The advice in this podcast is general in nature and does not constitute medical advice.
Always consult your doctor if you are concerned about your child's health.
We recommend always following the safe sleep guidelines.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Dr Fallon and Dr Law acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
They pay respect to their elders past and present and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.
Welcome to episode 100 of Brand New Little People, the podcast that's helped over 193 ,000 sleepy parents navigate the wild world of baby and toddler sleep for 100 episodes we've been your go -to for evidence -based no guilt sleep support and guess what we're still the highest ranked infant sleep podcast in the parenting charts it's amazing together we've answered over 600 parent questions we've cheered on your victories and busted myths from australia to finland the usa to japan because yes sleep struggles are truly truly universal.
Your favorite episodes were the ones where we focused on reducing nightwakings, no surprises there, on cot settling, managing low sleep needs babies and toddlers, tricky toddler behaviors, and of course, our iconic episode on myth busting the four month sleep regression.
But today we're mixing it up a little bit.
For our 100th episode, we're pulling back the curtain just a little on who we really are with some fun facts, hypotheticals, and we'll address some recent parent questions too.
So let's celebrate how far we've come and how much more there is to learn.
Laura, congratulations, 100 episodes, I cannot believe it.
No, I can't either, there congratulations to you too oh my goodness 100 that's just uh oh it just feels like an astonishing number of podcasts but I still enjoy recording them I enjoy them as much now as 100 ago I enjoy recording them not editing them so much no well I don't have to do that one day we'll have a producer but for now it's me the producer yes but no it is funny I remember still um I think I sent you a whatsapp message one day just going but what if we did like a podcast like just a 10 minute thing that we do like maybe once a week where we like just answer a few parent questions
and from there the idea just grew and grew yes such a big production every week like I can't believe we do this every week it's amazing no and those numbers are amazing nearly 200 000 listeners i mean isn't it just yeah yeah really amazing um we didn't think anyone was really delighted did we no i remember when we had 11 listeners and we were so excited like wow there's 11 people oh that is so funny it is such a cool format though and I know myself as a parent um just being able to listen to something while you're going about all the mundane you know household tasks and parenting tasks um it really
helps you get through the day and I love that we've had so many messages from parents who say oh you've been the soundtrack in our household or you know every day I go for a walk and I push the pram and I've got you girls talking you know while I'm walking along yes and I think wow what an incredible privilege to be part of people's lives like that yes yeah it is that's for sure no and I sometimes think back to well often think back to when my children were really small and there are certain people that came into my life just for that season and I just look back with fondness but you know I think
I've probably be spoken about my rent -a -gran Libby on this many many episodes ago um and you know that was just a lady who used to volunteer and help mums out who didn't have any support nearby and she was in my life for a season um and it was wonderful um and it's great that we may be able to fill that role for some parents now just through this podcast. It really is.
Yeah, and I imagine too some of the people who might have tuned in for the first couple of episodes who had toddlers, they might be getting ready to send those toddlers off to school next year now.
There's been a lot of growing happening in a couple of years since we started it.
So it is really, really cool.
So let's dive into some questions that I feel would be a bit bit of fun to answer before we dive into some of the meatier questions from parents I want to know Laura what's one thing about you that would surprise our listeners ah do you know what when I was glancing down these questions a moment ago I just completely skipped past number one now I'm going completely blank something that would surprise our listeners practitioners about me would be that I'm a pretty terrible sleeper myself and I do not take I wondered if you were going to say this.
Confessions of a sleep practitioner.
I am really really naughty with my own sleep and I'm so bad at just getting into bed and scrolling rolling it's like often that only point of the day i have to myself and i just place my sleep something crazy uh and then i'm not very good at having my set wake up time so um when i'm telling parents that it's really important that you keep that set wake up time it's do what i say and don't do what i do um but you know that's i don't have a sleep disorder but i do i i'm i'm not very good with um with being disciplined with my own sleep so um yeah sorry about that listeners what about you out of control
you know how to get it back on track again i do yeah what about you fallon what's one thing that would surprise our listeners about mine's a bit of a sleep related one too because i sometimes actually a lot of the time i let my kids get up in the middle of the night to watch the F1 races with me.
Even though it's not great for their sleep and the race is usually extremely late on a Sunday night right before the school week.
They just love it so much. Yeah, yeah, it's so exciting, like middle of the night.
And loud. Stimulating.
I can't believe, like I just cannot believe, like my husband even was like, who are you?
Like what are you doing?
This is not you car racing?
Like are you kidding me?
But I love it now. One of my kids got into F1 and started talking about it a lot and then I just completely fell in love with it, which is it's still just so weird to me.
It's just so weird to me.
But I'm a massive Oscar Piastri fan.
He's incredible. And so, yes, Sunday night we were up at stupid o 'clock and then the race was delayed and then my kids were furious getting ready for school and I just thought, I really should know better.
That's my confession.
but it's something nice that you're doing with your children and they are a bit older so their sleep's a little bit more resilient than our little toddlers that we're working with true that's true yeah and i think it's about sometimes you've got to make the good memories you know it might not be perfect sleep but you've got to make those memories so anyway that's my story that's what i'm sticking to well let's do our next question i'm curious to know if you weren't a sleep practitioner Fallon what other job do you think you'd be doing uh I often really wish that I was just working outside more
and in nature more so I would I would have this really weird fascination with rocks I would have loved to have been a geologist or maybe an environmental scientist or an archaeologist or something like that where i could just be outside all day in nature um not interacting with anybody my favorite dream wandering around the bush yeah i'd collect some data and i'd keep a really tidy spreadsheet with that data and i'd be very happy what about you the kind of well were you the kind of child that collected rocks and have them by your bedside when you were little yes i did rocks feathers now i'm thinking
you know i'm sounding a lot like my daughter i think she might might have gotten it from me but I used to spend hours walking around in the bush as a kid on my own like and I was telling my kids the other day my best friend lived about maybe 17 or 18 kilometers away and I used to ride my bike to her house and spend the day there and then ride home that evening oh my goodness I was about 11 yeah that's nuts isn't it it's always out in nature it is a bit yeah but yeah what about you what would you be doing um I think that I would probably still love to work with people um and I wouldn't know if I'd
be there no I'd probably be a bit bored with rocks I'd end up being like Tom Tom Hanks in um in that castaway movie where he had the the ball that he put his face on yeah that's right i need a wilson rock i reckon you would have been a great politician because whenever i'm with you near your house you just know everyone you talk to everyone like there's not a person you don't know you are just so talkative whereas i'll just stand there mute yeah my children really dislike going down the street with me because they're just like oh Oh my God, mum's talking again.
Mum's seeing someone else that she knows.
So I think that if I was to do another job, I probably would still be in a kind of adjacent style job.
I reckon I'd be a counsellor, or maybe I would have done my clinical psychology training.
I think I probably would still like to help people and still like to surround myself with people and do a bit of of problem solving.
Other people's problems are always a little bit easier to sort out than your own as well.
Well, I'm going to stick to the rocks.
Fair enough. So what would you say has been your favorite or maybe most unexpected moment from these 100 episodes?
Is there something that jumps out at you?
Yes, I have been astounded by the wonderful feedback we get from families and the lovely emails we receive just saying how much they've enjoyed the course or the program and how much they really appreciate us answering their questions in the podcast. And there was actually one of our listeners who sent us an email one day calling us the dear Dr. Sombel goddesses.
Got the mug. You made the mug of it, and I came home from a weekend away, I think.
Yeah. You'd got this mug delivered, and you said, I've sent you something.
You're going to love it.
Because I was away, I didn't get it for a few days.
Oh, my goodness. I laughed when I got this one.
I love it. That was Jess.
I looked it up. So, Jess, if you're listening, thank you so much. The email was something like, hello, Dr. Sonbel Goddesses, And then I can't remember what the rest of it was about, but I just loved it so much and I thought, yeah, that's a good mug.
And then I completely forgot to even bring these on the podcast, so what a good opportunity.
And thank you, Jess.
Yeah, that really made our day.
Yeah, it did. I think I actually – because I use my mug every day and I think I actually sit sometimes with clients having a sip of tea from this mug and they're probably thinking I'm a complete – vane lunatic oh I just took a sip of water and almost spat it out oh that is so funny that's like when I was I had my daughter's um pen which is bright pink and has this big fluffy thing hanging off the end of it and I was talking to a client and it was just the only pen within reach and I didn't even think about it I grabbed it and I was like twirling it around in my face and suddenly looked at the camera and was like
oh my god I looked arranged and quickly put it back down out again oh dear so funny what about you Fallon what's been your favorite or most unexpected moment from recording uh 100 episodes one of the things I love is that it's my daughter's little voice that you can hear during the acknowledgement of country at the start of every episode and even already her voice has changed so much that every time I go to edit the podcast together oh I just love hearing her cute little voice and I think it will be really really nice to listen back on when she's much, much older.
Yeah, so I love that.
I think that's kind of special.
And it's my husband who does the other voiceover stuff too at the start and the end.
It's very much a family production.
It is. My two are queuing up now.
They're saying, how come it's always Fallon's family who get to do these things?
Oh, if they want a job, how do they feel about, like, sound engineering or?
I'll find a job for them.
Yeah. all right let's let's move on to another question um and this is kind of back into the sleep space so Fallon what is one myth about sleep that makes you want to scream into a pillow oh it's hard to choose only one but I think the one that's currently doing my head in is the whole sleep associations aren't real or just sleep associations don't impact sleep sleep it's just wild to me that anybody needs out there saying that like it's like saying like the sun doesn't rise in the east like it just does um so yeah that one I still just think oh my god why are people saying that to parents it's
so unhelpful and inaccurate what do you reckon Laura do you have a most hated bit of advice uh sleep begets sleep hate it hate it put it in the bin absolutely in the bin it just leads to so much angst and so many parents sitting in dark rooms rocking babies and toddlers for hours and hours and making parents feel like they're doing something wrong so yep I would scream into a pillow actually if I did scream into a pillow every time I heard that I wouldn't have a voice it's just so infuriating yeah yes it really is and if you could have anyone on the podcast like it could be a real person an imaginary
person a famous person who would you want it to be do you know i have i did have it is a hard question i did have someone in mind but i'm just going to change it now to somebody else and it's simply this is me being blowing in the winds of what's happening at the moment um i would love to have oasis the band on the podcast are you a fan of their music i am and oasis is just doing a reunion tour at the moment in the uk and a lot of my friends in the uk are going to see them and so they're coming to australia i think that tour is coming out here oh is it well i should try yes i will try and maybe
the The tickets won't be as popular over here as they are in England, so it might be like when I went to see Robbie Williams and managed to get front row seats earlier on this year.
Yeah, so that's the soundtrack of me doing my psychology degree.
Oasis was in the charts in the UK when I was doing my degree over there, and I just know I can just sing those songs.
Just, yeah, I love them.
So that's who I would have on the podcast, nothing to do with sleep or parenting.
I'd love to hear their thoughts on parenting.
Yes. Well, since Harry Styles probably doesn't have a lot to offer us about parenting or sleep, I, at the moment, am loving reading a lot of the books by Leanne Moriarty.
I just think she has such an awesome way of kind of unpacking the human experience and kind of showing you all those multifaceted layers that people um build up over the years that leads them to be who they are and the way she describes parenting as well is just so fascinating the way she can capture like that incredible love that we all have for our children but then that absolute frustration that we also harbor at times yeah like I just people who are so clever with words like that i yeah it just totally amazes me i would love to meet her yes she could give us some tips for writing our sombel
book yeah yeah we need a sombel book um yeah oh that's so funny well i don't know how we'll go with oasis but you know i could send them an email and be like yeah since you're coming to australia laura loves you come on that podcast you'll love it about baby sleep I don't even know if they have kids maybe they do it would be interesting wouldn't it who knows where that podcast episode would go yeah all right um our next question is if you could magically solve one parenting struggle beside sleep Fallon what would it be shoelaces definitely shoelaces oh my god I think that I'm an all right parent
until I have to teach somebody how to tie shoelaces it is torture I don't understand it but there is some kind of like some kind of monster inside me and when I have to explain not like that no turn it around yeah put that bit no no it exceeds my capacity for patience so if they could just be born knowing how to do shoelaces oh i'd be very happy yeah you know what we should probably ask kelly one of our new sleep practitioners who's an ot whether there's a particular way particular language that needs to be used and maybe you could uh it's probably a bit late now for all of your children they
probably have just let not to come they've mastered it or they just don't come to you ask mom there's probably this kind of whispering at the door before school with whoever can't tie their shoelaces the other one doing it for them yeah it's just it's too much for me can't hack it what about you what would you do um i oh my god the parenting struggle that causes me to just completely go offline is meal time and which meals each child likes oh yes oh my god if i could just wave a magic lunch boxes in there too couldn't we lunch boxes so hard like no i don't like that why did you pack me this it's
horrible i threw it in the bin and all right i sold it to so and so for three dollars that's what i get all the time you what you're profiting from your lunchbox like i don't know if i should be proud of your entrepreneurial spirit yeah that sounds pretty entrepreneurial oh yeah maybe we have a position for a business manager manager um yes that's um yeah it is such a um a headache um knowing what they like one week to the next and what one child likes the other one doesn't and then they switch yes so that would be a parenting struggle that i would love to magically solve mealtimes yeah that magic
wand and away it goes i'm going to skip ahead to this next one if there was an olympic event for parenting skills what would you dominate at what's something you're really good at ah what am I good at when they were small I was really good at making up songs about anything so just to try and help with transitions right so we're gonna do a sunbell soundtrack then and it will be you singing away it was just one of the only ways that I could get my kids on board sometimes with with moving from one task to the next or leaving the playground or, I don't know, going upstairs to the shower or whatever
it was. I used to just have this uncanny skill.
I can make lots of things rhyme.
Yeah, come on then.
I'll carry you in. So that's definitely an Olympic event that I would dominate at.
What about you, Fallon?
Oh, that's so good.
Well, I remember reaching a point with my third kid where I had to install a rear -facing car seat and obviously I'd had to do it so many times and it's such a headache but I remember walking inside and saying to my husband I did it I installed the car seat and I didn't even swear once I was very proud of that like I just got so good at installing those things I was just an absolute pro and I really feel like if that was a sport I would have I would have dominated that would be my thing it's probably the only sport I'd ever be good that well it's a pretty impressive one i never installed a car
seat in the whole time my children were in car seats i have never i just had other people to always take it oh okay yep i had other people to help um and um which could include if my partner hadn't been around it could include getting a friend over to do it or i just never i just very rarely moved the car seats out of the car because um i just anyway we had the couple of cars we had we had car seats in that just stayed in well it sounds like you were very lucky because i had we could do a whole podcast episode on the very serious horrifying um occurrences that happened in my children's car seats
that required completely out of the car gross washing them all but we won't go into that it was traumatizing sure that some listeners would have some ideas like there's a reason why you don't have um like you don't just do a nappy and no pant like pants over the top very badly wrong on that particular angle yeah not good anyway moving along moving on someone actually wrote in once and asked us where the name Sombel comes from and I just every week I I kept forgetting to answer it on the podcast. I don't remember who it was now.
But it was a bit of a journey to find the name Somthal, wasn't it?
Like I came up with something else that I really liked and you were like, nah, it's too hard. It sounded a bit like, it was Somnia, I think, that you came up with.
And I said it's, yeah, but it sounded too much like Somalia to me.
So which is the white.
See, I'm just like, that's perfect.
Tired parents, wine.
Wine. that would have been perfect and i remember when i said to you what about if we just went like some bell and you were like yes i really like it and i was like i don't really like it much but then i just kept playing over my head and i was like oh it's good it'll do because of the meaning behind it which is some or somnus is latin for sleep so you got like insomnia some is usually associated with sleep and bell is the latin word for beautiful so some bell is like beautiful sleep so yeah and I always thought that it it does have a nice meaning and I always thought Sombelle sleep well was gonna be
a nice little catchphrase that we never used we haven't well we haven't used it yet um but yeah I think it's beautiful I really like it I like that yeah it reminds me I don't know why it reminds me of like the little kiddie classes in the 90s it's kind of got I feel like it's got a 90s ring to it but that's cool 90s the 90s are cool yeah Never thought that would happen, but they are.
Yeah, all the clothes are back in the shops, aren't they, from when we were younger.
All the teenagers are starting to wear the clothes that we wore when we were teenagers.
It's pretty frightening.
Yeah. All right, and just finally, what's next for the podcast, the clinic and Sambao?
Maybe we start with the podcast. What are we going to do next, Laura?
Yeah, so we are soon going to start to have guests coming on the podcast, which we're really excited about.
So because you and I have worked in the child health and child research space for so many years, we are quite well connected with various experts in various areas of parenting.
So we're really excited to invite some of our friends, colleagues and contacts onto the podcast um to talk to us about a whole range of parenting topics so if you are listening to this and you have some ideas of particular topics you would like us to discuss write in let us know and we will see if we can line up a speaker who can come in and talk to you all about that so we're super excited aren't we Fallon it will be great to yeah dive into some other topics but but I think to tie in how sleep impacts those things as well.
So I know in a few weeks we'll be interviewing a really good friend of ours, Dr Kylie, and she's a speech pathologist. She's going to be talking about speech and language and how that develops and just some signs you can look out for that your child might need some extra supports.
But we'll also be talking about how the development of speech and language is tied to sleep quality as well.
So, yeah, hoping to kind of build that bit more breadth to the content that we're delivering here as well, um and what a great way to do it but to actually bring in the experts so yeah it's going to be really fun and if you're an expert on a topic and you think oh i'd love to be on the podcast um yeah reach out to us because we'd love to have a chat um be amazing um and in terms of our clinic we were just saying before weren't we how much it's grown there's now yes people literally like Like last year, it was just you and I doing everything, everything ourselves.
And now we have admin support and this beautiful team.
We've got three new practitioners who are amazing.
And because we always work on cases as a team, it just brings this lovely depth of knowledge to our skill set in our sleep clinics.
We've got beautiful Lauren who is a very experienced nurse and a sleep practitioner, and she's got expertise with children from zero through to 12 years of age so she sees primary school age children um in our Children Sleep Australia clinic um we've got Kat who is a children's nurse and a sleep practitioner and she's just so wonderful with the little babies and more recently Kelly who's an occupational therapist and sleep practitioner um and of course her background she's helped children you know with all sorts of sleep difficulties and other co -occurring conditions as well um and of course you
Laura you see kids that are 3 to 17 years of age so even some teenagers in there as well yes how incredible to have been able to you know expand into these different areas and just give families the best experience and the most expertise we can possibly gather in one spot I'm so pumped to see us all grow and develop our skills over the next few years yeah absolutely it's so exciting um and it is really wonderful to have this um big team um with all different range of skill sets that um we can all um learn from and all of our listeners can also benefit from so um yeah we're so excited to see what the next
year brings as well yeah and i shouldn't forget either that we have lovely crystal who is our administration administration coordinator and a lot of the families who see us will have some contact with crystal as well and she's just such a fantastic help and really helps to keep all the um the cogs on the wheel turning um and make sure all the families have a really good experience so it's amazing and then sombal yeah sombal and what's next there's a lot of things coming soon that i won't talk about because i can't just yet they're still very early days but But we have finally published our night
waking masterclasses.
These were put up online for all SOMVAL members.
So it's freely available for SOMVAL members within the courses.
You'll see a new chapter that says masterclasses.
And I put so much work into making those masterclasses really detailed and pulling together all the little bits of information you need to really ensure that no matter how old your child is, that you're minimizing their night waking and everyone's getting the best possible rest they can um so i'm really excited for that and our plan is that we will gradually add more master classes so that you can sit down watch a video you know hear somebody talk through some of the content because we know that that's really helpful um everybody learns in different ways and providing a video format i think is really
really cool so yeah i'm excited to get some feedback on those masterclasses so if you have done it and you've loved it or any other feedback let us know we would really love to hear it yeah definitely and if you've got some ideas for um a particular masterclass topic as well let us know because um yeah it's all um yeah we just want to make some bell the best that we possibly can for all our members so um we always like to to get your questions and your feedback.
So do send it in. Yeah, absolutely.
So should we move on to parent questions now?
Yeah, let's dive into the serious stuff.
We've got some really good questions for this one.
Yes, so our first question is from Danielle, and Danielle has a five -month -old baby who was born three weeks early who used to contact NAP, And then they've made great progress with cot naps using patting and shushing.
Recently, Danielle's baby began teething and since then will only sleep on a parent again.
So Danielle's wondering, is it a waste of time trying to reintroduce cot sleep whilst teething or should they wait?
weight she also wants to know is it better to first focus on a consistent daily rhythm even if it means contact naps or can they start working on the rhythm and cot settling at the same time and finally if their baby has 10 and a half hours overnight and needs 13 hours total should they wake from long naps yeah really good question so first of all it's not a waste of time time trying to reintroduce cot settling whilst your baby's teething.
Um, I mean, of course you can wait if you want to.
The problem with teething is that it can go on for months and months and you don't really get a break.
So if you really want to work on sleep, just do it, but make sure you're using pain relief so that, um, you can be really confident that if they do have some pain, that it's under control, um, before you're trying to make these changes.
Um, so yeah, don't feel like you have to wait.
Um, but you know, if it's feeling too hard right now, of course, you know, in a couple of weeks, things might be a bit easier for you.
Um, is it better to focus on a consistent daily rhythm first, even if it means contact naps, um, or should they start the cot settling at the same time?
I'm a big fan of working on the daily rhythm first, really letting that daily rhythm build up sleep pressure.
Um, so that when you're after three or four days to a week, when you go to set up your baby that sleep drive is really nice and high and then if you change to cot settling at that point you're much more likely to have an easier time of things because your baby is just really really wanting sleep they're really ready for sleep and you're never trying to settle them in the cot if they're not quite tired enough.
So often parents will say oh once we got the daily rhythm in place for a week it was so much easier to work on cot settling than than it had been in the past. So that is a really good tip for anyone who's facing that struggle.
And absolutely, yes.
So if your baby's having 10 and a half hours of sleep at nighttime, needs around 13 hours each day, wake them from their longer naps.
So they've probably got a budget of about two and a half hours of day sleep if they're having 10 and a half hours overnight.
So you just want to make sure they don't go too far past that two and a half hour limit for their day sleep.
So you can wake a sleeping baby, especially if you are trying to improve their nights and improve their sleep quality.
Would you add anything to that, Laura?
No, I think you've just covered it all.
So, Danielle, I think you've got some good ideas there from Fallon and let us know how you get on.
Yeah, for sure. Now let's move on to Emma.
So Emma has a nine -month -old who previously had tummy pain from food intolerances, which has since been resolved through diet changes.
They've made big progress using Slow Fade, removing a feed -to -sleep association, and they're down to one night feed.
He now settles without needing much help.
Well done, Emma. However, their baby still wakes up, oh gosh, up to 15 times overnight, especially from 3 a .m. onwards, onwards and they're wondering what they can do he has an 11 and a half hour average sleep duration sleeps for an hour and a half for his first nap and 40 minutes for his second one but this one clashes with kinder pickup for their four -year -old so they aren't sure whether to give him the nap before or after pickup and whether to stick to that nap schedule on non -school days too they've tried moving the bedtime later but this makes the 3am wake -ups worse the best overnight night
results come from a 7 .30pm bedtime and 6am wake up, which doesn't make sense due to his low sleep needs.
And she wonders, what are we getting wrong?
Sounds complicated.
It does sound complicated.
So I'm delighted, Emma, that you have resolved the tummy pain due to food intolerance.
So that's great um yes 15 wake -ups overnight um just sounds just terrible really unsustainable um and so I think that we probably need to be doing some timing changes Emma sometimes what can happen is that when you first make some changes to the daily rhythm it can feel like sleep gets worse And it goes all up in the air before it settles down.
So I know that you've said you've tried to move bedtime a little bit later.
And then that feels like the nights get worse.
I mean, I feel for you if it can get worse than 15 wakes overnight.
I mean, that's so bad.
I would be saying to make a daily rhythm change and stick with it, even if it feels like it gets worse for a couple of days, because it is then likely to resolve.
So really, we want to stick with any schedule change for at least a week before we can be sure whether we need to make any further tweaks.
So with an 11 and a half hour average sleep duration, it sounds like your little one is having just over about two hours daytime sleep.
So that would mean that they have about nine and a half hours left overnight.
And they're currently going to bed at 730 and waking up at six.
So that's about ten and a half hours of sleep.
So I think we could probably do a little bit of tweaking with moving that bedtime a little bit later.
And also once you've made that tweak and stuck with it for a week, knowing that it might initially get a tiny bit worse.
But as I say, it's hard to know how much worse it can get, Emma, you poor thing.
I would also be looking at, you said that he's settling without much help.
So I would be double checking with how much is not much help, is he still going to sleep with you patting him, for example, if you've been using the slow fade approach. If he is, then I would be moving on to the next steps steps where you start to give him very short periods of time where you lift your hand off him so that he can start to fall asleep with less hands on support.
Because then you'll find that as he moves through his cycles overnight, he's not going to be so surprised that your hands are on him when he's coming up into light sleep.
So definitely continue to make those steps through the slow fade.
If you haven't already, it may be that if you're really just very close to being there, and sometimes he is falling asleep without your hands on him, that actually you could switch to the supported accelerated just to finally get over the line.
What do you think, Fallon, would you add anything else?
I think that is great advice.
I think about the children I've seen in clinic where they are so exquisitely sensitive to even just having a little bit of extra day sleep.
Like one morning they sleep in an extra half an hour and then we just see the repercussions across the following few nights.
So I would do your best to be quite strict with that daily rhythm for a full week.
Don't allow a sleep in if they have a tricky night.
Like really try and stick to that rhythm and give it a full week because sometimes it really does take a week for them to kind of click into that new pattern and I also agree with you Laura on the you know how he's falling asleep if some babies are just like if you're in the room when I fall asleep if I can see you over there when I fall asleep at bedtime and I wake up overnight and you're not over there still you know I'm calling out until you get back in that chair yes you know some of them are that sensitive so you know even if you're not doing much yeah it might be that you actually just need
to work on not being in the room when he falls asleep at the start of the night and once you've got that high enough sleep pressure as well when he does wake overnight he's going to go oh yep everything's exactly as it was when i fell asleep and also i'm really damn tired because i've found this new schedule and i'm they're not letting me catch up on day sleep or whatever um yes you'll find that he will start to use those skills to resettle himself um given the severity of that night waking i would also just add that it sounds like a pretty severe sleep situation and it might be the sort of situation where a coaching
call or a clinic appointment is a really good idea just so we can have a really close look at what's going on so if things aren't improving soon Emma that's what I would do I wouldn't want to put up with that for too long because I don't think anyone can survive it to be honest that's tough really hard all right our next question is from Catherine Catherine has a seven month old baby girl who's currently on on three naps and has no signs yet of being ready to drop down to two however Catherine's returning to work soon and she wants to make that transition to two naps before she goes back to work
and she's wondering if it's okay to drop to two naps early before a baby is showing any readiness signs for logistical reasons like she has.
She's added that her baby is not having any split nights there's no nap resistance and there's no bedtime issues this is a curious one we've not been asked this one before have we no look ideally we wait until they show us that they need two naps like that's the ideal if you really need to do it i think you can try and see how it goes like it's you know still offer the same total amount of day sleep but across two naps but i also think so So often when parents return to work, their babies suddenly take an extra, like at this age in particular, seven months, they often will be like, oh, I'm so tired
because I went to childcare or I was at Nana's house or, you know, things are a little bit different, that then parents often do say, oh, gosh, they're suddenly having a sneaky little car nap on the way home or late in the evening.
So sometimes they kind of want to do that during these big transitions.
So, yeah, I would say you can try it.
it's not something I've had a lot of experience with because we just typically wouldn't suggest it.
But if it is really important for some reason for your family, give it a try.
At least they're seven months and not six.
Most babies, they're six or seven months when they move to two naps.
So if she's not there yet, she's going to be pretty close.
So give it a try. It might be that you've got to give it at least a few days to see how she goes.
Would you agree, Laurel?
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't wait until she actually starts daycare to do it.
I would give it a go for a week before you return to work and before she starts at daycare.
And if you just can't manage it, it's going to be a period of time where she just stays on three naps and you'll be okay, Catherine.
She will make that transition when she's ready so if you try it for a week and you're just finding that she's shattered in the afternoon just cannot get through that last wake window um without having a little power nap or you know everything just falls over then just revert to the three naps start her at daycare on the three naps um and then when she does start to show the signs move her to the two naps um at that point it's a tricky yeah i haven't had any experience of this actually so um yeah much like fallon i'm kind of feeling my way with it so have a little experiment but don't be surprised
if it doesn't work because she's got she's not showing any signs at all it might just be a bit too much for her but you're not going to harm her by giving it a go yeah absolutely Sometimes they surprise us and they manage things better than we think they will.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
We have a question from Penny.
So Penny has a 21 -month -old toddler who toilet trained herself and is now dry overnight and sleeps well overall.
That's amazing. I wish I'd had one of those.
She goes to bed at 8 p .m. and is asleep by 9 p .m. the issue is pre -bed potty requests sometimes there are several in a row despite already using the potty successfully so penny's wondering is this a typical toilet training phase or a bedtime delay tactic and would a bedtime chart or reward system be helpful at this age okay penny yeah there's going to be many people who are very jealous of you listening to that experience that you were having penny um i think it is a stalling behavior because it sounds like it's taking up to an hour for your toddler to fall asleep at bedtime and that is an hour
that is really boring for a toddler and she would be using whatever tactics she can to delay and put put off just lying in bed bored.
And she will have learned through toilet training that it's something that you always will respond to.
Immediately, too. You probably drop everything.
Yes. Yeah, they know, like, this is how I get attention.
If I say, like, I need to go use the potty, everyone stops what they're doing.
Yes. So I think the first thing to do would be to think about whether that 8 p .m. bedtime is actually a little bit too early um and if you 8 p .m is really important to you then think about what time wake up is in the morning or how long the day nap is so that you can bring down the time it's taking her to fall asleep remember that we really want that um time for falling asleep to be under 20 minutes um you know much less if possible um then we know that at the point that you're popping your toddler down at night is the time that she's actually going to be ready to go to sleep, therefore is less
likely to use stalling tactics.
When we have situations where those kind of stalling tactics have become a little bit of a habit, using a bedtime routine chart just to try to make it really clear how many things happen in the lead up to bedtime and in what order that we combine Combined with a reward at the end, be it a big kiss and a cuddle or a sticker or a kiss on the hand or, you know, whatever your reward is in your household can be a really successful way of saying no more stalling tactics.
These are just the things that happen in this reasonable time frame and then nothing more after that.
Yeah. Do you have anything to add, Fallon?
only that um yeah having like a visual chart or even you might even get them to check it off the list like oh we went potty let's check that off the list we've done that now so we don't need to do it again and then if you're doing that really close to the time when she's ordinarily falling off to sleep then there's going to be less resistance unless no no i want to go again i want to go again because her body's thinking gosh i'm really tired it's almost 9 p .m you know this is when we fall asleep so it's sort of doing those two things in combination that should really really help um good luck penny
it sounds like you're doing such a great job um and hopefully those bedtimes will get on track nice and quickly yeah absolutely okay our next question is from justine and justine has a seven month old baby who wakes every two hours overnight sorry that big crash was my light system falling down crashing on my desk sorry justine carry on Laura okay so Justine has a seven month old baby who wakes every two hours overnight and is fed about three times Justine says that her baby is really difficult to transfer back to the cot after those feeds without waking she also has many false starts at bedtime
so they often hold her until they themselves go to bed later on at night Justine says that cot settling attempts Tempts usually result in crying, which Justine isn't comfortable with.
Her baby often settles instantly when held by her, but not when held by dad.
Justine also has a two -year -old who slept through from 12 weeks of age, but things are not improving with their second baby.
Solo parenting days are challenging because the toddler disturbs the baby, who then doesn't nap until the toddler does even with walks in the pram so Justine is wondering if we have any suggestions to manage settling and nap timing with a toddler in the mix she says that she doesn't want to be told to toughen up and let her baby cry oh sounds complicated doesn't it Fallon?
It's really really tough Justine you poor poor thing I think you know I definitely don't want to tell Justine to toughen up baby cry that's not what I want to tell you but I want to tell you that when you have two children um you know you're a family of four you have to make decisions about the well -being of everyone and that's what is so hard about having more than in one child is that there's just so much more pressure on you to be trying to you know juggle everybody's well -being um and part of well -being one of the three pillars as we often talk about is sleep so having good quality sleep um
for your baby as well babies have sleep quality they need to have sleep quality um it's a really important component of every child's well -being so what I I would say is Justine we have to identify what is the root cause of those wake -ups from what you're saying I mean I can't be sure I haven't done an assessment I haven't seen a sleep diary but I would say there's a couple of components we've got false starts so there's 100 % a problem with the daily rhythm there so there's something going on with the timing that's making the nights extra hard but we can fix the timing I would say in your case
it's not going to entirely resolve of the night waking.
Being held to fall asleep and also still having quite a few night feeds as well and you're saying that it's difficult to transfer her to the cot without her waking it really tells you that this is a baby who is very upset to wake in the night and go how the heck did I end up in my cot?
So they're waking up feeling quite upset to find themselves in that position and it's fair enough it's a bit like if you fall asleep in your bed but you wake up on on your back patio in the middle of the night you'd be like what the heck happened how did i get here you'd probably be pretty freaked out and if it kept happening multiple times a night you'd be upset about it you'd probably i would cry if that was happening to me yeah i think you once said fallon and it made me laugh and if your partner if you fell asleep in your bed and then during the night your partner went and moved you to the sofa you'd
get really cranky with your partner like would you stop doing it you would though it'd be so frustrating and you'd be exhausted the next day so i know it's really really hard for some babies to settle in their cot but they get used to what we help them adjust to so sometimes when we have to consider well -being there is you know it's it's so challenging because we go well we know we have to do this thing or or we're not going to have wellbeing.
But approaching that thing and working out how you're going to do it is really, really hard. But I would say all babies, some have a really easy temperament.
They adjust really easily.
Some have a really challenging temperament and adjustments are really hard for them.
But as parents, if it comes down to our children's wellbeing, we have to make tough decisions sometimes.
And it's that we can't always remove the obstacle that is in our children's way that makes them upset.
In this case, that's being put in the cot makes the baby upset we can't really remove that obstacle at some point this baby you know whether it's now or when they're 10 years old they're going to sleep on their own they're going to need to sleep on their own maybe they'll go to child care and they'll have to sleep in a cot we can't remove the obstacle but as parents we can show our children that we love them and support them when they make these adjustments we can give them constant hands hands on support, all the reassurance in the world.
We can take tiny little baby steps and we're showing our children, I am here for you 100%.
If you are upset or something is hard for you, I'm going to be here before, I'm going to be here during, and I'm going to be here afterwards.
And that is what builds really strong, beautiful connections between babies and toddlers and parents.
It's actually us showing them you can do hard things.
This is hard. it's really hard for you but I am absolutely here to support you through it whilst you adjust to it and eventually this baby will go oh I am actually okay here and and then sleep quality drastically improves their daytime mood improves the whole household improves everybody's well -being improves so I hope I haven't just given you the gentlest version of tough it up and let them cry because that's not what I'm trying to do but I just think you have have a little think about those things because I think Justine already knows that part of the problem is trying to get her into the cot
and I don't think that that is something we can avoid um some parents absolutely will consider co -sleeping at a point like this um and some parents love it obviously Sid's guidelines we are very much no don't do co -sleeping um but you know I think for some families they do just find it such a big hurdle that come toddlerhood they go well they're a toddler now it's not as dangerous to co -sleep and they just opt to co -sleep but again that might go on for several years so is that what you want to do um you know it's I guess comes down to what parents feel they can manage so sorry that was a big unpacking
of things but I think it's really important to dive into this sort of stuff because sometimes it is really clear that there's a um a challenging problem but the only way through it is through it and it's yeah it can be hard to hear yeah be hard particularly on the back of having a wonderful sleeper like it sounds that the first baby was you know sleeping through from 12 weeks of age and here's you know what we um do you know we're often saying that um every we always say every child is unique when we look at the baby in front of us and within the same family you can have chalk and cheese sleepers
and um justine has has had one baby that um slept through from 12 weeks and um you know potentially um I'm sure Justine and her partner were like woohoo we've we've nailed this parenting because it does feel wonderful when you do do something when when something goes really well as a parent you really need to congratulate yourself you're like yeah we are good at this and then the second child comes along and it's like yeah story and then you're like ah this is what people are talking people who have never had a picky eater or a fussy eater have no idea how terrible mealtimes can be no idea what's
the fuss why is everyone making a fuss about this until you're in that situation you're just clueless and so justine's had one experience of a great sleeper and now she's got a second one whose sleep is um really challenging um and it's really starting to to affect the family's wellbeing and functioning.
So listen, Justine, if it would be helpful for you, do book in for a coaching call because Fallon will be able to do a deep dive into what's happening for your seven -month -old baby's sleep and pick out like a practical, pragmatic approach that you are more likely to be able to stick to whilst also parenting a toddler because having those competing demands in the day in particular can make things really tricky.
That's what the coaching calls are there for when you do, when there are families who are, you know, really in the trenches.
So do book in. Yeah, and I would say if you just want something you can do right now, Justine, start working on step one of the slow fade approach, which is just where you're going to introduce padding and shushing to every settle.
So if you feed her to sleep, hold her to sleep, even if she doesn't want patting and shushing, do it anyway.
Make those her new sleep associations.
And then down the track, whether we work together or not, when you do go to move her to her own sleep space, you've got something really familiar that can carry over to that space and it might make a really big difference for what sounds to be a quite sensitive baby.
But all the very best, Justine, and, you know, we really hope you see some improvement soon and do reach out for support if you need it.
There's one more question from Larissa.
So Larissa says that she's got a couple of questions.
So one is she says, I understand that sleep cycles lengthen over time.
Could you please explain when and how this occurs in babies?
Because I'm concerned about waking my eight and a half month old from naps.
I'm wondering about whether when she wakes the baby from naps, if that's going to align with the sleep cycle length as it changes.
So I can just jump in really quickly just answer answer that one before we go on to um your main question so um larissa sleep cycles do start off quite short um in very little babies you know we might in really small babies they might be 25 minutes long um and then they start to lengthen to 30 minutes 45 minutes is kind of the average um and as a child enters toddlerhood and beyond they can get longer by the time they're starting school they're much more like adult length sleep cycles which are closer to 90 minutes um the rate at which they change and lengthen i don't think has been studied really
clearly yet um so i can't answer that question there isn't i don't think there has been a um a study on the the natural history of sleep cycle lengths across the first few years of life, I think that would be a wonderful, interesting study to do.
So if there's any PhD students out there who want to do it, come do the research. Yeah, we've got loads of data.
But yes, so it really is individual to, so all I can say at the moment is that we just look at the child in front of us.
So let's say Say you had determined, Larissa, that your child's sleep cycle length is 40 minutes and you're waking them from naps at 40 minute increments, like 40 minutes or an hour 20 and so on.
And you start to find that when you're waking your little one, they're a bit grumpy, a bit harder to wake and take a bit longer to warm up once you've woken them.
There's a good chance their sleep cycle length has changed and that 40 minutes might now be 45.
for example so then just watch them again when they're sleeping see when they wriggle their little body then that will give you a sense of how long that sleep cycle is yeah so now the main part of Larissa's question is that she says my eight and a half month old consistently waits between four and five a .m although she can be resettled without a feed she often needs to be picked up to fall back to sleep we've tried adjusting bedtime later and wake up earlier and reviewed her overall sleep need but the issue persists.
She typically sleeps for nine and a half hours overnight, has two daily naps of 40 to 60 minutes each. She has an overall sleep need of 11 hours, wakes at 6, goes to bed at 8 .30.
She usually settles independently for naps and at bedtime and Larissa is looking for suggestions to resolve the early morning wake -ups.
she's tried reducing the daytime sleep further but she finds she's cranky on less sleep during the day what do we reckon yeah if everything's going so well aside from the early wake up i'd be really tempted to do a full shift of the circadian rhythm along a little bit later so it might be that every three days or so you push nap time bedtime wake up time 15 minutes later later, let her adapt, then do it again and see if she can shuffle along and everything just moves that, that bit later.
Um, and if you're finding no matter what, you know, you've addressed the potential environmental things that could be alerting her that it's morning time.
Um, and she's still waking up that early.
It doesn't happen very often.
I would say it's pretty rare, but some babies are real morning larks and they just love to be up early.
Um, but it is very, very, very rare that we try all these things and then find that we can't shuffle bedtime later.
So chances are just pushing it all along a little bit is really going to help.
You just can't do it in one giant leap.
Just shuffling it 15 minutes every few days or so is just a good way to just gradually sort of shunt the circadian rhythm along that little bit.
Is that what you suggest, Laura?
Yeah, absolutely. And the other things that I'd be looking at, and I'm sure Larissa has has already um checked all of these things is is the room temperature okay at that hour that is the coldest part of the night coldest part of our body temp a core body temperature as well um so making sure that your eight month old isn't waking because they're cold making sure that there's no noise outside that's waking them at that hour um any lights that come on from the neighbors um any dogs barking um ensuring that there's you're using white noise um and just ruling out any of those environmental factors
but otherwise i think your advice is spot on there fallon that just shuffling the circadian rhythm by 15 minutes every few days almost like it's we do um daylight saving times yeah yeah yep excellent oh good luck larissa well thank you everyone for joining for our 100th episode how incredible um if you are needing enhanced support for sleep or settling it's what we do we work with the most challenging cases we are you know we get a lot of referrals from pediatricians who say i've tried everything with this child and you know come and help us that's what we do we work with complex cases so if you're
needing a lot of support you've got the option of booking into our clinic um or booking a coaching call of course some of us members opt for clinic appointments because they're a bit longer and a little bit more detailed um we have that availability we have telehealth appointments or if you're in melbourne you can go and visit laura in our lovely little clinic in hawthorne east um if you've been tuning in and you're not a sunbelt member yet why not hurry up and come and join us you know if you're needing that support it's it's there it's a great resource we put all of our best sleep advice in there
um and if you have enjoyed these 100 episodes and you want to give us a a little thanks maybe we can laura we need to start like a piggy bank saving up for a podcast producer or sound engineer maybe maybe these parents yeah anyone out there who would like to buy us a coffee we'll start to um you know save up pennies and hopefully get some more support with the podcast um but yeah you can buy us a coffee if you would like to to um to thank us thank you everyone truly from the bottom of my heart it's been such a pleasure these 100 episodes those hearing your stories hearing your successes and celebrating
those successes the people who struggled for you know sometimes years with sleep and then they find us we help them and see the whole family life turn around that is an absolute privilege to be part of and thank you for letting us be part of that journey for your family yeah absolutely all right thanks everyone bye -bye If you need help with your baby or toddler's sleep or settling, you need Sombelle.
Sombelle is Australia's first online pediatric sleep clinic program for babies and toddlers aged zero to three years.
It contains all the best resources from the sleep clinics at Infant Sleep Australia, so you can rest easy and soak in your child.
To find out more, click the link in the show notes or visit sombelle .infantsleep .com .au.
