Short and Shiny: "If not sleep training, then what?" How we can support and optimise sleep without controlled crying or separation-based methods.
I am answering a question from the community today; on if not sleep training, then what?! I had someone say that they were wanting some support with sleep but didn't want to sleep train. They also just couldn't envision what sleep support could look like without it. So that's what I walk you through today! There is so much SPACE between wait it out and cry it out. There are lots of ways we can get creative and make sleep a nicer place to be for everyone. If you are seeking some 1:1 sleep support pop over to my website: www.mamamatters.com.au or flick me an email hello@mamamatters.com.au. You can also book directly through Instagram now.
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.
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xx
TRANSCRIPT
Fiona Weaver 00:09
Hello love and welcome to the Manage 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, through honest conversations with experts and each other, we will help you to cut through all of the noise and to love the heck out of your imperfect and authentic parenting. I'm Fiona, a social worker by trade. Now supporting families with sleep and parenting through my business mama matters. I'm passionate about parenting psychology, biologically normal infant sleep and infant mental health and attachment. I'm also a parent and I am on a mission to normalize the shitshow that can be parenthood. I know that right now you might be trapped under a sleeping baby. Or maybe you've got your headphones in to soften the blue of the afternoon witching hour, wherever and whoever you are. I want you to know that you belong here. Now let's have a chat
Fiona Weaver 01:21
Hello, hello. So I am jumping on with a very little episode. Today I am trying something new challenging myself to just jumping on not overthinking it because I am your classic overthinker overcomplicated. Which is ironic because that is what I talk about it baby sleep is I'm complicating it but here I am complicating every other little aspect of my life. Anyway, I had a question on my Instagram when I said, I put out an anonymous question box. And there's always a few in there that say, I don't want to sleep train, I hear you I don't I don't want to sleep train. But what else can I do? Or somebody else said? Well, if padding and shushing in a darkened room isn't the answer, then what is and someone else said, I know that I don't want to do the behavioral sleep training. But I want to make some changes, or I want some support. But I just am really reluctant to engage in gentle sleep support that's in commerce, because we'll talk about that. Because I just can't imagine what that could possibly be without sleep training. So that's what I'm going to speak to today. And I want to reassure you that although the behavioral cried out sleep training, the separation based techniques and things have one end of the spectrum, and on the other end of the spectrum is do nothing, wait it out, just go with it go with the flow. That might work for some for some we might be somewhere in between. And there is so much room in between there is so much gray space there between cried out and wait it out. And that's where I work. So what could that possibly look like? If somebody comes to me for some support? What does that look like? So I want to show you how sleep and wake windows and self settling and linking sleep cycles and all the other stuff that you hear is only one piece of the puzzle. And in fact, I don't use self settling. I don't even talk about awake windows. I don't use terms like over tiredness overstimulated. None of those words, come into my consults. None of them. The only one I might talk about sometimes is awake window. And that would be in relation to does the last wake window between bed? Does that work better for your child to be the longest or smallest? Because that is so variable. Other than that, that's all. So if somebody comes to me for some support, here's what I will do. First of all, I will want to hear from them. What are their current caregiving challenges? What are you finding challenging around sleep at the moment? What are you coming to me for, and this is all in a an intake form that I give my clients before we actually get on a call. So we'll hear from them about what their current challenges are, why they're here, I will hear from them what their goals are what they hope to get out of our work together. Because if their goals aren't aligned with my goals, they're not my goals. And then that's not going to work. I don't come to them with an agenda. I let them come to me and let me know what their family values are what's important to them in their relationship with their kids, what their goals are, and we set realistic expectations. And look, I must be doing something right because nobody has ever come to me and said I want my baby sleeping through the night or I want my baby to, you know, sleep by themselves for 12 hours and put themselves to sleep and all of that. I don't get people like that because people know what I'm about. It doesn't mean that you can't come with your goals and with your hopes and dreams. And that's one of my questions. What are your hopes and dreams for your child? But we have to hold those hopes and dreams really gently alongside the realistic expectations. So I will Get a lot of background I will hear from you about everything from pregnancy from conception pregnancy birth. What was that postpartum period? Like for you? How did you recover? What was your baby? Like in those early days? Did you have a particularly colicky baby and unsettled baby? Was sleep really tough? From the start? Did you find that your baby slept less than other babies? Was your baby quite reactive from the start with a zero to 100 and I'm getting into baby temperament I'm getting into you, you're telling me who you think your baby is. And then in that, I would also give them the temperament and sensory preferences workshop so they can help to make sense of who their baby is, I would be looking at if whether the baby may be highly sensitive, maybe particularly reactive or sensitive to their environment. We will look at sensory preferences in that what are they typically seeking and avoiding some babies? I keep saying babies, but this has babies and kids. So infants, children, toddlers, everything. What are their sensory preferences? What do they seek and what do they avoid? So they might really seek proprioceptive input, which is that deep pressure touch, it's a feeling. It's receiving input through your joints and muscles. So it's like the bear hugs and crashing into things and holding really, really tight. And vestibular input is swinging round and round going upside down, inverting your head and your body. And lots of that rough and tumble and things. So I want to know what winds them up, what winds them down, what do they find a comfortable and uncomfortable, because this is all going to play a part into how we assess how we're we're spending our days and perhaps our bedtime routines. And thinking about what we can change in terms of little rhythms and rituals. Throughout our days, we will be looking at nutrition. But that is outside of my scope of practice to provide any specific advice around nutrition. But what I would be looking at is how many feeds a day are you having? Are we you know, short on feeds, because you know you're feeding four times a day because that's what the routine says. And I can definitely pick up on stuff like that. But in terms of any specific nutrition advice, I would be always referring on for that, I'd be screening for any red flags, such as sleep disordered breathing, food allergies, mineral deficiencies, again, outside of my scope of practice to diagnose and treat that, I certainly have some little indicators that let me know when there might be something to refer on to. And I have a an incredible naturopath, who I refer everybody on to, I would be really interested in how you're spending your days. How much time are you spending outside AI? Is your child spending a lot of time in, you know, on the floor? Or are they in containers a lot? You're getting outside of the house? Like are you are you finding that you're trying to spend too much time in the in the dark room? Because you're trying to get sleep sorted? And in that way, you're not making it outside? Are you doing things that fill your cup? Are you? Are you catching up with friends? Are you going for walks? Are you getting exercise? What fills your cup? And what does that look like at the moment? Are you actually doing things that bring you joy and fill your cup? Or are you completely depleting yourself? I will also want to know what sleep looks like. Obviously, I will always offer for you to hand me a sleep diary. So that would be over three days or so. And then that's it because I am not an advocate for tracking. But in terms of our work together, it's really helpful to have a diary for a few days. And that again, would not be overnight checking the clock about every time your child woke, it would just be you know was that with a with a big wakes, little wakes? What do those wakes in the night look like? How do you settle them back to sleep? Do you have to get up and walk around the house with them? Or is it just a little stir hop on the boob and go back to sleep. I want to know about your sleep arrangement who sleeps where and what your goals are with that often I will work with people who are bed sharing, but they want to get baby or kid into their own bed, or I'm working with
Fiona Weaver 09:09
people who want to night when and change up to sleep arrangement, lots and lots of different things. So I would get all of that background. And then what we would do is go back to your goals. And we will break them down into really manageable steps. And that is not going to look the same for each family. That's really important because your babies and your kids are all unique and not the same. And do you know them better than I do. So it's a really collaborative approach in me offering you some suggestions, offering you some creative ways of how you can make some changes. But from there, it's up to you to use your wisdom to draw on the resources and the tools that we've worked through together to work out a way to meet those goals in your own time. So you might be out of point where you're like I am done, I am cooked, I need to stop breastfeeding at night, I'm done. I'm not weaning, this is it, I'm ready. And that plan of attack might look very different to somebody who's saying, I don't want to do this forever. I'm not there yet. But I would love some insight and some resources and help in how I could possibly prepare for that, and how I would manage that when the time is right. So that's going to look very different for each family. Things that we can control around our baby sleep might be working with them on where they sleep, how we get them to sleep, the sleep environment, you know, using red lights and white noise and layering on those sleep associations. What we can't control is how much sleep they take and how often they wake. When we are working together, I would hope that inadvertently they would wait less, or the weeks would be more manageable. Ideally, we'd love them sleeping through the night, right? Wouldn't that be a treat. But I am very clear around, we don't have control over that. It's up to us to set up an environment conducive to sleep. It's up to us to provide opportunities for sleep, and to set up some really lovely sleepy rituals. So that's not necessarily routines by the clock. It's not necessarily certain kinds of sleep associations. But it's about making sleep a really nice place to be for everyone, because this is a long term game. And we all want sleep to be a lovely place to be. So we work around your perspective around sleep, we work around setting up environment conducive to sleep, we work around how you spend your days, adding in any sensory input where your child needs that we work on tweaking the bedtime routine to suit your individual child, maybe you're just trying to wind down for too long. And actually your child needs a real good wind up before you wind down to get all that energy out. We work on really beautiful connection rituals with your child, whether that's a bedtime or just throughout the day, we work on building attachment through special time and reading their cues and attuning to their cues and just relaxing about all of the rules and the shoulds of sleep. So there are heaps and heaps of ways that you can get creative around sleep and to optimize your child's sleep, and your family's sleep as a whole. We will also look at optimizing your sleep as a man. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do these rigid sleep training things that feel shitty for you shitty for your kid, and just don't feel in alignment with your values. So that I hope that answers your question. Try not to waffle but I can move forward. If you want to know more information head to my website, I do provide one to one support for families who are wanting to make any changes or just wanting an eagle eye view around their family sleep to optimize the sleep they have. It includes a full intake form, which is what I was speaking about before I would assess the intake form, get your sleep diary that's optional. And you would also have a little mini course. It's like a resource library about on a Sleep Foundation. So in that we talked about the temperament and sensory preferences, co regulation strategies, we talk about perspective shifting, all of that kind of beautiful stuff. And then we would have our 60 minute zoom consult. So if that is of interest to you, I'm here I'm here for you. If you have any questions, let me know otherwise, I will pop the pop the link in my show notes and yeah, I'll be back with another little quicksticks question answer scenario soon. I like doing this. Alright, have a good day. Thank you so much for listening to mama chatters 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.
