Back-to-School Sleep Q&A Podcast
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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.
We have made it through another week of parenting, so congratulations. Kudos to you. We are just chugging right along.
I don't know if you have any school aged children, but in our house we are gearing up to head back to school in just a couple days on Thursday. So my oldest will be going into first grade and my daughter my second will be going into kindergarten. So they are. Jazzed, and I am excited for them, although I am very, very sad to see them go off to school.
Ugh. I always get so sad at the back to school season. But I am excited on the other end because [00:01:00] I'm gonna have about like a month of peace with just Cal and I at home during the week until I welcome baby number four. So. I know that it will be a good thing that the older two have some school to go to, and I'll have some downtime with Calvin and the baby.
So I'm really looking forward to that.
With them going back to school. I posted this on my Instagram, but in case you don't follow me or in case you missed it, I know that my summer hours as far as consultation calls go have been super limited. I've pretty much blocked off my online scheduler. And I've still been meeting with those of you who reach out to me.
So thank you so much for being patient and finding a time that we can both chat , while I have all the kids here with me. But now that they're gonna be going back to school, obviously I still have Calvin, but I have help from grandparents
and then of course, during nap time. I won't have two other kids that are awake here at my house. So during nap time, [00:02:00] I'll be more open to scheduling consultation calls during that time as well. So as of next week.
That's August 25th. My schedule will be pretty much back to my normal hours, so if you'd like to book a one-on-one consultation call, you'll be able to go right to my website and book it on there. I'll have my availability on there now and it won't be blocked off anymore.
One caveat to that is I'm probably only going to keep that calendar open until I am like 38 weeks pregnant. I still feel like that might even be pushing it a little bit. I might go a little bit earlier than that. On a consultation leave, I'll be taking time off of one-on-one consultations when the baby is born. The Sleep by Alex membership will be 100% up and running still. So don't worry about that if you're a member. But if you're wanting to work one-on-one at all, then you're gonna wanna head straight to my website and schedule your call because there's really only going to be maybe about a [00:03:00] month on there, probably not even before I have it blocked off again for.
I'm not sure how long yet. I'm really just gonna give myself some time and feel it out. Of course, I still have Instagram. I'll be on, I'll have this podcast, I'll have the membership. So the consultation calls are the only thing that are going to be taking a little pause as I soak up the new baby hood.
Okay. For this week's podcast, we're going to do a good old listener q and a. I know I haven't done this in a while. I said I was gonna do it maybe once a month. I think it's been longer than that since I last did it. But I got a ton of great questions this week,
I just wanted to take this opportunity to touch on as many listener questions as I could so that I can get more of you some actionable tips and advice for your sleep situations.
Okay. The first question is, what age should babies or toddlers stop using the pacifier? So there's usually two best times I recommend to drop [00:04:00] the pacifier. The first is during sleep training between four and six months ideally. So if you are sleep training your baby and they're between four and six months, when you're doing this.
And you've decided that, you know what? I don't really want to even have the pacifier anymore. It's just another moving part I have to deal with. I don't wanna have to drop it at a later time, or maybe my baby isn't super into it, or we're sleep training anyways, so we might as well just get rid of it.
Plenty of people decide between four and six months when they teach their baby to fall asleep independently to drop the pacifier. If you choose to keep it after that time, and it's totally fine to keep it while sleep training just FYI, at least when I sleep train with people. But if you choose to keep it past six months old, the next best time truly isn't going to be until they're at least like two years old, between the age of two and three, they're gonna better understand what's going on when you take it away.
It can definitely still cause sleep [00:05:00] disturbances, but it's going to be less of a disturbance to their sleep than it would be at, let's say 12 months or something like that. So really, four to six months is the best time, or between two and three. I've always opted for between two and three with my kids. I love the pacifier and I like relying on it a lot of the time, to be honest.
So. This is how I've avoided not being their human pacifier ever. I've just never had to get in that cycle of feeding to sleep or nursing for comfort all day or all night. And I truly thank the pacifier for that. So I choose to keep it through sleep training, and then I just make sure that by the age of three, my kids have dropped it.
So far, they all dropped it between two and a half and almost three.
Okay, here's the next question. Seven month old was sleep trained, then got sick, then traveled. Now they're waking every two to three hours and having false starts [00:06:00] also, we just shifted to two naps. Will things settle on their own? What do I do? Okay. I chose to answer this question because I hear this from people all of the time.
So many people I talk to are like, well, we did sleep train, or We did do this, or sleep was fine. And then they got sick and then they got a tooth and then we went on a trip and then they had a sleep regression and then they cried at bedtime because they were didn't wanna separate from me. And then ever since then.
Things have just fallen apart. Like I'm just waiting for it to go back to the way it was. And what I'll say is if you've been in this sort of crummy situation for more than a couple weeks, it's probably not just gonna go back to the way it was. If your baby is no longer sick, for example, let's say they got sick and sleep went out the window and you had to pull out all the stops to help them to sleep, totally, totally normal.
But let's say they're no longer sick. Now they're feeling better, yet we're still needing to pull out all the stops in order to help them get to sleep. This is not just going [00:07:00] to go away on its own. This means that now we've developed some habits that are sticking around until we do something about it.
Most sleep regressions are going to clear up within a couple weeks. So if you are in a sleep regression that has lasted longer than a couple weeks, you've probably developed new habits with your baby that now your baby relies on in order to sleep.
So for this listener, when your baby wakes up every two to three hours, now what are they needing in order to fall back asleep? Just think about that for a minute. Are they just waking and stirring and going back to sleep on their own? Then it's probably not a habit sticking around. Maybe they need a shift in their schedule or something.
But if they're waking every two to three hours and you're needing to go in there, you're needing to pat them or rock them or feed them. This is a habit they now have in between each sleep cycle transition. They're waking up in between the sleep cycle transition, which is typically every two to three hours, and then they're wanting whatever they had while they were sick or traveling [00:08:00] or going through a aggression or whatever it may be in order to fall back asleep.
So once again, if you are already two plus weeks into a regression or your baby's tooth, the top of their tooth has already popped through their gums, or your baby is no longer sick anymore, they don't have a fever, they don't have an ear infection. , if they've gotten over whatever it was that initially got them to this situation in the first place, and you're still dealing with the crummy sleep, then most likely it's not just gonna clear up on its own.
It's most likely going to take some effort from you to change your sleep habits from what you're doing. Now, back to independent sleep. Sometimes for a previously sleep trained baby that looks like a little sleep training reset, so you can just use whatever method you chose before and go ahead and try it all again.
To avoid needing to do this. Every time your baby gets sick or gets a tooth or you go on a trip, truly think about what sort of habits you're forming [00:09:00] when your kids are going through these things. Of course, I'm not saying don't rock your baby to sleep when they're sick or anything like that. Yes, of course we're gonna pull out all the stops to help a sick baby sleep, but once they start feeling better and they no longer have that fever, and now they're just.
Like sort of whining and being cranky because this is what they like. Now we've gotta ride away, get back to our old sleep habits so we don't have these things sticking around.
If your baby hasn't been sleeping well because of teething, but it's been longer than like a week, it, it's probably not because they're teething anymore. The bulk of cutting a tooth is usually gonna be limited to three to seven-ish days. If you see that their gums are red or swollen, maybe they're tender to the touch, maybe you can actually see the tooth right under the gums trying to pop out like these things all mean that, yeah, they're probably in pain and they need some extra help and comfort, but once that tooth has popped out of the top, or maybe you're not seeing any of those things, they're not having crappy sleep because of teething.
It's because of habits now that are around that they're [00:10:00] used to. Okay, sorry, I just went on my like teething, sleep regression, tangent. Anywho, needless to say to this listener, you're probably gonna have to do something about it by this point,
and once again, it sounds like you already did sleep training and used a method that worked well for you. So I would just do that over again.
Okay. The next question is, how do I prevent my 11 week old from waking up every 30 minutes between eight and 11:00 PM Oh, first of all, I am so sorry you were dealing with that. That is exhausting, especially by the end of the day. When you just wanna put them to bed. So I'd be curious about a lot of things going on here.
Now, there's a lot of moving parts when it comes to newborn sleep, so there is no like one size fits all answer here. But I'm just gonna list a few things to maybe think about. First of all. Is your baby going to bed too early? So most newborns, and this can be up to like four months old, do better with a later bedtime between nine, 10 or [00:11:00] 11 o'clock.
So sometimes they truly just aren't going to get a long stretch of sleep. Until then, it'll look like little cat naps until finally it's. 10 or 11 at night, and then they'll do their long stretch of sleep. So it could just be that your baby is not yet ready for an eight o'clock bedtime. I would just have a cat nap at eight o'clock and then have them awake for a couple hours before they go to bed for a long stretch.
So that's one option now.
Because you're saying they're waking up every 30 minutes. That's a lot. So if the bedtime thing doesn't help and that's not the issue, I would be very curious about what's going on with their daytime feeds. I would be very curious about what's going on with any discomfort. Do they have gas or reflux? Do they have a possible lip tie or tongue tie?
Do they have any intolerances? If we cannot even get stretches of sleep that are three hours long at this age, then I'm very curious about what's going on with [00:12:00] feeding. Are we getting full feeds spread out every two to three hours during the day and what's going on
when it comes to any discomfort they may have?
I would love to chat with you. If you want to chat, come head over to the Sleep by Alex membership or book a 30 minute consult. We can totally kind of troubleshoot this. There's a lot that goes into newborn sleep once again, but those are just a few things that come to the top of my mind.
Okay, here is the last question for today. My 11 month old is still waking early between five and 5:45 AM their wake windows are three and a half hours, three and a half hours, and three hours, 45 minutes, and sometimes one time a night they wake up.
They also have inconsistent naps. Two of them a day. They're either 42 to 48 minutes or two hours. Okay? By 11 months old. We can 100% get on a consistent clock based nap schedule, but you have to put in some work to get there with some babies. If you are going solely off of wake windows still at 11 months old, and when they take a 42 minute [00:13:00] nap, you just get them up, start the wake window, then offer the next nap.
Three and a half hours later, you are going to have naps that are all over the place. That's just going to keep perpetuating. An unpredictable nap schedule. So what you can do is, yes, we need to be cognizant of wake windows. We need to understand how long it's appropriate for my baby to be awake, even at 11 months old before they need to go to sleep.
These are really, really important and we need to start getting their body on a clock that works for us if we would like it to be consistent.
So for example, if they do well with a three and a half hour wake window in the morning, I would make sure we are not offering that first nap any earlier than nine 30.
That's us shooting for a 6:00 AM Wake up. That means the first nap would land at nine 30. If they wake up before six, we're gonna either leave them, pull out all the stuff, so to get them back to sleep, we're gonna make sure it's clear like it is not time to wake up yet. Then once it's six. Okay. We turn on the lights, we get up, and [00:14:00] then we're going to keep them up until they're nap at nine 30.
If they take a 42 minute nap, we're going to do the same thing. Depending on what you're comfortable with, you're either going to leave them until the end of the desired nap time. I'd say at least like 75 minutes at this point would be like a full nap.
At this age,
or you can be in there with them until the end of their nap time, whatever it is. Of course, I work with people to get like a one-on-one plan on how to do this. These are just some options that we usually work through.
But we're gonna start to teach their body like, no, no. This is how long nap time lasts. And we're not gonna start their wake window right when they wake up from their short nap. We're going to do what we can to make it clear like your nine 30 nap is not over until 10 45. And then at 10 45. We're turning on the lights, so we're opening the blinds or we're pretending like they just woke up, and then we're gonna try and get the next nap as close to our desired nap time as we can.
There's some wiggle room. Of course, on a clock based schedule, I would have 30 minutes of wiggle room, so you have a window that you're shooting for. You don't need to make them [00:15:00] super cranky, overtired, and losing it to make it to the quote unquote nap time. But you do wanna start to be consistent about laying them down.
In these 30 minute windows, this is going to start to help you get on a clock based schedule. Once again, if they only sleep that 42 minutes, we're gonna make it clear like nap times is not over yet.
You're gonna go back to sleep, and we're not start in the next wake window or the next wake time until our desired end of nap time. Of course, this is all assuming that your baby already falls asleep completely independently. If you are rocking your baby to sleep or feeding your baby to sleep or snuggling them to sleep or patting them to sleep, then you kinda have to scratch everything I just said, and you have to start with sleep initiation at the beginning of nap and the beginning of bedtime before you get to these other stages.
But if your baby's falling asleep on their own, they're just not napping predictably, then this is what you can focus on next.
What I will also add to this is right now I'm talking to a parent who has a baby who's almost a [00:16:00] year old, so they can be a little bit more flexible about their wake windows and fall into this clock based schedule a little easier. If you're trying to get your four or five month old on a clock based schedule, then they probably won't be as flexible with their wake windows.
And staying up even 15 to 20 minutes longer than they normally would, can be detrimental still at that stage. So if you have a younger baby, this doesn't necessarily all apply to you, of course some of it does, but this is specifically for older babies who can handle being awake a little longer than they typically would be.
Okay, everyone, thank you for tuning in this week. I know that was just a quick little q and a. I like to get four or five of you some actionable next steps. Of course, I don't get to ask you any questions, which if we're on the phone together, I ask like a bajillion questions and I don't get to hear about your specific situation in baby as much as I'd want to.
So if any of you feel like you wanna dive deeper on this or you want some one-on-one support in getting through [00:17:00] this. Scenario you're going through. Then of course, once again, schedule a phone consult or reach out to me. You can always send me an email at Sleep by [email protected] if you're curious what consultation you should book.
And of course the Sleep at Alex membership is always available for you to join, come to our live calls. Send me this information in question right away today, and we'll start messaging back and forth and get you right on your merry way. Thanks everyone. I hope you have a fantastic week and we will chat next week.