker 1: the same thing at the same time? It's tell me,
Speaker 1: I typically like doing them both at the same time
Speaker 1: because sleep comes together much quicker that way. Um, because
Speaker 1: when you don't get good naps, you don't get a
Speaker 1: good nighttime sleep. Are they directly related? They can't. They
Speaker 1: can lead to nighttime wakings. No, thank you. I do
Speaker 1: like working on them together. That doesn't mean they can
Speaker 1: be They all still can be separated. So you can
Speaker 1: work on ninth. If you're going to do one first,
Speaker 1: you work on nighttime first, because it's the easier of
Speaker 1: the two, because naps are harder to come together because
Speaker 1: they're a lighter stage of sleep. Got it. So even
Speaker 1: when you're working on them together at the same time,
Speaker 1: naps still might be wonky a little bit, um, But
Speaker 1: then as the more practice you give your baby for napping,
Speaker 1: the more it will come together. What are the early
Speaker 1: I don't know mistakes that parents make with sleep training,
Speaker 1: stopping too fast, saying it does it's not working one
Speaker 1: day two? Oh gosh, I'm so fad that is me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm kind of working out there. But good thing, Adam.
Speaker 1: You know, I always feel like it takes a partner
Speaker 1: to be kind of stronger than the other to stick
Speaker 1: with it, not given too soon, not just quit too early.
Speaker 1: So it's really perseverance and stamina and having a plan.
Speaker 1: Write it down, even if you're not working with someone.
Speaker 1: Put a plan down on paper. This is what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do on night one. This is what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do on night two. That really what your resolution?
Speaker 1: Keeping yourself accountable, tell somebody about it right takes the
Speaker 1: village guys. Um, So you'd already mentioned this and this
Speaker 1: is big on me. But what happens when you might
Speaker 1: have gotten a lot of these routines into place, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden something does come up travel illness,
Speaker 1: somebody's come to visit. It just throws off everything and
Speaker 1: you kind of get through it and then you come
Speaker 1: back when you come back to it. Is that kind
Speaker 1: of the deal? Yep, you come back when you get
Speaker 1: at home, you pick things right back up where you
Speaker 1: left off. Um, waking them up in the morning to
Speaker 1: reset their circadian rhythms. If you've been traveling, Yeah, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm going on a trip. And I am fully for
Speaker 1: freaking out about the time difference because I have a
Speaker 1: great schedule going on and a great sleeping baby, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, what am I doing? But see, I am
Speaker 1: of this person of like I'm two ways, Like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sort of a hippie and down for like whatever,
Speaker 1: and it's my life and I want to live it
Speaker 1: and I want to grab it by the khons. But
Speaker 1: I also I'm like, but he we're on a schedule
Speaker 1: and he sleeps through the night, and like, what am
Speaker 1: I doing? He'll get back. It's a muscle, he knows it.
Speaker 1: He'll come back to it. And it's a personal choice.
Speaker 1: Like you know, Um, you basically just go back to
Speaker 1: whatever training method you had going great for you from before.
Speaker 1: What do you suggest for people who like you say
Speaker 1: the partners involved nanny's are involved, grandparents are involved, you know,
Speaker 1: any sort of other help. I'm sure it's so important
Speaker 1: to get everybody on the same freaking page of your schedule. Later,
Speaker 1: if you're a scheduled person, have your schedule laid out. Um.
Speaker 1: I had printed all over my trailer because I had
Speaker 1: a lot of different I it took me a while
Speaker 1: to find nanny I very much trusted, and so at
Speaker 1: the beginning, it was my husband, and it was friends
Speaker 1: who were also nanny's when I was a nannie, and
Speaker 1: people I really trusted because I was having a hard
Speaker 1: time leaving the baby alone and I had to write
Speaker 1: everything down, and I really hope that everyone's stuck to it.
Speaker 1: What are the common myths, stigmas, all this stuff about
Speaker 1: sleep training that you want to dispel, Susie right here,
Speaker 1: right now. Um, we talked about when already that you're
Speaker 1: harming your baby if you let them cry. Thank you
Speaker 1: for telling me, because I even still worry. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like, I think about those early days
Speaker 1: of like letting him cry for three minutes and just
Speaker 1: being like, because you know what, I just went away
Speaker 1: with my mother, God bless her. I love her so much,
Speaker 1: but I put the baby down and he was whining
Speaker 1: and complaining for a couple of minutes. Um. And my
Speaker 1: mom was horrified, like horrified that I let him do that. Um.
Speaker 1: And she'll be the first to admit, oh, Katie, I
Speaker 1: let you sleep in the bed for whatever. I never
Speaker 1: let you cry a day in your life, you know.
Speaker 1: And and so we have differing opinions there, um, but
Speaker 1: I have to admit I totally caved and went in
Speaker 1: and got him and rocked him, and I like, never
Speaker 1: rock him to sleep, but like my mom and I
Speaker 1: felt the judgment of it, and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, you're You're totally right. We're on a family vacation.
Speaker 1: He's upset. He should never be upset. I'm a horrible mom.
Speaker 1: I'm hurting him. I went up and I rocked the
Speaker 1: baby and he wanted to sleep in my arms, And like,
Speaker 1: I don't ever do that. So the smallest comment will
Speaker 1: make you do yep. The stranger for a stranger. I
Speaker 1: remember being in baby Gap and my little girl was
Speaker 1: taking a nap and I was like, all right, here
Speaker 1: it comes. He forty five minutes sleep cycle. She starts crying.
Speaker 1: Grandma in front of me, turns around, says, I think
Speaker 1: she needs to burp. Oh, you're like, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: how do you know? And I'm like, okay, I'm like
Speaker 1: you reason, I'm like, my god, damn, I gotta buckle
Speaker 1: her now and like pick her up. And I did,
Speaker 1: and you did. I did. Oh my god, we didn't
Speaker 1: even know this person. You guys. Being a mom is
Speaker 1: so weird and hard and a study in being strong
Speaker 1: on your own and sticking to your convictions and oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, it's so insane. Um so another one, yes,
Speaker 1: what else is your only option is cry it out?
Speaker 1: That it's involved in, like just letting your baby cry. Right,
Speaker 1: So you're saying if that's something that just freaks you out,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that you necessarily can't still achieve getting
Speaker 1: some sort of sleep schedule in place right, And timing
Speaker 1: is a key component of it, Like you can get
Speaker 1: your baby down if the timing is right and you're
Speaker 1: processing their sleepy cues and getting all the things in
Speaker 1: line that I can go down without crying. Oh, you
Speaker 1: might take a little bit, but I watched my baby
Speaker 1: like a hawk. As soon as I see like yawn
Speaker 1: one to three, I'm like, we got nap baby, we
Speaker 1: got nap, and I'm going to catch him before the
Speaker 1: breakdown happens. But like, I know, when I've crossed over
Speaker 1: into breakdown land where I missed, I was doing whatever
Speaker 1: and I didn't see the cues of the rubbing eyes
Speaker 1: and the yawning and whatever, and now we're into full
Speaker 1: blown but bye, and now I know it's gonna be
Speaker 1: so much harder to get them down right. Um, this
Speaker 1: is so so so all interesting, And I think that
Speaker 1: that's very helpful to know for moms who might be
Speaker 1: super turned off by the stigma attached with crying it out,
Speaker 1: or feel really upset about babies crying and their own
Speaker 1: baby crying, that there are options, like you've said, the
Speaker 1: Ferber method and what was the other one? Others, others, chair,
Speaker 1: there's a sleepwave, they hug it out. There's another I'll
Speaker 1: get out. We didn't talk about that you at all.
Speaker 1: What's that? Um? So it's another gentle version. So you
Speaker 1: have a baby that's standing. Um, I haven't gotten there yet, guys,
Speaker 1: I am scared. Okay, it's similar to chair, but you
Speaker 1: don't pick up your baby, but you kind of go
Speaker 1: over and you just kind of like I'm here, hug yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I'll slowly like calm down with your calmness,
Speaker 1: and they light down. Oh my gosh. So I did
Speaker 1: hug it out with my daughter at some point when
Speaker 1: she was standing because she was she was sleeping very well.
Speaker 1: And then you know some develop mental things. So that's
Speaker 1: also the thing where you might have your sleep thing
Speaker 1: down and then all of a sudden rolling over his
Speaker 1: new four months sleep progression is new. We're standing now,
Speaker 1: we're pulling ourselves over the crib, and we are mcgivering
Speaker 1: and matrix ng our way down the side of the crib.
Speaker 1: I'm so scared for that to happen. By the way,
Speaker 1: I'm like, that will be another episode. Oh good. Then
Speaker 1: I had a friend who um when her son got
Speaker 1: the big boy bed, he kept running out of his bed,
Speaker 1: drunk with freedom and getting into their room every single night,
Speaker 1: like in the middle of the night whenever he woke
Speaker 1: up and they put a gate up, and then he
Speaker 1: would scream cry through the night on the other side
Speaker 1: of the gate and say I'm bleeding, I'm hurt, I
Speaker 1: need to change my shirt, I'm all wet. I mean
Speaker 1: not true things, And I just have a vision of
Speaker 1: my friend and her husband holding each other sobbing to
Speaker 1: stay strong and not go because he had to walk
Speaker 1: his own self back to his big boy bed and
Speaker 1: put himself to sleep. Guys, this is not for the
Speaker 1: faint of our being a parent and whatever method you choose,
Speaker 1: just getting through the night and everyone having sleep. It's safety, guys,
Speaker 1: Like there were moments you're driving behind a wheel of
Speaker 1: the car, you need sleepy. So we've talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about the benefits of sleep training for the baby
Speaker 1: um developmentally, but also I'm sure you probably see huge
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds in in parents themselves when they get sleep. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: we're able when we get sleep, We're able to be
Speaker 1: more responsive to them versus being reactive. Because when I
Speaker 1: know when I don't get sleep, I'm snappy for sure,
Speaker 1: and I don't need to take it out on them
Speaker 1: just because there having a tantrum over something and I
Speaker 1: blow up at them because I'm tired. Right, So getting
Speaker 1: sleep in line, not only for them but for you
Speaker 1: is really important so you can parent better too and
Speaker 1: get behind the wheel of a car, drive them somewhere
Speaker 1: or just yourself. Yes, but yes, it's it's sleep. Is
Speaker 1: I had never gone without sleep in my entire life.
Speaker 1: I had never I mean, any time I'd had like
Speaker 1: a crazy night all night are in college to get
Speaker 1: a paper in or something, I would sleep the next day.
Speaker 1: Or any time those early twenty years where I partied
Speaker 1: really hard or whatever, I would sleep the next day.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to do anything. No, And when I
Speaker 1: brought my son home, I for the first time my
Speaker 1: whole life went three nights without sleep, and my husband
Speaker 1: said I was saying crazy things, like literally crazy things.
Speaker 1: I was scared, Like I I really enjoy sleeping. I
Speaker 1: like napping. I like my eight hours, and sleep was, like,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the most important thing. And I'm
Speaker 1: so happy to know you. There are tons of different
Speaker 1: options with figuring out what a parent is comfortable with
Speaker 1: for themselves and for their baby and for their family.
Speaker 1: But what we know is that sleep is more important.
Speaker 1: And that's what I do too, is building a relationship
Speaker 1: with the family to understand them. And you know, are
Speaker 1: they working, are they not working? Um, who's taking care
Speaker 1: of the baby during the day, What type of schedules
Speaker 1: do we need? Um? Kind of putting it all to
Speaker 1: are they going to daycare? Are they going to preschool. Um,
Speaker 1: when naps look like they're what are their philosophy kind
Speaker 1: of putting it all together for them so that they
Speaker 1: can have a plan of what to do when they
Speaker 1: do get home, or maybe they're not getting home in time,
Speaker 1: So it's really tailoring it to your individual case. Susie
Speaker 1: Manky's you are awesome healthy little sleepers. You guys, UM,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for all of your time and
Speaker 1: your information and for talking about babies and sleeping. You're
Speaker 1: welcome the pleasure. I guys, I am so excited today
Speaker 1: because my dear friend Abigail Morgan is here, and she
Speaker 1: is not only a very good friend, but she really
Speaker 1: helped me through very rough time in my life after
Speaker 1: my miscarriage. Um. I it took me months to get
Speaker 1: a regular cycle back. It took me months to feel
Speaker 1: like myself again. Abigail was the person that stuck needles
Speaker 1: in me lovingly every single week I got pregnant. And
Speaker 1: I also went to Abigail every week of my pregnancy,
Speaker 1: and she visited me at home after I gave birth. UM. So,
Speaker 1: not only is it like acupuncture, but you were a
Speaker 1: helper and spiritual help to me mentally, physically, pre pregnancy,
Speaker 1: throughout my pregnancy and after my pregnancy. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: You're welcome. I explain a little bit about what you do,
Speaker 1: and then we'll we'll move into UM all of the
Speaker 1: awesome stuff you do to your with your own children,
Speaker 1: because you are a mother of two. I am. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, board certified in
Speaker 1: Traditional Chinese medicine in the state of California. So what
Speaker 1: that means is that I'm I have a master's degree
Speaker 1: in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Masters and Science and UM. I
Speaker 1: am a primary care physician in California. So I have
Speaker 1: to diagnose using you know biomedical codes UM and let's
Speaker 1: say you know ib s or dysmenorrhea, painful periods or migraines,
Speaker 1: whatever it is UM and understand what that means from
Speaker 1: a Western perspective, but then also diagnose and treat according
Speaker 1: to Eastern medicine or traditional Chinese medicine. I specialize in
Speaker 1: reproductive health, so I have an additional board certification from
Speaker 1: the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine in UM Integrated
Speaker 1: Reproductive Health and it is float Chinese Float Chinese Medical
Speaker 1: Arts yes, yes, flow Chinese medical arts and you when
Speaker 1: you're not busy doing that, you are a mom of two.
Speaker 1: I am and they hold. My kids are seven and nine,
Speaker 1: and they're gosh almost eight, almost ten, great, And I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you a lot about when we
Speaker 1: started to get close mere working together throughout my pregnancy.
Speaker 1: I was and still am very fascinated in the way
Speaker 1: in which you raise your kids, which I think is
Speaker 1: great for this episode. And I would love to talk
Speaker 1: to you about how you raised them really like through sleep,
Speaker 1: through food, all of your because I know you worked
Speaker 1: with attachment parenting. You had a family bed, and I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated by these things because I've met your kids and
Speaker 1: they're awesome. So clearly the things you did were successful
Speaker 1: for you and your family. UM, can you talk to
Speaker 1: me how you came to the decision about a family
Speaker 1: bed and what is that exactly? Well for me? Um?
Speaker 1: I grew up in New York City. My parents were
Speaker 1: in the theater business. They're very had a very unconventional upbringing, UM,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I was, I felt like, well
Speaker 1: I kind of grew up Okay, I'm well adjusted, Like
Speaker 1: what did they do? And I didn't honestly know apparently
Speaker 1: that I had a crib and everything. But my mom's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you were in our bed every night. Oh your
Speaker 1: brother was in our bed until he was six. So
Speaker 1: I just thought, well that worked. And then I also
Speaker 1: had other people in my life who were doing family
Speaker 1: bed Um what is it? What set? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Basically bed sharing? There's okay, so there's room sharing and
Speaker 1: there's bed sharing. So now we know the American Academy
Speaker 1: Pediatrics recommends room sharing as of two thousands sixteen, up
Speaker 1: until minimum of six months, preferably a year. How they say, so,
Speaker 1: even if you have your baby in a crib, the
Speaker 1: AP recommends crippy in the room. Now that's obviously not
Speaker 1: the right answer for everybody, but they came to that
Speaker 1: decision after a home and my understanding is um, after
Speaker 1: a lot of pediatricians were reporting, yeah, infant death from
Speaker 1: from kids from parents that weren't attentive to let's say
Speaker 1: they didn't have a monitor or you know, they were
Speaker 1: relying too much on it or wearing noise canceling headphones
Speaker 1: or something. So so that said, I felt that I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be close to my baby. I I
Speaker 1: felt that it would be hard to get up out
Speaker 1: of bed and go into another room and take the
Speaker 1: baby out of the crib and nurse and put the
Speaker 1: baby back. We also had a small two bedroom apartment
Speaker 1: at the time. When I had that, logistically, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't I feel like it made a whole lot
Speaker 1: of sense. The walls were, you know, it's like a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties building with paper thin walls. We would have
Speaker 1: heard the kid anyway. And I just wanted to sleep
Speaker 1: as much as possible because I knew i'd be going
Speaker 1: back to work and all that. I also read a
Speaker 1: book I had to write down the title because I, um,
Speaker 1: I haven't looked at it in so long, but it
Speaker 1: was called The Continuum com The Continuum Concept by Gene
Speaker 1: Leadloff from six I read it probably in nine two thousand,
Speaker 1: um way before I thought about having kids, and um,
Speaker 1: the it's a It's a book by an anthropologist who
Speaker 1: went into essentially a pre industrial society and looked at
Speaker 1: how these parents were all functioned and they all wear
Speaker 1: their babies. So then I looked into attachment parenting, and
Speaker 1: I looked into how that's based on attachment theory. This
Speaker 1: is yes, but explained to our listeners what exactly is
Speaker 1: attachment parenting, because you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: these trigger words when you're a new mom or when
Speaker 1: you're pregnant that you hear, like sleep training, the cryed
Speaker 1: out method, attachment parenting, a family bed, co sleeping. These
Speaker 1: are all such triggering words that I think are like
Speaker 1: not what's fascinating is that you've done some of them,
Speaker 1: And can you explain what exactly attachment parenting is and
Speaker 1: that worked for you? I can't, and I feel like
Speaker 1: I didn't fully explain the answer to your question about
Speaker 1: family bed Yes, we will get that. So. Yeah, So basically,
Speaker 1: bed sharing is parents or caregivers in the same bed
Speaker 1: as the baby. Room sharing is maybe there's a sidecar,
Speaker 1: so you in one bed with you and your husband
Speaker 1: and your baby. And then when the second kid came around,
Speaker 1: we already had what's called a sidecar, a small um
Speaker 1: infant mattress on the floor, and our king bed was
Speaker 1: on the floor right next to him. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: that but then shortly after my second kid was born
Speaker 1: there two years apart, he was like I'm out room literally,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, he was like, this is you know this
Speaker 1: waking up in the middle of the night, baby infant
Speaker 1: stuff like I'm over that. The fear that people have
Speaker 1: about like blankets sheets rolling over on your baby, that
Speaker 1: does not happen. It doesn't happen. But there are safe
Speaker 1: sleeping guidelines and your listeners can look them up from
Speaker 1: Dr James McKenna. He actually wrote a great book called
Speaker 1: Sleeping with Your Baby, A Parent's Guide to co Sleeping,
Speaker 1: and so all of that is explained in that book.
Speaker 1: But you know, the long and short of it is,
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of blankets. You don't have
Speaker 1: blankets over the baby. It basically goes the breastfeeding parent, uh,
Speaker 1: and then and the baby some sort of bedrail or wall, baby,
Speaker 1: breastfeeding parent and then other parent. So we actually that's
Speaker 1: the best way to do it. That's actually not what
Speaker 1: we ended up doing. The configuration of the of the room.
Speaker 1: We had dad on one side, baby in the middle,
Speaker 1: and me and we just baby didn't have our comforter
Speaker 1: over him. We made a U shape with the comforter
Speaker 1: god or we had two separate comforters depending on the
Speaker 1: time of here. You know, here we are in Los Angeles, right,
Speaker 1: you don't really are, so, yeah, it's different than and
Speaker 1: so when the baby would wake up and make sounds,
Speaker 1: you would just roll over and lay down breastfeed and
Speaker 1: he is right there. So the beauty of beauty of
Speaker 1: it is that you know with que feeding overnight is
Speaker 1: baby goes, you know, in roots and even at eight
Speaker 1: weeks self attaches and I'm like, oh, I guess he's nursing.
Speaker 1: You wake up and then you're done and you go
Speaker 1: back to sleep. Yeah, So the nursing hormones, the oxytocin
Speaker 1: and all those feel good hormones really help me. Is
Speaker 1: the rest gating mom to go back to sleep? Sure,
Speaker 1: And and then you do that in a safe way
Speaker 1: by not you don't obviously that there's a suffocation hazard
Speaker 1: if there's a big blanket over the baby. Of course,
Speaker 1: so we would have our own little baby blanket over him,
Speaker 1: or a sleep sack or something like that, various things
Speaker 1: depending on the time of year. If it was warm,
Speaker 1: then baby would just be in a sleeper without any blankets.
Speaker 1: And then when you gave birth to your second baby,
Speaker 1: how did the bed look there? So fascinating. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: at I my toddler was still nursing. He I breastfed
Speaker 1: through my whole second pregnancy. Um, oh yeah, you guys,
Speaker 1: Abigail's a champion who tandem breastbed. That's why I ever
Speaker 1: heard of that. That's two babies, one on each boob. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not always at the same time, although they were at
Speaker 1: the same time sometimes. Um, it was just the second
Speaker 1: pregnancy was not. It took us by surprise. So they
Speaker 1: were two years apart. So the older kid who was
Speaker 1: too when my the second one was born, was at
Speaker 1: that time from eighteen months from his age eighteen months
Speaker 1: until baby two was born, he was sleeping in a
Speaker 1: sidecar arrangement, so he was on the floor in a
Speaker 1: small baby mattress. Yeah, next to our bed. So we
Speaker 1: would put him down at his bedtime six thirty or
Speaker 1: seven or whatever it was, and then we would go
Speaker 1: leave the room and go about our night. And then
Speaker 1: we would just go in and sleep in the family bed.
Speaker 1: And so when baby two was born, um, and I
Speaker 1: had both kids at home, so baby Nuver two was born.
Speaker 1: That my birth was super super fast. The whole thing
Speaker 1: was about an hour. Um. My husband had been putting
Speaker 1: my older kid to bed, the two year old while
Speaker 1: I was realizing, oh holy ship labor and then you know,
Speaker 1: an hour later later, the baby's born in the in
Speaker 1: the kitchen and water birth. This was a planned home birth,
Speaker 1: I should say, with a with a nurse midwife. UM.
Speaker 1: So then the next morning my son met the new
Speaker 1: baby and he just kind of toddled out of his
Speaker 1: little sidecar bed. Um. I think I had slept in
Speaker 1: the couch pull out that night. Whatever sleep after, like superwoman,
Speaker 1: I can't just what made sense? I mean? And and
Speaker 1: so when shortly after you asked how the sleep when
Speaker 1: the number two was born, so she we co slept
Speaker 1: with her and UM, and then after the first couple
Speaker 1: of nights, it became clear, Okay, so toddler really needs
Speaker 1: to continue having this eleven hour straight sleep which he
Speaker 1: had been getting. And UM and my husband needed sleep.
Speaker 1: And so I slept in the twin bed in my
Speaker 1: son's room, which he hadn't even moved into yet. This
Speaker 1: is our two bedroom house. We'd upgraded, but it was
Speaker 1: still only two bedrooms. And so I slept in the
Speaker 1: twin bed with my daughter, the newborn, so that she
Speaker 1: could queue feed. That said she would go three four
Speaker 1: hours straight from newborn age, which you know, you can't
Speaker 1: really let a newborn and more than four hours from
Speaker 1: when a breastfeed, so I had to sometimes wake her UM.
Speaker 1: But she was a totally different type of breastfeeder than
Speaker 1: than her older brother was UM and they are to
Speaker 1: this day. They eat in very different ways, of different
Speaker 1: metabolisms UM where he was just you know, like a
Speaker 1: hummingbird nursing frequently. And she was like whatever, I'm like,
Speaker 1: fast asleep. How did you? And then we all went
Speaker 1: into the family bed. I don't know, she was maybe
Speaker 1: a month old. I brought her back into the family bed,
Speaker 1: and then my son was like, I'm out. He was
Speaker 1: two years old, and he was like forget. It was
Speaker 1: like moms up every four hours or less. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I don't even know if he knew that I was up,
Speaker 1: because you know, it's quiet. It's not like the child
Speaker 1: is screaming right right, feed them when they're hungry. But
Speaker 1: he just I think that he was so completely appalled
Speaker 1: that there was another child to be joined the family.
Speaker 1: It was like I'm going to just pretend this isn't
Speaker 1: happening face, And so we gave it. How did you
Speaker 1: find um? How is it on a relationship? You know?
Speaker 1: I think that like I imagine I had the cozy
Speaker 1: moments of like, you know, because I didn't do Albie
Speaker 1: was I was really really sick after I gave birth.
Speaker 1: I had probably the worst cold and cough I've ever
Speaker 1: had in my entire life. Um, and so Albie was
Speaker 1: sleeping in his crib outside of my room from day one,
Speaker 1: um with a night nurse. And I really still romanticized
Speaker 1: the idea of like the whole family being in a
Speaker 1: bed and all of these things. But realistically, since you
Speaker 1: have done it for a long time, you had a
Speaker 1: family bed, how does that look with your relationship, like
Speaker 1: with your husband? Is it like do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Yeah, it's a good question. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: looks different for every family. I know it does because
Speaker 1: I have a lot of friends and family members who've
Speaker 1: done family bed and many of them even longer than
Speaker 1: we did. So I'm just going to speak from my
Speaker 1: own experience. Um, it was amazing when my first one
Speaker 1: was born, you know, it really was. And this is
Speaker 1: a kid who physiologically needed to eat every forty five
Speaker 1: minutes to an hour and a half until he was
Speaker 1: about a year old. That was just who he is,
Speaker 1: and he would get super full fast. His kid is
Speaker 1: a newborn could drain abreast in five minutes for you guys,
Speaker 1: like it would take that sometimes at the beginning I
Speaker 1: would be breastfeeding for and I remember asking my midwife,
Speaker 1: who was also you know, elactation expert, like, what about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes per side, isn't it supposed to? She's like, honey,
Speaker 1: watched the baby, not the clock. And that was the
Speaker 1: best advice I got. Right. So, in the light of
Speaker 1: all of these repeated surges of oxytocin and the feel
Speaker 1: good hormones that you know, our brain has the pituitary gland,
Speaker 1: which is between our eyes and the forehead, secretes oxytocin,
Speaker 1: which stimulates uter in contractions. So that's part of what
Speaker 1: helps the uterus go back to its normal size after
Speaker 1: giving birth and also stimulates that prolactin comes from there
Speaker 1: to stimulates the milk let down. So every time you
Speaker 1: get that surge of oxytocin, the prolactin milk let down,
Speaker 1: you know, it feels kind of like being high, you know,
Speaker 1: you're staring a little bit in college, or I could
Speaker 1: just say it's you know, it's a really heavy or
Speaker 1: or like a post orgasmic feeling, except it's not sexual.
Speaker 1: It's just really feel you're all in this bed of
Speaker 1: feeling swimming in you know, of of mother homos. That's
Speaker 1: what you were feeling and he was feeling. I also
Speaker 1: felt a lot of anxiety right. Um. My husband and
Speaker 1: I were talking about this the other day that he's like,
Speaker 1: do you remember when we could you drop a fork
Speaker 1: in the kitchen and we would panic because we thought
Speaker 1: he was gonna wake up because he was such a
Speaker 1: light sleeper. I can't. I mean, I'm oh my gosh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the first time was was was amazing, but it
Speaker 1: was also it also was not without its challenges. Did
Speaker 1: you feel that you got quality It sounds like you've
Speaker 1: got quality sleep in this situation because you weren't having
Speaker 1: to get out of bed. I remember that to go breastfeed,
Speaker 1: like for you going back to work, it was all
Speaker 1: about logging the most amount of minutes possible to sleep,
Speaker 1: and that would mean having the baby right there next
Speaker 1: to you. Means you're not getting up out of bed
Speaker 1: to get the baby out of the crib and skin.
Speaker 1: It's better, you know, regulation of the breastfeeding mechanism, the
Speaker 1: you know, the letdown reflects happens sooner when your baby's
Speaker 1: right next to you. Um. And then baby wearing, which
Speaker 1: we did during the day. And this is all in
Speaker 1: regards to attachment parenting, is what we're talking about. Can
Speaker 1: you explain a little bit about what that means? Yes, absolutely, Well,
Speaker 1: there's the eight principles of attachment parenting can be found
Speaker 1: from Attachment Parenting dot org, which is not for profit organization,
Speaker 1: but basically it's based on attachment theory, which goes way
Speaker 1: way back. But um, it's the psychological model that describes
Speaker 1: relationships between humans, and attachment theory is now the primary,
Speaker 1: the dominant theory used in child development UM, in infant
Speaker 1: and toddler mental health. This is what psychotherapists use. It's
Speaker 1: called attachment theory theory. UM. And so we look at
Speaker 1: it in the West in terms of the die ad
Speaker 1: like the mother infant I had, but um, really we
Speaker 1: need to look at the whole world and see that
Speaker 1: in most cultures it's not a nuclear family. Right. We're
Speaker 1: kind of forgive me, we're kind of fucked in because
Speaker 1: this whole idea of it's like one or two parents
Speaker 1: raising kids is not you guys, take it really really
Speaker 1: is true? Yes, yes, and um. So attachment attachment parenting
Speaker 1: looks at um being the a having a primary character,
Speaker 1: which usually ends up being the mother who gave birth.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't have to be. I had a good
Speaker 1: friend whose wife went back to work at Disney as
Speaker 1: a producer like six weeks after giving birth, and he
Speaker 1: was they were attachment parenting, so she would they co slept,
Speaker 1: and but he was the baby wearing dad and he
Speaker 1: was at the park with us and all of that,
Speaker 1: And so it doesn't have to be just a mom.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't have basically means like that the baby
Speaker 1: is always close to you in proximity. Yeah, always most
Speaker 1: of the time. So baby wearing allows you to kind
Speaker 1: of go about your day while having the baby close
Speaker 1: to you. Baby would for me, baby would sleep on me,
Speaker 1: and we baby where I had like fourteen different baby carriers, um,
Speaker 1: and so some in the beginning were more appropriate to
Speaker 1: an infant, and then as the older Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: once I had you know, I got pregnant, I was
Speaker 1: wearing him more on my back um and then co
Speaker 1: sleeping or bedshine. You are que feeding, wow, and okay,
Speaker 1: so explain que feeding. This is also a whole thing.
Speaker 1: And then I want to get into a little bit
Speaker 1: about how you naturally got your babies sort of on
Speaker 1: a schedule on their own, and because you did end
Speaker 1: up going you went back to work. Yeah, after the
Speaker 1: first kid, I went back to work about three and
Speaker 1: a half months after giving birth. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: my own business owner, so I wasn't going back to
Speaker 1: work in the nine to six corporate office with an
Speaker 1: hour community each way, right, you were just having your
Speaker 1: own hours. You do that plan so you practice co
Speaker 1: sleeping attachment parenting. You would wear that. You would sleep
Speaker 1: with the baby on you for naps in your bed
Speaker 1: at night, and then you would wear him and her
Speaker 1: as you did stuff that the day. I should point
Speaker 1: out when my husband, my husband was the primary caregiver
Speaker 1: on when I went back to work, he would do
Speaker 1: the baby wearing, and on the weekends we both would
Speaker 1: and then when we had a babysitter, they would wear
Speaker 1: the baby. Did you find there to be any sort
Speaker 1: of huge separation that happened or does the baby just
Speaker 1: decide like, mom, I don't want to be warned, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, when they start to really separate, look like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's clear. You know. Basically, I feel that it's
Speaker 1: important to look at the brain and brain development. And
Speaker 1: so when attachment theory looks at how an infant responds
Speaker 1: when they are separated from their primary caregiver, right, and
Speaker 1: so in in Africa, in UM, certain countries that are
Speaker 1: we might call pre pre industrial, you know, where they
Speaker 1: still have um the I can't spacing on the word
Speaker 1: for it, but there's multiple mothers in the village. Still
Speaker 1: goes on in many parts. Of course. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: this idea of solitary sleep is less than a hundred
Speaker 1: years old. So to kind of just put that in perspective,
Speaker 1: we can think of how long we've been around as
Speaker 1: a human race. So if a child is separated by
Speaker 1: themselves in the dark, scared, that goes into um, you
Speaker 1: know what's called our implicit memory. So they look at it.
Speaker 1: This is more of a doctor Dan Siegel, who's a
Speaker 1: psychotherapist and neurobiologist UM here in California, but um looking
Speaker 1: at how how the brain works, the amygdala, the hippocampus,
Speaker 1: the parts of brain that store our raw sensory memory.
Speaker 1: This is this stuff that's you know, pre verbal. But
Speaker 1: if you let's say a child is attacked by a bear.
Speaker 1: You know, just because there's three months doesn't mean they're
Speaker 1: not going to remember because it got and so the
Speaker 1: same thing happens when a child is by themselves alone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so the idea is not to never leave
Speaker 1: your child alone. But with attached and parenting, we are
Speaker 1: really looking for their cues of when they are ready,
Speaker 1: Like you carried this baby inside of you when they
Speaker 1: were not alone for ten months, and now the babies
Speaker 1: outside of you, and you keep them close and they
Speaker 1: will make it clear within when they are ready for
Speaker 1: any sort of distance. Is that sort of the well, yes,
Speaker 1: but also when mother mom and the dad or the
Speaker 1: parents are ready exam for whatever it is. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a soothing approach so that the child
Speaker 1: is associating going to sleep with being safe. If the
Speaker 1: child associates going to sleep with being in a state
Speaker 1: of terror and fear, then you can bet that kid's
Speaker 1: going to have problems later on in life with those
Speaker 1: implicit memories. Got it. So I saw that a lot
Speaker 1: because I worked with moms for so long before I
Speaker 1: became a parent, and I saw that, and I just
Speaker 1: didn't want that. You knew in your heart that that
Speaker 1: was not like you were never going to be For example,
Speaker 1: this whole cryed out method are letting babies really cry
Speaker 1: when they go to sleep fundamentally and psychologically to you.
Speaker 1: That didn't sit right to me and my husband, and
Speaker 1: we talked about it quite a lot, especially in pregnancy.
Speaker 1: You just knew that you were going to always put
Speaker 1: your baby to sleep in a state of comfort and
Speaker 1: peace and safety. That was the idea. And then when
Speaker 1: eventually I night leaned my my oldest child when he
Speaker 1: was about seventeen months, we used the DCOR J. Gordon,
Speaker 1: who is a pediatrician on the West side of California,
Speaker 1: Santa Monica, rather west side west side California, the west side.
Speaker 1: But yes, so what did you say? And um, and
Speaker 1: that approach is picking a seven hour chunk because the
Speaker 1: definition of sleeping through the night is about seven hours. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, for a child under about a year. And
Speaker 1: he says, do not use this method under like twelve
Speaker 1: to fourteen months. But we picked a seven hour chunk
Speaker 1: because I was just tired of nursing all night throughout pregnancy. Honestly,
Speaker 1: like that point, literally I'm sitting here, you guys, I'm
Speaker 1: probably the most quiet I've ever been in any of
Speaker 1: the podcast because my mouth is on the floor, just
Speaker 1: a gape at like and that you look pretty and
Speaker 1: you're like well rested and you did all of this.
Speaker 1: I just can't even imagine it. Okay, so well, they
Speaker 1: do eventually sleep, but yeah, the idea was pick a
Speaker 1: seven hour chunk and he says, you know, eleven pm
Speaker 1: to six am, Yeah, exactly, um, and and when instead
Speaker 1: of it's gradual, but it for us it took about
Speaker 1: a week and we did it with both kids. So
Speaker 1: instead of nursing to sleep, you breastfeed, and then after
Speaker 1: eleven pm, you don't breastfeed at all, and so you
Speaker 1: do shishing and patting their back, but it's still within
Speaker 1: the family bed. So this approach is fantastic if you're
Speaker 1: doing family bed but you want to, you're ready to
Speaker 1: night lean your kids because you're making themselves feel safe
Speaker 1: and comforted, but not through food and nursing anything. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be the quote primary parent, It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be the mom, as long as everybody's
Speaker 1: on the same page and you're really clear on your guide.
Speaker 1: So when did you start to see a schedule? I'm
Speaker 1: assuming it started to naturally form because then you went
Speaker 1: back to work and I know that your baby was
Speaker 1: cared for by your husband and then also at daycare
Speaker 1: and things like that, like, how did you continue this
Speaker 1: sort of methodology with really basically being sort of on
Speaker 1: demand and taking things off of cues of your baby
Speaker 1: um when other people are involved. Right, Well, we did
Speaker 1: daycared in Sartil eighteen months, so I didn't have the
Speaker 1: experience of infant daycare, which I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have. But I went back to work three
Speaker 1: days a week, and two days my husband was on
Speaker 1: was the primary parent. And then one day we had
Speaker 1: a guy who saw like he could do it no problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah we did, and we still did, and he would
Speaker 1: just feed a bottle before. The idea with que feeding
Speaker 1: is that whether you're bottle feeding or your breastfeeding, if
Speaker 1: you have listeners who have really tried to breastfeed but can't,
Speaker 1: you can absolutely still do cue feeding, whether it's with
Speaker 1: breast milk, your own breast milk that's pumped don't, or
Speaker 1: milk formula, whatever it is, it's food. And que feeding
Speaker 1: is basically like you think they're hungry, they're expressing that
Speaker 1: they're hungry feed. You learn their cues pretty quickly, just
Speaker 1: like you do with with when they need to poop,
Speaker 1: which is the whole other conversation for another episode. But
Speaker 1: so I went back to work at three and a
Speaker 1: half months after baby number one was born, and um,
Speaker 1: at that point he had really around I think about
Speaker 1: three months, he settled into a pretty predictable pattern of breastfeeding,
Speaker 1: of sleep, and I believe rhythm and routine are so important. Um.
Speaker 1: I love that sort of Waldorf approach of rhythm and routine.
Speaker 1: Um of you know, a Rudolf Steiner of babies love routine.
Speaker 1: They can be you know, looking at the baby's cues
Speaker 1: just like I explained my first kid and my second
Speaker 1: kid totally different metabolisms. You know, one needed to eat
Speaker 1: every and the only one could totally grow, like six
Speaker 1: months was going like much much longer. So um, So
Speaker 1: we would watch their cues and then if it was
Speaker 1: a caregiver there, they would give a bottle of breast milk, um,
Speaker 1: and then you know often wear the baby or or
Speaker 1: bounce on a ball and put them down to sleep
Speaker 1: in their bed and then go about their business. Um.
Speaker 1: And I do were to take care and they weren't
Speaker 1: on a set schedule for example, like they weren't saying,
Speaker 1: like we do nap time here for to take care
Speaker 1: was until eighteen months. Okay, so by that time the
Speaker 1: baby was set one and a half year old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. I mean by the time he started daycare,
Speaker 1: he was probably waking up once a night, maybe twice
Speaker 1: a night to nurse. No, No, that's actually because we
Speaker 1: night we needed said teen eighteen months, so he was
Speaker 1: waking more frequently. But basically the full three full days
Speaker 1: a week of daycare when that started, um was about
Speaker 1: the time he was sleeping straight through the night, eleven
Speaker 1: hour straight. So no, they had to set nap time,
Speaker 1: you know, one to two thirty. And I've said, how
Speaker 1: the heck are you going to get fourteen kids to
Speaker 1: nap at the same time, And they say, oh, it
Speaker 1: just it happens, and they they're incredibly loving and they
Speaker 1: sit there and they pack their backs and then it's contagious.
Speaker 1: All the kids are turned on that white noise exactly,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh my god, So, um,
Speaker 1: what did have you found to be the benefits of
Speaker 1: co sleeping? So the advantages basically from when they night leaned,
Speaker 1: stopped nursing overnight, but continue nursing during the day. Um,
Speaker 1: they have not had any sleep aggressions at all, and
Speaker 1: so uh and they have positive associations with sleep. They're
Speaker 1: basically they're not afraid of it. They're not getting in
Speaker 1: a dark room and freaking out. The biggest issue now
Speaker 1: is but mom, I'm not done with this chapter, and
Speaker 1: they want to keep reading. And we have a firm
Speaker 1: lights out, you know rule, and I know and I
Speaker 1: want to keep reading. So I really take an empathy
Speaker 1: based approach to parenting and that just grows with them.
Speaker 1: You know. Now they're in second and fourth grade and
Speaker 1: their sleep is absolutely crucial. So if anything, it's they
Speaker 1: don't want to go to bed soon enough. Even if
Speaker 1: they're still like in bed at seven thirty, that's a
Speaker 1: hard out for us. But they may be reading for
Speaker 1: an hour and a half and so you know, we
Speaker 1: have to turn in beded seven thirty and then they
Speaker 1: go to sleep at nine. They might read well, I mean,
Speaker 1: my daughters out by eight fifteen most nights, but my
Speaker 1: son will push it as late as we can. I
Speaker 1: be your kid, this islievable? Like that sounds well they
Speaker 1: have to be up at six delicious school. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm in bed bow. I treat a lot of
Speaker 1: insomnie in my practice, and a lot of the adults
Speaker 1: I work with did not have healthy sleep hygiene as kids,
Speaker 1: and so I think sleep hygiene. You know, however that's defined,
Speaker 1: it looks different for every family. Is super important for
Speaker 1: setting us up as adults because the brain is so malleable.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not fully milinated until age seven. Um,
Speaker 1: what advice would you give to parents who might be
Speaker 1: looking into making a choice like this? The number one
Speaker 1: piece of advice I would give is trust your instinct,
Speaker 1: trust your intuition, because it's never wrong. And if you
Speaker 1: are married, and you're because a lot of the people
Speaker 1: I work with are going about this alone. Um, single
Speaker 1: moms by choice. But if you with your partner or
Speaker 1: the person that you're deciding to raise your kids with,
Speaker 1: make sure that you talk about all these questions first,
Speaker 1: not all of them, but many of them. How what
Speaker 1: do you want parenting to look like? Did you do
Speaker 1: that with your husband? I did? Like you, guys, knew
Speaker 1: while you were pregnant you had spoken about a family
Speaker 1: bed and attachment parenting and you had read books, and
Speaker 1: I mean it was kind of hilarious. My my mother
Speaker 1: in law Ga blessed her through me a baby shower
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of her friends that I had
Speaker 1: never met before. She said, so it's the nursery, Like,
Speaker 1: what is the color theme? You know? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: we were not going to have a nursery because we
Speaker 1: have a two bedroom apartment and one of them, one
Speaker 1: of the bedrooms was our office, right and um, and
Speaker 1: the other was our bedroom and so we were She's like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, are you going to find out the gender?
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I'm not going to find out gender
Speaker 1: because there's no test for gender. But we elected not
Speaker 1: to choose to find out the sex for my first
Speaker 1: so we didn't know. So I literally got like thirty
Speaker 1: fantastic gifts that were all pink or green and um,
Speaker 1: and my my mother in law net this adorable white
Speaker 1: baby blanket for my son with a raider patch on
Speaker 1: it because my husband's a huge Raider fan. She's determined
Speaker 1: to have something and something, so I was just like,
Speaker 1: if I can't have a pick color, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: a blanket with a raider And so I love her,
Speaker 1: So the real thing, it's trust your instinct. It's wonderful
Speaker 1: what I'm sitting here listening to because I I am
Speaker 1: such a Libra in that Yes, I'm just like very
Speaker 1: good at weighing out, Like I love being a part
Speaker 1: of this podcast because I love hearing how people do things,
Speaker 1: and I also really am able to see way things
Speaker 1: out and so for me instinctually it can get hard
Speaker 1: because I'm like, well, I'm feeling this, but maybe it's that,
Speaker 1: but maybe it's this, but maybe it's that. You know,
Speaker 1: It's it's so good that you say that, because as
Speaker 1: a Libra, I have the same thing. I'm always wanting
Speaker 1: to know the end and the young things, the plus
Speaker 1: in the minus the cost benefit ratio exactly. And for
Speaker 1: a new parent or you know, maybe a parent who
Speaker 1: had a kid nine ten years ago and it's going
Speaker 1: to be doing it all over again and thinking maybe
Speaker 1: I'll do things different. You'll go to the library, get books.
Speaker 1: Just it's you, guys. That's why I Abigail's brought up
Speaker 1: so many amazing points in this podcast that will all
Speaker 1: be listed in the crib notes. Absolutely, and just I think,
Speaker 1: follow your instinct and follow your your inclination to learn
Speaker 1: more about something, and ultimately you are the expert about
Speaker 1: your baby right nobody else's And it for me, resisting
Speaker 1: the mommy wars brought on a lot of anxiety. I
Speaker 1: felt judged. Whether or not I was actually being judged,
Speaker 1: I would feel anxious. Am I doing what's best for
Speaker 1: my kid? Can I be any better? But I've learned
Speaker 1: now almost ten years into this, to just to surrender
Speaker 1: and let it go and detached with love and find
Speaker 1: acceptance with that uncertainty because ultimately, you know, we really
Speaker 1: can't control our kids. We can set no fee boundaries.
Speaker 1: I can try, but absolutely we can set healthy boundaries
Speaker 1: and you know, have a really good rhythm and routine
Speaker 1: in our day and all that and and um and
Speaker 1: then ultimately I think, I truly think a lot of
Speaker 1: the personality just come into the world with it. Oh
Speaker 1: for sure, to know that a lot of them just
Speaker 1: kind of came out who they were really weird, they
Speaker 1: absolutely did. Yeah. I my mom and dad read this
Speaker 1: book by t Berry Brazilton who just passed away at
Speaker 1: age couple of months ago. Um. And he's you know,
Speaker 1: a world famous guy, but he was like the pediatrician
Speaker 1: and the post spock Era who was started talking about
Speaker 1: this attachment theory and all that and my parents, and
Speaker 1: my mom was like, I don't know, it just made
Speaker 1: so much sense and it was totally different with her
Speaker 1: from what her parents had done with their six children.
Speaker 1: And that was that I saw that. I saw She's like,
Speaker 1: she found a book. It lit a fire. You know,
Speaker 1: she didn't. She said she felt like the only person
Speaker 1: in the world who had ever had a baby. She
Speaker 1: was an actress in New York. None of her friends kids, right,
Speaker 1: So I I took a cue from my mom, I think,
Speaker 1: and just following following my instinct, learning more about it,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately just letting it go. And you know,
Speaker 1: reading your baby and getting to know your baby and
Speaker 1: trusting that you know what's best for him, and and
Speaker 1: sometimes I was on the floor hysterically crying, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the reality of it. No matter what
Speaker 1: you choose, whichever ways, And just because you choose something
Speaker 1: one day doesn't mean you can't change your mind another day. Also,
Speaker 1: by the way, at some point you're all going to
Speaker 1: be crying on the floor, and at some point you're
Speaker 1: all going to be laughing your grasses off, and that's
Speaker 1: just seems to be motherhood. It is, And whether it's
Speaker 1: a biological child or an adopted child or you know,
Speaker 1: a grandchild or whatever, it's that same dynamic. You have
Speaker 1: to just surrender into that powerlessness. I think I was
Speaker 1: actually just away without me and we had a nap
Speaker 1: in the bed with us for fun, and I felt
Speaker 1: like I couldn't really like get into a comfortable position honestly,
Speaker 1: Like I was like, what about the blankets. I know
Speaker 1: we've already talked about this, but is that just something
Speaker 1: in time that you sort of figure out the best
Speaker 1: way position wise to sleep with your baby in the
Speaker 1: bed or was there something that you know works every
Speaker 1: time that's written in a book? Um, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I will refer you back to the Dr James McKenna
Speaker 1: guidelines for Safeco sleeping because he gives good guidelines in
Speaker 1: general for everybody, but um and to avoid sids and
Speaker 1: all of that. But I think what I tell my
Speaker 1: pay aatians too, especially if they're dealing with insomnia and
Speaker 1: the new baby's find whatever is comfortable for you first,
Speaker 1: exclusive of the baby. I personally am a side sleeper.
Speaker 1: I've always left on my left side that's how I sleep,
Speaker 1: except my mom says, when I was a baby, I
Speaker 1: slept on my tummy. Um, I, you know, find your pillow, blanket,
Speaker 1: combo on the mattress, and then figure out how baby
Speaker 1: can work around that in a safe way, so that,
Speaker 1: for example, with me, I would tuck the blanket under
Speaker 1: my legs so it wasn't anywhere near baby um. And
Speaker 1: it also has to be a firm mattress. We can't
Speaker 1: be dealing with a mushy mattress here or a big
Speaker 1: cushy mattress cover those those don't fit the safe sleeping guidelines.
Speaker 1: So we had a super firm mattress, which is what
Speaker 1: we liked anyway. So find where your comfortable spot is
Speaker 1: and then if that's it kind of is easiest on
Speaker 1: the side. Because this is all keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: I learned how to nurse on my side very early
Speaker 1: once the baby. Remember came over to do a postpartum
Speaker 1: um tune up acupuncture session and she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you could just lay right here and put the baby
Speaker 1: right here, And I was like, you can lay down
Speaker 1: and nurse. I only thought in the hospital, I had
Speaker 1: only learned that there was a football hold or the
Speaker 1: cradle hold you could, so you would be sleeping on
Speaker 1: the side. You get comfortable and figure out how the
Speaker 1: baby works into that. Because you're sleeping well and comfortably,
Speaker 1: so is the baby, right And I basically lined up
Speaker 1: baby nose to nipple or he was a little bit
Speaker 1: lower um, and that was what was comfortable for me.
Speaker 1: Babies are very resilient. They will pretty much sleep anywhere,
Speaker 1: and so the advantage of bed sharing was that, you know,
Speaker 1: we did travel to see family, or we went on vacation,
Speaker 1: or we were in a hotel or when I would
Speaker 1: always do and it would just the baby would just
Speaker 1: sleep where we slept, you know. And and this whole
Speaker 1: idea of a lot of people think of family dead
Speaker 1: means you go to bed when the kid goes to bed. No,
Speaker 1: you know, when they were really little, at bedtime was
Speaker 1: six o'clock. Sure, you would put the big kid down
Speaker 1: to six o'clock and then I would like rush to
Speaker 1: do laundry and make dinner and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: The dirty secret of parenting is that that window narrows,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you end up with so much
Speaker 1: night pen not right now all he goes to sleep
Speaker 1: at seven and I'm really my seven to ten windows
Speaker 1: like huge for me right now. Actually it's like you
Speaker 1: know when I see my husband and like when I
Speaker 1: have a five glass of wine. Whatever. Well, the only
Speaker 1: thing is you get creative with where you are intimate
Speaker 1: with your partner, you know, I mean it's not people.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to especially when you have the
Speaker 1: second kid, and after the second kid comes, you know,
Speaker 1: it's super important not to lose that intimacy in that
Speaker 1: one at one time date night became crucial. This has
Speaker 1: been so eye opening and so wonderful. And you are
Speaker 1: I'm just so happy to be sitting with you in
Speaker 1: my crib on my couch. Um both you're just the best.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for all of your wise
Speaker 1: words and advice and personal experience. UM, we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you guys so much for listening to
Speaker 1: today's episode. I want to hear from you. Let's chat questions, comments, concerns.
Speaker 1: Let me know. You can always find me at Katie's
Speaker 1: Crib at Shonda land dot com. Katie's Crib is a
Speaker 1: production of Shonda Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. H