Sleep regressions/ progressions/ developmental leaps - what does it all mean? How to ditch the anxiety about the 'dreaded sleep regressions'
Today's episode is allll about bloody 'sleep regressions'. We chat about the following:
- The fear mongering around sleep regressions in the mainstream sleep industry
- Sleep regressions as a tool to sell - introducing problems that you need to fix
- The trap of the 4 month sleep regression and fear of failure
- Wonder weeks and whether they help or hinder your parenting
- Common tricky times for sleep
- Helpful reframes for sleep 'regressions'
- Coping strategies and perspective shifts that we can help to spread to mothers everywhere
Join my email list here and nab yourself the first chapter of my sleep guide totally FREE: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63e75b640f93ed601fa2a460
Today's episode is sponsored by my beautiful friend Emma Norris, Perinatal Clinicial Nutritionist at Maia Mothers Collective.
Are you thinking about conceiving again in the next 6 months, but concerned your body isn't quite ready to go again? Do you feel exhausted, foggy and overwhelmed? Are you anxious to have a better pregnancy, birthing and postpartum experience that your previous one?
My friend Emma is a Clinical Perinatal Nutritionist and she wants to change the way women approach their pregnancies by empowering them to take control of their health in the few months prior to conception. Emma has just launched an online course called Your Trimester Zero.
The live 6-week course explores all of the important stuff you need to know to get your body and mind ready for a thriving pregnancy and postpartum. She walks you through preconception nutrition, supplements, the menstrual cycle, sperm health and lifestyle practices that are helpful before you get pregnant again.
The course has tonnes of value like weekly handouts, preconception meal plan, interactive food planning template, blood pathology cheat sheet, weekly journalling prompts, meditation and even breath work guides. As a mum herself, Emma knows how easy it can be to put your own needs last. But she wants you to feel in control, empowered and confident you're doing everything you can to optimise your own health, future pregnancy and postpartum period by teaching you the tools she knows can make a difference in your experience.
Emma has generously given poddy listeners an exclusive 20% discount to the course. Just use code MAMAMATTERS at checkout.
https://www.maiamothers.com.au/your-trimester-zero
Hey Mama, I have a Sleep Guide for you! For birth to 18 months, this guide is steeped in evidence and laced with compassion. And you can download the first chapter absolutely free HERE.
Are we Insta pals? If not, why not? Come and hang out at @mamamatters.au!
As always, thanks for being here- if you enjoy this poddy I would LOVE if you could give a rating and a review. It means the world to me.
xx
TRANSCRIPT
Fiona Weaver 00:05
Hello love and welcome to the mama chatters podcast. If you're keen to ditch all of the parenting shoulds and want to uncomplicate sleep and parenting, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Fiona Weaver, founder of mama matters and through honest chats with experts and each other will help you to cut through all of the noise and to love the heck out of your imperfect and authentic parenting. Wherever and whoever you are. You belong here. Now, let's have a chat.
Fiona Weaver 00:37
Hello my love's I hope you're well and welcome to another episode of mama chatters. I'm very happy to share that our very first podcast sponsor is Emma Norris, who is a clinical perinatal nutritionist at Mayo mothers collective. She's wondering if you are thinking about conceiving again in the next six months but concerned your body isn't quite ready to go again. Do you feel exhausted, foggy and overwhelmed? Are you anxious to have a better pregnancy birthing and postpartum experience than your previous one? Emma wants to change the way women approach their pregnancies by empowering them to take control of their health and the few months prior to conception. She has just just launched an online course called your trimester zero to live six week course explores all the important stuff you need to know to get your body and mind ready for a thriving pregnancy and postpartum. She walks you through preconception nutrition supplements, the menstrual cycle, sperm health and lifestyle practices that are helpful before you get pregnant again, the course has tons of value like weekly handouts, preconception meal plan, interactive food planning template, blood pathology, cheat sheet weekly journaling, prompts, meditation and even breathwork guides. As a mom herself Emma knows how easy it can be to put your own needs last, but she wants you to feel in control, empowered and confident you're doing everything you can to optimize your own health, future pregnancy and postpartum period. By teaching you the tools she knows can make a difference in your experience. Emma has generously given party listeners an exclusive 20% discount to the course. And you're going to want to do this if you are ready to get pregnant again. So I'm going to link Emma's course in the show notes here and you can go straight to checkout. It starts next week next week. And I wholeheartedly believe in everything Emma does we have a podcast episode with her talking about postnatal depletion. That is from a few episodes back, have a listen to that if you want to get to know her. You will love her. I know you will, because she's great. Okay, so let's get stuck into today's episode. This is a solo episode again, I am speaking to Dada sleep regressions. And I want you to imagine every time I say sleep regression, I'm using my little little finger air quotes there. And you'll learn why I put them in air quotes. If you've had a baby, there is a pretty big chance that you have learned about sleep regressions, or at least heard of them. And the biggest sleep regression that we hear about is this four month sleep regression. And there's so much I will have to say about this that I have to record a whole episode on it. Because for one that the language around these regressions is so unhelpful. I think it's really unethical and icky the way that we use regressions to sell a product. I think it puts the fear of God into new mothers, particularly around that three month mark. There is so much of that are you think they're sleeping? Well now we'll wait till the regression hits. There's so much chatter between mothers in mother's groups about what that regression is going to look like, how you're going to handle it, how you're going to survive this regression. And I just really want you to through this episode, really breathe a sigh of relief, relax your shoulders, and
Fiona Weaver 04:49
And I actually Googled sleep regressions. I'm gonna get so sick of saying that when I Googled it, I googled it this morning to see what you guys are finding when you are Googling in the middle of the night and
Fiona Weaver 05:00
And it wasn't pretty. The very first article that came up was from a very well known sleep consultant. And she was talking about how to not get stuck in the form of sleep regression. And to not get stuck, you need to teach your baby to link their sleep cycles, you need to teach them to fall asleep in the same place that they will stay asleep or that they will wake between sleep cycles, because God forbid, they fall asleep in your arms, and they wake up in a cart, because they're going to cry for you, God forbid. And you know, all of the answers to these so called problems where I can walk you through that in my course. So that you have a plan so that you don't get stuck in this regression forever. There's also a lot of language around. If this happens, then you respond in this way, if your baby is more wakeful at night, and you respond by feeding them every week, then guess what, they're getting all their calories at night, now they're reverse cycling. And this is how you get stuck in this cycle. So it's already blaming, it's already I feel worried reading that, you know, if I had a little baby, and I didn't know better, I'll be like shit. And I remember feeling this, I remember three and a half months was the time that I reached out to the sleep consultant. Because although I had really loved wearing my baby for naps, I loved sleeping with him. I loved breastfeeding him to sleep. I loved you know, having contact naps on the couch every day, I really was enjoying that time. But it got to about three and a half months. And I was looking at the sleep regression. And I was like shit, I haven't taught him how to do all these things. And so I started trying to teach him to self settle, trying to teach him to link his sleep cycles. And it didn't work because it wasn't appropriate for my baby. And so I reached out to the sleep consultant, I'm a little bit worried because this is looming over me. And my baby can't let LINC sleep cycles is it something you can help with. And I just want to go back to my three and a half month postpartum self and say, just relax, love, keep doing what you're doing. It feels good, it feels right, there's nothing that you need to be afraid of, there is nothing that you're doing wrong.
Fiona Weaver 07:18
Luckily, this sleep consultant could tell that I wasn't all in and she didn't try to sell me her services, because I think she knew from my email that I'd be a nightmare client, because I was having a little bit of an internal battle between this is how I want to parent but this is what I'm scared of. And there was another article that came up in those first few search results that was called the four month sleep regression that makes parents want to cry. Sorry, stop it, just stop it. But this is the really overarching theme about all of these articles that I have searched for. I have not found one that says this is this is the nature of babies sleep, and it's okay to do what it takes to give your baby the more support they need during this period. And to cut some corners for yourself as well to cope with extra wakefulness, nothing has said that all of it has said that you need to teach your baby to self settle, you need to teach them to link their sleep cycles and get them on to a schedule. Now what happens around this mark, separate to what is actually happening for the baby. But what happens to mothers around this mark when you go from and this is one of my biggest irks of the baby sleep mainstream sleeping industry is that all of this support and advice and information has as focused around building attachment with your baby, responding to your baby getting to know your baby feeding on demand, establishing your breastfeeding supply. Yes, there are still many, many sleep consultants who talk about crazy routines and things in this first trimester. But a lot of them are about falling in love with your baby and taking time to recover. And then it goes to about three and a half months and they say will shit this is about to happen to you. Someone's about to drop a bomb on you and you haven't prepared for it. So now in these next two weeks, because of sleep regression can happen at any minute. You need to teach your baby all these skills of sleep otherwise you are effed. So if this four month sleep regression is causing you or has caused you anxiety or fear, or as someone has said robbed them of joy in this period, I see you and I hear you and I can absolutely understand why. Because all of the messages that you are receiving,
Fiona Weaver 09:48
leading you in that direction. So as I said, I hope this podcast can shift some of that perspective for you. I'm going to share now a couple of people's experiences with regression shins that have messaged on Instagram. When Mama says at the beginning of my journey as a mom, I was terrified. I remember coming into the first one at four months, and I was so anxious and just waiting for it to come waiting for all the weeks overnight and the catastrophe that is painted all over the internet. And then it didn't happen. Sure, during the day we went from long, lovely naps to suddenly waking between cycles. But I do feel like I was unfairly made terrified of what was to come both because of the noise and my lack of understanding normal infants sleep and other mamas said, Amen. I was so nervous about four months sleep regression. I was so terrified about it that I learned all about the safe sleep seven just in case it hit real hard. Anyway, sometime about three and a half months, we had two rough nights in a row and I thought bugger this, we co slept for a couple of naps to get my confidence up before trying overnight. Now my girl was 11 months old and we haven't looked back, she has had a couple of other phases of sleep wobbles, including a savage three weeks of split nights, but having the boob available to her all night has meant that I'm usually getting enough sleep or rest and the cuddles are amazing. So all that to say my fear of the regression actually fueled a complete transformation of our parenting, and has given us the confidence to give a big middle finger to a lot of mainstream parenting shoulds who would have thought another Mama said I was warned about regressions and was so stressed that one was going to happen always thinking that it was coming soon like this looming shadow over me. I was told to download the Wonder weeks app and do all the exercises and then got stressed about when one of the stormy weeks was coming up. It was only when I stopped checking the app and ignoring when the sleep regressions were meant to happen, that I could relax and just enjoy my baby as the person she was. She still had times when she didn't sleep as well. But without that huge shadow of sleep regression Windows looming over me. I didn't worry about them so much. We just rode the wave together and found a new normal at the end of it. And last one four months sleep regression as a first time mum, I spent so many hours googling it thinking I had to teach my daughter how to self settle before it hit otherwise she'd never sleep independently. Literally no logic to this, but sleep training. fear mongering runs deep when you're desperate for sleep. It lasted about 10 days with Ali weeks. It was hard for sure. But it prompted me to slow down keep my days flexible and rest when I could, after a month of trying to get it to go down drowsy but awake literally spent three hours one day in a dark room trying to get her to sleep. I gave up and surrendered to contact naps babywearing and napping on the go. Life got a whole lot happier and more social. I have so many more of those to share. And I will share some more on my blog and also on my Instagram. But this just shows you how much it impacts everybody's parenting experience. And it doesn't need to be such a thing. I always say sleep doesn't need to be such a thing. Sleep regressions don't need to be such a bloody thing. So let's talk about what sleep regressions are, and how we can start to reframe some of these. So first of all, we actually don't really want to use the term sleep regression. Because a regression implies that we are going backwards on a skill that we have previously learned. If you if your child regressors in motor development or speech development, that is a regression because that is a skill that they have developmentally acquired, and then they go backwards. That's not the case with sleep. because sleep is not linear. Sleep is not linear. Over the first couple of years of life, our babies are changing and developing so rapidly, they are going through illness, teething separation, anxiety, gross motor development, language development, literally everything is just exploding for them. So of course their sleep is going to ebb and flow as well. But the whole sleep regression thing implies that sleep is otherwise predictable and consistent. And then you go through a period of time. And usually there will be a timeline around it like it will happen between here and then. And it will last for you know, anything from five days to two weeks or six weeks or whatever. They all say something different. But this implies that everything is consistent, and then there's a little regression and they regress and then they come back to balance. And that's not necessarily what baby sleep actually looks like. There is a real change around that three, four or five month mark, where you're where you will notice that your baby starts to sleep a little bit differently. They may take shorter naps, they may like to be settled in particular way they may need more helpful settling and resettling and the things might just look a little bit different. They might be waking more frequently overnight, they might be more distracted during the day for feeds. These are just signs that your baby is maturing, they're moving from that newborn sleep stage to a more baby adult like sleep cycle. That's all it is. We don't need to overcomplicate it. There is nothing that you need to do in order to prepare or survive. I'm using my finger quotes a lot for this regression. It is not a regression. It is just a natural phase of development and we can roll with it now nothing bad is going to happen. Nothing will combust. If you respond to your baby, the way that you feel is right at that time, if your baby's waking more frequently, and you want to breastfeed them to settle them back to sleep overnight, that is okay, you do not need to do that with a sign of guilt, you can rest easy knowing that whatever they're going through will continue to change. And you can continue to adapt the way that you respond to them. This is called parental sensitivity. And this attunement to responding to our kids in ways that they are asking for it anytime, is a really, really great building block for attachment. And being attuned to being in sync with them. We don't want to lose that. But this change to sleep around this time, you might notice that anywhere between sort of three and five months, and it will look different for every baby. So some babies may really change it, it might really seem sudden and dramatic, and then other babies it will be merely a blip on the radar. And I can speak to this with experience, my firstborn was quite psycho, during any sort of developmental changes he was his sleep was always very impacted by what was happening to him, either within him or in his environment. So I really did notice this change and also noticed, you know, when he was sick or when he was teething, or when he was experiencing separation anxiety, so his sleep would always change dramatically. My daughter, on the other hand, who has a more easygoing sort of consistent temperament, she, I never knew when she was going through a developmental leap, I never noticed any regressions, she just cruised on through. And that's not to say that she was a unicorn sleeping through the night, she woke every night. But it just wasn't anything to write home about, I did bed share with both of my babies. And I think that that definitely made a difference. Because if you are experiencing more wakefulness, if you are lying alongside them, and they are happy to feed and go back to sleep, then your wakes won't be too extreme. And that is one of the biggest takeaways from all of the sleep regression stuff is to not count wakes, it doesn't matter. Counting the wakes, the number of wakes does not impact how tired or rested you feel in the morning, it literally makes zero difference. It is just about how tired or rested you feel in the morning. So stop counting the weeks. But we will get to that at the end. There's also a couple of other times in the first few years of life where sleep might seem a little bit more tricky or might change. And these are mainly around the eight to 10 month mark and again at the 18 month mark. And they're the only kind of marks that I will speak to, and I'm not going to give it too much airtime. I'm just going to say that. If you are noticing if you have a baby between 810 1112 months, and you're like fuck what's happened, sleep was actually cruising along. And now it's hard again, that is very normal and common. And again, it is just the nature of baby sleep. There's also another little tricky patch around 18 months when sleep might get a little bit more challenging, or your little toddler might start refusing their naps or bedtime might be taking a little bit longer. That's a really common time as well. And again, it's very normal. And just because sleep is just not linear. I'm gonna say it again.
Fiona Weaver 18:28
So I'm not going to go into too much detail in these little tricky patches of sleep. In this episode. Today, I am more about what I'm wanting to raise awareness around why this sleep regression language, this narrative is unhelpful, and how we can shift this perspective. So if you want to know more about these tricky patches, I will be providing a free download via email or my blog. Once I get all of that out this week. So join my email list and you will not miss it. And that will give you some more information about what's happening around those times developmentally speaking. And now I'm going to talk a little bit about how we can shift this narrative once and for all so that you can lose the fear lose the anxiety about sleep regressions. And hopefully this can spread that so the way that you talk to other mothers, the way that you talk to your friends who are about to have a baby can help to normalize the ebb and flow of baby sleep and to lose the anxiety around bloody sleep regressions. So my first top tip in shifting this paradigm, stop tracking wakes you do not need to know how many times your baby is waking overnight. You do not need to know how many times more they are waking during a tricky patch than they were before. It doesn't mean they've gone backwards. If they're waking more than they were. It doesn't mean that there's anything to fix. Tracking wakes does nothing but build your build on your own anxiety or tiredness So the number of wakes that your baby has overnight actually does not in itself impact how tired or rested you feel in the morning. And this is the trap with tracking wakes is that we, we might not even realize, you know, we might wake up, okay, and then we'll check the apps and see how many times our baby woke and we think, are bloody hell, I must be tired. That's terrible, What a disgrace. Like something needs to change, something's happening here, we need to fix this. Whereas you might have also just felt, okay, you might have felt a little bit more tired even than normal, but it can stay there, it can stop there, you might feel tired, and it might just be like, I might take it easy. Today, I'm feeling a bit more tired. Versus I feel tired. And oh my god, there's a problem here that needs to be fixed panic stations. The other trap with tracking waves is that often people will use an app. And many of those tracking apps are also selling problems to you that problems that you need to fix via certain products or consultants. tracking apps are just I just don't want anyone using them. Okay? Unless you have a medical reason or something. There's always someone who says, oh, but they really helped me, whatever, do what you want. But I will never ever, ever, ever, ever recommend a person to continually track their child's weeks, it's not helpful. The other thing is, it means that you are picking up your phone every time you wake. So especially if you are bed sharing, you don't even need to wake up fully to breastfeed your baby and go back to sleep. It's different if you are getting up in you know, having a feed via a bottle, of course, you're gonna have to wake up to get out of bed and get the bottle ready. That's different. But if you are just if your bed sharing and breastfeeding and just kind of partial browsing and hopping on the boob and going back to sleep, don't even count that as awake. Don't even don't even recognize that as awake. Just almost sleep through it. So if you are then picking up your phone to put on the bloody tracking app, what time they have stirred and hopped on the broom. That is just so unhelpful. It's so unhelpful. Okay, you heard it here. First, stop tracking wakes. And speaking of unhelpful apps, I have mixed reviews about the wonder weeks, I appreciate that sometimes people can find validation and solidarity and knowing that there are these periods of time where things feel a little bit harder, because of a reason. I completely get that. If you are looking at the app every day and looking at the storm approaching and thinking oh my god, it's gonna be so bad. Or if the storm is storm cloud is hovering over you, if you don't know that app it when you go. When you when your baby goes through a developmental leap, they'll have a storm cloud over that period of time. And then it'll be sunshine between them. So if the storm is looming, and you are thinking of that's what's happening, that's why the baby's crying. That's why the baby is irritable. That's why he's grumpy today because of the storm. And then it takes you away from the baby in front of you, and it takes you away from attuning moment to moment, if you are then blaming everything for the bloody storm. It also means that it gives this false sense of security that between the storm clouds everything is sunny. And then if your baby does have a mood, you're like hang on these not in a leap, like what is going on here that was awake for night, but he's not in a leap. So it's kind of overcomplicating, again, the messiness of baby sleep as it inherently is. So if you have that app, or that or that book, and it's just, you know, curiosity for you, you enjoy it, and it doesn't cause you any stress, you're not addicted to it, then by all means, keep it. If it is causing you stress or you are tied to it, or you are finding that you are blaming everything on it, then I would lose it, lose it once and for all. The other thing you can do is to see your baby as a human. So to know that sometimes you sleep better than others, sometimes you're a bit more resilient than other times, sometimes you're a bit more irritable or grumpy or frustrated more easily, or you need a little bit more from your your partner or your loved ones. And other times you might not. So it's the same for our babies. So we don't need to find reasons or answers for every mood or cry that they have. It's just them being human. And that is just the messiness of being a human in this human life. Something that helps a lot of people during periods of wakefulness or just more intensity with their babies is really focusing on the changes that they are noticing in their baby. This can really this excitement in noticing and their development, what they have been able to master or what new things they're doing can really take over the anxiety or the fear around what you feel is being lost due to regression. So really, really noticing all of the These little things that you are seeing in your baby change, and putting the focus there instead of what it feels like it's going backwards. And the last thing I want to say, and perhaps the most important thing is that it's okay and even great for you to take the path of least resistance. If it is easiest to safely bed share with your baby during these periods, and breastfeed them back to sleep. Or if it's easier to just put them in the carrier or use the pram or whatever that helps get them across the line to settle for sleep and resettle them. It is okay. And it is great to take that path because that path of least resistance is going to help you and your family on the whole get more sleep. So some of the sleep training accounts and information that you read online is all about sticking to these good habits with your baby during these regressions as well. And this is when we find that people find it so difficult because they are in another room they've got their hands through the cop bars, their panic and shushing a baby who just needs extra love and support during this time. And then it can feel really hard for a family. If you are able to go with the flow a little bit more if you're able to lean in and surrender to more support more contact more support for sleep, then you will have an easier time noticing also what you if you are feeling particularly tired or burnt out during this period, then to take the load off during the day to cut corners for yourself as well. Instead of doing all these productive things during the day, sit on the couch and have a contact nap if that's going to help your baby get more sleep. And it's going to help you to slow down and rest and recover. That is fantastic. So think about ways that you can cut corners yourself, get some meals in, ask your partner or your loved ones for some more help. Say no to things that feel a bit too hard. During that time. Make sure you're still you know, living your life and getting outside as much as you can and speaking with friends and whatnot. But some of those more demanding tasks or things that feel too big. Let them go during this period. And the same goes for the rest of your parenting life. And it is relevant to the recent podcast episode I recorded about what checking in with yourself and what your is resilience level is. So if your baby is going through a tricky time with sleep, if you are needing to give more of yourself to help them to sleep, then sometimes your resilience might be feeling a little bit lower during those periods. And it's important to honor that and to have your own needs met. Okay, so I'm going to leave it there today. As I said, I will have more information on these particular tricky times for sleep via a downloadable PDF that I will send out via email. So make sure you are on my list. And I will speak to this topic a little bit more on socials this week as well. Thank you again to Mr. Norris, clinical nutritionist who has sponsored today's episode. And thank you to you for being a part of this changed this shift in the way that we speak about baby's sleep and the way that we help parents to feel confident and empowered about sleep is so needed and it requires you so thank you for being here. I appreciate all of you. And I will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to mama chatters
Fiona Weaver 28:20
if you enjoyed this episode, let's continue the conversation on Instagram at MAMA matters.au Be sure to share this app with your family and friends. And don't forget if you liked it, please leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again and I will see you next time.
