pod ep 11 listener q & a #2
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[00:00:00] Welcome to this sleep by Alex podcast. I am a certified pediatric sleep consultant and a mom of three, and I will be bringing you quick science backed sleep advice to get you and your baby or a toddler sleeping well.
Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday. Welcome back.
I hope all you moms, dads, the grandparents, caregivers, whoever you are, are having a lovely day.
We're in a full summer swing over here, and if you didn't see, um, my story on Instagram. I have my three kiddos at home with me all summer, and I don't have like set hours each week that I know I'm going to be kid free. So I just wanted to remind you that if you want to schedule a one-on-one consultation call, I am absolutely still doing them.
But if you go to my website and you see that like I only have one time slot, or I'm all booked up for a couple weeks, please just shoot me a message because I will absolutely fit you in. I just have to, you know, arrange for all the [00:01:00] kids to be taken care of. So. Please know that I am still doing consultation calls.
I just can't quite have the same amount of set hours on my website because I've got my kiddos with me all day long.
Also, if you want a one-on-one consultation, now is the time. Summertime is gonna be the time for you to get it in because come October I am going to be welcoming my new little baby, and I will definitely keep the online membership going, but I will take a little maternity leave from the one-on-one consultation call.
So if you're wanting to work one-on-one. And please do so in the next few months.
All right. A couple updates here that I'm gonna be tackling soon with my own kiddos and I will make sure that I'll share along the way.
My little guy is two and a half, he'll be three in October, and of course I'm due with another baby in October, and I feel like. Toddlers turning three. There are so many things to tackle, so I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by [00:02:00] what to do first. Luckily we already potty trained a couple months ago that had a rough start, , but then ended up going really, really well.
And he is totally potty trained now. But we have two more things that at some point I need to address, especially as he approaches three years old.
So the first is he's still sleeping with a pacifier. So he does not get his pacifier during the day, but he gets it when he sleeps at nap time and bedtime. My hard line here is not past three years old. Like, we're really gonna make sure this is gone by three for the sake of his mouth and teeth.
But I'm also welcoming a baby right as he's turning three, and I don't want to have too many changes for him all at the same time. So I'm thinking that in the next month or so, I'm going to need to take away the pacifier, which I am so not looking forward to. . Luckily he has IES and like other comfort items that he loves, but right now I can put [00:03:00] everybody to bed and they all sleep all night and I'm pregnant and I'm tired and I think I'm really scared to like take the next step that could possibly mess with sleep.
But I did wanna let you know that I am going to be addressing this soon because it does have to do with toddler sleep. So if you're curious about the process of taking away the pacifier and how it ends up going for us, just subscribe to the podcast because probably in the next month or so I will be sharing my experience.
Another thing we will be doing with him is eventually moving to a big kid bed or a toddler bed. He is still in a crib in his own room. Right now, the house we're currently living in has about zero space for this next baby, which is gonna get really interesting.
But because he is gonna be turning three right as the baby's born, and I don't really need the crib, at least for the first few months because I'll have the baby in my room in a bassinet. I'm not gonna be buying another crib this time around. He'll definitely be old enough to move to a toddler bed, and then whenever I'm ready for the crib, the baby can use the crib.
But once again, I don't want to do this all at once. I don't want the baby to be [00:04:00] born and I'm like kicking him out of his crib and I'm taking away his pacifier. That is just way too much for a toddler to handle. Having a little sibling enter the equation is enough for a few months.
So I'm not really sure what my plan is for that one yet. I know I'm gonna start with the pacifier. I'm gonna see how it goes. If it goes okay, I'm gonna keep him in the crib for as long as I can. Like I said, I don't need the crib right away with the baby. So I'm just gonna keep him in there, ride it out, and then maybe a few months after the baby's born, that's when he moves to his toddler bed and he's actually gonna be joining his other siblings in their room.
So there's gonna be three of them in there. And then the baby will have their own room. I know it's gonna be a little silly, but it is what it is while we live here.
But I'm also thinking that like if he has a hard time with the pacifier getting taken away and he starts fighting sleep and he starts crying a lot and I'm like a week or two in and it's still not going well. He may actually benefit from [00:05:00] moving into the room with his older siblings because he really wants to sleep in there.
And I think it would be fun and exciting for him and comforting for him to have his brother and his sister in the room. So that's definitely a possibility over the summer if I feel like the pacifier transition doesn't go well, but I'm gonna start with the pacifier 'cause that's more important for the health of his mouth
and then go from there. So stay tuned. I will keep you updated on all how all that goes.
For the rest of this episode, I just wanted to do another quick listener q and a. I loved doing this last month because I got so many great questions and while of course, it's nice to dive into like one topic and really break it down, it's also nice to be able to give like five or six of you some quick actionable tips that you can start right away.
I think I'm gonna try and shoot for one of these listener q and a episodes like once a month-ish. If it feels like you guys like this, I will throw these in there every month and get your questions answered. If you [00:06:00] ever want one of your questions answered, you can either send me a voice memo or a message to sleep by Alex [email protected], or of course, I'm always on Instagram at sleep by Alex.
Okay, the first question comes from Brooke today, and her question is, what is the sweet spot to sleep train? This is such a good question. So there is a sweet spot to sleep train, and what does that mean? Well, basically it means it's the easiest time to sleep train. It's probably not going to take a super long time.
Your baby's not super set in their ways, but they're old enough and developmentally ready to learn the skill of sleeping independently. I. If you're outside of the sweet spot, is sleep training impossible? No, absolutely not. But it can definitely get harder as your baby gets older. Or of course if your baby is younger than the sweet spot, they're just not gonna be ready yet.
So the perfect timing for sleep training is usually between four and six months. Now every baby's different. Not every baby is [00:07:00] going to be ready right at four months. Some are going to be closer to five or six months, but for the most part, between four and six months is gonna be a great time to sleep train.
They're usually going to take to it quickly. They haven't been too set in their ways. They don't have new skills that you need to contend with, like sitting up in the crib, crawling around, pulling themselves up, calling mama, calling dad, reaching their arms out as your baby gets older.
Sleep training, 100% is possible, but they will fight longer and harder and do these other skills that can prolong the process and just make it feel trickier.
So if you have a four, five, or six month old and sleep training is on your radar at all, I would definitely dive into some resources today and give it a go and see what happens before your baby gets older and it just gets harder.
Okay, the next question is from Angelique. She said, is it okay to let my 23 month old nap for three hours versus two and a half if he doesn't wake up [00:08:00] at two and a half hours? So it sounds like this almost 2-year-old, probably usually only naps for two and a half hours, but sometimes lately.
They're napping for three hours, if not woken up. So this is going to be different for every toddler. Some two year olds are perfectly fine, still taking a three hour nap. They can go to bed easily and they can still sleep all night long. If that's the case, if you feel like you can let your 23 month old sleep for three hours and bedtime's not a struggle, , it's not getting pushed too late for you
it's not taking a super long time and he's sleeping through the night and sleeping well, not waking up too early, then absolutely. You should let him sleep for three hours if he needs it. Great. If you find that you start to do this, you let him sleep for three hours, and then all of a sudden some of those things are happening, bedtime's taking a lot longer.
He's waking up earlier in the morning. Maybe he's waking in the middle of the night and wasn't before. These are all indications that the three hour nap was just a little bit too [00:09:00] much.
The next listener question is, my baby is four months. When is a good time to start a nap slash bedtime routine? Thank you. It is never too early or too late to start a nap or bedtime routine. You can start a bedtime routine as soon as your baby is born. Now of course, when there are like a fresh newborn, there might not be tubs of routine, and that's totally okay.
But you can definitely start to lay the foundation of, here are a few actions we always do before you go take a nap or before you go to bed. Usually this can be really helpful as you approach like two to three months old and definitely by four months old to have a routine set in place before your baby goes to bed and before they take a nap.
All this said, this doesn't need to be anything fancy or elaborate. A nap time routine can be five to 10 minutes. It can mean we turn the lights down, we turn the sound machine on, we change the diaper, we put the SleepSack on, we sing one song and we go to bed. It does not have to be anything crazy. Same with the bedtime routine.
Maybe it's more like 20 to 30 minutes. It can involve a bath if you want to. [00:10:00] It doesn't have to every night. Maybe some lotion, diaper change, maybe a book or two. Snuggle for a few minutes. Go to sleep. It doesn't need to be anything crazy, but pick a few actions that are sustainable for you that you can do every single day.
This is really going to help prime your baby for sleep and let them know like, Hey, we're winding down. Sleep is coming. Once again, it's never too early to start this and it's never too late. If you have a 7, 8, 9 month old and you've never had a bedtime routine and you feel like it might be helpful for you, which I can pretty much guarantee it will, then you can totally start now.
Okay, the next question is. My nine month old suddenly sleeps only one hour each nap and wakes up at night. This has been going on for three weeks already. I've already tried different wake windows. Okay, so this is probably really common for a lot of you. Your baby was sleeping fine or napping fine, and then all of a sudden we have short [00:11:00] naps or we have frequent night wake up and you're trying to change their schedule around and every day you're trying a different wake window.
And it's just not working, and all of a sudden, like a month later you're still struggling with sleep. While of course I would need to talk to this parent to like really nail down what's going on here, I. Most likely because she added the word suddenly, which means that before her nine month old was napping and sleeping just fine.
That's what that's telling me because this is a change that happened about three weeks ago. What most likely is going on is your baby hit the eight month sleep regression, and that sort of threw things off the rails and maybe we started new habits and now their body's sort of on this clock.
And unless we make a change, it might just stick like this for a while. So a sleep regression can happen really at any time, but there is one right around eight months old for many babies. Sleep regressions might look like all of a sudden your baby is taking shorter naps, or all of a sudden they're wake up early in the morning or all of a sudden they're waking up more frequently than they were [00:12:00] at night.
Or all of a sudden you lay them down for bed and instead of going to sleep, they're sitting up in their crib crying. These are all things that can happen during a sleep regression. Most regressions around this age will pass within two weeks if we are consistent about the schedule and the sleep habits.
What I mean by that is if your baby used to nap for an hour and a half and now they're waking up after an hour crying, and instead of either leaving them until the end of their usual nap time or helping them get back to sleep or making it clear like, Hey, it's still nap time. I will sit with you, but we're not getting up in until the end of nap time.
Then your baby can just get used to now just sleeping that hour, getting up, starting the next wake window. Their whole schedule gets moved around and now their body clock is used to this new schedule, so that could be one thing that's happening. Same thing with wake ups at night. If your baby wasn't waking up at night before and then around eight months, all of a sudden they're waking up again at night.
Are you staying [00:13:00] consistent with how they sleep? Are we all of the sudden nursing back to sleep every two hours? Are we all of the sudden needing to hold them in the rocker all night long? These are all things that your baby can get used to very, very quickly at this age. And then the sleep regression won't pass within two weeks because now we've just formed new habits that are gonna stick around until we make a conscious effort to break them.
So the next time your baby was sleeping great and independently, and then all of a sudden they're having a sleep regression, I highly recommend implementing what I call the five minute rule. And this just means. Let's take a little pause. Let's see if your baby actually needs you right now. This can be for teething, for aggression, , your baby wakes up, you hear them, you set a five minute timer. You make sure like, okay, they're not gonna be going back to sleep. They're actually really upset about something. They really need me. The five minute timer goes off. If they're still crying, you can definitely go in there and see what you can get away with.
So try providing the. Smallest amount of [00:14:00] support to them to get back to sleep. So for some of you, you're gonna be comfortable with checking in, rubbing their back or belly, maybe even snuggling them for a minute to get them calm, and then walking out again and setting another five to 10 minute timer. You might repeat this until they fall back asleep, assuming that they're not really sick or something.
This is mainly for a sleep regression or you know they're getting a tooth.
Some of you are not going to be comfortable with the five to 10 minute timers, and that is okay. So once again, just see what little amount of intervention you can get away with. When it comes to getting the back to sleep, use a little soothing ladder and see what you can do to get them back to sleep without.
Automatically resorting to them coming to sleep with you or you holding them in the rocker all night long. So can you first sit next to them until they calm down and go back to sleep? If not, okay. Can you hold their hand? Can you rub their back or belly? Can you stroke their eyebrows? If none of this is working after a while, of course, can you pick them up and hold them in their rocker?
Absolutely. Can you try holding them [00:15:00] until they're not completely asleep? Laying them back down, giving them another five or so minutes and trying again. Awesome. The hope is that these little soothing ladders will help us not jump to straight into our bed or straighten into our arms for the rest of the night.
Unless you want that to be a habit that sticks around. If you're totally fine with your baby coming into your bed in the middle of the night, then please, please do so . But if you don't want that to happen, then you really need to give it a good college effort of trying the other things before we're jumping to something like nursing back to sleep all night long, especially at nine months old.
They are going to really get set in their ways. And they'll continue to want that even past the regression. So now that it's been three weeks with this person, most likely it's not the regression anymore that's happening.
Most likely there's some sort of habits that have been formed that need to be switched up. I am totally happy to support you through this process. We can get you right back on track, especially if sleep was fine a few weeks ago.
This won't take long at all. Hop in the Sleep by Alex membership. Use [00:16:00] Code Podcast for 50% off. You can literally just stay for one month if you want. We'll get your sleep back on track.
And I'll make sure you don't go another 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks with these short naps and frequent night wake up.
Okay. Last question I will address today. Any tips for helping break the Feed to Sleep Association for a seven month old baby? Thank you. Yes, absolutely. This can be a tricky spot that many parents get stuck in is this Feed to Sleep Association. It can feel really overwhelming when, first of all, the only way your baby can get to sleep is by feeding, especially if it's by nursing, right?
Because you're the only one in the family maybe who can do this. , but even when it's with a bottle, it can still feel unsustainable because sometimes you feed your baby to sleep, you finally get them down, you lay them down in their bed and they wake up 10 minutes later and then your only option is to pop another bottle in their mouth or pop the breast in their mouth and they already ate.
So technically they shouldn't be hungry, and this is just really hard to rely on feeding to sleep in some [00:17:00] situations.
In order to break the Feed to Sleep association, you're going to want to move the feeds away from nap time and bedtime. So 20 minutes maybe before nap time and bedtime. You are still giving the feed, but it is in a bright room. We are not. Doing our bedtime routine, yet we are making it clear like we are staying awake.
We're doing our best to keep our baby awake during the feed and then we're going to rely on other things to get them to sleep. At seven months old, you can absolutely just teach your baby to fall asleep completely independently. So if you are up for some sleep learning, you can move the feed earlier and you can go straight to teaching your baby how to fall asleep completely on their own.
This is going to break that Feed to Sleep association within the first week or so. You can also do this in a gradual way if you're not quite ready for that. So moving from feeding to sleep to rocking to sleep is going to be a great first step. Then maybe you move to padding to sleep, to rubbing their back until they're asleep, to sitting with them until they're asleep, so on and so forth.
However you wanna go about it. Obviously, [00:18:00] there's different methods for different temperaments and different families. But your biggest first step is going to be move the feed away from bedtime, away from nap time, and start to help your baby learn to associate other things with falling asleep If you'd like, literally step-by-step guidance on that, please see the show notes.
Joining the Sleep IAL membership allows you access instantly to the four to 24 month sleep course. I break all of this down in depth. I give you four different sort of options when it comes to what method you'd like to use, depending on how gradual or how accelerated you'd like to go. And then you send me your questions all day, every day, whenever you need to come to the live calls, and I'll help guide you through the process.
Okay. That's it for today. Thank you all of you who sent in your questions. Once again, you can always send your questions to Sleep by Alex [email protected], or you can send me a message on Instagram at Sleep by Alex. I hope you have a lovely week and I will see you next [00:19:00] week.
