March 17, 2021 • 45 mins
Chrissy Lawler is a licensed therapist, baby sleep specialist, and a mom of 4 kids. This week, she joins Heidi to take the fear and anxiety out of baby sleep. Heidi and Chrissy answer your biggest questions about newborn sleep, give tips and tricks to help your baby learn to sleep, and Chrissy talks through her gentle sleep training method – without relying on “cry it out”.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Baby, a baby, I need you, Oh how I need
you What to Expect as a production of I Heart Radio.
I'm your host Heidi Murkoff, and I'm a mom on
a mission, a mission to help you know what to
expect every step of the way if you're a new
(00:26):
parent or you're about to become one. Today's episode of
the What to Expect podcast probably had you at the
words sleep. Last year recovered newborn and safe sleep one
on one, so go back and check it out. But
today we're taking your biggest sleep concerns one step further
by welcoming Chrissie Lawler of the Peaceful Sleeper dot Com.
(00:48):
She's a licensed therapist and baby sleep specialists, and she's
also a mom of four ages six months to seven years,
all of whom sleep through the night. That's not just
because she's lucky, it's because she knows her sleep stuff.
She's here today to explain her method of gentle sleep
training and answer your biggest baby sleep questions. Welcome Chrissie,
(01:13):
Thanks so much for being here. I first want to
point out that you're a therapist. Yes, how and why
did you become a baby sleep specialist? I mean, I'm
guessing there was a newborn involved, and I'm guessing that
newborn didn't do a lot of sleeping. And it's like
motherhood is the mother of invention, but you tell me
(01:33):
yes exactly. So I've been a therapist for eleven years,
back before I started having kids. It kind of all
came together. I started noticing that all of my therapy
clients that were the most stuck, stuck in depression, anxiety,
resenting their spouses, feeling disenchanted with motherhood. All of my
clients that were the most stuck were the ones that
(01:54):
weren't sleeping. I also struggled with insomnia, and so I
hated as a therapist. So that I was like, I
don't know, welcome to adulthood, guests, we don't sleep, good luck,
Let's talk about the real issues at hand. So I
got trained to treat chronic insomnia and two things came
from that. One, I reformed my own insomnia. I also
(02:15):
learned that sleep deprivation and postpartum depression and anxiety were
intimately linked in the data. Then fast forward, I had
my own baby, I wrestled with my own postpartum depression
and anxiety, had my own shame spiral. Because I'm a therapist,
I shouldn't be able to get depression because I have
(02:36):
all the tools, which now I know it's not true.
But I realized that a I was not enjoying motherhood,
and that broke my heart. I wanted to be a
mom for my whole entire life. I also knew that
I had all the skills, I had all the tools,
I knew how to implement my tools, but because I
(02:57):
wasn't sleeping, I couldn't get over the hump of this feeling,
this gloom, and that's not how I wanted to show
up in motherhood. So then I kind of dove into
all of the resources and kind of piecemealed it all together.
But my biggest beef that I had at the time
was it felt like, as a mom who was wrestling
(03:17):
with depression and anxiety, as a mom who was a therapist,
that like knew all the ways that I could screw
up my children. And I'm a perfectionist and a people pleaser.
I felt like so much of the literature was telling
me you have to do it this way or else
You're terrible, You're doing it wrong. Your baby is gonna
suffer because you're not a good enough mom, and so
(03:37):
I felt so inundated with all of this. I'm sure
so much of it I was adding onto myself, but
I felt so lost and overwhelmed, like I just need
to know how to get this baby to sleep, and
if she can sleep well, then I can sleep well.
Then I can enjoy motherhood again. Then I can love
my husband again. And so it just like you said,
(04:01):
you know, motherhood is the mother of invention, the mother
of invention exactly. I love that line, and so it
just kind of came together fast forward. I sleep trained
my own babies, and then I was helping friends, and
then I just started realizing that as a therapist I
could have a voice in the space to those other
moms that are exhausted and overwhelmed and disenchanted and feeling
(04:25):
bad about themselves. I could help them unlock the magic
of motherhood again. And if we can get good sleep,
then we enjoy the experience. See, you're a mom on
a mission too, just like me. Yeah, and a mission together.
So I just want to clarify one thing. If you
have anxiety or depression, it is not always triggered by
(04:46):
not sleeping. In fact, you could be sleeping all the
time as a symptom of depression. But I totally feel
you on this because there has to be a very
close connection for many moms. Yes, and to jump on
that and be super clear, I also I takes aloft,
I love zoloft. That was absolutely a part of my
(05:10):
treatment plan to enjoy motherhood more was getting on the
right medication, doing therapy, taking care of myself and arming
myself with more skills and tools to be able to
get sleep buttoned up and do self care and all
of that. So, yes, sleep is I think a super
super critical component of that, but it's absolutely not the
(05:32):
only component in mommy as well being. Absolutely so. You know,
you had your last baby during the pandemic, and I'm
just curious because so many different issues have come up
during the pandemic. You know, children acting up and and
things like that, completely understandably, but what about sleep problems.
(05:53):
Have you noticed any increase or maybe decrease in sleep
problems during the pandemic. Yeah, it's so interesting because it
really just depends on the baby and the family. Some
babies have gotten way better sleep because we're not carting
our tilders around to all of these activities and sacrificing
good quality baby sleep. Sometimes it's the opposite, where you know,
(06:18):
we're too tired for structure, we're too overwhelmed, so the
kids kind of just run the house and we'll sleep
when we sleep. I mean, I get it, like we're
all burned out, we're all kind of trying to survive,
and so it feels like there have been a lot
of benefits to being home so much as far as
baby sleep, but also a lot of downsides. Yeah, I
(06:42):
totally agree. Now, a lot of our listeners are pregnant
currently and already they're thinking ahead, are I guess, worrying
ahead about the months of sleep deprivation they've heard so
much about. And you know, we all know that baby
sleep conversations in general can be super are loaded, right,
and there are lots of very strong opinions and feelings,
(07:06):
and let's just say it, judge men, I want to
say at the get go, this is not about letting
a baby cry it out. It's not about whether or
not you can spoil a baby. You know, in my opinion,
you should try as hard as you can to spoil
your baby, but it's just not possible because a baby
(07:27):
in the first six months especially needs all those snuggles
and all those cuddles and the filling of a baby's needs.
But ultimately, also, as you wisely point out, they also
need a lot of sleep. And what we are going
to talk about today is how to help them get
that sleep right. Yes, absolutely so. What are some newborn
(07:50):
sleep basics that parents need to know before they even
bring their babies home from the hospital. Yeah, so, I think,
jumping back to your earlier point, I think, collectedly, as moms,
we need to stop scaring pregnant moms. There is so
much fear and overwhelm already, so much fear of inadequacy
(08:12):
going into it season. Moms that are listening to this
right now, please remember to be so gentle with very
fragile pregnant women that might feel very intimidated. It's great
to paint an accurate picture, but let's not paint a
scary one, no gloom and doom. Yes, exactly. So, I
(08:34):
want to piggyback on two things that you said. One,
we cannot spoil a newborn, It just isn't possible. They
need all of those snuggles. And two, they need so
much sleep, and so the my biggest point far, and
a way for newborn moms is keep those awake windows
nice and short. The newborn period is all about playing detective,
(08:57):
tuning into your baby and figuring out their cues. But
one of the mistakes that we often make is that
we project our own thoughts and feelings and needs onto
our baby, which can be really helpful, like, oh, I
would be feeling x y Z right now, so maybe
that's what my baby is feeling, which is nine helpful,
(09:19):
but a lot of times in the sleep realm, it
backfires because four babies sleep begets sleep. And like I said,
I also treat adult insomnia. And so when we're treating
adult insomnia, if we're getting all of this broken sleep,
we need to sleep deprive ourselves to make us good
and tired. So we fall asleep quickly and we sleep
(09:40):
all the way through the night, and then we slowly
scale that back. So a lot of newborn parents make
the mistake of thinking, my baby is not sleeping well,
but if I can get them good and tired, then
they'll sleep better. And that's not the way that we
want to do it. There are kind of three different
phases in this tired dynamic, So we want to aim
(10:05):
for about sixty minutes of awake time when they're brand new,
and some of that awake time for a new tiny baby,
it counts as those drowsy feedings. So your newborn baby
is going to get like eighteen to twenty hours of
sleep a day, and in the very beginning, some of
those four hours of awake time are still gonna look
pretty dang drowsy. And that's okay. So jumping back to
(10:29):
this idea of three different phases of tiredness, what we
want to capitalize on is phase one, where they're just
starting to get sleepy. We usually have a lull in play.
They're staring off their eyelids and eyebrows might start to
get a little pinky purple e. They're just in like this,
(10:50):
very calm, sleepy. Most of the time, we don't recognize
that as the optimal window to put them down. If
we miss that the then we get into the second component,
which I call wired and tired. Oh that's what I
call it too, Maybe I learned it from you years ago,
grape minds exactly. But they get wired and tired. You
(11:14):
know that they're tired, but they're fussy and they're rubbing
their eyes and tugging on their ears and doing all
the tired signs, but they've gotten overtired, and so it's
really hard for them to wind down. The thing that
I like to think about here is we all our
brains are wired to power through our exhaustion. If you
(11:35):
think about from an adaptive standpoint, we have those moments
where it's the middle of the night, we're tired, and
something needs us to be awake. So like eight months ago,
I remember it was three o'clock in the morning, I
was pregnant. Still, my seven year old comes to me,
I'm passed out, dead asleep, and she says, Mommy, I
threw up. So what happens In an instant? I am
(11:58):
wide awake, am changing sheets, starting laundry, getting her in
the bath, getting her new jammie, singing her song, getting
her back down to bed, and then chrisis averted. I
come back downstairs. Five minutes later, I'm passed out again. Right,
it's because my brain knows how to regulate. Oh you
(12:19):
were sleeping, Oh wait, you need to be awake. Oh wait,
now you can go back to sleep again. Our little
babies brains are capable of all of those fundamentals, but
they haven't buttoned it up yet. And so if they
start producing those sleepy chemicals and then we don't get
them down, then they start to produce the powering through chemicals,
(12:41):
and then they're this chemical mashup of like I'm tired,
but I'm awake, but I'm tired, but I'm awake, and
then they're losing their minds. Then after that passes, then
they're so exhausted that even the powering through awake chemicals
make them knock out. So what happens is a lot
(13:01):
of especially newborn moms that haven't quite figured it out yet.
I think they miss phase one of the sleepy. Then
they're wrestling in phase two with the wired and tired,
and then they finally get their baby to sleep, and
that phase three, I'm so exhausted, I knock out, And
so they think, oh wait, I should have just kept
(13:22):
my baby up longer. So they finally knock out. But
it's a thousand times easier to get them to sleep
when we catch them at sleepy and we skipped the
wired and tired craziness. Oh infinitely more. That is so smart.
(13:50):
Clearly there's no one size fits all, right, So every
baby is different, like every parent is different. I'm sure
you've noticed big offerences in your four kids, and because
of that, a lot of this is meant as much
as advice as you can give, as I can give
some of it. You're going to have to like feel
(14:11):
your way in the dark. I mean literally totally, yes,
But what are some of the fundamentals about baby sleep
right from the start? So you come home from the
hospital right where your baby was sleeping like a dream
and you're like high five in your partner and then
you get home nothing. What do you say about the
(14:33):
whole you know, switching up days and nights and how
to overcome that, because typically when a baby gets home
from the hospital, they're in this world where they're used
to being in the dark. So nighttime is no baby Yes,
like you said, there is no one size fits all.
All babies are different. I think as the sleep consultant
(14:54):
mixed with a therapist and my personal experience that I
talked to you about, my aim over all is to
empower moms to understand fundamental principles and like you said,
feel their way in the dark and feel confident that
I can tune in and figure out what my baby needs.
But there are some fundamental principles. So I would say
fundamental principle number one that I think is true for
(15:17):
all newborns is we want to keep those awake windows
at about an hour. Sometimes you can push it to
ninety minutes, but for a little tiny baby, I would
not push it longer than that. And that includes the feeds. Yes,
that includes the feeding. Sometimes if it's a super drowsy feed,
I'll count that as like half awake time. And that's
one of those nuances where like you're kind of feeling
(15:40):
your way in the dark, orienting day and night. The
best thing you can do there is not let daytime
maps go longer than three hours. So that is one
of the instances that you would wake a sleeping baby.
The other big thing is keep your nighttime dark and dim.
So like using night light when you're feeding your baby
(16:01):
at night. If you have a TV in your room,
don't turn that on. Watch a show on your phone
if you want to be entertained. But let's not have
these big stimulating bright lights when you're feeding your baby
in the middle of the night, and don't be trying
to play with your baby or you know, keep the
chat to minimum. Yes, even if you're talking to your
baby and I love you so much, you can whisper
(16:22):
all of those things. You can be stroking their cheek.
We do want to in those first like four to
six weeks, when babies are super tired. That's when like
you're going to be kind of a jerk. Like while
your baby is feeding at night, you want to be
like wiggling their hand, wiggling their toes, flicking their ears.
Sometimes I'd like dip my hand in my water that
(16:43):
was next to my bed and like sprinkle some water
on their forehead. Because we want our newborns to get
good full feedings, so we want to get good full
feedings at night. Um, we want to keep nighttime dark
and dim and quiet. Dates time sleep can be light
and bright and noisy. Let your baby be sleeping out
(17:04):
in the living room in a safe sleep space. Of course. Um,
there's no need for blackout curtains or white noise machines
at this age. Let them sleep with light, bright sounds,
and just orient daytime sleep feels different than nighttime sleep.
That's such an important point because I just recently had
a mom say, well, you know what we did the
(17:26):
quiet thing. And now we live in an old house
with creaky floors, and the second we step on a floorboard,
she wakes up. And in retrospect you realize is that
it is actually better to get them used to a
little bit of noise and not try to create the
sleep bubble around them. I think as they get older
and have more solidified naps and scheduling, that's when I
(17:49):
do like once I sleep train, I do like to
have white noise machines, blackout curtains, all of that, because
then you have something that you can plan around. You know,
if you know that every day your baby is gonna
nap at nine, twelve and three, and you can kind
of set up this consistency, than awesome. But newborns have
(18:09):
no consistency, no predictability. So that's another point that I
want to give to brand new moms. Some people will
talk about how awesome it is to get your newborn
on a schedule and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, And I say,
throw all of that out the window. The only thing
you need to look at the clock four is to feed.
(18:30):
I say every two to four hours. Don't stress too
much about three hours on the dot. As long as
baby's gaining weight. Well, sometimes it's two, sometimes it's four.
Let's just get a nice big window exactly. So, the
only thing that I think newborn moms need to be
looking at the clock four is to make sure they're
not awake longer than sixty minutes or sixted and ninety
(18:51):
and make sure we're feeding every two to four hours.
But other than that, we don't need to be stressing
about getting on a predictable clock by schedule. It's just
not possible. And when we have unrealistic expectations, it diminishes
our joy and motherhood absolutely and and plus you know,
(19:12):
babies need to, as you said, feed onto man. Even
if the demand isn't there initially, it will be ultimately
if you feed often enough. So let's get to some
of the specific questions that I hear about newborn sleep.
There is no easier way to get a baby to
sleep than on your chest or in your arm, skin
(19:34):
to skin, And it feels amazing until you have to
pee or your armfuls asleep. That happens all the time totally,
But a lot of parents worry, understandably about letting their
babies get into that habit. I mean I always say,
you know, babies are creatures of comfort and their creatures
of habit, and you create a comforting habit, you know
(19:54):
ultimately it's gonna be hard to break. Plus, having them
fall asleep on you, especially when you're a sleepy too,
can be a safety risk. What do you say about this?
I mean, especially early on when it's so tempting. Yeah,
so I say, first and foremost, we can't spoil a newborn.
And secondly, kind of my general principle really in parenting
(20:19):
as a whole is do as much as your baby
needs you to do, but not more than that. And
so lots of newborn babies need to be swaddled up,
snug and rocked to sleep. Fine, if you can then
put your baby down, great, do that, you know, so
we're still pretty much rocking our baby to sleep for
(20:40):
every single sleep. Sometimes you can get the timing just
right and swaddle snug, and some babies can just drift
off to sleep on their own. Again, that shouldn't be
the expectation that newborn moms have of what doing it
right looks like, because that's not realistic. Um. The only
thing that I try to avoid when possible is not
(21:01):
relying on nursing to sleep because again, like if baby
is only awake for sixty minutes, we don't want to
get in this habit of baby doesn't know how to
fall asleep unless they're eating, and now we're eating every
single hour, and then we have a snacking habit and
all of that. Again, it's a comforting habit totally. I
always recommend a good snug swaddle preventing overtiredness, like I
(21:25):
can't say enough. And then if you need to rock
your baby to sleep, do that. If the second you
put your baby down they wake up, then maybe rock
them back to sleep or plan on some naps of
the day. You know, I think a lot of new
moms put way too much pressure on themselves to bounce
back right away and be exercising and cleaning and cooking
and whatever. Like sometimes it's really nice to just sit
(21:47):
and hold your sleeping baby. So if they won't sleep
independently on their own and their own bascinet or whatever
during the day, it's fine to say, all right, this
nap is just going to have to happen in arms,
or I'm going to get a wrap or a carrier
or a backpack. Definitely, at night. I recommend get your
baby used to sleeping in their own space. So that's
(22:10):
why again I say, we do as much as our
babies need us to do for them, but not more
than that. If you can rock your baby to sleep
and put them down and they'll keep sleeping, great, then
you don't need to hold your baby for every single
nap every single day. Do that sometimes because we love it,
and your son should should not be that. That's the
only way your baby can fall asleep and stay asleep.
(22:31):
So you should keep trying at least to put the
baby down, yes, and put them down to sleep, yes, yeah,
And then you know, if baby stirs in the transition,
then you can like jostle their belly, you can give
a pacifier, you can do an eyebrow stroke. They are
all of these things that you can do to help
ease the transition to be sleeping in their own space
a little bit better. Awesome, Okay, deep breath And I
(22:56):
almost hesitate to say the words sleep, deep training because
the words summon up so many negative connotations. We at
what to expect, don't judge, no shame in the game, ever,
Can you explain how your philosophy is is different from
(23:16):
what many people typically think of when they hear the
words sleep changing, and they're thinking crying, crying, crying, crying. Yes.
So one analogy that I use a lot is when
we are teaching our babies to go down a slide.
So I'm an extrovert. I like to get out of
the house, so I usually end up at the park
with my toddlers. And now i have a six month
(23:37):
old baby, and so I'll put her at the top
of the slide and hold her the whole way down. Right,
she has some core strength, but she's not coordinated enough
to do the slide. But I'm I'm showing her the motions.
I'm showing her this is how we do it. This
is fun. Yet, stay sitting, we and I'm having fun,
and I'm holding her the whole way down. When she
gets a little bit older and a little bit stronger,
(23:57):
I'm going to transition to just holding her hands and
in in a couple more months, when she's a little
bit bigger, a little bit stronger, a little more coordinated.
At some point, I'm gonna put her at the top
of the slide and I'm gonna wait at the bottom,
and I'm gonna say come on, wait, and then she's
going to be able to climb the ladder by herself
and get to the top of the slide. And so
it's a very collaborative process. I'm teaching you the ropes,
(24:20):
I'm showing you how to do it, and then I'm
backing off as you demonstrate that you are developmentally ready
for this next step. But there is always some awkwardness
in that transition where maybe I put her at the
top of the slide and I know she can do it,
but wait, it's different. I'm waiting at the bottom of
the slide saying come on, and she's looking at me
(24:42):
like uh right. And because every child is different, I
had the first one who never did let go exactly.
She never managed to summon up that that courage, whereas
my second one, you know, six months, was probably doing
it on its own. So every kid is different. You
have to take their cues some of this, yeah, exactly.
(25:05):
So if I come back to sleep training and using
that analogy, I think the newborn phase, when we are
rocking our babies to sleep, we are rocking them back
to sleep if they're taking short naps, were showing them
the ropes that like Hey, this is how we get
you to sleep. When you're nice and drowsy, you fold
into sleep easily. We are making sure your naps are
(25:28):
long enough. We are teaching you how to sleep well.
That's what the entire four months is all about. I'm
showing my baby how to sleep well. Then. And I
know you recommend sleep training at six months and I
recommend sleep training at four months, but we can kind
of talk about those things. We can split the difference, right,
(25:49):
But I the reason that I like to sleep train
at four months is because they hit that four month
regression where I believe they are craving a little bit
more consider e stancy, routine and predictabilities, and they can
learn how to go into that sleep on their own.
There's still support. And I'm a big believer, Like my
(26:12):
main recommendation is modified cry it out, but you're gonna
fool cry it out. You can do no cry. What
matters to me is that we are setting the foundation
and handing over some of that ability to initiate sleep
to our babies. And so there are two main components
of sleep training. I say that in air quotes. Sleep training,
(26:35):
in my mind is about optimizing the daytime schedule to
prevent over tiredness, which you've been doing for the last
four months. So the actual sleep training part for me
only entails in this first phase learning how to fall
asleep on your own. We are still rocking back to
sleep when they wake up from short naps, and we
(26:55):
are still feeding at night. And I think that's where
it can get confusing, because different doctors will say different things,
different specialists will say different things. People recommend sleep training
at different times to mean different things, and so I
go earlier because I think they are capable of learning
how to initiate sleep independently at four months, but we're
(27:17):
not making them cry it out at night to drop
night feedings. We're still letting them feed when they wake up.
And then my philosophy is, if we've got the daytime
sleep buttoned up and they're not overtired and they know
how to fall asleep independently, those night feedings will drop
all the way on their own, and then we don't
even have to do anything. So like, I just sleep
(27:38):
trained a baby this weekend, and all we did was
focused on learning how to fall asleep. Her baby used
to be co sleeping, eating every single hour, and she
just texted me this morning that her baby did nine
hours and forty five minutes right without waking up, and
we did not do any intervention in the middle of
the night. It's just he learned how to all asleep,
(28:01):
and so he learned how to sleep cycle transition without help.
That's an incredible success story. I was so excited. So
your premise is that you do pick a baby up
when they're crying inevitably always, So yeah, pretty much. So.
I the way that I do modified cry it out
(28:23):
is a little bit different than like for and again,
people use all these terms interchangeably, so I can kind
of be muddled. But I like to teach babies how
to fall asleep on their own. If we're doing modified
cry it out, I make sure the timing is right,
set the baby down, set our timer for ten minutes
when if they haven't fallen asleep, then I go in.
(28:46):
I pick them up. I whisper in their ear. You're
doing such a good job. I mean, loves you so much,
you're figuring it out. I give the passy back, I
do a cheek stroke, the eyebrow stroke, and just kind
of say, like, you know how this system works, and
you can figure out how to do it on your own.
But I also cap it. So I think that's another
area where sleep training can have a lot of heightened emotions.
(29:10):
Is somebody on a mommy forum might say sleep training
was awesome, like my baby screamed for four hours the
first night, but the next night it was only two.
And then somebody else is like, you know, your baby
is screap for four hours. So I do in like
the official formula I do. When we're first starting out
for nighttime, we do ten minutes and then fifteen minutes
and then But I would say in the years that
(29:33):
I've been doing this, ninety nine percent of babies that
I've sleep trained will fall asleep in the first or
second twenty minute timer. It is very rare that we
get through that third twenty minute timer and then we
just rock or feed to sleep and say, okay, I
was good enough for the first night, but that was enough.
We don't need to push too hard, too fast. But
(29:54):
the other thing that I like parents to pay attention
to when their baby is fussing is the very a
rehability in their crying. It is a very different story
if we have a baby that escalates up to a
level ten and they are screaming at a ten for
ten straight minutes. We're probably not gonna do these lengthening
timers like there's something happening. They're not learning how to
(30:16):
self soothe. But if you're paying attention to the variability,
what we have a lot of times is you know,
you put baby down and she was at like a
four and then a seven and a ten, and then
back to a six and then an eight and then
a three and then whoa, she was totally quiet for
a minute. If we're seeing that variability, every time baby
de escalates on their own, they're putting a piece of
(30:38):
the self suiting puzzle into place. And that's what we're
springboarding off of. That's why we go in and we
get them all the way back down to zero. We're
calming them down, we're showing them I'm here, I love you,
you're doing great, and then we give them the opportunity again.
And really that process is like three days. If personally
(31:00):
you just don't want to do cry it out, I
totally understand that, But we can't make the argument that
cry it out inherently damages attachment. I think the biggest
argument in that camp is that when babies are crying,
their cortisol levels are increased. But the data also tells
us that two weeks after sleep training, babies who did
(31:23):
cry it out don't have any difference in cortisol levels.
And if we have a baby that knows how to
initiate sleep on their own, we are drastically reducing the
stress and cortisol and tears in the long term on
both sides of the crib. Yes. And I always say, like,
it is not our mission as parents to avoid our
(31:46):
babies discomfort. I don't know about you. I have babies
that lose their minds when they're buckled in the car seat.
I have babies that do not enjoy getting out of
a cold bath or getting their diapers changed. Your bookers like,
I'm not gonna not do the things because they're uncomfortable.
I know this is the best way that I can
provide for your needs to be met so that you
(32:09):
can be happy and healthy and successful. On Friday, Oh
my god, I love that. Not surprisingly, when we posted
for sleep questions on what to expect Instagram, we got
(32:30):
a near fall. One of the ones that we get
a lot is how can I help a baby self series.
Now you've definitely gone through some of the basics. Swaddling
is super comforting, and so is a passi for some
babies and not for all. Unfortunately, I wish it were.
I was zero for two with passy because someone else
(32:51):
asked about passy's whether that's something you should restrict or
it's okay if it falls out in the middle of
the night. What else do you have to say about
self soothing? Yeah, so I do love pacifiers. I think
it's a great soothing tool for babies. If we have
a fussy baby, I like to swaddle, snug. I like
to get them on their side. Sometimes we rock babies
(33:12):
kind of up and down, where it's basically their back
is parallel with the floor, and that's just setting off
their moral reflex over and over again, making them feel
like they're falling. So I like them to be chest
to chest, which is better for feeding too, exactly, sometimes
facing outwards. But if you have a very alert, attentive baby,
that can also be very overstimulating when really we need
(33:35):
to be taking away anything that's stimulating them. And when
their faces kind of pressed into mom's shirt, it's you know,
there's nothing else to really look at they'll just close
their eyes exactly, or dad shirts exactly. The side position
a swinging movement. I kind of like a little jiggle.
So I think of like if we think of a
(33:56):
spin cycle on a washing machine, not unlike the towels
or lopside and you think your house is gonna break,
but like a regular spin cycle on a washing machine,
just this nice, steady, little jiggle, maybe like half an
inch back and forth. I think babies really like that.
I also do an eyebrow stroke, so we start at
their hairline and kind of bring our hand down to
(34:17):
the tip of our nose. We have a reflex and
instincts that if something is coming close to our eyes,
we close them, and so if we are doing this
eyebrow stroke, we are encouraging our baby to close their eyes,
and it feels really good for their face to be
touched gently. My husband has this great move where he
like holds the passing in with his thumb and then
covers their eyes with the rest of his hand and
(34:39):
then just kind of like bobbles their head a little bit.
And so he's not even doing a whole lot, He's
just doing this little kind of ninja jiggle and it
works every time. He's the best baby. Soother good to
know is he work for higher like he should be.
So I just want to make sure video understands. So
when you say on their side, that's when you're rocking them. Ye, correct, Yes,
(35:01):
you know when you put them down in the bass
net or because that would be unsafe. Correct. But I'm
glad that you mentioned that because I have. One of
my other ninja moves is when you are laying a
sleeping baby down. Again, we often are rocking the baby
and then we go to lay them down and we
flip them onto their back to lower them down, and
that kicks off the moral reflex. So I do is
(35:25):
depending on your sleep environment, sometimes you have to do
another little ninja move where you like move your left
hand up by their head and then their right hand
on their bum. Or sometimes you can just lay them down,
lower them all the way down on their side, and
only roll them to their back when they're down so
that we don't kick off that moral reflex. We're just
(35:46):
tilting them. But yes, baby should always be placed to
sleep on their backs. But that's my other secret trick
is lay them down sideways before you rotate them. You
have so many ninja move I I like to create
the ninja move my grands some would be totally impressed, totally,
but just one more time on things like swaddle and
(36:06):
PASSI some babies do resist swaddle, or maybe they want
their arms free. Maybe you've got a sum sucker. So
just as you go, yes, yeah, I definitely have a bias,
and I know that it's my personal bias too, because
all of my babies have been really happy in the swaddle.
I wouldn't give up on the swaddle until you've done
(36:28):
all of the other soothing tricks in combination, because sometimes
they just resist the swaddle. But a lot of times,
the babies that seem the most like they hate the
swaddle are the babies that have really intense jerking movements.
It's kind of like hiccups in their body. They just
jolt and jerk, and so those are often the babies
(36:49):
that need to be swaddled the most, but they just
pushed against it because their body jerks and flails. So
give it a fighting chance for sure. Now you touched
this earlier and when I talk about having a routine
from day one, and I feel that's super important. But
I think a lot of people get confused between a
(37:12):
routine and a schedule, and a routine is something babies
can count on. It's something that makes them feel comforted consistently.
This is what I can expect a routine, and babies
love that stuff. Schedules are a completely different matter. Do
you want to like weigh in there. Yeah, So my
(37:33):
experience has also shifted personally as I've had four children, right, so,
like I have four kids seven and under, and so
my baby gets a very different bedtime at naptime routine
than my first child. Did you know we were just
laughing at night, you know, we had the baby in
the sink and a bath while we were cleaning out dinner,
not having the dishes in the sink. Yeah, I was
(37:55):
wondering about maybe it was taking a bath in the
sink while we were just kind of like doing evening stuff.
And my husband jokes, who, like, can you believe that
When Maddie was a baby, like we had her in
the bath and both of us are just leaning over
the tub just watching her together. And now with Nolan,
it's like, all right, kid, get clean because we got
stuff we're doing. That's why fourth kids are so resilient
(38:17):
and independent, right exactly. But I do think having something
predictable and consistent they can count on. And it can
be a minute if that's all that you've got, or
it can be thirty minutes if you want it to
be that, but something that signals to the baby, hey,
(38:37):
we're moving in this other direction like we were playing,
and now we're going to bed. And it's so helpful
as the child grows, because you get to the toddler
years and they are going a hundred miles per hour.
You can't suddenly slam the brakes on and expect them
to go to zero. So that's the whole point of
(38:57):
the bedtime routine is to unwind gradually, and so if
you start that habit early enough, then you're ahead of
the game. So on that topic, because we also have
moms who have older babies on the site, and some
of them are still not sleeping at fifteen months, eighteen months,
(39:19):
and you know, at this point, maybe you're regretting that
you didn't do sleep training or maybe something disrupted you know,
sleep as usual, whether or not you have ever hopped
on the sleep train before. How do you deal with
an older baby or toddler who's still having the same
sleep issues. Yeah, so consistency is still key. Yeah, And
(39:43):
really I always tell people like, it's never too late
to sleep train. The earlier the better. After four months,
the earlier the better. But it's never too late to
get good sleep habits. And like I said in the
very beginning, I am a therapist and I treat adult
sleep issues. So if you're not tackling sleep and till
you're thirty seven years old, that is fine, let's start
today and get better sleep. So I like to differentiate
(40:06):
babies and toddlers because it's a totally different set of tools.
Babies under about eighteen months, it's going to be consistency, predictability, scheduling,
having a good routine, helping them wind down, providing the
right space at the right time, helping them learn to
(40:28):
initiate sleep independently. Babies that you're sleep training older are
just going to protest more than babies that you sleep
trained younger. It's just the way that the world works,
that's true of everything. Yes, totally, Babies over about eighteen
months is really when we start to see that toddler
will coming into play. You mean toddler won't. Yes, that
(40:51):
is exactly what I mean. So with toddlers, it's a
lot more about getting their buy in in some way,
shape or form, because you cannot force a human being
to sleep, and if they realize that gets a rise
out of you. Oh, now all of a sudden, I
have this power, etcetera, etcetera, then you have a whole
(41:11):
different fight. So it's still about, you know, having a routine,
having some consistency, but babies over eighteen months, we've also
got to figure out how to get them to buy
in and want to sleep and let go of the
power struggle if they're not sleeping. I have two favorite
tools for that. One figuring out a really compelling incentive.
(41:33):
Toys are not compelling incentives for children. They just aren't
because they have so much stuff in the moment they
don't actually care about that else, address or whatever it is.
So figuring out what's a better incentive. Usually it's quality
time because they're just offsetting the same thing. Instead of
(41:54):
me and mom having all of this time or Dad
having all of this time to lay together at night
while they're waiting for me to fall asleep, and now
I get two extra hours of mom instead of that,
we're gonna have a really awesome date if I get
some stickers on my sticker chart, right, So figuring out
a better incentive, and then the second most important component
(42:17):
is letting go of the power struggle if they don't sleep,
just providing the space and time. If they don't sleep,
they don't sleep. We got them up, we get them out,
and I put a box of books next to their
crib so they can reach through the bars and grab
some books. And you're kind of saying like, look, if
you're not going to sleep, you at least need to
be quiet and content in your room for this hour.
(42:37):
And then you know what happens. Books aren't exciting enough
long term, so maybe they'll fight against you for like
a week or so. But if they realize they're not
really getting any extra benefit and they've already read these
twenty books a thousand times, like okay, fine, I am
actually tired. I'm going to go back to sleep. And
they haven't gotten a rise out of you, which I
think is the critical part. You talk about the our
(43:00):
struggle because you know who's usually going to win that,
and it's so much the same with potty yes education, Yes,
so Chrissy, I could talk to you all day long,
actually all night long, but fortunately we'll all be sleeping
tonight because we have such good sleep habits. So thank
you so much for being with us. And tell our
(43:21):
listeners where they can find more information. Yes, so find
me on Instagram at the Peaceful Sleeper, the dot peaceful
dot Sleeper, and my website is the Peaceful Sleeper dot com.
I've got books, I've got guides, I've got courses, I've
got everything you need for baby sleep up to adult sleep.
And I've even got a Peaceful Mama course to help
(43:41):
us feel empowered in motherhood. Oh that's awesome. Well, thanks
again and sweet dreams. Thank you. Thanks for having me
baby baby love. I need you, Oh how need you?
(44:02):
Thanks for listening. Remember I'm always here for you. What
to Expect is always here for you. We're all in
this together. For more on what you heard on today's episode,
visit what to Expect dot com slash podcasts. You can
also check out What to Expect when You're Expecting, What
to Expect the First Year, and the what to Expect app.
(44:23):
And we want to hear from you. Connect with us
on our community message board or on our social media.
You can find me at Heidi Murkoff and Emma at
Emma Being wt E, and of course at What to Expect.
Baby Love is performed by Riley Peterer. What to Expect
(44:43):
is a production of I Heart Radio. From more shows
from I Heart Radio check out the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
In my Arms, what Don't just staying to Kneedjo, Baby Left,
(45:04):
Baby Loose h
Baby, a baby, I need you, Oh how I need
you What to Expect as a production of I Heart Radio.
I'm your host Heidi Murkoff, and I'm a mom on
a mission, a mission to help you know what to
expect every step of the way if you're a new
(00:26):
parent or you're about to become one. Today's episode of
the What to Expect podcast probably had you at the
words sleep. Last year recovered newborn and safe sleep one
on one, so go back and check it out. But
today we're taking your biggest sleep concerns one step further
by welcoming Chrissie Lawler of the Peaceful Sleeper dot Com.
(00:48):
She's a licensed therapist and baby sleep specialists, and she's
also a mom of four ages six months to seven years,
all of whom sleep through the night. That's not just
because she's lucky, it's because she knows her sleep stuff.
She's here today to explain her method of gentle sleep
training and answer your biggest baby sleep questions. Welcome Chrissie,
(01:13):
Thanks so much for being here. I first want to
point out that you're a therapist. Yes, how and why
did you become a baby sleep specialist? I mean, I'm
guessing there was a newborn involved, and I'm guessing that
newborn didn't do a lot of sleeping. And it's like
motherhood is the mother of invention, but you tell me
(01:33):
yes exactly. So I've been a therapist for eleven years,
back before I started having kids. It kind of all
came together. I started noticing that all of my therapy
clients that were the most stuck, stuck in depression, anxiety,
resenting their spouses, feeling disenchanted with motherhood. All of my
clients that were the most stuck were the ones that
(01:54):
weren't sleeping. I also struggled with insomnia, and so I
hated as a therapist. So that I was like, I
don't know, welcome to adulthood, guests, we don't sleep, good luck,
Let's talk about the real issues at hand. So I
got trained to treat chronic insomnia and two things came
from that. One, I reformed my own insomnia. I also
(02:15):
learned that sleep deprivation and postpartum depression and anxiety were
intimately linked in the data. Then fast forward, I had
my own baby, I wrestled with my own postpartum depression
and anxiety, had my own shame spiral. Because I'm a therapist,
I shouldn't be able to get depression because I have
(02:36):
all the tools, which now I know it's not true.
But I realized that a I was not enjoying motherhood,
and that broke my heart. I wanted to be a
mom for my whole entire life. I also knew that
I had all the skills, I had all the tools,
I knew how to implement my tools, but because I
(02:57):
wasn't sleeping, I couldn't get over the hump of this feeling,
this gloom, and that's not how I wanted to show
up in motherhood. So then I kind of dove into
all of the resources and kind of piecemealed it all together.
But my biggest beef that I had at the time
was it felt like, as a mom who was wrestling
(03:17):
with depression and anxiety, as a mom who was a therapist,
that like knew all the ways that I could screw
up my children. And I'm a perfectionist and a people pleaser.
I felt like so much of the literature was telling
me you have to do it this way or else
You're terrible, You're doing it wrong. Your baby is gonna
suffer because you're not a good enough mom, and so
(03:37):
I felt so inundated with all of this. I'm sure
so much of it I was adding onto myself, but
I felt so lost and overwhelmed, like I just need
to know how to get this baby to sleep, and
if she can sleep well, then I can sleep well.
Then I can enjoy motherhood again. Then I can love
my husband again. And so it just like you said,
(04:01):
you know, motherhood is the mother of invention, the mother
of invention exactly. I love that line, and so it
just kind of came together fast forward. I sleep trained
my own babies, and then I was helping friends, and
then I just started realizing that as a therapist I
could have a voice in the space to those other
moms that are exhausted and overwhelmed and disenchanted and feeling
(04:25):
bad about themselves. I could help them unlock the magic
of motherhood again. And if we can get good sleep,
then we enjoy the experience. See, you're a mom on
a mission too, just like me. Yeah, and a mission together.
So I just want to clarify one thing. If you
have anxiety or depression, it is not always triggered by
(04:46):
not sleeping. In fact, you could be sleeping all the
time as a symptom of depression. But I totally feel
you on this because there has to be a very
close connection for many moms. Yes, and to jump on
that and be super clear, I also I takes aloft,
I love zoloft. That was absolutely a part of my
(05:10):
treatment plan to enjoy motherhood more was getting on the
right medication, doing therapy, taking care of myself and arming
myself with more skills and tools to be able to
get sleep buttoned up and do self care and all
of that. So, yes, sleep is I think a super
super critical component of that, but it's absolutely not the
(05:32):
only component in mommy as well being. Absolutely so. You know,
you had your last baby during the pandemic, and I'm
just curious because so many different issues have come up
during the pandemic. You know, children acting up and and
things like that, completely understandably, but what about sleep problems.
(05:53):
Have you noticed any increase or maybe decrease in sleep
problems during the pandemic. Yeah, it's so interesting because it
really just depends on the baby and the family. Some
babies have gotten way better sleep because we're not carting
our tilders around to all of these activities and sacrificing
good quality baby sleep. Sometimes it's the opposite, where you know,
(06:18):
we're too tired for structure, we're too overwhelmed, so the
kids kind of just run the house and we'll sleep
when we sleep. I mean, I get it, like we're
all burned out, we're all kind of trying to survive,
and so it feels like there have been a lot
of benefits to being home so much as far as
baby sleep, but also a lot of downsides. Yeah, I
(06:42):
totally agree. Now, a lot of our listeners are pregnant
currently and already they're thinking ahead, are I guess, worrying
ahead about the months of sleep deprivation they've heard so
much about. And you know, we all know that baby
sleep conversations in general can be super are loaded, right,
and there are lots of very strong opinions and feelings,
(07:06):
and let's just say it, judge men, I want to
say at the get go, this is not about letting
a baby cry it out. It's not about whether or
not you can spoil a baby. You know, in my opinion,
you should try as hard as you can to spoil
your baby, but it's just not possible because a baby
(07:27):
in the first six months especially needs all those snuggles
and all those cuddles and the filling of a baby's needs.
But ultimately, also, as you wisely point out, they also
need a lot of sleep. And what we are going
to talk about today is how to help them get
that sleep right. Yes, absolutely so. What are some newborn
(07:50):
sleep basics that parents need to know before they even
bring their babies home from the hospital. Yeah, so, I think,
jumping back to your earlier point, I think, collectedly, as moms,
we need to stop scaring pregnant moms. There is so
much fear and overwhelm already, so much fear of inadequacy
(08:12):
going into it season. Moms that are listening to this
right now, please remember to be so gentle with very
fragile pregnant women that might feel very intimidated. It's great
to paint an accurate picture, but let's not paint a
scary one, no gloom and doom. Yes, exactly. So, I
(08:34):
want to piggyback on two things that you said. One,
we cannot spoil a newborn, It just isn't possible. They
need all of those snuggles. And two, they need so
much sleep, and so the my biggest point far, and
a way for newborn moms is keep those awake windows
nice and short. The newborn period is all about playing detective,
(08:57):
tuning into your baby and figuring out their cues. But
one of the mistakes that we often make is that
we project our own thoughts and feelings and needs onto
our baby, which can be really helpful, like, oh, I
would be feeling x y Z right now, so maybe
that's what my baby is feeling, which is nine helpful,
(09:19):
but a lot of times in the sleep realm, it
backfires because four babies sleep begets sleep. And like I said,
I also treat adult insomnia. And so when we're treating
adult insomnia, if we're getting all of this broken sleep,
we need to sleep deprive ourselves to make us good
and tired. So we fall asleep quickly and we sleep
(09:40):
all the way through the night, and then we slowly
scale that back. So a lot of newborn parents make
the mistake of thinking, my baby is not sleeping well,
but if I can get them good and tired, then
they'll sleep better. And that's not the way that we
want to do it. There are kind of three different
phases in this tired dynamic, So we want to aim
(10:05):
for about sixty minutes of awake time when they're brand new,
and some of that awake time for a new tiny baby,
it counts as those drowsy feedings. So your newborn baby
is going to get like eighteen to twenty hours of
sleep a day, and in the very beginning, some of
those four hours of awake time are still gonna look
pretty dang drowsy. And that's okay. So jumping back to
(10:29):
this idea of three different phases of tiredness, what we
want to capitalize on is phase one, where they're just
starting to get sleepy. We usually have a lull in play.
They're staring off their eyelids and eyebrows might start to
get a little pinky purple e. They're just in like this,
(10:50):
very calm, sleepy. Most of the time, we don't recognize
that as the optimal window to put them down. If
we miss that the then we get into the second component,
which I call wired and tired. Oh that's what I
call it too, Maybe I learned it from you years ago,
grape minds exactly. But they get wired and tired. You
(11:14):
know that they're tired, but they're fussy and they're rubbing
their eyes and tugging on their ears and doing all
the tired signs, but they've gotten overtired, and so it's
really hard for them to wind down. The thing that
I like to think about here is we all our
brains are wired to power through our exhaustion. If you
(11:35):
think about from an adaptive standpoint, we have those moments
where it's the middle of the night, we're tired, and
something needs us to be awake. So like eight months ago,
I remember it was three o'clock in the morning, I
was pregnant. Still, my seven year old comes to me,
I'm passed out, dead asleep, and she says, Mommy, I
threw up. So what happens In an instant? I am
(11:58):
wide awake, am changing sheets, starting laundry, getting her in
the bath, getting her new jammie, singing her song, getting
her back down to bed, and then chrisis averted. I
come back downstairs. Five minutes later, I'm passed out again. Right,
it's because my brain knows how to regulate. Oh you
(12:19):
were sleeping, Oh wait, you need to be awake. Oh wait,
now you can go back to sleep again. Our little
babies brains are capable of all of those fundamentals, but
they haven't buttoned it up yet. And so if they
start producing those sleepy chemicals and then we don't get
them down, then they start to produce the powering through chemicals,
(12:41):
and then they're this chemical mashup of like I'm tired,
but I'm awake, but I'm tired, but I'm awake, and
then they're losing their minds. Then after that passes, then
they're so exhausted that even the powering through awake chemicals
make them knock out. So what happens is a lot
(13:01):
of especially newborn moms that haven't quite figured it out yet.
I think they miss phase one of the sleepy. Then
they're wrestling in phase two with the wired and tired,
and then they finally get their baby to sleep, and
that phase three, I'm so exhausted, I knock out, And
so they think, oh wait, I should have just kept
(13:22):
my baby up longer. So they finally knock out. But
it's a thousand times easier to get them to sleep
when we catch them at sleepy and we skipped the
wired and tired craziness. Oh infinitely more. That is so smart.
(13:50):
Clearly there's no one size fits all, right, So every
baby is different, like every parent is different. I'm sure
you've noticed big offerences in your four kids, and because
of that, a lot of this is meant as much
as advice as you can give, as I can give
some of it. You're going to have to like feel
(14:11):
your way in the dark. I mean literally totally, yes,
But what are some of the fundamentals about baby sleep
right from the start? So you come home from the
hospital right where your baby was sleeping like a dream
and you're like high five in your partner and then
you get home nothing. What do you say about the
(14:33):
whole you know, switching up days and nights and how
to overcome that, because typically when a baby gets home
from the hospital, they're in this world where they're used
to being in the dark. So nighttime is no baby Yes,
like you said, there is no one size fits all.
All babies are different. I think as the sleep consultant
(14:54):
mixed with a therapist and my personal experience that I
talked to you about, my aim over all is to
empower moms to understand fundamental principles and like you said,
feel their way in the dark and feel confident that
I can tune in and figure out what my baby needs.
But there are some fundamental principles. So I would say
fundamental principle number one that I think is true for
(15:17):
all newborns is we want to keep those awake windows
at about an hour. Sometimes you can push it to
ninety minutes, but for a little tiny baby, I would
not push it longer than that. And that includes the feeds. Yes,
that includes the feeding. Sometimes if it's a super drowsy feed,
I'll count that as like half awake time. And that's
one of those nuances where like you're kind of feeling
(15:40):
your way in the dark, orienting day and night. The
best thing you can do there is not let daytime
maps go longer than three hours. So that is one
of the instances that you would wake a sleeping baby.
The other big thing is keep your nighttime dark and dim.
So like using night light when you're feeding your baby
(16:01):
at night. If you have a TV in your room,
don't turn that on. Watch a show on your phone
if you want to be entertained. But let's not have
these big stimulating bright lights when you're feeding your baby
in the middle of the night, and don't be trying
to play with your baby or you know, keep the
chat to minimum. Yes, even if you're talking to your
baby and I love you so much, you can whisper
(16:22):
all of those things. You can be stroking their cheek.
We do want to in those first like four to
six weeks, when babies are super tired. That's when like
you're going to be kind of a jerk. Like while
your baby is feeding at night, you want to be
like wiggling their hand, wiggling their toes, flicking their ears.
Sometimes I'd like dip my hand in my water that
(16:43):
was next to my bed and like sprinkle some water
on their forehead. Because we want our newborns to get
good full feedings, so we want to get good full
feedings at night. Um, we want to keep nighttime dark
and dim and quiet. Dates time sleep can be light
and bright and noisy. Let your baby be sleeping out
(17:04):
in the living room in a safe sleep space. Of course. Um,
there's no need for blackout curtains or white noise machines
at this age. Let them sleep with light, bright sounds,
and just orient daytime sleep feels different than nighttime sleep.
That's such an important point because I just recently had
a mom say, well, you know what we did the
(17:26):
quiet thing. And now we live in an old house
with creaky floors, and the second we step on a floorboard,
she wakes up. And in retrospect you realize is that
it is actually better to get them used to a
little bit of noise and not try to create the
sleep bubble around them. I think as they get older
and have more solidified naps and scheduling, that's when I
(17:49):
do like once I sleep train, I do like to
have white noise machines, blackout curtains, all of that, because
then you have something that you can plan around. You know,
if you know that every day your baby is gonna
nap at nine, twelve and three, and you can kind
of set up this consistency, than awesome. But newborns have
(18:09):
no consistency, no predictability. So that's another point that I
want to give to brand new moms. Some people will
talk about how awesome it is to get your newborn
on a schedule and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, And I say,
throw all of that out the window. The only thing
you need to look at the clock four is to feed.
(18:30):
I say every two to four hours. Don't stress too
much about three hours on the dot. As long as
baby's gaining weight. Well, sometimes it's two, sometimes it's four.
Let's just get a nice big window exactly. So, the
only thing that I think newborn moms need to be
looking at the clock four is to make sure they're
not awake longer than sixty minutes or sixted and ninety
(18:51):
and make sure we're feeding every two to four hours.
But other than that, we don't need to be stressing
about getting on a predictable clock by schedule. It's just
not possible. And when we have unrealistic expectations, it diminishes
our joy and motherhood absolutely and and plus you know,
(19:12):
babies need to, as you said, feed onto man. Even
if the demand isn't there initially, it will be ultimately
if you feed often enough. So let's get to some
of the specific questions that I hear about newborn sleep.
There is no easier way to get a baby to
sleep than on your chest or in your arm, skin
(19:34):
to skin, And it feels amazing until you have to
pee or your armfuls asleep. That happens all the time totally,
But a lot of parents worry, understandably about letting their
babies get into that habit. I mean I always say,
you know, babies are creatures of comfort and their creatures
of habit, and you create a comforting habit, you know
(19:54):
ultimately it's gonna be hard to break. Plus, having them
fall asleep on you, especially when you're a sleepy too,
can be a safety risk. What do you say about this?
I mean, especially early on when it's so tempting. Yeah,
so I say, first and foremost, we can't spoil a newborn.
And secondly, kind of my general principle really in parenting
(20:19):
as a whole is do as much as your baby
needs you to do, but not more than that. And
so lots of newborn babies need to be swaddled up,
snug and rocked to sleep. Fine, if you can then
put your baby down, great, do that, you know, so
we're still pretty much rocking our baby to sleep for
(20:40):
every single sleep. Sometimes you can get the timing just
right and swaddle snug, and some babies can just drift
off to sleep on their own. Again, that shouldn't be
the expectation that newborn moms have of what doing it
right looks like, because that's not realistic. Um. The only
thing that I try to avoid when possible is not
(21:01):
relying on nursing to sleep because again, like if baby
is only awake for sixty minutes, we don't want to
get in this habit of baby doesn't know how to
fall asleep unless they're eating, and now we're eating every
single hour, and then we have a snacking habit and
all of that. Again, it's a comforting habit totally. I
always recommend a good snug swaddle preventing overtiredness, like I
(21:25):
can't say enough. And then if you need to rock
your baby to sleep, do that. If the second you
put your baby down they wake up, then maybe rock
them back to sleep or plan on some naps of
the day. You know, I think a lot of new
moms put way too much pressure on themselves to bounce
back right away and be exercising and cleaning and cooking
and whatever. Like sometimes it's really nice to just sit
(21:47):
and hold your sleeping baby. So if they won't sleep
independently on their own and their own bascinet or whatever
during the day, it's fine to say, all right, this
nap is just going to have to happen in arms,
or I'm going to get a wrap or a carrier
or a backpack. Definitely, at night. I recommend get your
baby used to sleeping in their own space. So that's
(22:10):
why again I say, we do as much as our
babies need us to do for them, but not more
than that. If you can rock your baby to sleep
and put them down and they'll keep sleeping, great, then
you don't need to hold your baby for every single
nap every single day. Do that sometimes because we love it,
and your son should should not be that. That's the
only way your baby can fall asleep and stay asleep.
(22:31):
So you should keep trying at least to put the
baby down, yes, and put them down to sleep, yes, yeah,
And then you know, if baby stirs in the transition,
then you can like jostle their belly, you can give
a pacifier, you can do an eyebrow stroke. They are
all of these things that you can do to help
ease the transition to be sleeping in their own space
a little bit better. Awesome, Okay, deep breath And I
(22:56):
almost hesitate to say the words sleep, deep training because
the words summon up so many negative connotations. We at
what to expect, don't judge, no shame in the game, ever,
Can you explain how your philosophy is is different from
(23:16):
what many people typically think of when they hear the
words sleep changing, and they're thinking crying, crying, crying, crying. Yes.
So one analogy that I use a lot is when
we are teaching our babies to go down a slide.
So I'm an extrovert. I like to get out of
the house, so I usually end up at the park
with my toddlers. And now i have a six month
(23:37):
old baby, and so I'll put her at the top
of the slide and hold her the whole way down. Right,
she has some core strength, but she's not coordinated enough
to do the slide. But I'm I'm showing her the motions.
I'm showing her this is how we do it. This
is fun. Yet, stay sitting, we and I'm having fun,
and I'm holding her the whole way down. When she
gets a little bit older and a little bit stronger,
(23:57):
I'm going to transition to just holding her hands and
in in a couple more months, when she's a little
bit bigger, a little bit stronger, a little more coordinated.
At some point, I'm gonna put her at the top
of the slide and I'm gonna wait at the bottom,
and I'm gonna say come on, wait, and then she's
going to be able to climb the ladder by herself
and get to the top of the slide. And so
it's a very collaborative process. I'm teaching you the ropes,
(24:20):
I'm showing you how to do it, and then I'm
backing off as you demonstrate that you are developmentally ready
for this next step. But there is always some awkwardness
in that transition where maybe I put her at the
top of the slide and I know she can do it,
but wait, it's different. I'm waiting at the bottom of
the slide saying come on, and she's looking at me
(24:42):
like uh right. And because every child is different, I
had the first one who never did let go exactly.
She never managed to summon up that that courage, whereas
my second one, you know, six months, was probably doing
it on its own. So every kid is different. You
have to take their cues some of this, yeah, exactly.
(25:05):
So if I come back to sleep training and using
that analogy, I think the newborn phase, when we are
rocking our babies to sleep, we are rocking them back
to sleep if they're taking short naps, were showing them
the ropes that like Hey, this is how we get
you to sleep. When you're nice and drowsy, you fold
into sleep easily. We are making sure your naps are
(25:28):
long enough. We are teaching you how to sleep well.
That's what the entire four months is all about. I'm
showing my baby how to sleep well. Then. And I
know you recommend sleep training at six months and I
recommend sleep training at four months, but we can kind
of talk about those things. We can split the difference, right,
(25:49):
But I the reason that I like to sleep train
at four months is because they hit that four month
regression where I believe they are craving a little bit
more consider e stancy, routine and predictabilities, and they can
learn how to go into that sleep on their own.
There's still support. And I'm a big believer, Like my
(26:12):
main recommendation is modified cry it out, but you're gonna
fool cry it out. You can do no cry. What
matters to me is that we are setting the foundation
and handing over some of that ability to initiate sleep
to our babies. And so there are two main components
of sleep training. I say that in air quotes. Sleep training,
(26:35):
in my mind is about optimizing the daytime schedule to
prevent over tiredness, which you've been doing for the last
four months. So the actual sleep training part for me
only entails in this first phase learning how to fall
asleep on your own. We are still rocking back to
sleep when they wake up from short naps, and we
(26:55):
are still feeding at night. And I think that's where
it can get confusing, because different doctors will say different things,
different specialists will say different things. People recommend sleep training
at different times to mean different things, and so I
go earlier because I think they are capable of learning
how to initiate sleep independently at four months, but we're
(27:17):
not making them cry it out at night to drop
night feedings. We're still letting them feed when they wake up.
And then my philosophy is, if we've got the daytime
sleep buttoned up and they're not overtired and they know
how to fall asleep independently, those night feedings will drop
all the way on their own, and then we don't
even have to do anything. So like, I just sleep
(27:38):
trained a baby this weekend, and all we did was
focused on learning how to fall asleep. Her baby used
to be co sleeping, eating every single hour, and she
just texted me this morning that her baby did nine
hours and forty five minutes right without waking up, and
we did not do any intervention in the middle of
the night. It's just he learned how to all asleep,
(28:01):
and so he learned how to sleep cycle transition without help.
That's an incredible success story. I was so excited. So
your premise is that you do pick a baby up
when they're crying inevitably always, So yeah, pretty much. So.
I the way that I do modified cry it out
(28:23):
is a little bit different than like for and again,
people use all these terms interchangeably, so I can kind
of be muddled. But I like to teach babies how
to fall asleep on their own. If we're doing modified
cry it out, I make sure the timing is right,
set the baby down, set our timer for ten minutes
when if they haven't fallen asleep, then I go in.
(28:46):
I pick them up. I whisper in their ear. You're
doing such a good job. I mean, loves you so much,
you're figuring it out. I give the passy back, I
do a cheek stroke, the eyebrow stroke, and just kind
of say, like, you know how this system works, and
you can figure out how to do it on your own.
But I also cap it. So I think that's another
area where sleep training can have a lot of heightened emotions.
(29:10):
Is somebody on a mommy forum might say sleep training
was awesome, like my baby screamed for four hours the
first night, but the next night it was only two.
And then somebody else is like, you know, your baby
is screap for four hours. So I do in like
the official formula I do. When we're first starting out
for nighttime, we do ten minutes and then fifteen minutes
and then But I would say in the years that
(29:33):
I've been doing this, ninety nine percent of babies that
I've sleep trained will fall asleep in the first or
second twenty minute timer. It is very rare that we
get through that third twenty minute timer and then we
just rock or feed to sleep and say, okay, I
was good enough for the first night, but that was enough.
We don't need to push too hard, too fast. But
(29:54):
the other thing that I like parents to pay attention
to when their baby is fussing is the very a
rehability in their crying. It is a very different story
if we have a baby that escalates up to a
level ten and they are screaming at a ten for
ten straight minutes. We're probably not gonna do these lengthening
timers like there's something happening. They're not learning how to
(30:16):
self soothe. But if you're paying attention to the variability,
what we have a lot of times is you know,
you put baby down and she was at like a
four and then a seven and a ten, and then
back to a six and then an eight and then
a three and then whoa, she was totally quiet for
a minute. If we're seeing that variability, every time baby
de escalates on their own, they're putting a piece of
(30:38):
the self suiting puzzle into place. And that's what we're
springboarding off of. That's why we go in and we
get them all the way back down to zero. We're
calming them down, we're showing them I'm here, I love you,
you're doing great, and then we give them the opportunity again.
And really that process is like three days. If personally
(31:00):
you just don't want to do cry it out, I
totally understand that, But we can't make the argument that
cry it out inherently damages attachment. I think the biggest
argument in that camp is that when babies are crying,
their cortisol levels are increased. But the data also tells
us that two weeks after sleep training, babies who did
(31:23):
cry it out don't have any difference in cortisol levels.
And if we have a baby that knows how to
initiate sleep on their own, we are drastically reducing the
stress and cortisol and tears in the long term on
both sides of the crib. Yes. And I always say, like,
it is not our mission as parents to avoid our
(31:46):
babies discomfort. I don't know about you. I have babies
that lose their minds when they're buckled in the car seat.
I have babies that do not enjoy getting out of
a cold bath or getting their diapers changed. Your bookers like,
I'm not gonna not do the things because they're uncomfortable.
I know this is the best way that I can
provide for your needs to be met so that you
(32:09):
can be happy and healthy and successful. On Friday, Oh
my god, I love that. Not surprisingly, when we posted
for sleep questions on what to expect Instagram, we got
(32:30):
a near fall. One of the ones that we get
a lot is how can I help a baby self series.
Now you've definitely gone through some of the basics. Swaddling
is super comforting, and so is a passi for some
babies and not for all. Unfortunately, I wish it were.
I was zero for two with passy because someone else
(32:51):
asked about passy's whether that's something you should restrict or
it's okay if it falls out in the middle of
the night. What else do you have to say about
self soothing? Yeah, so I do love pacifiers. I think
it's a great soothing tool for babies. If we have
a fussy baby, I like to swaddle, snug. I like
to get them on their side. Sometimes we rock babies
(33:12):
kind of up and down, where it's basically their back
is parallel with the floor, and that's just setting off
their moral reflex over and over again, making them feel
like they're falling. So I like them to be chest
to chest, which is better for feeding too, exactly, sometimes
facing outwards. But if you have a very alert, attentive baby,
that can also be very overstimulating when really we need
(33:35):
to be taking away anything that's stimulating them. And when
their faces kind of pressed into mom's shirt, it's you know,
there's nothing else to really look at they'll just close
their eyes exactly, or dad shirts exactly. The side position
a swinging movement. I kind of like a little jiggle.
So I think of like if we think of a
(33:56):
spin cycle on a washing machine, not unlike the towels
or lopside and you think your house is gonna break,
but like a regular spin cycle on a washing machine,
just this nice, steady, little jiggle, maybe like half an
inch back and forth. I think babies really like that.
I also do an eyebrow stroke, so we start at
their hairline and kind of bring our hand down to
(34:17):
the tip of our nose. We have a reflex and
instincts that if something is coming close to our eyes,
we close them, and so if we are doing this
eyebrow stroke, we are encouraging our baby to close their eyes,
and it feels really good for their face to be
touched gently. My husband has this great move where he
like holds the passing in with his thumb and then
covers their eyes with the rest of his hand and
(34:39):
then just kind of like bobbles their head a little bit.
And so he's not even doing a whole lot, He's
just doing this little kind of ninja jiggle and it
works every time. He's the best baby. Soother good to
know is he work for higher like he should be.
So I just want to make sure video understands. So
when you say on their side, that's when you're rocking them. Ye, correct, Yes,
(35:01):
you know when you put them down in the bass
net or because that would be unsafe. Correct. But I'm
glad that you mentioned that because I have. One of
my other ninja moves is when you are laying a
sleeping baby down. Again, we often are rocking the baby
and then we go to lay them down and we
flip them onto their back to lower them down, and
that kicks off the moral reflex. So I do is
(35:25):
depending on your sleep environment, sometimes you have to do
another little ninja move where you like move your left
hand up by their head and then their right hand
on their bum. Or sometimes you can just lay them down,
lower them all the way down on their side, and
only roll them to their back when they're down so
that we don't kick off that moral reflex. We're just
(35:46):
tilting them. But yes, baby should always be placed to
sleep on their backs. But that's my other secret trick
is lay them down sideways before you rotate them. You
have so many ninja move I I like to create
the ninja move my grands some would be totally impressed, totally,
but just one more time on things like swaddle and
(36:06):
PASSI some babies do resist swaddle, or maybe they want
their arms free. Maybe you've got a sum sucker. So
just as you go, yes, yeah, I definitely have a bias,
and I know that it's my personal bias too, because
all of my babies have been really happy in the swaddle.
I wouldn't give up on the swaddle until you've done
(36:28):
all of the other soothing tricks in combination, because sometimes
they just resist the swaddle. But a lot of times,
the babies that seem the most like they hate the
swaddle are the babies that have really intense jerking movements.
It's kind of like hiccups in their body. They just
jolt and jerk, and so those are often the babies
(36:49):
that need to be swaddled the most, but they just
pushed against it because their body jerks and flails. So
give it a fighting chance for sure. Now you touched
this earlier and when I talk about having a routine
from day one, and I feel that's super important. But
I think a lot of people get confused between a
(37:12):
routine and a schedule, and a routine is something babies
can count on. It's something that makes them feel comforted consistently.
This is what I can expect a routine, and babies
love that stuff. Schedules are a completely different matter. Do
you want to like weigh in there. Yeah, So my
(37:33):
experience has also shifted personally as I've had four children, right, so,
like I have four kids seven and under, and so
my baby gets a very different bedtime at naptime routine
than my first child. Did you know we were just
laughing at night, you know, we had the baby in
the sink and a bath while we were cleaning out dinner,
not having the dishes in the sink. Yeah, I was
(37:55):
wondering about maybe it was taking a bath in the
sink while we were just kind of like doing evening stuff.
And my husband jokes, who, like, can you believe that
When Maddie was a baby, like we had her in
the bath and both of us are just leaning over
the tub just watching her together. And now with Nolan,
it's like, all right, kid, get clean because we got
stuff we're doing. That's why fourth kids are so resilient
(38:17):
and independent, right exactly. But I do think having something
predictable and consistent they can count on. And it can
be a minute if that's all that you've got, or
it can be thirty minutes if you want it to
be that, but something that signals to the baby, hey,
(38:37):
we're moving in this other direction like we were playing,
and now we're going to bed. And it's so helpful
as the child grows, because you get to the toddler
years and they are going a hundred miles per hour.
You can't suddenly slam the brakes on and expect them
to go to zero. So that's the whole point of
(38:57):
the bedtime routine is to unwind gradually, and so if
you start that habit early enough, then you're ahead of
the game. So on that topic, because we also have
moms who have older babies on the site, and some
of them are still not sleeping at fifteen months, eighteen months,
(39:19):
and you know, at this point, maybe you're regretting that
you didn't do sleep training or maybe something disrupted you know,
sleep as usual, whether or not you have ever hopped
on the sleep train before. How do you deal with
an older baby or toddler who's still having the same
sleep issues. Yeah, so consistency is still key. Yeah, And
(39:43):
really I always tell people like, it's never too late
to sleep train. The earlier the better. After four months,
the earlier the better. But it's never too late to
get good sleep habits. And like I said in the
very beginning, I am a therapist and I treat adult
sleep issues. So if you're not tackling sleep and till
you're thirty seven years old, that is fine, let's start
today and get better sleep. So I like to differentiate
(40:06):
babies and toddlers because it's a totally different set of tools.
Babies under about eighteen months, it's going to be consistency, predictability, scheduling,
having a good routine, helping them wind down, providing the
right space at the right time, helping them learn to
(40:28):
initiate sleep independently. Babies that you're sleep training older are
just going to protest more than babies that you sleep
trained younger. It's just the way that the world works,
that's true of everything. Yes, totally, Babies over about eighteen
months is really when we start to see that toddler
will coming into play. You mean toddler won't. Yes, that
(40:51):
is exactly what I mean. So with toddlers, it's a
lot more about getting their buy in in some way,
shape or form, because you cannot force a human being
to sleep, and if they realize that gets a rise
out of you. Oh, now all of a sudden, I
have this power, etcetera, etcetera, then you have a whole
(41:11):
different fight. So it's still about, you know, having a routine,
having some consistency, but babies over eighteen months, we've also
got to figure out how to get them to buy
in and want to sleep and let go of the
power struggle if they're not sleeping. I have two favorite
tools for that. One figuring out a really compelling incentive.
(41:33):
Toys are not compelling incentives for children. They just aren't
because they have so much stuff in the moment they
don't actually care about that else, address or whatever it is.
So figuring out what's a better incentive. Usually it's quality
time because they're just offsetting the same thing. Instead of
(41:54):
me and mom having all of this time or Dad
having all of this time to lay together at night
while they're waiting for me to fall asleep, and now
I get two extra hours of mom instead of that,
we're gonna have a really awesome date if I get
some stickers on my sticker chart, right, So figuring out
a better incentive, and then the second most important component
(42:17):
is letting go of the power struggle if they don't sleep,
just providing the space and time. If they don't sleep,
they don't sleep. We got them up, we get them out,
and I put a box of books next to their
crib so they can reach through the bars and grab
some books. And you're kind of saying like, look, if
you're not going to sleep, you at least need to
be quiet and content in your room for this hour.
(42:37):
And then you know what happens. Books aren't exciting enough
long term, so maybe they'll fight against you for like
a week or so. But if they realize they're not
really getting any extra benefit and they've already read these
twenty books a thousand times, like okay, fine, I am
actually tired. I'm going to go back to sleep. And
they haven't gotten a rise out of you, which I
think is the critical part. You talk about the our
(43:00):
struggle because you know who's usually going to win that,
and it's so much the same with potty yes education, Yes,
so Chrissy, I could talk to you all day long,
actually all night long, but fortunately we'll all be sleeping
tonight because we have such good sleep habits. So thank
you so much for being with us. And tell our
(43:21):
listeners where they can find more information. Yes, so find
me on Instagram at the Peaceful Sleeper, the dot peaceful
dot Sleeper, and my website is the Peaceful Sleeper dot com.
I've got books, I've got guides, I've got courses, I've
got everything you need for baby sleep up to adult sleep.
And I've even got a Peaceful Mama course to help
(43:41):
us feel empowered in motherhood. Oh that's awesome. Well, thanks
again and sweet dreams. Thank you. Thanks for having me
baby baby love. I need you, Oh how need you?
(44:02):
Thanks for listening. Remember I'm always here for you. What
to Expect is always here for you. We're all in
this together. For more on what you heard on today's episode,
visit what to Expect dot com slash podcasts. You can
also check out What to Expect when You're Expecting, What
to Expect the First Year, and the what to Expect app.
(44:23):
And we want to hear from you. Connect with us
on our community message board or on our social media.
You can find me at Heidi Murkoff and Emma at
Emma Being wt E, and of course at What to Expect.
Baby Love is performed by Riley Peterer. What to Expect
(44:43):
is a production of I Heart Radio. From more shows
from I Heart Radio check out the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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(45:04):
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