REWILD + FREE - Normalizing Infant & Toddler Sleep: How to get your baby to sleep WITHOUT sleep training, with Robin Sanderson (@wild.child.sleep)

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

In this episode I'm joined by Robin (@wild.child.sleep) who gives us the truth about infant sleep. Consider this conversation *almost* everything you need to know about your baby's sleep. Robin unpacks sleep myths, defines sleep training, and discusses common societal pressures that are impacting a mother's self confidence and self trust.  Robin is NOT a sleep trainer! Instead this is a discussion about looking at sleep from a holistic lens, normalizing normal and trusting your instincts.  We get a little nerdy about the nervous system and hormones but Robin does a fantastic job at explaining the nuance around infant sleep in an easy to digest way  and shares helpful insights and tangible strategies to support your baby or toddler to sleep.Click here to access Robin's free guide on Infant + Toddler Temperament More about Robin: Robin is a doula and infant sleep specialist bringing back the lost art of Mothering the Mother. Robin works with you to understand your choices and find simple, effective, and evidence based solutions to meet your sleep goals. She leaves you with all the tools you need to feel confident in your parenting journey.  Find out more hereConnect with Robin on IG (@wild.child.sleep)Connect with Nicole on IG (@nicolepasveer)Want to be a guest on the podcast?  Fill out this formIf this show has inspired, transformed or made your life a tinyyy bit better in anyway and you’ve been searching for a way to say thank you, and support me in producing more episodes, you can now buy me a donut 🍩 (see link below)Support the showConnect with Nicole on IG (@nicolepasveer) Want to be a guest on the podcast? Fill out this form

You don't very often go out and see like a toddler in a carrier nursing or like an older baby in a carrier sleeping on mom, you know, like that's like newborn. Sure. That's great. And then be on the newborn stage. It's like, oh, why aren't they sleeping alone? Welcome to the Not Just a Mom Show, where we have open and honest conversations about the vulnerabilities and the victories within entrepreneurship and new motherhood. If we haven't met yet, I'm Nicole Pazier and I'm going to be your host. Here on the show, we don't subscribe to perfection. In fact, being present is the new perfect and showing up messy is the new norm. My hope is that this podcast serves as a safe space for me and inspiration for you to stop living life watered down. Together,

we will uncover versions of our most potent selves where we show up unapologetically, intentionally, and without filter. We are worthy, just as we are, as all that we are, not just the label we put on ourselves. We are more than just a mom, and I'm so glad you're here. Welcome back to another episode on the Not Just a Mom podcast. I'm super excited for this one. I probably say that at the beginning of every episode but it's true this podcast really does light me up and these conversations I'm having are just really

energizing and inspiring and I hope you feel the same I'm gonna guess you do since you likely keep coming back to listen if this is your first time listening then I will warn you that these conversations are unscripted they're're raw. They're vulnerable. We really, really do put an emphasis on showing up messy and imperfect. I don't know why I'm saying we. This is a one-man show. It's just me editing and producing and doing all the things to make this podcast come to life. So by we, I mean me. I am a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist.

And this podcast is my safe, creative playground to just share my authentic truth and allow others to come on and also practice their creative self-expression. And so this episode is no exception. I'm joined by Robin of Wild Child Sleep. Robin is a doula and infant sleep specialist, bringing back the lost art of mothering the mother. Robin works with you to understand your choices and find simple, effective, and evidence-based solutions to meet your sleep goals. She leaves you with all the tools you need to feel confident in your parenting journey. And I had the privilege of working with Robin a little over a year or so ago. Robin helped

us really just understand normal infant sleep and really helped us understand just the impact we have as caregivers to regulate our nervous system and just all of that. Robin is not a sleep trainer and this is not a conversation about sleep training your baby. In fact, it's the complete opposite. I will warn you, I do unapologetically share my own truths about my view and beliefs on sleep training and I am quite passionate about it, so I don't hold back here. If triggers you in any way I invite you to I guess really discern like if it's something I'm saying or something within yourself often triggers are an indication and invitation to work through something but also know that you do the

best you do or also know that you do the best you can with the information you have. So if some of this information is new for you, please take the time to digest it and integrate it and know that you can only do better with the new information you're learning. So be gentle on yourselves and be sure to check out the show notes for Robin's freebie all about infant and toddler temperament. Okay, let's get right into it so yeah i've been looking forward to this conversation you and i have been part of each other's worlds now for geez probably like a good year maybe longer i don't even know i think we both started our instagram pages maybe around the same time.

And so you were very helpful and supportive for me in just how I was approaching sleep and normalizing infant sleep for me at the time that Aubrey was, I don't even know. She would have been like, what, maybe six months old? Things were messy and chaotic for us. And you kind of came in and helped us a bit just understanding what we were doing and not so much like teaching her to sleep because we know that's not possible, but really just teaching us what's normal and how we can more so support our own nervous systems so that we're supporting her. So thank you for that. Because I feel like it totally changed my whole trajectory in terms of how I look at infant sleep and our relationship at bedtime. It's been awesome. Yeah, it's been so fun to watch your progression too because I remember like the first time that we talked and you were like oh my gosh I'm thinking about sleep training like everything's

just a disaster I don't know what to do um and then you went from that to like we talked a little bit more and I was like no no no everything you're doing is amazing like everything your daughter is doing is totally normal and just going to some education and like you said some like nervous system regulation and just kind of figuring out how to like take care of yourself as a parent to take care of your daughter so it's been so fun to watch you go from like a year ago to where you're at today well I like I laugh at myself because even just looking at my own my own story um in the early days well first of all before before even like having Aubrey I was one of those parents that would literally like make fun of other parents who were co-sleeping.

I thought like, what are you doing? Like, why is your baby in bed with you? Um, I literally have text messages with one of my best friends of me basically commenting on her sleep choices and things have totally come full circle. And it's one of those things that until you're in it, like just don't make comments. I know that now. But I was that person that without a kid, like you don't know. And really all you know is whatever you've been exposed to. And all I've been exposed to is the typical traditional North American narrative that Hollywood portrays. Right. And just an an event traditional it's like this weird modern like shift that we've had to like our babies now need to be able to sleep independently and sleep

on their own but like even further back traditionally that's not what we did like that's not what humans did they slept with no not at all not at all and i think it's it's become this like weird obsession to have our kids grow up faster than they need to and i think sleep's just one aspect of that and obviously it's a big aspect and i think part of it has to do with unfortunately our society just doesn't hold space for mothers and like early parenthood and if you look at the U.S. and like um maternity leave or lack of maternity leave I should say and women having to go back to work like six weeks after their baby of course that's putting pressure on the need for sleep and the need for um yeah like straight through the night, which as we know is not even something

that adults do. So why are we holding this expectation to like a four month old? It's bonkers to me. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a lot, like a lot of parents that reach out to me or a lot of moms, especially that reach out to me or babies are four months old, three months old. And they're like, okay, I I'm going back to work soon. Um, baby's going to be sleeping in a crib or a bassinet at daycare. And so I have to get them sleeping in a crib or bassinet and I go back to work in two weeks. I'm like, okay, so first let's back up a little bit and set some realistic expectations. And that's the hard thing is like, that's, it's so hard to make changes that early to baby sleep because they're just not ready for it yet. But like you said, our society is like forcing this thing that our baby is not ready

for yet. It's so hard. It's so hard to set realistic expectations for parents, but also support them in that process. Well, and it's even more challenging set realistic expectations for parents but also support them in that process when it's even more challenging when there's a third party in that case daycare that obviously has their own agenda and you're not there to it i can't even imagine i'm i thank my lucky stars every day for the way things have unfolded for me and the fact that i haven't had to go back to work obviously here in can, we have a longer maternity leave to begin with. But I think about that quite often, that had things been different, that would have not only changed our relationship at sleep, but it also would have completely shifted our breastfeeding relationship too. Like I imagine it forces people to wean earlier than they want to and to, I don't even want to use the word sleep train because I don't like it, but maybe let's get into sleep training like right away. Let's literally like tell me your definition of it.

Cause I think that's one thing is that sleep training as a whole is like a very big spectrum. And I know myself, I can be very quick to just be like, oh, well, I'm anti-sleep training. Or I am now. I probably wasn't like three years ago when I didn't have a kid. But I am very much anti-sleep training now. And when I am referring to sleep training, I'm referring to like traditional, like cry it out sleep training methods, but I realized there's tons of things under the spectrum. So maybe, yeah, why don't you start with just kind of distinguishing that spectrum a bit for us? So I would define sleep

training to be anything that is a modification to your infant sleep that is going to expect them to or ask them to do something that they aren't developmentally ready to do or leaving them alone and not responding, leaving them alone or not responding. So cry it out is I would consider, yeah, cry it out is probably like the most extreme form of sleep training. But there are other forms of sleep training. Like you may have heard of the camp it out strategy where you essentially sit in a chair next to baby's crib and you can talk to them and you can shush and you can sing and all these things. But you can't touch them or go in and pick them up. And then there's another one where you're like slowly removing yourself from the room. So like each day you take a couple of steps out or you stay out of the room for a little bit longer. So it's like a timed thing, but it's none of it. Essentially, none of it, you are responding to your baby's needs or using a timer or you're using like this schedule that is not responding to how your baby is reacting to the situation. So not only are you not responding to your baby's needs, but you're also basically blocking out your own internal wisdom and whatever your intuition is telling you to do like that's I think

that's the most bonkers part for me is that the sleep training industry is literally teaching parents to not trust their instincts and I feel like our culture is already lacking lacking any support or space to help parents in that department. We are already walking into motherhood and parenthood feeling inadequate and lacking confidence. And then I think all the expectations around sleep just pile on and make that feeling of inadequacy and lack of confidence like sky high to the point that we feel like we're doing something wrong so of course we're going to look for an outside source to help quote-unquote fix it yeah yeah and it's just like it's not something that we see in our society very often like you don't very often go out and see like a toddler in a carrier nursing or like an older baby and a

carrier sleeping on mom you know like that's like yeah sure that's great and then yeah be on the newborn stage it's like oh why aren't they sleeping alone yeah that's so true I feel like even again looking back in my own experience like before I knew anything when I mean I still don't I still don't know what I'm doing but before I became a mom right seriously nobody does but like just thinking back to those really early days like I think I had it in my head that okay like stuff sleep's gonna be really rough like I'm expecting to be sleep deprived especially for the first four months and then I feel like around that four month after you get through the hurdle of the four months sleep progression or regression, whatever you want to call it, things should be better. And nobody really talks about

how sleep is actually going past that four months. It's almost like, just like after birth, you have like your six week checkup and then like, there's nothing discussed about your body, your healing, anything after that. It's almost like after the four month window, everything must just be back to normal. And like, nobody's obsessed with sleep anymore. Would you agree with that? That people kind of have that pressure at the four month mark that things should be better by then? Yeah, it seems like the four or three-month sleep progression is expected. And then they're like, okay, but things didn't get better after this. What's going on? What's wrong with my baby? What am I doing wrong? But the thing is sleep is

actually worse at six months for most babies. I shouldn't say worse, not worse. Babies wake up more often during the night at six months than they do at three and four months. So that like six months to a year, honestly, is maybe even harder than the newborn stage. Because like you said, you expect it at the newborn stage, but you don't. You expect it to continue to get better and better and better. And I know now that infant sleep is not linear. I wish I knew that in the early days. I definitely did not.

I definitely was under the belief that, yeah, it was going to get better the older she got. And that definitely wasn't our story. I would say that, like you just said, the six to 12 month period was pretty rough. I would say we still absolutely have very rough nights, but I just look at it with a completely different perspective, I think. And I think that is in large part to connecting with someone like you and following other more holistic infant sleep accounts. And like you pointed out, it's really just like not modeled to us, right? You said you don't see like a toddler sleeping in a carrier on their parent for a nap. You don't see family floor beds unless you come to my house, then will um but like those things like those things

aren't talked about so of course like again myself included I fell into the trap of thinking okay well we need we need a crib and we need to set up a nursery and we've since moved houses but we lived in our house for the first year of Aubrey's life and she never once slept in that room that that crib just turned into a very big laundry hamper and I've talked to other co-sleeping families and like that's the same story for them too but it just makes me wonder like if more of this was TV and all of that, like just the external pressures that parents are feeling, I would like to think would be less because the way things are going right now is like, we are fed all these lies. I'm going to, I'm going to call them lies. Like they feel like

lies from society and it, and it, it totally disrupts what our expectations are going to be. And then it just perpetuates that feeling of failure and lacking self-esteem and confidence. It's tricky. Yeah. And I feel like it is slowly getting better, especially because there are so many accounts like mine and like some of the other bigger accounts that are just growing and growing and growing, which is amazing. Like I love seeing that

that are setting realistic expectations for parents, but it seems like parents aren't coming to those realistic expectations until after becoming a parent and going through like what you went through and what we went through early on. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's so true. Cause again, just looking back at our experience, like I, I remember falling into that state of desperation. We didn't go down the sleep training route, but I do remember a friend sent me the pdfs that she had from the taking care of taking care of babies course and they were sent to me and as I looked through them like I I treated them as if I was not challenging what I was reading I just took it

as the cold hard hard truth and so I quickly got stuck in the mindset of okay baby has to what is it eat play sleep whatever the silly like and I was like something's wrong with me because Aubrey like eat play eat sleep eat play like there is no like she does not follow that and there's nothing I can do like that kid wanted to be on my boob 24 7 and she'd sleep when she wanted she'd play like when like it's like I don't understand how we're supposed to make our babies I think she was like three or four months at the time how are we supposed to make them be robots when like I don't even live that scheduled of a lifestyle um yeah it's crazy even I so like I have my degree in elementary education so I took a ton

of like child development classes like that's a ton of my background is in childhood development. But even I remember searching at like when my daughter was maybe three or four months old, like what's the perfect sleep schedule for a three or four month old? Like I was just so exhausted. My partner had gone back to work and I just wanted like things to be better. And I wanted to find this perfect schedule. And everyone I found online was completely different. And I was like, hold on, how am I supposed to figure out which one of these is the correct

one? And then how do I stick to it? Like, this is so far off from what my daughter is doing. How am I supposed to do any of these? Yeah. Yeah. Is that kind of what led you down this path? Was your own experience with your daughter's sleep?

Yeah. So I was already working on my maternal support practitioner certification through Bibo Mia. And we got to one of the modules that was on infant sleep and it was Dr. Greer Kirschenbaum is the, she's the one that designs their infant sleep program. And so she was there teaching that class and just talking about all the neuroscience and biologically normal things about infant sleep. And I was like, this is like, it's a one, one time, two hour class. And I want all the information you can give me, like, tell me where I can learn more. And so I found their infant and family, infant and family sleep specialist program and enrolled in that and just continue to keep learning about it. Yeah.

Oh, cool. learning from whether it's been your account or accounts like yours is it, there's so much to do with like the nervous system. And, um, well, I think you pointed out like the neural pathways and stuff and like, none of that stuff is ever talked about. And when we start understanding it through that lens, at least for me, it's a lot easier to show up and be supportive of my daughter's sleep as opposed to thinking that sleep is just like some skill that you have to learn how to do like that doesn't even make sense when I say it out loud so I was gonna say something about how like a lot of people a lot of parents think that their baby has a sleep problem, but it ends up not actually being a sleep problem. It's something about their daytime. Like when baby is awake, something

about that time needs to be tweaked. And let's get into that. Okay. Yeah. Let's get into that. Cause I think you're so right. Everyone thinks, Oh, like sleep's the issue. It's something that we're doing wrong at sleep time. And no, it might actually be, well, first of all, it's not anything you're doing right or wrong, but it might be something that you can actually shift in your rhythms and routines throughout the day that is actually going to have a domino effect on sleep time. Right, exactly. And so if we can figure out what is going on in the day time that needs to be shifted, then a lot of times those sleep problems that parents call them, they just kind of disappear. They resolve on their own because all the baby's needs are being met or more of baby's needs are being met, I should say, during the daytime.

And so they're needing less in the evening or their hormones are optimally optimal for sleep. That makes sense. Let's talk about hormones because I think that's something that, well, one, it can almost feel too big and it will just go over people's heads and they don't want to talk about it. Or two, they just literally don't even realize the impact that it has on sleep and why we should be supporting them. So yeah, let's talk to me about hormones as if I'm like a 12 year old and I don't know what they are. Let's just talk about two, like the two most important hormones when it comes to sleep are cortisol and melatonin. So cortisol is a stress hormone. So when our body experiences stress or even just throughout the daytime, cortisol builds up in our body and we have to do something to release it. So some ways to release cortisol are like rough and tumble play for adults that might look like exercise for babies that might be depending on the baby's age. It could be like playing game and chase, um, throwing gently, toss the baby onto the bed,

whatever to kind of bring that cortisol down. And then melatonin is a sleep hormone. So melatonin production starts about, um, an hour. Well, it starts when the sun goes down and about an hour after melatonin production starts is when our bodies are ready for bed. Um, so that is if that would be, if there were no artificial lights happening. So if we're inside in a house and there's a lot of artificial lights in our house, if those lights aren't dimming an hour before whatever the expected bedtime is, then bedtime might creep a little bit later.

That makes sense. Yeah. So melatonin is going to be the greatest during the first part of the night. And then production peaks around 2 to 4 a.m. And then after that, it starts to drop until it's about time to wake up. And when it's around time to wake up, if there were no artificial lights, that would be when the sun came up. Our body would start to produce some of those waking hormones like cortisol. It's not just stress.

It's also kind of what keeps us awake and keeps us going. That would be released and we would wake up. Right. That makes sense. So, and I like that you point out that like our cortisol naturally increases in the morning. Cortisol isn't inherently bad. We need cortisol to literally like wake up and be alert and do human like things during the day. But I think especially for adults, and maybe you can touch on how this might impact infants and toddlers, there's a lot of things in in these very like high states of fight or flight. And in my own experience, like that's totally had an impact on my sleep because it means I'm not able to regulate myself down into a more calmed parasympathetic state and I'm kind of just always on. And a lot of us like turn to, I don't know, like watching TV or scrolling social media before bed or thinking that,

oh, I just need a glass of wine to help me wind down. And what does that look like in, like an infant's body and in an infant's day-to-day of lifestyle? Because obviously they're not going to work. They're not super stressed. They're not doing the same things that adults engage in that would be impacting their nervous system and their cortisol levels the same. They're not in this like high stress society. Well, they are, but they don't necessarily know

how stressful it is yet, right? They're hopefully supported and kept safe in their homes, but right, they're not watching the news. They're not seeing what's happening, whatever. True, true. But we have to keep in mind how, like how long they have been on this earth. So what might not feel, what is something that is stressful to us, to an adult who's experienced like going to the grocery store thousands of times to an infant, who's experienced like going to the grocery store thousands of times to an infant, if they've only gone to the grocery store twice and they're going to the grocery store again, that might be something that is like this exciting or nerve-wracking event

that's going to bring up cortisol in their body. So even if it seems like a mundane thing to us, we have to think about from our baby's perspective, how is our baby going to perceive this? Um, and how can that affect their stress levels and cortisol? Oh, go ahead. Yeah. So like you were saying, it's not inherently bad and it is like, it does increase even if what we're doing is a positive thing, if it's still an exciting, like highly arousing thing. So it could be like going to see grandma and grandpa, they could love grandma and grandpa, but that's going to raise cortisol and that's going to affect that time. It might affect nighttime sleep and maybe even cause early

waking. Like that can have all sorts of effects for sleep if we're not very intentional about bringing that cortisol down before bedtime. Right. That makes sense. And I like the distinction that cortisol is raising in our bodies, not just from stressful events that we might perceive as negative, but also like exciting events that could easily just like cross over our mind and think well this was like a fun day we had such a good day today and no like yes it was yes absolutely it was a fun day you got to see grandma and grandpa you got to go to the grocery store and get ice cream and whatever else the day ended up being but if all those things are i don't know what I'm trying to say, but basically all those things do have an impact on our baby's cortisol levels and is almost like increasing. I'm almost thinking it as like

this cortisol tank. And so like, as the cortisol levels are rising up, that's going to start impacting the baby's, well, correct me if I'm wrong, because I was about to say sleep pressure, but sleep pressure is its own other thing, isn't it? Again, now I'm thinking of like another tank. I have all these like visuals in my mind. I mean, I think cortisol would be part of sleep pressure. Because if our cortisol levels are getting too high, then our sleep pressure is going to go down. Well, no.

Well, no, isn't it more our nervous system state is just too aroused? We're almost in this agitated state. Yeah. And I think what gets confusing is it can be easy to think that like a dysregulated nervous system is coming from something negative when no, it can also just be too much fun and too much excitement and too much newness. Right. So, and I think that's why when people talk about how babies do so well with consistency and rhythms, I'm guessing that's where that comment is coming from is because if days are kind of consistent and there's things to kind of be expected throughout the day, that's going to help keep our cortisol levels probably more at a baseline level.

Would you agree with that? Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. And I think there's kind of a fine balance and it's going to be different for every kid and for every family, a fine balance of having this consistent routine, having plenty of connection with caregivers and baby, but also having new experiences and getting plenty of stimulation so that they're, when it is time to go to sleep, that they are tired. There is enough sleep pressure. They are tired enough to go to sleep

because they've gotten to use their new skills. They've gotten to practice whatever it is that they're learning right now. Oh my goodness. So many things that I feel like we could touch on from there. The word stimulation for the first time. And I feel like that's the word that's been like on the tip of our tongue that we've needed to spit out and we hadn't yet. Stimulation. So yeah, stimulation can be good and bad, right? It's not this negative thing. It can be going for ice cream and going to see granny like that is stimulating. And then the other thing you touched on was all the new things that baby is learning. And it's quite common to see disruptions in sleep when they're learning new skills. And I think that's another kind of like mindfuck, for lack of a better word, that happens to

parents because it's like, well, I thought like my kid was growing up, like they're walking and talking now and they're sleeping like a three month old. What's going on? Yeah, like they're walking and talking now and they're sleeping like a three-month-old what's going on yeah like they're becoming more independent they're walking away from me and like yeah they they are learning that they have independence but that can also be really stressful for them that like oh I can get up and walk away from my mom that's exciting but that can also be really scary and that can cause some separation anxiety which can raise cortisol and cause all kinds of all kinds of sleep disruptions

it's just so complex and it it just saddens me to think that people truly believe that we can look at sleep as this like one thing and no, like it has to be looked at through a holistic lens. Like we have to be looking at everything else around, around sleep. We have to be looking at what the day looks like. We have to look at baby's overall health. And of course there's oral stuff that could be going on. I know like tongue ties, like that was part of our story. Breathing stuff, like you said, new milestones that they're learning. We haven't even touched on co-regulation and like the parents nervous system. so many moving parts to be looking at when we're actually trying to understand our baby's sleep. And yeah, it saddens me to think that like in the sleep training world, I feel like it's very black and white and it's just like, okay, what does bedtime routine look like? And how many hours in the night are they sleeping? It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What about like

the rest of the day and the rest of the lifespan that this kid has been alive for right and is it like are these even within the normal range that they're so like oh yeah and most a lot of sleep trainers advertise or market themselves as evidence-based and like they're trying to use some of the terms that the more holistic sleep coaches and sleep specialists use. But if you look at the data or if you look at the evidence that they're actually using, it's not supporting what they're saying, or there's just like too small of numbers of participants in the trials that it's, it's, you can't really draw conclusions from it. I had a really good example in my brain that it's, it's, you can't really draw conclusions from it.

I had a really good example in my brain and I already forgot it. I feel like I actually remember you sharing in your stories one time, an article, and I'm trying to pull the example too, because then we can touch on it because it was a good one. I feel like it was something along the lines of a study looking at, um, of a study looking at, like, at least I think I've, maybe this wasn't for you, but I feel like I've heard this, and this is kind of part of the common debate between sleep training or not, is looking at studies for the length of time a child sleeps, but often in the study, it's parent reported. So if the parent is saying, yeah, my child is sleeping all night, but that parent is practicing like a cry it out method where they're not actually responding to

their kid and they're in a completely different bedroom and they're not even like hearing or seeing their baby toss and turn and wake up. Yet they're saying in this study that, oh, my baby sleeps all night just because like their sleep wasn't interrupted. Right, right. Or if they just happen to have an easy sleeper who is waking up at night. Yeah, I mean, it just isn't signaling. And so like you said, it doesn't wake them up. Yeah, so those parent reported.

I don't think that's the direction you were gonna go though is it uh i don't think it was but i i can't remember that's okay okay let's go back to the hormones and let's actually talk about what supports lowering cortisol i mean you gave the example of rough and tumble play, and then some things that actually support melatonin. And yeah, maybe you can just share some ways that, some tangible ways that parents can actually support their infant with lowering cortisol or increasing melatonin. Yeah. So yeah, let's start with bedtime. So if we talk about bedtime routines, we, and it's going to depend on your temperament, so you can always play around with the order that you do things or what you include in bedtime routines. But I definitely suggest having after three months or so. Before three

months, their circadian rhythm is not yet developing yet. So don't worry about it before that. But after three months, you definitely want to include a bath time. After bath time, I highly suggest putting baby in just the diaper, or if you're comfortable letting them run around completely naked, that's even better, which is going to bring their body temperature down, which is going to help prepare our bodies for sleep. Our adult bodies do that naturally because we have a more, well, there's the best that have a healthy circadian rhythm. We'll do that naturally. Um, so we can help support our baby's melatonin production to increase, um, by letting them run around in just the diaper. Typically after the bath, I would say just having some sort of rough and tumble activity or some

sort of like higher energy activities. So like we already said, that's going to bring down cortisol levels and help babies sleep more soundly throughout the night. It can also help us sleep more soundly throughout the night. So if we're kind of up and playing with baby, that can be a great routine for us in the evening too, as adults. And then you want some sort of calming activities. So maybe you're going to read books together, you can sing songs or something else. Um, and then that can lead into your soothing strategies. So whatever, if you're nursing and snuggling, or if you're snuggling and reading a book, whatever your soothing strategies are, and then you're staying with baby until they're fully asleep. What do you want to back up a little bit?

Because I know you, that's exactly what I was going to say. I want to back up to the beginning of, um, so at the beginning of your bedtime routine, I would suggest having your bedtime be about 45 minutes to maybe an hour, depending on baby's age and their tolerance. But at the very beginning of that, start dimming the lights because we know that melatonin about an hour after melatonin production starts, our bodies are ready for bed or our baby's bodies are ready for bed so if we help them by dimming our artificial lights we can um in our bathroom we can turn our our overhead lights off our bathroom lights are usually pretty bright so we can turn those off and maybe get some like twinkle lights or something fun that's going to be a lot less bright in our bathroom even those little um rock salt lamps are great because

I was just about to say, yeah, we love using a salt lamp. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are great because they have the amber light instead of blue light. So we're wanting to avoid blue lights in the evening and have amber lights. Also avoid screen time in any of that. So you're calming down activity. You don't want to include screen time for that. So if that has been an activity, you might want to think about what you're going to be replacing that with. Okay, so that's bedtime routine. So nap a downtime routine, I would suggest just pretty simple, maybe do a little bit of a cortisol release activity, like a little bit of raffle and tumble play, change baby's diaper, put them in whatever they're going to wear. If they're going to wear a sleep sack or something for their nap, put them in that and then start your soothing associations

or your sleep association. So your nursing to sleep or your reading or whatever that is. So that's going to be much shorter. I would say 15 minutes for nap time routine. Um, I imagine that your work gets very intertwined with, um, like lactation consulting and like breastfeeding support and i know you don't necessarily do that but i imagine for a lot of people that are breastfeeding um that obviously has an impact and is often a big way that they're using to comfort their baby to sleep. So I guess my question from that is like, how does your work interconnect with lactation specialists and just like even your understanding of breastfeeding? And because you had touched on kind of like regulating our heart rate and stuff,

and my mind went to like skin to skin and breastfeeding and the impacts that all of that has. And again, society is losing the mark, missing the mark on emphasizing the importance that all of that has. And again, society is losing the mark, missing the mark on emphasizing the importance of all of that. I could go on a tangent there, but I'm going to bring it back. Do you have any comments on that? So typically what I do is I will try to educate about like what is normal when it comes to breastfeeding in relation to sleep and anything that might be out of my scope of practice, um, like concerns about a tongue tie or if there's other latch concerns or supply concerns, then I would refer out to lactation consultants. Um, but like you were saying with feeding to sleep, nursing to sleep, nursing at night,

all of that is so normal. And if we go back to hormones that we had talked about our, so like as a mom, my body is going to have varying hormones throughout the day that, well, that was messy. let me start to try that again okay so if we go back to um talking about hormones the cortisol and the melatonin how cortisol is kind of what helps us wake up in the morning and keeps us going throughout the day and maybe builds up and then goes down in the evening melatonin goes up and helps us fall asleep and stay asleep the same thing is happening with the levels of hormones in our breast milk so if you are feeding on demand during the day and during the nighttime then you're helping your baby learn to regulate their circadian rhythm or i guess not

learn but you are helping their body figure out how to regulate their circadian rhythm so you're essentially supplementing their hormones while their body is maturing that's so cool and I mean I knew that like I knew that nighttime milk or even like evening breast milk was different than daytime milk. And I mean, that's just one example of why I will count. And this is my podcast, so I can say it that like breast is best. I can't, I can't even like stand to debate that formula is equal to breast milk because it's not, because I don't see formula having that change in composition. There's like not different bedtime formula than there is daytime formula.

Like there's nothing in formula that is helping my baby support their circadian rhythm or their immunity or their whatever else breast milk is doing. Anyways. It might help them sleep for a longer stretch of time because it helps them be more full but that hunger isn't the or thirst isn't the only reason that maybe wake so if they're waking because they need connection they're still gonna wake up yeah yeah yeah well and filling their stomach with formula which has obviously a different composition than breast milk so it's keeping them full longer i don't even know if there's studies yet that are showing

what like the long-term impacts are on just like the growing digestive system and like there's obviously a reason that nature's design was for babies to be feeding frequently just something i wonder about um so like you had right i'm gonna be looking up after this you have to let me know um so like you had pointed out that it is absolutely super normal for an infant to be nursing frequently throughout the night can we talk about like how frequent is frequent like i feel like people might be listening and thinking oh like well my baby like doesn't get off well actually i'll talk about my experience aubrey is 20 months old she still literally could like latch onto my boob all

night long if i'd let her and she's not necessarily eating the entire time. I mean, it's on and off eating, it's suckling, it's whatever else. But I am still her source of comfort. And there's been tons of nights where like Dylan will say to me like, well, do we just need to like give her something else to suck on? It's like, well, no no like that's not like no like this is why you're not making the sleep decisions in our household but like I mean he is just asking from like what he sees in the media obviously like he doesn't nobody sees a almost two-year-old

stuck to their mom's boob all night long or during the day for nap time that is the only way my daughter is almost dropping her nap but when she is napping she is latched on the entire time and she's 23 months she'll be 24 months in July. It's just so interesting, isn't it? How our expectations are distorted from what's been modeled to us and like conversations like this and obviously accounts like yours that are actually educating parents on what is truly normal, excuse me, and normalizing the attachment that our babies are supposed to have with us. Because I think that's what this comes down to. It's not even about sleep it's about like forming this attachment and the fact that we are from a very like primal perspective supposed to be our babies like one and only and if we want to even talk about like the mother baby

dyad like we're not supposed to be disrupting that. And everything in our culture is pushing us away from that. Yeah. And I agree. Our culture is pushing us to try to force our babies to be independent. But the way the attachment works here, like if you're trying to push your baby to be independent, they're going to push back even harder to try to be dependent on you because that's just how it works. They will, right.

If you allow them to be dependent as long as they need. And then when they're ready, allow them bits of independence as they're ready. And as they want it, then they're going to be more independent later. So we're, I feel like a lot of people aren't seeing like the long game. They're in like the short term mindset of like, I need X today. So I need my baby to sleep in the crib because I have to get the dishes done or I have to get this email sent or you know whatever whereas baby that day might be like oh my brain is telling me that mom's gonna leave me forever yeah well exactly

like for them it is like it's actually really cool to think about their survival instincts and the things that they do to keep themselves alive and again just thinking back to when Aubrey was like super super young and yeah just I guess like having a different a different sense of compassion for her cries and like understanding that like she's not crying to annoy me she's not crying to like make my life difficult she's not crying because she thinks she's not crying to like make my life difficult she's not crying because she thinks it's funny when I don't get a full night's sleep at night she's crying because she that's their only way of communicating and she literally doesn't know if me walking away to go to the bathroom means me walking away forever like or me like even just like rolling away as opposed to like continuing to face her like

those things do feel like life or death when you're literally not even 10 pounds yeah yeah and you have no control over what is happening to you or what is going on around you or feeding yourself or going to you have no control over anything you just have this one person that is or two people or however many caregivers you have taking care of you meeting all of your needs yeah one to put it back into context like you made the comment about maybe it's only like their second time in the grocery store and even though that seems super normal and even mundane for us. It's definitely stimulating for them. But what I was going to say is like, just to put into context of the infant's previous environment when they were still in utero and everything is literally on demand, right? They don't need to

really cry. Well, obviously they're not crying out for anything like it just happens that the nutrient exchange like everything is just happening for them and they are in this very safe comfortable habitat they can always hear you they hear your heart rate they hear you talking you are just always there and so to expect them to be this full like human two three even 12 months later is absolutely barbaric like who do we think we are that like humans developmentally are capable of that there i am shaking my head again because it's just like it's talked about frequently that we know humans brains are born underdeveloped or humans are born with underdeveloped brains so that our head is smaller so that we can yeah yeah yeah like you

mean in contrast to like other mammals when they're born they're obviously like walking and able to go be contributing members of their pack um much earlier on than a human um it is super super super interesting because i think that is where there's a lack of just knowledge too like there's a knowledge gap there in the sense of understanding human development and brain development and all of that like again that's not talked about much like the hormone piece isn't talked about and back to how i said like sleep can't just be looked at as just sleep it's all of these things so complex yeah i think i remember the the study that we were both trying to think of. Okay. So it's the one. So there was a study and on mothers who were sleep training their babies. And after I believe it was the first two or three days, they were so they were measuring levels of cortisol in the mom and the baby.

Both of their cortisol went up and was very high during the sleep training. They cried out times after the first three days when baby stopped crying so much, when the baby stopped crying, the mother's cortisol went down. But the baby's cortisol, even though they had stopped crying, their cortisol levels still stayed high. Their stress levels did not reduce because they had stopped, even though they had stopped crying. Oh, fascinating.

Which as an educator, yeah. And as an educator, thinking about the way that kids learn, we would call that learned helplessness. Essentially, to me at least, that is showing me that that baby has learned that it is not worth the energy to put into crying anymore because nobody is going to come and help me. So I'm just going to reserve my energy. I'm going to stop and just shut down, which might look like going to sleep. Yeah. Well, and from a nervous system perspective, my mind was nerding out for a second, just thinking like, okay, so we have hit this very activated sympathetic state in fight or flight where we literally don't know if mom or dad are coming back. We think this is life or death. We're

screaming our little lungs out. And then our poor nervous system will eventually go into a state of freeze and just shut down, as you said, because we have to store our energy and just be very careful in the sense of like our survival. We can't like use all of our juice crying for our mom. And that is so sad to think about that. Yeah, people will just say, oh, well, my baby fell asleep and it's like no actually your baby's nervous system went into a freeze response like that's actually not good or in your in your example like this learned helplessness and and what are the consequences of that down the road when they are becoming um when they're like school age or like actually adults and being in partnerships themselves like they are gonna have these ingrained beliefs that when i need help nobody's there for

me and this can get into this like very deep, dark discussion about trauma. And I don't think we need to go there. But I think I't think any parent is intentionally trying to harm their child by sleep training. But I think when we start actually looking at the longstanding effects of what happens when we are sleep training, like cry it out sleep training, not responding kind of sleep training. It is abusive to our kids and it is creating longstanding trauma. And we don't necessarily know what the impacts of that are yet. That's really scary. Yeah. And I don't know if there is any research, any like longitudinal research studying that i i know there are studies that are shorter that they were one it was one of those studies that didn't have a very large participant um study like the sample is small small sample sample size smaller sample size thank you

we're really smart I swear we know we know about research and things yes this is what happens when you record like heading into a Friday evening yeah I love it um I feel like this conversation could ruffle some feathers and be a little bit triggering for people that have maybe sleep trained in the past. How do you usually go about that conversation? Because obviously the sleep training industry has gotten big and it has become unfortunately a very normal part of. Yeah. I love the way you said that. Exactly. So I like to start with, we always do the best that we can with the knowledge that we have. And then when we know better, we do better. So now that we know better, we're going to do better. And I think that's so true of parenthood in general, just not, not even just when it comes

to sleep training, just as parents, like there's so much that we didn't know before. And now that we know better, we can do better. Yeah. So there's always that piece. And then it's, it's never too late to repair with your baby or your child or your adult child or however old they are. You can always work on repairing that relationship. And you can talk through, even with a baby, you can talk through what happened and what you're going to do differently now. I always like to go the route personally of social stories, which is essentially like writing a story of what happened or what is going to happen.

The problem, like you come up with like a problem and then this is how it's going to be fixed. And you always end with something like, and mom was there for you or mom will always be there for you or mom will always stay with you until you feel better or whatever however you feel comfortable ending it even for younger babies I think that's a good strategy I think they understand a lot more than people give them credit for yeah I was just going to say that like I feel like it can feel really awkward and I've experienced this it can feel really awkward to talk to your infant toddler that isn't communicating back to you yet but we have to remember that they understand more than we know and I think even just going at it with that intention like the energy that comes with that intention is valuable um and i think that's part of the repair piece and even again just thinking about like a nervous system level thinking from a nervous system perspective coming to a place where you're even able to like spit

those words out and have that conversation whether they can interpret it or not is still bringing down your nervous system to a more calm state and that's gonna have the impacts of co-regulation onto them so even if it's not like a verbal understanding there's almost like this like non-verbal and like cool like nervous system energy vibe transfer that's going on and I think people forget about that like that stuff's really important like when you think about I always think about like when you go say you're at a restaurant and you have a server that you can just tell she's like super busy and her head is someplace else and she's obviously having a bad day and she's taking it out on your table in the sense that like she's like super busy and her head is someplace else and she's obviously having a bad day and she's taking it out on your table in the sense that like she's slamming your glass of water

down and she's like not making eye contact and all those like non-verbal cues and that nervous system state and that energy that she's coming from have a impact on your experience and that's so true in parenthood too and how we approach just like our own energy around our kids it's impactful and I don't think we give enough credit to it um yeah it is and that and that doesn't mean that you have to be this like perfectly set and calm person all the time as a parent it's like if you are showing your kids or your babies how you are regulating yourself and recognizing that like oh that thing that I did was probably not very nice or maybe that wasn't the right choice and here's how I'm gonna do it differently next time whether you verbalize that or just act upon it it's yeah no I'm glad you brought in that reminder because

again it can be this unrealistic goal to think that we need to have this like permanent calm nervous system state or think that we just need to be regulated 100% of the time and that's not the truth like we are supposed to I'm nobody can see me doing what I'm doing, but I'm basically doing like a wave with my hand. Like our nervous system is supposed to go up and down, right? We're supposed to move through the different nervous system states. And the issue arises when we get stuck in these states or if we are chronically in a super activated state and we're not able to downregulate and um

yeah like if our parasympathetic if our parasympathetic nervous system states aren't ever activated to promote rest and calm that's kind of when the issue arises because then we're just always in this survival state and our bodies need rest as well. Well, and I think especially as moms, we focus so much on our babies. Sometimes we forget or we just get out of tune with ourselves and we forget how to notice all of those things within ourselves. And then we just aren't taking care of ourselves. And then we, what ends up happening is like, we ratchet up the stress and then our babies ratchet up the stress, which causes more stress than us. And it's just this like stressful cycle that just keeps going until we were like, our baby's not going to be the one to recognize it and bring themselves down

and settle. We have to figure out how to take care of ourselves and meet our needs so that we can take care of our babies. Yeah. Which basically brings us back full circle to the conversation about cortisol and supporting to sleep and it being almost less to do with like the physical bedtime routine and what you're actually doing to physically support to sleep and more to do with all the things that happened throughout the day that created this. Again, I'm using my hands and nobody can see me, but like these things piling up on each other and yeah,

almost like like building blocks on one another and yeah, almost like building blocks on one another. And yeah, it just has a bigger impact on everything than I think we really understand. So it's not just about, I don't even know what I'm trying to say anymore. Yeah. And I think it's not just about having like routines and having like this perfect schedule or thing that you're doing. It's more about understanding yourself and your child or your children and responding to their needs and being willing to be flexible. So if you are out having a crazy day or a really fun day, knowing that you're going to need a little bit of extra time for your baby in the evening to get their wiggles out and get settled or that bedtime that night're going to need a little bit of extra time for your baby in the evening to get their wiggles out and get settled. Or that bedtime that night is going to be a little bit

later and you're going to be tired. And that's just the natural consequence of having that big fun day. Yeah. One thing we haven't touched on is what about like the complete opposite when our babies aren't getting enough stimulation? I guess I kind of feel like because the way our conversation was going is almost like having people be careful about how much stimulation their kid is being exposed to throughout the day. And I guess I just wanted to bring it back for full circle in the sense that the goal isn't zero stimulation and there's actually the instance of not having enough stimulation and that's going to have an impact on sleep too. There is a fine line when it comes to stimulation. So you want baby to be

getting enough stimulation. We know that some overstimulation might, well, will cause an increase in cortisol, but also under stimulation is going to mean that baby isn't quite as tired or their wake windows might be longer, or they might just be bored and they might show that boredom by crying or being a little bit more fussy. Um, and so that's a fine line that is just, it's going to be an individual thing for every single baby, which is going to have to do with their temperament and how, like what they need on a day-to-day basis, but also how, knowing how that's going to change throughout their development. Does that make sense? Yeah, it totally does when I'm just thinking how temperament would especially for families with more than one kid temperament would be something that can really mess with you in the sense that

you might think oh well I I know what I'm doing like my first kid slept just fine like and this is what worked these are the routines we did and everything was peachy and then kid two comes around and everything that you've tried like doesn't work and yeah like I think one of the biggest explanations would be temperament is that kids have different temperaments and kids have different sensory needs and um yeah it gets more complex and there's so much nuance in the sense of, like we've already touched on, there's just so many things that are impacting sleep and it's not just about sleep. Yeah, it's rarely actually about sleep. There is no instruction manual for this. There can't be because there's too many things that are floating around that kind of need to be assessed and dissected and considered.

And I just imagine that makes your job really, really cool, but also really, really hard. like what do you do that isn't already that I can't find online or that I like can't find on your Instagram or um that I can't find resources for and honestly the answer is all of the information is there what I do is I collect all of that information for your family and I help pull more information out of you about your baby and then come up with a plan, like collaborate on a plan that is going to help your whole family sleep better. Yeah. I love that. Cause it's almost impossible to do without having like the background and the education, because there is just way too many layers. Like it's too complex,

way too many layers like it's too complex way too complex it is and especially when there's so much like contradictory information or contradictory yeah just that our society contradicts everything that is normal and tells you that you're wrong. Social media is amazing in the sense that it can be a very valuable source of education and community, but it can also be a source of differing of opinions, differing of of resources and really just emphasizing all the contradictions out there and that makes it extremely overwhelming for a parent who is just looking for an answer and it kind of comes back to what we were saying in the beginning about the way society is kind of going is it's teaching people not to trust their instincts. And I think the contradicting information out there is making it even harder because it's like, well, what am I supposed to follow?

Like there it's very clear that there isn't a one-way approach to this and um yeah it just makes it very hard if you are already someone that struggles with following your intuition or making like gut decisions and just doing things because you truly believe they're right for you when when you look outside of yourself there's literally like 70 different paths to take like it it just makes the feeling of inadequacy and the lack of confidence even stronger and um I think because of that like sleep the conversation about sleep and the very classic question of like oh how's your baby sleeping um it's become a very triggering topic for a lot of parents because nobody's really feeling confident and there's so much room for debate, even though there shouldn't be, because the way I see it is

there's like facts and then there's not facts, but not everybody sees it that way, obviously, right? To me, things shouldn't be debatable, but obviously they are because it's creating a lot of friction in like the parenthood world. Yeah. And a lot of times the question isn't so much just how is baby sleeping it's how is baby sleeping through the night yeah and the pressure that comes with that yeah yeah like oh if i say no what like what are you gonna say and if I say yes are you just gonna like if I lie and say yes are you just gonna celebrate yeah even though that's a complete lie yeah we've experienced that like I am to the point where yeah like I basically do lie because I don't even want to waste my time and energy on having that conversation but I also don't want to open up the

space to receive unsolicited advice, because again, everybody has their own opinion and their own strategy with sleep. And I'm quite comfortable and confident in our current strategy that like, yeah, I'm not looking for answers. Like just because I might complain about our shitty sleep last night doesn't mean I actually want you to come in and tell me to do something differently. Or like, I remember we were at a pediatrician appointment when Aubrey was, I don't know, I want to say like eight months old and the pediatrician found out that I was breastfeeding and he made a comment about, oh, well, you better like start weaning like she should be night weaned by 12 months old and it's like okay like if if that's the classic conversation that's happening at doctor's appointments and that wasn't even like a direct hit at sleep but like if you are telling

me that my child should be night weaned and if nursing to sleep and nursing through the night is my main strategy right now and it has been for the last 20 months um that's not gonna fly very well for me and thankfully like i was able to just like not take that as sound advice but i imagine there'd be a lot of parents and mothers going into those appointments and thinking, oh, my doctor said we have to do this. And it just leads you down, again, this path that is telling you not to trust your instincts. And I think parents don't even know that they are going against their instincts because it's almost like this point of like brainwashing. And I hate to say that, but it almost is, unfortunately. And I don't even know how we come out of that. I think it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of, yeah, I don't know. It's messy. to us as mothers, because if we think that society thinks that feeding to sleep is not normal, but we do want to stop feeding to sleep, which at a certain point is fine. If you want to stop feeding to sleep and you want to use different strategies, but then knowing how to go about that is like, okay, I don't know anybody that does this. I don't know anybody to talk about this with. How do I stop doing this when I'm ready and when my baby is actually ready to do that?

It's interesting that you went there because I feel like that is close to what we're experiencing right now. Like sometimes, like I'm not ready to wean yet, but I feel like it's on the horizon. I feel like Aubrey will probably breastfeed forever if I don't start initiating some boundaries. And I think my body is giving me signs that like we need a little bit of separation between us. Anyways, that's a whole other side note. But what I was going to say is there's a part of me that sometimes feels like I'm trapped in the sense of obviously we're already at 20 months. So this has nothing to do with the conversation with the doctor telling me to night mean by 12 months. we did not do that right so we're already like past 20 months and sometimes I have moments of thinking okay like I think I'm ready to start

night weaning but then another part of me says I'm not willing to disrupt our sleep and I almost feel like I'm at this like really sticky point of it's almost like I'm just like sacrificing my own needs sidelining my own needs to what's the word like just avoid the potential disruption that it's going to have on sleep because that's been my main strategy for this long so like it feels very scary I guess to think that I would need to start pulling out other tools in the toolkit and implement other strategies and try different ways to support her to sleep and so instead I just keep breastfeeding. Yeah. Yeah. And knowing that that is going to, like, that is likely going to result in tears and that is going to be stressful for you too.

So you need to, I don't, I don't know if you need to, but I would suggest you go into that from a place of like feeling confident about it and feeling like you have tools to regulate yourself because you know that that's it's going to be hard for her even though it's it's okay it's fine she's plenty old enough that she can get through without yeah no absolutely and you're still going to be comforting her you know yeah I think this again just like paints the perfect picture of how complex sleep is and just how important it is that we are supporting ourselves and supporting our own nervous systems, knowing that we are co-regulating for our kids and that we are obviously their main source of comfort and support and maybe even nutrition if we're breastfeeding and all this to say that it's not just about sleep it's it's about the mom and the parent too and just all the things going on throughout the day and even like understanding okay so in my own example that I just shared if we choose to begin night weaning anytime soon that means that I need to make sure I have

the capacity to handle like you said the tears that are going to come and the potential few nights or however many nights it would be of frustration and protest that Aubrey's going to give me and if I'm being honest right now like I don't have the capacity to do that because I already know that I'm already feeling spread thin in other areas. So yeah, when and if we do decide to do that, it needs to be coming from a place of not just confidence, but also like extra love into my cup. And I think that's kind of true for any transition you're going through, especially when it's something that is like parent-led instead of baby-led, because there's going to be protests from baby. And that makes it really, really hard. It does. It's hard. And I think when you're like trying to make a change, like you're trying to

night wean or you're trying to put baby in the crib, sometimes that can be even, it can be easier if your partner helps. So if your partner is like the new nighttime soother or is like trading off with you at night, or it's the one that puts baby down into the crib or whatever it is that you're trying to achieve, it sometimes can be easier with your partner because they have different ways of soothing baby and baby's not like expecting that, oh, I'm going to get milk. Milkies. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense.

Is that what your daughter's calling it? Milkies? Milkies. Yeah. When she like signs the milk hand. so i'm basically just a cow to her anyways enough about me let's hear how people can find you and just some of the things that are going on in your corner of the internet right now if people wanted to connect with you or even hire you for some sleep support so i provide one-to-one virtual infant sleep consults with families.

So whether you just want to come and ask a bunch of questions or you don't even know what questions to ask, you can just come and say help or do more of like an in-depth comprehensive consultation. If you're wanting to solve a problem, make a change, and you need help knowing how to go about that without going to sleep training route or without ever leaving baby to cry alone. So you can find me on Instagram. It's wildchildsleep. And let's see, on Wednesdays, I always do a Q&A on Instagram. So you can come and ask any question about infant sleep, postpartum, birth, whatever you want. And I usually give a

fairly detailed answer. It's really cool that you're doing what you're doing and it's really important work. And like we pointed out in the beginning, obviously like there's your account and there's other more holistic sleep accounts out there that are helping to normalize normal infant sleep. And I think it's just, it's something that I would love to like scream from the rooftops because it changed my entire motherhood trajectory. Like if I'm being honest, like I think the whole sleep debate and even like the internal debate that I would have been experiencing in the early months really, really takes a toll on your self-esteem and just like level of self-trust with your mothering ability, your mothering ability and your like maternal instinct.

And like, we've already pointed out in this conversation, like the classic narrative right now, the sleep training industry, like all of it is doing everything to get us out of our instincts and just like looking for, I don't even know. There's just so much pressure to have our kids be more independent than they should and have the mother-baby dyad be separated earlier than it should. And the impacts on breastfeeding, the impacts on our nervous system, the impacts on attachment, the impacts on development, all the things, there's just not enough space or attention being put on those things. And I think, yeah, I guess all this just to say that I am very happy we connected. I'm very happy that you have been part of my world and just increasing my own knowledge and capacity for all of this has really played a very positive impact on my own like confidence as a mother okay before you go I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to

listen to this episode if you were thinking of anyone while listening please send it their way and if anything resonated with you or you love these conversations, please subscribe and leave a review. This really helps the podcast algorithms put my show in front of more people just like you. And the last thing, I would love nothing more than hearing from you. So say hi, DM me on Instagram and give me a follow at NicolePasvir. Until next time.