We recommend always following the safe sleep guidelines.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Dr Fallon and Dr Law acknowledged 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 recognize that sovereignty was never ceded.
Imagine this your six-month-old baby wakes at least five times every night, sometimes very briefly and other times for up to two hours.
You've rocked and shushed your baby for so long that your body aches every day.
And the minute your head hits the pillow, your baby springs awake again.
Yeah.
In a state of desperation.
You open Instagram and there it is, in big, bold font with a picture of a peaceful, well-rested mother.
And it reads, it's normal for babies to wake in the night.
Oh gosh, awful.
In today's episode, we unpack this very toxic statement because parents deserve better.
Welcome back to Brand New Little People, the podcast companion to the Somvell Pediatric Sleep Clinic programs created by us.
I'm Dr Fallon Cook and I'm here with Dr Laura Conway and we're the directors of Infant Sleep Australia.
Laura, this is one of our most hated statements from the internet, isn't it?
It's not all for babies to wake in the night.
Some are helpful for parents.
Yeah.
Really unhelpful.
And it is the last thing you want to hear when you, night after night after night, have been doing battle with a little person who is not able to sleep for long stretches.
You, therefore, are getting terrible sleep yourself.
And then to be bombarded with that minimizing statement just feels so cruel and I feel so sorry for these families who are just being bombarded with this kind of messaging.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It really touches a nerve for me when I see stuff like this, because I just find it so dismissive of what are really genuine problems that parents are dealing with.
And the last thing you need when you're a new parent is anybody minimizing the experiences that you're having.
It's just, it's awful.
So yeah, I did a bit of a post on Instagram about it and it was really well received.
We had a lot of parents like write in and be like, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like what you're saying because we kind of unpacked this statement.
Why does it just rankle me so much?
So, yeah, we unpacked it on Instagram and people really liked it.
And we've got a few more posts like that, where we're going to start to unpick some of those really helpful things that we see online.
But maybe let's dive into this particular one.
So it's normal for babies to wake overnight.
Yeah.
And it is true, isn't it?
So there is a grain of truth.
This is a simple fact and it starts with a truth, doesn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
As do a lot of these things.
There's a grain of truth, but it then swells out of all proportion.
So if we think about why babies wake overnight, of course little babies will be waking overnight for their needs to be met.
So if they need feeds, if they need their nappy changed, They just need a little cuddle.
You know, those are normal things that younger babies and some older babies need to have overnight.
And absolutely, it's your job as a parent to provide for your baby in that way.
But if we think about sleep in general...
There are also going to be other natural wakes overnight that are not due to your baby needing a feed or needing their nappy changed.
Because, as we all move between sleep cycles overnight, there are natural wakings that happen between the cycles.
And that's just the way sleep works.
Yeah.
No one is saying that there's no wakings in the night, are they?
Well, that's it, isn't it?
Like even as adults and parents, when I tell this to parents, they're often like, really?
Yep.
Like as adults, we wake up five or six times per night, but it's so brief and so fleeting.
We tend to not remember it.
But like often you know, adults will say I do remember, maybe like rolling over once last night or maybe twice.
But generally, unless I've got insomnia, we're back to sleep really quickly.
So yeah, actually no one is really out there saying that.
You know, babies shouldn't wake overnight.
We all know that babies wake overnight, much like adults.
But I think that's...
That's where this has been – you know people talk about like the straw man fallacy, where sometimes you can present something that's similar to the truth because it's easier to shoot it down and kill that argument off.
And I think that's what they're doing, because it is a bit of a play on words, because we've got night waking in the very literal sense, meaning that you know somebody – is asleep.
Then they exit their sleep cycle and they wake during the night.
That'd be a very literal definition where all humans wake multiple times overnight, very briefly between sleep cycles.
But then you've got the practical definition, the meaning that parents are using and that we use all the time, which isn't about that literal meaning.
It's just if babies or humans are waking up overnight and um and fully waking up, needing something like for an adult with insomnia, if they're waking up for half an hour overnight, we don't just go oh, but it's normal for you to wake, because it's not really normal if you're waking for 30 minutes in the night.
Um, so it's that the way that the people who do sort of push that oh, it's normal for babies to wake overnight, kind of um narrative, they're Kind of deliberately choosing that very literal definition because it's easy to shoot down, rather than the practical definition that parents actually use all the time.
And we know what parents are actually referring to when they talk about night waking.
Yeah, and they're talking about their babies or toddlers calling out and needing something to happen to help them go back to sleep.
So some parents will say, my baby only wakes once overnight.
Us as sleep practitioners aren't thinking, oh, there's no other wakings.
We know that that baby is waking multiple times and resettling, but we are not...
Weird.
We're using the meaning in the way that the parents intend.
How many times is your baby waking overnight, needing you to do something to help and support them to go back to sleep?
Yes.
And I think the crux of this is that people choose to use that literal meaning because it makes parents' concerns about night waking seem a bit irrational and a bit crazy.
What do you mean you're worried about night waking?
It's normal.
You know, like it's so, oh, it makes me so cross.
Oh, gosh.
You know.
I think the main point that's being missed when people say that, you know, night waking is normal for babies is that whilst the night waking is normal, it is a learned skill to be able to resettle yourself back to sleep.
So most adults can do this pretty easily.
Yeah, you know, in the absence of an actual sleep disorder, we know how to get ourselves back to sleep.
Some really little babies seem to just know, you know, right from the get-go.
They're unicorns though.
A lot of babies will take a long time to kind of figure out that.
You know, if I wake in the night I can actually just go back to sleep.
And that's what's being missed from that conversation, that it's not about the actual waking.
It's about what's happening during the wake-ups.
Yeah, that's right.
And like you say, there's a spectrum of skills for babies and when in terms of when they begin to be able to consolidate their sleep, link their sleep cycles overnight, do long stretches without stress. needing a parent to come and support them each time they come up into light sleep and some start earlier than others some will do it for a while and then have a little hiccup if they've become unwell or something's happened there's been a big change um and um yeah others will um won't um be able to do it themselves without a little bit of support you know once they're a little bit older and it's all just very different some take a long time to work it out and those are the families who you know you're just describing in that intro who potentially are up multiple times overnight sometimes for long stretches of time who are absolutely at the end of their tether absolutely exhausted and shattered because we know how important sleep is for daily functioning and And then they're being told, oh, well, that's just natural.
And it's just missing the point entirely.
It really, really does.
Well, I was so outraged, Laura, that I came up with four reasons why I hate this particular phrase.
Four reasons for your outrage.
Exactly.
It felt so validating, I tell you, to create that post and actually like unpack my own feelings.
I think, you know, if I had the time for a therapist, they'd be very proud of me.
Yeah.
So you tell me, what's the first reason for your outrage?
So the first thing is really centering on how this statement you know it's normal for babies to wake overnight is invalidating parent experience.
Because the subtext of that argument that they've got is that your feelings aren't valid, because this is just a biological norm that you should have expected and you've got no right to complain about it.
You know, that's what it's sort of saying to Ferris.
This is normal.
Stop complaining.
But the reality is that things can be normal but still really hard to deal with.
Like teething is completely normal for babies and toddlers to get their teeth, but we don't say to parents it's normal.
We use pain relief.
We have strategies to help our little ones through it.
Same thing with tantrums.
They are normal, but we still teach parents how to manage tantrums because they can absolutely cause havoc for poor families.
And I think that's That's the point I really want to make is the normality of a behavior doesn't change the impact that it can have on a parent's well-being or a family unit's well-being.
So, yeah, I hate that whole it's normal.
Like yeah okay, there's a lot of normal things that are still really bloody irritating and that we need help with, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah, and we can put scaffolds around it.
We acknowledge it's hard.
How can we improve it in the same way we acknowledge parenting a teething baby is very hard.
But here we go.
Let's talk about pain relief.
Let's talk about teething rings and pain, particular foods that a child, a baby, might like to gnaw on that will alleviate their pain.
It's not just oh well tough, get on with it, stop complaining.
You know that all babies teeth.
Why did you have one?
If you can't cope, we don't say that.
But that's really what we're saying to parents Who would dare to complain that they're only getting three hours, if they're lucky, a night for their own sleep.
Yeah.
It's outrageous, isn't it?
It is outrageous.
Oh, that just leads really neatly to my second reason why I hate these.
Okay, second reason for outrage.
Well, it frames parents' needs as being either secondary to their babies or completely irrelevant.
And that's what really really irks me as well is that this whole argument is based around.
The only thing that matters is this baby's biological norm and that you're, as a parent, your needs for sleep or rest, or just you know a few shreds or skerricks of mental health, you know.
That that's not important and not worthy of protection, which just totally disregards the fact that the reality is that, you know, Family wellbeing is like an ecosystem where there are all these factors that influence each other.
And for you to be a really good parent, for you to be.
You know, have the headspace to be attentive, to be loving and patient and calm with your baby.
You know it's really hard to do that if you're completely burnt out and exhausted and just having the worst time of things.
So, yeah, I always just...
I don't know.
I always worry a lot about parents and I know you do too as well, Laura.
In the work that we do, in our appointments, we're always thinking how are these parents?
Are they okay?
You know, it's not like we're just going, well, how's the baby?
The baby's the only thing that matters, because to have a healthy a baby with good wellbeing, it's about more than just the baby.
It's the parents, it's the family unit as well.
Absolutely.
And you know, having good sleep as a family unit can really provide a safety net for a really vulnerable stage in anyone's lives becoming parents.
And I, as you know, fell into my PhD looking at parent-child interactions in young families.
And it's so, so important for parents to be able to provide warm engaging, loving interactions with their children, for their baby and toddler's mental health development and their language development.
And if you are surviving on the smell of an oily rag to get through your days, I can assure you it's going to be very hard to be the person that you usually are, with better sleep, let alone the a parent to a little baby, someone who you're just getting to know.
They're just learning the world themselves.
And, you know, just by minimizing it and saying, this is normal, get on with it.
It's just really negating that all of those factors are so important for the child's development.
So, yeah, I'm getting outraged too, but I'm just going to keep myself calm.
Yeah.
Well, no, I'm just going to stoke your fires with the next one.
Okay, next one.
The third thing that I hate about this is that implication that if you want change for your baby's sleep, it's an unnatural thing to do.
Like by wanting this change, you're going against nature.
You're a less natural or instinctive parent if you want to change something about your baby's sleep.
And this one really gets me and not just in sleep, in a whole bunch of different kind of natural parenting topics, because the whole, when we look at humans and how we have advanced as a species, it's been about working with our biology to make our lives better, better and to be healthier humans and more advanced humans.
And I had a lot of fun thinking up, you know, ways we've done this.
Like we live in houses.
That's not natural.
We wear clothing and that's also not natural.
And we use medicines.
Also not natural.
But that's just what we do as humans.
So you know, helping a baby learn how to resettle themselves back to sleep is just another way that we're using our knowledge to help families to be well and to thrive and be okay in a really modern world.
You know, I don't see these families saying well, we're not going to live in a house, because that's not natural.
We've got a cave down the road and we'll make do.
Yeah.
No way.
Yeah, we're going to use some vines to knit together some leaves for our clothes.
It's just nonsense.
It's absolutely nonsense.
And of course you know we have got much more knowledge about sleep now now than we have ever had before.
There's still a long way to go um with understanding sleep and its functions, um in um, you know, across the life course, um.
But we, when we know better, we do better.
So why not?
We understand now why babies are waking.
We know that there's different stages of sleep and that we move through cycles and that different stages of sleep are important for different things.
And if your nights are really fragmented.
We know that it has an impact on your daily functioning and physicality.
Children it has an impact on their learning and development.
We didn't know that 50 years ago.
Now we do, so let's use that information, let's benefit from it.
Yeah, And I think people often don't realize how much research has been done on baby sleep.
Like there's over 70, I think it's 75 or something.
I should know the number studies that have actually looked at different methods for cot settling and how effective they are and what the impact is.
And that's over 30,000 babies studied.
And I also know a lot of people don't realize what that means.
But when we say these babies are being studied, it's that parents have collected data about that baby's normal day-to-day life in their normal home settings.
Not that they've been taken into some science lab and have run a few tests and pressed a few buttons on a computer.
This is actual data from real families as well.
So this is not an understudied thing.
We've got great research that really helps us to inform um the choices that parents have, because that's what it is it's about, saying this is what we know and these are the choices that you have that are safe and likely to be helpful.
Um yeah, and to kind of shun all of that seems a little silly yeah, especially if you're doing it from your iphone, using the internet.
Um, Not very natural things.
That's right.
That's another not natural.
It is not natural to be like Instagram and TikTok.
Those are not natural, but we're all doing it.
Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
OK, tell me what your fourth point of outrage is.
Point of outrage.
And then I'll shut up temporarily about it.
But it's the way that that phrase you know it's normal for babies to wake overnight creates this false dichotomy.
And this really irritates me, because I think the subtext is kind of saying you've only got two choices.
You can just accept relentless exhaustion because it's normal, or you have to engage in harsh, cried out approaches, as if that's the only option that you've got, which is completely absurd, because the world of baby sleep is a spectrum.
It has a huge range of different approaches you can use.
And it's entirely up to families which of those approaches they might feel comfortable with.
But there are just so many gentle options that are really supportive that parents feel really comfortable with.
And we shouldn't be discouraging parents from exploring those options, because parents actually know their baby better than us, the influencer online who's spouting the nonsense.
And I just think parents should know that it is not a choice between suffering in silence, feeling like you can't even complain about the difficulties you're having, or opting to just shut the door at 7pm and not return until the morning.
Those are not your two options.
In fact, they are so uncommon, both of those options.
Yeah.
I want all parents to know about the million shades of grey in between those two.
Yeah.
And also there's providing parents with the knowledge and understanding that there's a range of sleep needs in children, in babies and toddlers and children.
And so when we're thinking about overnight wakes, we're not just thinking about cot settling.
We're also thinking about understanding what your individual child's sleep profile is, what their temperament is.
And harnessing all of those factors, along with how they fall asleep and what happens when they wake up overnight, to see if we can or what we can make adjustments to to improve their sleep so that they do do longer stretches overnight, which is great for their well-being and it's awesome for yours as well.
Yeah.
So it's much more than just cot settling.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think what's often lost in this conversation too, is that the goal of parents who are seeking support with their baby's sleep or their toddler's sleep is It's to help babies feel safe and secure enough so that, if they wake up overnight, they're not anxious or worried.
They're not going, oh, my gosh, you know, how did I get in my cot?
Why am I here?
What's happening?
It's to have them feel really resilient and calm and to know they're okay and for it to not be a shock.
You know five six, ten times per night to be waking up somewhere they weren't expecting.
So it's actually about making babies feel okay with that.
And I think that gets lost in a lot of the online arguments.
And I think it's really worth saying as well that, you know, it's...
If your baby or your child wakes a lot overnight, but it's not a problem for you, you don't have to change anything, because I think that's another angle that's often taken.
There's always pressure on families, they've got to change everything.
You don't.
Like we literally do sleep every day.
Like it is our expertise.
And I still would not just say to someone oh, you need to go get them in the cot and you have to do this approach.
This is what you have to do.
And anybody who's said that to you is not very good at their job.
It's parent choice and it's about – our job is about educating parents on the options they have and actually letting the parents tell us what approach they feel comfortable with but what approach is – the right fit for their baby's temperament, because parents know we can help them, you know, untangle the threads and work out, um you know, what's likely to be a good fit.
But at the end of the day, it's the parents who who know best, and we're just there to guide them and encourage them and cheer them on.
Yeah, absolutely.
Oh look, i think um that that has been um a really great opportunity for you and i to.
It's been like therapeutic session.
Got that out of my system.
Got it out of my system.
But you know Laura, I've got a whole list of other posts I'm going to make about the I'm going to call it the They Say series, and then we're going to unpack some of these things.
And I'm really keen to see what parents think as we start to unpack just some of the dodgy stuff.
We've seen online, some of the common kind of myths that go around as well.
But I really want to be guided by the people who actually listen to this podcast.
So if you don't follow us, go and follow us.
And if you spot the post that we did about this particular irritating statement, that Then go and tell me what you think in the comments.
But comment on it and tell us what else you would like us to pick apart, because we know there's a lot out there that we could tackle.
So, yeah, I'm kind of excited to do more of those sorts of posts.
It's fun.
All right.
Shall we move on to parent questions now, Fallon?
Yeah, we've certainly got a lot of them to get through.
We have.
So we have gone to fortnightly podcast episodes now, just because we have that huge bank of over 100 episodes now that listeners can go back through.
And that does mean that we do now have –
Quite a few questions to get through.
So we're going to do our best to be as succinct as possible while still being very helpful.
Yeah.
And if anything's really super urgent, please book in for a coaching call.
You'll probably get into CS within a couple of weeks, although they are pretty heavily booked at the moment.
But you do have that option as well if you need a bit more detailed advice or something a bit quicker.
Yeah.
OK, so let's kick off.
The first question is from Katie, who has an eight month old baby who recently transitioned well from three to two naps, totally in just an hour.
So it's two half-hour naps, has a 7.30 bedtime and a 6.45 wake-up.
Katie says every night between 9 and midnight, her baby cries and appears quite distressed.
But on closer...
After looking, she sees that the baby seems to be asleep, has her eyes closed and there's no tears.
But the only way to settle her, to stop her seeming so distressed, is with a small bottle, after which she goes back to sleep until around four in the morning, when she has another feed.
So Katie asks, do we have any ideas what's causing this and how to stop it from happening?
This is very interesting.
So we see this every now and then in the clinic where we have babies.
They usually are over six months of age and they show behaviours that are really similar to night terrors.
But we typically say night terrors don't start until the toddler years.
But then they just have this behavior where they're not really with it.
They're not really waking up.
They're crying a lot.
They seem really distressed and nothing sort of seems to snap them out of it.
And often parents will do something like offering a small feed or a bottle which can help them to kind of come around and just kind of reset a little bit.
And then they're calm and they're back to sleep again.
So it's really hard to say why this is happening.
If Katie said you know they're wide awake or you know they're definitely awake, then I'd be thinking okay well, do we need to adapt that daily rhythm?
But it sounds like this baby might not even be waking up.
So I think the way Katie's managing it is perfect.
You could also just just wait and watch.
If they're asleep and they're crying in their sleep, there's probably not a lot you could do to comfort them.
They probably don't really even need the comfort.
So you could just kind of watch and see what happens, because it might be that after a few minutes they go quiet and they're back to sleep again.
But it is really interesting.
What do you think laura?
Yeah, it did confuzzle me, as my daughter would say, because it does sound like a night terror.
And night terrors normally happen in that first third of the night.
We've spoken about them before, of course, but in regards to older children.
But it's that moving out of deep sleep up into the lighter sleep stage.
It's a little bit of a glitch.
And in older children we generally say just don't intervene, because it can make the distress escalate or go on for longer.
So look, I suspect it is something to do with your baby moving from deep sleep up into their lighter sleep stages, Katie.
So I think probably doing what Fallon said is a really good idea just to hold, you know, wait for five minutes or so and see if it does just pass itself um, and let us know how you get on, because it is um yeah, it is a little bit um, unusual behavior at eight months old And it could be worth even just cooling them down a little bit.
So if they're running a little bit hot, a little bit hot and sweaty sometimes, that can trigger night terror-like behavior.
So just because it wouldn't hurt to try, I'd be tempted to just check it out.
A little bit too warm sometimes.
Just reducing the layers a little bit, turning down the thermostat a little bit, it makes a massive difference and it just stops.
So be keen to hear how you go, Katie.
Yeah.
All right.
Sharon has a three and a half month old baby boy who self-settles for all naps and overnight sleep.
And she's put thank you in brackets.
You're very welcome, Sharon.
Sharon says, since being unswaddled, cot naps have shortened to 30 minutes, while pram and car naps can be longer.
Some days end up being four or five short cot naps, other days a mix of cot and on the go naps.
Attempts to resettle in the cot after 30 minutes lead to more crankiness.
Managing naps is difficult with a 21 month old too.
Oh, I bet it is.
Sharon asks, will cot naps naturally lengthen as her baby adjusts to being unswaddled and matures?
And do we have any tips for creating more nap rhythm when managing two young children?
I think we do have a podcast episode where we talk in a little bit more detail about how to manage toddlers and babies at the same time, Sharon.
So go back in the back catalogue and have a little look.
And there's some lessons in Sunbell on that too.
Yes, true.
Yeah.
So it's really it can be really hard.
You're in a very tricky time of life, Sharon, with the little baby and the toddler.
I suspect your baby is probably closer to four months now, because it's been a couple of weeks since we, since your email, came through.
So I would be thinking more about trying to avoid as many cot naps as up to five, because I suspect what's happening is that your baby is starting to need slightly longer awake during the day.
You know, maybe having five cot naps a day suggests to me that maybe your baby's only managing to be awake for an hour or so at a time, and then you're popping him down and then he might only be able to do one sleep cycle because the sleep pressure hasn't got quite high enough.
So I would be looking at starting to maybe lengthen some of those awake windows, Sharon.
So they get a little bit longer as the day goes on.
And that might help some of those cot naps begin to be a little bit longer.
And yeah, you're right.
It is something that he's going to have to get used to being unswaddled, because babies have to learn how to hold their arms still and not bop themselves in the face with their hands.
And so it is a skill that gets better with practice.
So yes, I'd be thinking about lengthening some of those wake windows to try and encourage some nap consolidation.
And when your baby wakes up after only a short nap.
If possible, just set yourself 10 minutes where you might try and resettle your baby to see if they could do another cycle.
Consider having a basket of toys for the toddler that only come out when you are resettling the baby, that are really highly motivating for him to play with.
And that just gives you five or 10 minutes with your hands free.
If possible, I know that that isn't possible for all toddlers.
They're not interested.
They want to be by your side.
Fallon, do you have anything else that you would add to help Sharon?
No, I think it's just it's so often at this phase that it's, you know, often the first 12 weeks we're trying to avoid overtiredness, that we settle them really quickly when they show tired signs, that then, as they move past 12 weeks and we don't have to be worried about that so much.
A lot of parents just can't help it.
They're so scared that they settle their babies a little bit too early.
And then, yeah, we end up with lots of really brief catnaps.
Yeah.
I agree, definitely stretch out yeah, the time between naps a little bit, and it's likely to really help.
You can kind of wait until they're pretty grizzly and cranky and, you know, showing multiple tired signs.
And then maybe pop your baby.
Just think every morning, nap one or nap two is going to definitely be in the pram.
And then your toddler won't be tired at all at that point.
So you can try for maybe an hour, hour 15, hour and a half before they go down.
I don't know what their sleep need is, of course, before you put them in the pram for that first nap.
And then you could go to a park with your toddler.
And then in the pram, you've described that they are having longer naps.
So you might at least get one good nap out of them, which is then going to help that next wake window be a bit longer before they go down for their next nap, which might then coincide with your toddler's nap.
That's the holy grail, isn't it?
It sure is.
Yeah, good luck, Sharon.
Okay, we have our next question from Fotini, who has a 14-month-old whose sleep has improved since joining Sunbelt.
That's good to hear.
She asks, when is the right time to move a toddler into their own room?
It's a good question.
Look, any time now is a good time.
Separation anxiety can be peaking around this time.
So you might want to do it fairly slowly.
If you're worried about how your toddler will adapt to being in their own room, it might be that one of you sleeps beside their cot on a spare mattress for the first few nights and you just give a bit of reassurance if it's needed.
And then you start to sort of leave their room before they fall asleep, so that they're getting used to being in their room without you there so much.
But, yeah, now I would say it's a quick and easy answer.
Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
Next question we have is from Nicole.
She has a five-month-old baby girl who was waking hourly overnight and feeding to sleep.
They've just started using the supported accelerated approach and have already seen improvements with her sleeping up to eight hours.
Oh my gosh, Nicole, that is amazing.
So good.
So good.
Yeah.
So Nicole's question is around the approach for daytime naps.
She used to have three naps totaling two and a half to three and a half hours a day.
Currently she will not nap using the supported accelerated approach in her cot and they have needed to take her on pram walks twice a day.
They've tried but often stop after 15 to 20 minutes.
Because of this, she's only getting one and a half to two hours of nap sleep during the day and is often grumpy and tired by the evening.
Is there another way they can support her day sleep without it affecting the nighttime settling?
That seems to be working.
Hmm.
Nicole, I reckon what's happened is your baby was having such fragmented overnight sleep before that they were having lots of catch-up sleep during the day.
So they were having up to three and a half hours of day sleep to recover from being up hourly all through the night.
So I suspect what's happening now is that your baby is just sleeping so much better at night, up to eight hours in a stretch, and therefore is needing less sleep in the daytime than she previously needed.
So I think first of all don't be worried that because you term it as she's only getting one and a half to two hours of day sleep now.
It may be that she does actually only need two hours of day sleep now that her nighttime has improved.
Having said that, you describe that she is grumpy and tired in the evening.
Now I do know from the longer email that you sent through you were only a couple of days into the supported accelerated approach.
So it's very usual for those first few days for a baby to be a bit grumpy.
And often by third fourth, fifth night things start to improve because everything is getting on a bit of an even keel.
And so I'm hoping that you have had that experience Nicole, and things are beginning to improve, particularly because it does sound like you were supporting your baby to have her naps during the day by putting her in the pram.
So we know that she is getting some sleep during the day and she is getting good quality sleep overnight.
Now, in terms of how to improve the cot settling for the naps, I think there's a couple of things you could do.
One is that you could continue to give one nap a day that is in the pram.
If you would like to do that, it might be a nice thing for you and your husband to do in the morning.
And then you could do the other two naps in the cot.
But I want you to persist for longer than 15 or 20 minutes.
If your baby has just had the experience of going into the cot, protesting about it for 15 minutes and then being popped in the pram, where she might prefer to be, that's quite manageable for most babies.
To protest for 15 minutes.
Nicole, your baby might think, well, this is weird.
Okay.
This is what we have to do.
Okay.
Here we go again.
Have a squawk for 15 minutes whilst mum comes back and forwards.
And then we go in the pram.
All right.
And so it kind of gets reinforced.
So I would be thinking maybe keep one nap in the pram just for some sanity.
Maybe it's the last nap of the day the third nap you do in the pram and the first two you do in the cot and start and challenge yourself to try for longer and think to yourself.
I'm going to attempt to settle my baby in the cot for at least half an hour.
And if after that time she doesn't sleep, then maybe get her up and then try again in another half an hour to an hour, rather than popping her in the pram just whilst we try and nail the naps.
But they can be notoriously tricky for some babies.
What tips and tricks do you have up your sleeve, Fallon, for babies who are like Nicole's?
Yeah, often in the clinic I say to parents don't even bother trying for the cot settles for maybe the first week that you're working on your new approach.
I will just say, look, nail the nights.
Yeah, for the naps.
What did I say?
Just don't worry about cot settling.
Oh, it's 9.30 at night.
So I probably needed more naps today.
But no.
So what I would say to families is, if you're making a change to cot settling and self-settling, focus on getting that right at night, which is what Nicole's doing, which is great.
And I say to families, if you do all the naps in the pram for the first week, don't care less.
It's totally fine.
Because after a week of self-settling overnight, those self-settling skills are that much stronger.
Then when you try a nap in the cot, it's much more likely to work.
So you do have that option of just going.
Oh, let's just try this in another few days, when they've had a bit more practice at night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good luck, Nicole.
Okay, our next question is from Georgina.
Her baby girl had very unsettled sleep in the first few months, only sleeping in short stretches.
Things improve slightly around four months.
We don't often hear that, that things improve at four months.
So that's interesting.
But she has always relied on breastfeeding to sleep and refuses to let anyone else settle her.
At seven months, Georgina tried the supported accelerated approach, which helped lengthen overnight stretches, but the crying was intense, so they paused.
Now her baby sleeps from 8pm to 4 or 5am, feeds and then sleeps until 6.30, a huge improvement.
Good.
Good.
She asks should they try the slow fade approach or another strategy to help their baby accept settling from someone else?
She says no matter what, she just cries until she's blue and coughing if anyone else tries to get her down.
Help.
Oh, Georgina, you poor thing.
Some babies have a really challenging temperament where they know what they want and they react so strongly.
And it can feel so hard as a parent because you're looking at your child, thinking why are you doing this?
You know, you might be surrounded by other babies that don't react as strongly as your baby.
It can feel really, really overwhelming.
So my thinking is that...
There isn't an easy way to just make your baby accept their dad.
I wish that there was some trick I could tell you, but it often it really is.
Just they have to realize that it doesn't matter who settles me.
It goes the same way.
So maybe one way you could do it is when you're settling your baby for sleep, you just have dad in the room, not doing anything in particular, but just in the room and observing what you're doing to get her off to sleep.
I wasn't clear on whether the breastfeeding to sleep has completely stopped or not, but if you're using something other than breastfeeding to sleep to settle her Georgina, then have your husband or your partner in the room watching exactly what you're doing.
So your baby's getting used to him being around.
And over time, you know if you're doing something like shushing whilst padding to sleep or breastfeeding anything.
If you're just saying a phrase at bedtime and then you're wandering away, get your husband to start also doing that, so he just becomes part of the routine.
And I think sometimes it does take us just getting out of the house.
So what you've got to remember is that it's not doing any harm for your baby to be settled by someone else.
They are just having very strong opinions about how they would much prefer it with someone else.
But when we have strong opinions or preferences, it's not that we're frightened or anxious or, you know, like terrified about what's happening.
We're just mad.
And part of you know, development is starting to realize that yeah, sometimes things – you know are difficult or challenging or not going to go the way I want them to.
But my parents are still here supporting me through it, even when I'm really cranky, that you know things aren't going the way I want them to go.
I hope that feels helpful, Georgina.
I feel like it probably doesn't, because it is just a really tough situation with babies that have these very strong opinions.
Convicting them to settle for someone else can be really hard.
But I just think about standardizing your approach and getting your partner to really replicate that closely so your baby realizes it actually doesn't matter who does this.
It's the same no matter what.
Yeah, yeah.
And if you can Georgina, you know, pick maybe a Friday night where, assuming that neither of you are working on the weekend, pick a Friday night that your husband is going to do the settling.
Go out of the house if you can or you know, go up to the shops or go round to your mum's or you know a friend's.
So you're not there because you speak about how she cries until you intervene.
And so I wonder if she's just learning again.
Oh, this is a strange thing I have to do until mum comes in.
And maybe the best way for you not to intervene and for your baby to see she's perfectly safe and loved and supported and nourished and cherished by her father is crying.
You know, that's going to be easy if you're out of the house.
So you're not hearing that crying because she is just with her dad and her dad loves her too.
Yeah, I'm sorry as well that we can't offer you that.
I wish there was a magic wand we could wave, Georgina.
Both Fallon and I have experience of children, personal experience of children with very strong characters.
And it was evident from this age, if not earlier.
Yeah, but don't worry, they're going to be CEOs one day, right?
Right. going to be running the world.
That's right, we tell ourselves that.
So Georgina, your little girl will be running the world with our little girls.
So from a place of compassion that we're speaking Georgina, and I hope it is as helpful as it can be when you're parenting children with strong opinions, like your little baby.
So Good luck.
Yeah, good luck.
All right.
Shall I read out Angela's question now?
Yeah.
So Angela has a 13-month-old who sleeps through the night and hasn't woken through the night from four months, except once when she was sick.
And Angela says I truly believe it's because of my learnings from you guys with sleep pressure and the rest.
Oh, that's really lovely.
I think you've just got a little champion sleeper on your hands by the sound of it.
It's amazing.
Angela says, at home he usually has two naps, but at daycare, where he goes three days per week, he will only have one nap for around one and a half to two hours.
He started to refuse his second nap at home sometimes, and Angela is wondering should she move him to one nap at home too?
She's worried that five and a half to six hours is too long for him to be awake before bedtime.
No, it's not.
What do you think, Laura?
Time for one nap, isn't it?
Yeah Angela, I would say that your little toddler, now rather than baby, is telling you that he is ready to drop down to one nap a day.
Three days a week, he's just having the one nap.
When there's all that stimulation at daycare, he is happy to only have one nap.
And on the days he's at home with you, occasionally he is fighting that second nap.
It is time to move to that one nap a day.
And five and a half to six hours awake is not too long for him to be awake before bedtime.
It's just maths, just what happens when children drop down to one nap.
13 months is a very typical age.
Anywhere between kind of 12 and...
16 months we see typically.
Sometimes there are children on either side of that who drop very, very early, down to one nap or hold on to two naps until very, very late.
Those are often the very low sleep needs and high sleep needs babies.
But 13 months of old, Angela, I would say rip the Band-Aid off.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
We've still got so many questions to get through.
Oh, okay.
Let's go.
All right.
Let's get our skates on.
Okay.
So Madeline has an 18 month old who has struggled with frequent night wakes since he was three months old.
Often the wakings have been managed with feeding to sleep and co-sleeping.
So her baby was weaned overnight two months ago, has a solid bedtime routine, happily settling in his cot at the start of the night.
After starting the advanced accelerated approach three weeks ago, his sleep improved, waking only once or twice and even sleeping through on occasion.
That's brilliant.
But now resettling has become harder again, sometimes taking 45 minutes or more, with frequent false starts.
She asked whether setbacks like this are normal and how long it usually takes to see consistent improvements.
She's wondering whether her child's temperament might mean he needs more physical proximity as, no matter what they have tried, nothing seems to stick.
Well, this would be a pretty quick answer.
That's definitely just sleep pressure and the daily rhythm has to be right because he's got self-settling skills.
He's doing really well being alone and without that physical proximity.
He can do really, really well.
It's going to come down to timing.
So look at what his actual sleep needs are. and cater to it really strictly.
And I would almost put money on those night wakes going away, Madeline.
So work through that unique sleep needs chapter.
And if you're a bit stuck on the daily rhythm it's a good thing to bring to a coaching call, because we'll figure it out really quickly.
And then I would say those night wakes will just disappear and that can prevent a return to old settling habits that didn't work so well for you.
Um, i think if sleep pressure is a little low at night time often that's what brings progress sort of undone again.
So really important to to stay on top of that.
Yeah good, all right.
Um, do you want to read the next one?
Yeah, we have a question from you Lynn, whose baby girl is 18 months old and thriving on one nap a day.
She's sleeping independently and sleeps through the night.
Well done.
Brilliant.
Yeah, really good.
Yeah.
Eileen says her nap typically starts around 1230 pm, but recently it's shifted later, sometimes as late as 230 pm.
On one occasion she resisted her cot, turned on the light, then eventually curled up on the floor and fell asleep by herself.
That's funny.
Overnight, she usually sleeps 10.5 to 11 hours with a one to one and a half hour nap.
So Yulin asks, does this shift in nap timing signal the beginning of a gradual transition to no nap?
And for these later naps, is it best to keep them short to about an hour so bedtime stays on track?
I would say yes and yes.
Yes and yes is what I was thinking too.
You're absolutely spot on, Euline.
You're on the money.
Absolutely.
It's been lovely to watch Euline's progress because I think Euline has sent in a few questions over the time that she's been part of SOMBEL.
So I love to see your updates, Euline.
Yeah, I love seeing familiar names pop up again.
Yeah, i'm like oh good, what's happening, how are things going?
Yeah, so i um would certainly say that your toddler is now on track to starting that transition down to no nap at all.
Um now, given that bedtime she's sometimes having 10 and a half hours overnight, sometimes 11 hours, sometimes one hour nap, sometimes an hour and a half nap i would be thinking about trying to standardize that at this point, just because um, That's going to help that nap time become a little bit more predictable for you as well.
So I would be thinking, if you want her to have a longer nap, like an hour and a half, I would be doing just the 10 and a half hours overnight.
So picking the bedtime and wake up that's in line with that.
But you might find that if she's just on that slippery slope now not slippery slope sounds like it's something unnatural, but just on that transition point and she manages really well on just one hour, perhaps I'd go just a one hour nap and then give her the majority of the sleep overnight.
Certainly, if the nap is pushing later in the day, just keep it to one hour for sure, to keep bedtime on track.
Yeah, I 100% agree.
I think that's really good advice, Laura.
Okay, so Julian has a baby boy who's 11 months old and has been sleeping well with independent settling, thanks to Sombel.
Oh, that's great to hear.
He often sleeps through the night and has done since he was eight months old.
Recently, however, he's been waking earlier.
Oh, these awful early wakes between 4.30 and 5.30.
He's begun to have some overnight wakes as well.
And his naps and bedtime push later.
His last sleep diary showed a sleep need of about 11 hours with two 30-minute naps, bedtime of 815 and wake up 615.
He's energetic and happy when awake.
So Julian asks is 11 months too early to drop to one nap, or should they maintain two shorter naps and adjust the daily rhythm to fit his current sleep needs?
What do you reckon, Fallon?
Occasionally I'll get a baby in the clinic who's 11 months old and then is just so ready for one nap.
Like it's just so obvious that these little busy babies are just like, nah, I'm done.
I just want one nap now.
So it's possible.
Certainly not impossible.
Generally what I say before 12 months is if you, if they're okay, doing two 30 minute naps and and you know that bedtime and wake time that Jillian's described, if that works fine, they're coping well with that, the settling's not too difficult or drawn out um, that's what I would do for a little bit longer, but pretty quickly.
I reckon you'll find that you know you just won't want the second nap or the settling will get tricky, and that's when you know okay, let's just make it one nap for one hour in the middle of the day um, and I think things will will start to get better.
Um Yeah, so see if you can keep two short naps for a little while longer.
But really, if we think about the checklist for dropping naps, he's taking quite a few.
Bedtime pushing later, resisting one of the naps waking early for the day, more frequent overnight wakes.
So if you can be sure that there's nothing else going on for him there's no medical factors going on, there's no change in bedding or bedroom or any of those things, And really it's just becoming harder and harder to fit that second nap in.
Yeah, transition him to just the one.
I bet he's a really – oh, actually, should I say he's energetic and happy when awake.
Often these are the babies that are just like, I've got stuff to do.
I don't want to nap.
Yeah, this is boring.
I can imagine it.
Yeah.
All right.
So moving on to Rachel.
Rachel has a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and has been using SunVal since she was four months old.
Oh, how lovely.
You must have been here from close to the start, which is great.
Yeah.
Rachel says, over the past few months they have been tweaking her sleep and naps based on what appeared to be a drop in sleep needs.
They think she needs around 11 hours sleep a day and that's generally a 630 am wake up, a 30-minute nap and an 8 pm bedtime.
Previously, waking her up after 30 minutes was fine, but recently she's been hard to wake up.
And Rachel asks, when do sleep cycles get longer and how do you know this has happened?
Do we want to address that question first maybe and then go into the next one?
Yeah.
So sleep cycles just get longer as children get older.
By the time your baby starts school, by the time she's somewhere between four and six years of age, her sleep cycles will be the same length as an adult, so close to 90 minutes.
So there isn't I don't think there's actually been a study of natural sleep cycle length development Fallon, but one for us to just double check, because studies are coming out all the time.
But it may be that her sleep cycles are longer than 30 minutes and the reason that she's finding it hard to wake up after that time now is because she's mid-sleep cycle.
And that is one of the ways that you tell if a sleep cycle has got longer.
So if she's really hard to wake her sleep cycles have got longer you're waking her mid-cycle, then she's going to be a bit grumpy, may have a bit of sleep inertia.
Take half an hour or longer to warm up after you've woken her from that nap.
So I think at two and a half you've probably got a decision to make.
Do you drop the nap and push all of the sleep into the overnight?
And you might find that she actually coats all right.
After about a week, she'll get used to it.
Or do you try and work out the length of her sleep cycle now and give her a longer nap?
But that will mean shortening the overnight.
I think with an 11-hour sleep need, it's pretty low.
They usually drop naps a little earlier than other toddlers.
So, given she's two and a half, I'd lean towards.
Probably it's time to drop the nap and consolidate that nighttime sleep.
Rachel's other question was just around being awake at night.
So sometimes they've given her too much sleep at night, which resulted in her having a couple of nights of being awake at 4 am for an hour.
They generally keep her in bed and maybe sing a lullaby and she's pretty happy to lie there.
But Rachel says she's been told that for herself that if she is awake for more than 20 minutes to get out of bed and return when she's sleepy.
She's wondering if the same applies to toddlers.
I wonder if Rachel's been treated with CBTI for insomnia.
That's stimulus control therapy, Rachel, that you're referring to, which is what we do.
One of the tricks or techniques that we do use to treat insomnia in adults.
No, we don't do that in toddlers.
We just very quickly adjust the daily rhythm, don't we?
We just close those gaps overnight.
Yeah.
Because we don't want toddlers to think there's any other option except sleeping.
No.
It works well with adults because they want to go back to bed.
When you have to get out of bed in the middle of the night after trying to fall asleep for 20 minutes, you just want to get back under those covers as quickly as possible.
Toddlers don't.
So we do not use that strategy with toddlers.
Uh, if your baby is um, is fine well, your toddler rather, is fine, whilst you sing to them and they lie in bed.
And it's just the occasional thing.
And i know in your longer email rachel, you said it was on the back of sickness and um, she had actually recovered, but you hadn't yet adjusted the daily rhythm back again that that happened.
It's fine um, you know rachel, how to adjust things um, and it is just by changing bedtime and wake up.
But no, let's not do any stimulus control therapy for toddlers.
Not a good idea.
And I think God even more evidence that the nap is probably ready to go.
Yes.
And that will likely help as well.
Excellent.
I think we're going for a record of the longest episode ever, but that's all right.
We've got two more questions.
Two more questions.
All right.
So I'll read out May's.
So May has a toddler who's 22 months old, previously self-settled and stepped through the night.
After a holiday he began needing patting to sleep and still wakes once overnight expecting this support.
They've tried the supported accelerated approach.
He will settle if a parent is present, but becomes extremely upset if they leave before he's fully asleep.
He does not appear to have separation anxiety and will fall asleep within minutes if someone stays in the room.
So she's asking how can they help him return to self-settling independently without needing a parent to remain in the room until in deep sleep?
Well, he absolutely can do it because he's only waking once overnight.
So there's long stretches of sleep where he's naturally waking up multiple times, but he's deciding to put himself back to sleep.
So he's got the skills.
He can absolutely do this.
He doesn't have separation anxiety and it might not be low sleep pressure either, because he's falling back asleep within minutes, only needing someone in the room.
So I think I would probably stick to that supported accelerated approach or the advanced accelerated approach for toddlers.
But just keep the intervals really short.
Just show him that yeah, I might come and go from your room really briefly, like might be 30 seconds or something at first.
But I come back in and you get some reassurance and then I go.
And if you're just sort of coming and going really quickly like that.
He's going to realize, okay, I don't like this.
I'd rather they just stayed, but actually I'm fine.
And they just keep doing the same boring, repetitive reassurance, but they're not actually changing what they're doing.
I think he'd make a pretty quick adjustment.
And I think that is an easier pathway than going right back to some very gradual approach.
We don't want to treat it like separation anxiety and do a lot of confidence building and gradually get out of there, because while you're working on that, he might suddenly decide well, this is great.
I love it.
Thanks, mum and dad.
I'd like you to do it six times per night now.
Thank you very much.
And then suddenly you're like sitting in the room trying to inch your chair out the door or something.
Yeah.
And it's actually gotten a whole lot worse.
So if you can manage it, I would do the intervals.
You know that he's okay.
He knows what to do.
He's just hoping that you might hang around a bit longer.
Yeah.
And you can even say, I'll be right back.
Leave.
Wait your interval.
Come back.
I said I was coming back.
Lie down.
I'll be right back.
Out again.
Yeah.
So you're just giving him evidence upon evidence that you're still around.
You're coming back.
You're not ever gone for very long at all.
Yeah.
And he will, he'll adapt.
Yeah.
Yes, good luck, May.
And lucky last, we have Cathy.
Cathy's baby girl is just five weeks old and has resisted swaddling since two weeks old.
She fights every type of swaddle.
Cathy says if she's in their arms and swaddled she will relax and sleep without protest.
But now she refuses to sleep in the bassinet.
And this has led to a reliance on contact napping and now frequent night waking if they try to put her in the bassinet.
They've tried gradual cot settling, but progress has been limited over the last week.
So Kathy would like to know what can they do to help their baby accept the bassinet, given that swaddling leads to protests.
But with no swaddle their baby startles a lot.
So that's that morrow reflex where we see babies startle awake and when they're nodding off to sleep.
What do you think, Laura?
It's a bit of a tricky one.
It is a tricky one.
And I really feel for you, Cathy, because you're just, you know, you're very new into this.
Your baby's only five weeks old.
She's new into being earthside.
And it's a really tricky place to be.
I would be thinking let's continue to use the swaddle, because she has been adapting to it while she's in your arms.
Baby sleep changes very, very quickly in the first few weeks.
So probably in the week or so since you've sent this email Cathy, your baby has had another.
You know all those days and nights of being in her swaddle whilst in your arms, and that's going to have been more and more experience for her to see that the swaddle is fine.
So I think now it's going to be important to give yourselves a bit of a break and move on to bassinet settling so that you are moving away from that reliance on contact napping and I know from your longer email you are having to do holding her overnight as well, and she's waking every.
Otherwise she's waking every 20 minutes in the bassinet.
So I'd really encourage you to stay really calm and confident, popping your baby into her swaddle, popping her into the bassinet and then, with your arms or hands on her, giving her loads of support, knowing that you're right there with her.
Um, even if she's not she's unsure about it.
Everything's new and different for her um.
It's okay to be um patting her, shushing and humming while she's in the bassinet for a short period of time before you're giving her a cuddle and then popping back down and then off you go again.
Um, we um generally find that with repeated practice and repeated exposure, babies do come to learn to see that they're safe and secure with mum or dad by their side in the bassinet.
And it sounds like it's just very, very important for your family wellbeing Cathy, to move away from the situation that you find yourself where you can't put her into the bassinet.
It's just not sustainable, safe for any of you.
And so, yeah, I'd say be brave.
Know that you're not doing any harm and it is really important for the whole family's well-being.
What would you add, Helen?
Just that it takes practice.
Some babies are quite convinced that the bassinet's a terrible, terrible place.
And think of it like a little scientist who's landed on a new planet.
They're gathering data, like, is this okay?
And if, as soon as they cry in their bassinet, we pick them up out of it, they're kind of going oh, that definitely wasn't okay.
Because when I got upset about that place, I was really quickly removed from it.
So it's probably not safe.
But if we can give them lots of support and we just keep showing them you're okay here, you can give them lots of cuddles, have lots of breaks, but you're then building that evidence base.
So they're going, oh, yeah, time and time again, I go in there, it's actually okay.
Don't get eaten by a tiger.
Mum sings a lovely song and dad does the lovely pats.
They start to learn that, okay, this is actually an okay place to be.
But they just want to build up that evidence.
Maybe they're the little sceptical babies.
They just need a little bit more convincing.
Yeah. this is actually okay um it is super tough but Kathy I promise you they they all adapt um but some of them just take their sweet time so make sure you've got some supports around you if you've got some friends who offer to help they're gonna help you know give them a job don't let them leave the house don't don't let say oh I'll let you know you're like you know this is what I needed to do um give them that job get that support around you and be over before you know it amazing thank you for all these amazing questions this week and please let me know what would you like us to unpack more so what I'm looking for are those little phrases those ones that make you go oh that's so unhelpful please don't flood our social media channels with every bit of terrible social media posts because I don't think my heart can take it or on my day but send us a dm it will take more more than four points to de-escalate you that's what i'll be doing here delivering the 27 reasons why i don't like this i would love to know what you'd like to you know miss you on us to bust and that sort of thing would be awesome if you're not following our social media channels please go and do it because yeah i put a lot of energy into it i need more people to tell me i'm doing a good job validate my hard work yes absolutely follow us but yeah we do share lots of tips and things on there um and if you have been struggling with night waking um You know, because whilst night waking is normal, we have certainly learned that it, you know, it can be very problematic and have a big impact on wellbeing.
So if you are struggling with your baby or your toddler's night waking, we have masterclasses that are age specific within SOMBAL that really help you go through every possible factor you need to cover so that you can come up with a great plan and just get that night waking under control.
So if you're needing that help, go and check out SOMBALcom um, you know, book in for a coaching call.
If you need extra support, we are here to help you.
I'm going to pop a link in the show notes.
If you would like to buy us a coffee, we always love that um, but otherwise, that wraps us up for another episode laura um yeah, and we'll be back again in another fortnight.
Thanks everyone bye.
If you need help with your baby or toddler's sleep or settling, you need Sombell.
Sombell 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 sombell.infantsleep.com.au.
