If you’ve ever been told your baby is “broken” because they don’t sleep through the night, you’re not alone. So many mums feel pressured by rigid schedules, conflicting advice, and the constant comparison game. But here’s the truth: babies aren’t meant to sleep like adults, and understanding their natural biology can make a world of difference for both you and your little one.

In this episode, Dr Renee White sits down with Professor Helen L. Ball, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Durham Infancy & Sleep Centre. Helen has spent decades researching infant sleep and is the founder of the Baby Sleep Information Source (BASIS). Her work bridges the gap between science and parenting, offering evidence-based guidance that supports both parents and health professionals.

Together, Renee and Helen explore the realities of baby sleep, challenge outdated myths, and share practical ways you can feel more confident (and more rested).

You’ll hear about:

• The origins of strict baby sleep schedules – and why they don’t align with infant biology.
• Safe bedsharing and breastfeeding – what the research actually shows.
• Swaddling myths – how it impacts arousal, feeding, and safety.
• Recognising when sleep struggles might signal something else – and when to seek help.
• Practical strategies you can try tonight to harmonise your rest with your baby’s natural rhythms.

Whether you’re a first-time mum trying to navigate newborn nights or a parent feeling burnt out by sleep advice that just doesn’t work for your family, this conversation is here to bring you clarity, reassurance, and some much-needed perspective. You’re not doing it wrong. Your baby isn’t broken. And you are most certainly not alone.

✨ Subscribe, share with a friend, and remember: the more we spread evidence-based knowledge, the more we can support every mum to feel confident and cared for.

Resources and Links:

📲 Connect with Renee on Instagram: @fillyourcup_

🌐 Learn more about Dr Renee White and explore Fill Your Cup Doula services

🍪 Treat yourself with our Chocolate + Goji lactation cookies

Learn more about Professor Helen L. Ball’s work:

• Website: BASIS – Baby Sleep Information Source
• Website: How Babies Sleep
• Instagram: @basis_babysleepinfosource
• Facebook: Baby Sleep Information Source

If this episode reassured you or shifted how you think about baby sleep, pass it on to another mum who might need it.

✨ This episode is proudly brought to you by Cake Maternity

Cake Maternity specialises in high-quality nursing bras that are supportive, functional, comfortable, and stylish because you shouldn’t have to compromise as a mum.

With sizes from 6–22 bands and A to JJ cups, their range includes seamless, flexi-wire, hands-free pumping, and absorbent birthing bras. Explore the collection at au.cakematernity.com and use code FYC15 for 15% off your order.

Disclaimer: The information on this podcast is not a substitute for independent professional advice.

Nothing contained in this episode s intended to be used as medical advice and it is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, nor should it be used for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for your own health professional's advice.

[00:00:27] Dr. Renee White: I'm Dr. Renee White, and this is the [00:00:30] Science of Motherhood. This episode is proudly brought to you by a brand I personally used and absolutely loved during my breastfeeding journey. Cake maternity. So cake maternity, specializes in [00:00:45] high quality nursing bras that are not only supportive. Functional and incredibly comfortable, but also stylish because you shouldn't have to compromise just because you're a mum.[00:01:00]

[00:01:35] Dr. Renee White: That feeling of like wearing a bra to bed is just like, ugh, no thanks. And so I remember walking [00:01:45] into my local kind of, you know, bra store. I think I was like five, six days postpartum. And I said to them, I need something that I can sleep with overnight that can, you know, get around town. But you know, that [00:02:00] I wanted something that was wire free, something that felt really luxe against my skin.

[00:02:31] Dr. Renee White: Like honestly, it felt so nice against my skin and as I said, like I slept in this bra for 15 months. Well, there was multiple bras. Let's be honest. Let's be honest, ladies, there was [00:02:45] more than one. I got two on that day, and then I just kind of, you know. Got more colors and that was just so, so nice to have.

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[00:04:26] Dr. Renee White: That's FYC 15. To get [00:04:30] 15% off your order, like seriously run, don't walk. These things are so, so good. As I said to you, 15 months of sleeping in one of these bras, like if that's not a testimonial, I don't [00:04:45] know what is.

[00:05:24] Dr. Renee White: If you have been enjoying this podcast, if you have got some sort of, [00:05:30] you know, confidence, you're feeling empowered, you've learnt something new, you've shared it with a friend or a family member, can you do me a favor? Can you pop into your Apple or [00:05:45] Spotify, wherever you are listening to this and just leave a review.

[00:06:23] Dr. Renee White: If we wanna be sharing that knowledge, we need reviews. That's how the game works [00:06:30] people. So if you can just pop into your app and just do a quick review, that would be absolutely amazing. I really do appreciate it. Alright. Today's guest, I [00:06:45] have to confess, and I can't remember if I said this in the interview because it's a bit of a blur for me because I tried so hard not to fan girl, but this particular guest I have had on my whiteboard as [00:07:00] someone who I wanted to invite on the podcast for quite some time. I think when I kind of went to rub her name off the, off the whiteboard, you know, when like the, the, the texta has been [00:07:15] on there for so long that you have to go over it with fresh texta to then rub it off. That's kind of what I had to do with today's guest's name.

[00:07:54] Dr. Renee White: I cannot wait for you to get this in your ears for all of [00:08:00] those playing at home. Helen is a professor of anthropology and she's the director of the Durham Infancy and Sleep Center. She has pioneered, absolutely pioneered the [00:08:15] translation of academic research on infant sleep into evidence for use by parents and healthcare staff by what's called BASIS, so the Baby and Sleep Information [00:08:30] Source website.

[00:08:58] Dr. Renee White: They're like two Goliaths [00:09:00] and there's always, you know, lots of opinions. Helen is all about the research. Okay. And what she says is backed by the research. And so in today's interview we talk about, you know, how it all started, like how [00:09:15] she became curious about this field. And like many of us in science, it stems from personal experience.

[00:10:04] Dr. Renee White: And we talk about, you know, why lots of people need to understand this probably before they have a baby. And I guess, you know, addressing those parental [00:10:15] expectations as well, when to seek help. Also, you know, I guess that practical implementation, if you're, if you are really struggling with newborn sleep, what are some of the things that you can [00:10:30] implement tonight to, I guess, you know, really start harmonizing the needs of your baby's biology?

[00:11:04] Prof Helen Ball: Well, thank you. Good morning. From the uk

[00:11:32] Dr. Renee White: Mm-hmm. And that is understanding how you got into this particular type of research. As a scientist, myself, I, I kind of look back [00:11:45] on, you know, what, was there a defining moment mm-hmm. Where you were like, actually, hold on a minute. I'm starting to become very curious about this field. Mm-hmm. And I guess, you know, was there a pivotal moment that made you realize that, [00:12:00] you know sleep, infant sleep is exactly the avenue you wanted to go down.

[00:12:35] Prof Helen Ball: And then realizing pretty quickly having a field, having a primatology field site in the Caribbean and being in the northeast of [00:12:45] England wasn't going to work with a, with a small child.

[00:12:49] Prof Helen Ball: So, you know, I went and did field work for, for one summer, the second, the first summer after we moved to Durham. And um, it was [00:13:00] just. I couldn't get excited about going and chasing around after monkeys on an island, even though the island was in the Caribbean when my husband and daughter were back in, you know, on the beach enjoying [00:13:15] themselves all summer. And I was missing all of that.

[00:13:19] Prof Helen Ball: And so I came back to the UK and decided that I needed to find something that I could do using the skills that I'd, that I'd learned in my [00:13:30] PhD, in observation, et cetera, that I could do closer to home.

[00:13:58] Prof Helen Ball: But nobody was [00:14:00] looking at it at all anywhere in Europe. And I thought, yeah, I can do that here in the uk. And I already knew lots of people with babies, et cetera. So that seemed like a, an easy place to start, and it just really spread from [00:14:15] there.

[00:14:29] Dr. Renee White: Like [00:14:30] were you taking kind of your own experience as a mother into that? Or was it kind of, you know, chicken and the egg scenario?

[00:15:16] Prof Helen Ball: And why didn't we just keep her with us? And I remember asking a friend about it because, you know, it was one of those things that nobody really talked about. So you didn't know if other people did it. But as an anthropologist it made sense. It was sort [00:15:30] of an obvious solution. And she said, oh yes. And, and her son was about four at that point.

[00:15:53] Prof Helen Ball: And they would say, what about infant sleep? Mm-hmm. I'd say, I'd say I'm, I'm interested in the, the mother baby bed [00:16:00] sharing part because it seems to me we don't know very much about it. We don't know how people make their decisions about it. We don't know how people do it. Uh, we dunno how they benefit from it.

[00:16:40] Prof Helen Ball: But I thought that it did. Yeah. And there was a lot of stigma around [00:16:45] it. People were afraid to talk about it for lots of reasons, not just because they thought they'd get told off that they were gonna kill their babies, but because it was sort of, I think it was sort of a associated with permissive parenting, and you were [00:17:00] somehow letting your child get away with something if you weren't forcing them to sleep in a cot by themselves all night. Um,

[00:17:11] Prof Helen Ball: Yeah. Yeah. People were reluctant to sort of [00:17:15] discuss these things for fear of other people's opinions, and I felt there was a huge amount to be unpicked and unpacked there. So yeah, that was. It was as a result of my own experiences, but also the [00:17:30] reaction of other people that made me think, yeah, there's, there's, there's more to this than, than anybody understands.

[00:18:09] Dr. Renee White: It's a tool in the toolkit, as I call it. And I also broach it in the sense of like, [00:18:15] you may not think that you are going to do it, but a lot of people end up doing it. So let's have a conversation about how to do. Safely. Um, so you know, in advance what you're doing, your [00:18:30] research informed, was it the 2019 revision of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicines Protocol?

[00:18:37] Prof Helen Ball: That's right.

[00:18:53] Prof Helen Ball: Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, if we start with the, sort of the statistics around the relationship between breastfeeding and bed [00:19:00] sharing, what we've found is that about 80% of breastfeeders regularly bed share with their babies, and the remainder will do it some of the time. It's, it's not a hugely common strategy to only keep your [00:19:15] baby in a, in a crib if you're breastfeeding. And that's just because. Breastfeeding? Well, it's, it's, there are multiple reasons, but one is that breastfeeding's soporific for both you and your baby. And so you're likely to fall asleep while you're feeding.

[00:19:57] Prof Helen Ball: And we found that that mums who [00:20:00] intentionally bed shared for that reason were more likely to carry on breastfeeding for longer because it made it less onerous that frequent night waking.

[00:20:11] Prof Helen Ball: And then the third reason is that the babies [00:20:15] need to feed frequently during the night is also linked to the mother's milk supply.

[00:20:47] Prof Helen Ball: So there's sort of multiple physiological and behavioral sort of reasons why bed sharing and breastfeeding end up being linked. And then in terms of sort of safety, one of the things that our research [00:21:00] showed around about the, the early, early noughties was the way in which breastfeeding mothers bed share with their babies was a very characteristics of pattern.

[00:21:33] Prof Helen Ball: And in every instance, the breastfeeding mums, regardless of whether they previously breastfed, and regardless of whether this was their first baby, and in the [00:21:45] postnatal ward, this was their first baby on their first night together, we just said, you've been allocated to bed sharing and let them get on with it.

[00:21:54] Dr. Renee White: mm-hmm.

[00:22:10] Dr. Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:34] Prof Helen Ball: Mm-hmm. And we saw that so consistently amongst mothers who were breastfeeding that it seems to me to be a sort of, well, not a sort of, but an, an instinctive behavior [00:22:45] that, that breastfeeding

[00:22:46] Prof Helen Ball: Will do. And so that, you know, that ended up informing an awful lot of guidance around safe bed sharing and what safe bed sharing looks like to the extent that [00:23:00] here in the UK now, that image of the mother curled up around the baby.

[00:23:22] Dr. Renee White: That's, yeah. That's amazing. I, I always kind of recite this story with, I think, you know, I got the fear of [00:23:30] God put into me, you know, don't, don't bed share and, you know, danger, danger type of thing. And I remember my daughter was seven months old at the time, and she got croup and it was, as you were kind of saying, it's that [00:23:45] exhaustive mm-hmm.

[00:24:28] Dr. Renee White: Mm, mm-hmm. Like this. [00:24:30] And I was like, you know, like I was kind of like Russell Crow from Beautiful Mind trying to work out what was going on, what going on. And then I was like. And I was like, hold on a minute. This is a complete farce. She's never [00:24:45] going back in the cot or basinette. Like, this is just insane. You know?

[00:25:17] Dr. Renee White: Like I've, it, we had a sick child and I still say I've never been so rested.

[00:25:53] Prof Helen Ball: I didn't make a choice. Mm-hmm. It was just the nearest hospital to where we were at the time. And, um, she [00:26:00] was, she was a very forward thinking, woman centered sort of midwife. And she had signs around her office going, no episiotomy and no enema and no shaving, and no, this, you know, she was stood for, you know, [00:26:15] um, not medicalizing childbirth in any way.

[00:26:37] Prof Helen Ball: Yeah. I, I think that was just kind of like this very fortuitous set of circumstances mm-hmm. That came together. That meant [00:26:45] that my first experience of mothering, I didn't have that sort of exhaustion, sleep deprivation, getting up every, you know, couple of hours

[00:26:58] Prof Helen Ball: Because these things [00:27:00] coalesced to just encourage me to bring her into bed from the day we got home.

[00:27:28] Dr. Renee White: Because we're trying to be the best [00:27:30] mum that we can. And so to have such positive reinforcement like that

[00:27:36] Dr. Renee White: Is absolute gold. I'd love to know, because we hear about, and I was subjected to this [00:27:45] because I got told that my baby was broken. Mm-hmm. Because she was sleeping 40 minutes at a time and to be honest with you, it didn't bother me.

[00:28:20] Dr. Renee White: Where, where does this origin come from of like this rigidity of sleep schedules and formulated [00:28:30] sleep plans. Like where does this all come from? Because I now know in hindsight, because I've got a lot of clarity and I've, you know, spoken to experts like you and, you know, read your book and things like that.

[00:28:57] Prof Helen Ball: Yeah. I think, I think [00:29:00] industrialization had a lot to do with it. The sort of, you know,

[00:29:04] Prof Helen Ball: The economic sort of. Changes that happened in the mid to late 18 hundreds through the early 19 [00:29:15] hundreds, I think had huge influences on, on adults and on family life, and required adults to work in a way that they'd never [00:29:30] had to work before. The sort of the mills and the factories and the, you know, the 12 hour shifts and the regimented sort of clocking in and clocking out and, and all of that kind of stuff changed the way in which [00:29:45] people lived, the way in which people thought about time, the way in which people organized their lives.

[00:29:52] Prof Helen Ball: People moved away from the places where their families had always lived to go to the cities to work in these [00:30:00] factories because they couldn't make money there.

[00:30:02] Prof Helen Ball: And then they had no support when they had babies. So those babies had to basically fit into this artificial sort of adult world [00:30:15] that wasn't ever designed to meet their needs.

[00:30:47] Prof Helen Ball: So they could be looked after by other people while mums were in the factories or whatever it was when, you know, the, the rise of artificial feeding came about because women couldn't breastfeed all the time and there were no [00:31:00] breast pumps at that, that period. So there was sort of a huge decline in, in bio biological motherhood, if you like. The sort of the things that we used to do as mothers prior to the mid 18 hundreds [00:31:15] all became practically impossible for women to do if they were, if they were working in a factory or a mill or something, or they were

[00:31:25] Prof Helen Ball: Or they were providing, you know, one of the service roles for all of the people who were working in [00:31:30] the factories and the mills and that, that sort of went on through the 1920s when the, what people call this, the era of scientific baby care sort of came into, its its height and people were [00:31:45] writing lots of guides for mothers, mostly middle class and upper class mothers.

[00:31:51] Prof Helen Ball: But these principles, you know, began to be picked up by ordinary everyday people as well, but they didn't necessarily read as [00:32:00] much or as well, so most of these guides were written for the sort of the educated well off. And they were about creating the regimented, compliant child who was not going to cause their [00:32:15] parents any, any stress or, or, you know, disharmony in the family or whatever because children, you know

[00:32:24] Prof Helen Ball: The era of children should be seen and not heard. Mm-hmm. Babies shouldn't [00:32:30] manipulate you. You know, all of the kind of sayings that we have about babies crying is good for their lungs and, um, you know, he's not gonna die themed, put him in a room by himself. You know, all of this [00:32:45] stuff came about during that era and it's, it's really sort of become a pervasive, sort of cultural folk wisdom [00:33:00] about how you treat babies.

[00:33:14] Dr. Renee White: Mm-hmm. [00:33:15] Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, I guess just tying that through, one of the things that we often get asked as doulas is, you know, how do I, how do I set my baby up [00:33:30] for sleep success?

[00:33:55] Dr. Renee White: Mm-hmm. And you know, maybe those who have experienced the sleep [00:34:00] industry of those strict schedules and realized, actually, you know what, that doesn't work for our family. What are some of the things that you would love for parents to know about, I guess, you know. Developing [00:34:15] healthy sleep wake cycles for their baby.

[00:34:23] Prof Helen Ball: Well, I think, I mean, one of the things that you mentioned a few minutes ago about having to teach your baby to sleep, I think is [00:34:30] one of the biggest myths that we can bust because what people are say, what people are understanding when they're told that is very different from what's actually happening.

[00:35:12] Prof Helen Ball: Pretty much on [00:35:15] command and for lengthy periods.

[00:35:18] Prof Helen Ball: And you know, fundamentally that second one to sleep on command for, for anybody to fall asleep when somebody else tells them or has decided that they [00:35:30] should, is impossible. You cannot fall asleep on command. You can only fall asleep when your sleep pressure is high enough.

[00:36:05] Prof Helen Ball: Mm-hmm. But if parents are trying to put their baby to bed at a time when the baby's sleep pressure isn't high, that baby is never gonna fall asleep [00:36:15] until it's had enough chance for its sleep pressure to increase. So what you end up doing is shushing and patting and rocking and what, you know, whatever strategy you try to use to make your baby go to sleep at the time that you've decided that [00:36:30] they should go to sleep, you're just passing time.

[00:36:58] Prof Helen Ball: You have to be [00:37:00] calm mm-hmm. In order to be able to relax.

[00:37:02] Prof Helen Ball: The sleep pressure to take over. So, you know, people, I would say if somebody is trying to get their child or their baby to go to sleep at a particular time and it, the baby [00:37:15] doesn't fall asleep within five or 10 minutes, give up. Do something different.

[00:37:20] Prof Helen Ball: Take them out. Mm-hmm. Play with them. Do something that's gonna, you know, engage their brain so that they build up a bit more sleep pressure and [00:37:30] try again in half an hour. Or, you know, wait until you, you think they're, they're sleepier. You know, this doesn't work for very new babies because very new babies can't sustain very long awake periods and they just fall asleep whenever they need to [00:37:45] all the time.

[00:38:11] Prof Helen Ball: Um, so people get hung up with [00:38:15] these rigid schedules, which are unrealistic because their baby is always changing. So actually the schedule needs to constantly change. So in a way, the schedule is pointless because you need to just follow your baby's [00:38:30] development.

[00:38:54] Prof Helen Ball: Mm-hmm. Yep. And you know, as adults we all have different amounts of time that we need to [00:39:00] sleep. And babies have different needs too. You know, if you look at some of those, so there's a, I've put in the book, because it's such an in illuminative graph from a systematic review that that was done by Barbara Gall from New Zealand about 10 years [00:39:15] ago now.

[00:39:40] Prof Helen Ball: And in the first six months or so, the averages of all the studies are all over [00:39:45] the place. Nevermind the individual babies in those studies. So, you know, the distributions go from some babies sleeping for as much as 22 hours in 24 and others sleeping for about eight or nine. And if you've got, you know, [00:40:00] a baby at one end of that distribution and your neighbor or sister's got a baby at the other end, you know, they're gonna be like chalk and cheese.

[00:40:24] Dr. Renee White: Mm, absolutely. Is there, is there ever a point [00:40:30] where there's like genuine sleep issues at all?

[00:40:56] Dr. Renee White: Mm-hmm. All the tools in the toolkit. Is there [00:41:00] anything, like, are there any things where you're like, okay, this is genuinely a sleep issue, or is it, or is it actually a fact of like something else is going on, which is influencing the sleep issue?

[00:41:19] Prof Helen Ball: It's often a feeding related issue. So it might be some kind of intolerance or you know, some, some. Something that is affecting the [00:41:30] baby's ability to feed and means that the baby has to keep waking and trying to feed, you know, frequently or that the baby's

[00:41:39] Prof Helen Ball: Feeling discomfort as a result of feeding, like some kind of allergy or, or what [00:41:45] intolerance or whatever.

[00:42:10] Prof Helen Ball: That is the clinical sort of thing that happens in the second half of the [00:42:15] first year, which is when the child sort of has these pauses in their breathing and Mm. That causes them to wake up. So you can, you can hear, you know, if you listen to your child when they're sleeping, you can hear if they have apnea, you'll hear them [00:42:30] sort of stop breathing and then start stutter and start breathing again.

[00:42:59] Prof Helen Ball: But I have come [00:43:00] across one or two, well, usually they're health practitioners who sort of come to me and say, I've got a mum and she, her baby's screaming and waking up and screaming in the middle of the night and she can't console them. And, and I'm like, that really sounds [00:43:15] like night terrors and you need to send her to a either gp.

[00:43:19] Prof Helen Ball: But you know, other than that. The children for whom parents really struggle with their sleep in babyhood tend to [00:43:30] have this as an issue throughout childhood. And it's often related to a later diagnosis of, of Neurodivergence A DHD or autism or you know, people will look back and go, oh, that [00:43:45] explains why they never slept.

[00:44:06] Dr. Renee White: That's interesting. I also, I fact check me, was there a paper, some research that yourself and [00:44:15] someone else did on swaddling?

[00:44:18] Dr. Renee White: Yes.

[00:44:20] Dr. Renee White: I'll, I'll, yes.

[00:44:22] Dr. Renee White: Oh my goodness. I have, I have a, I have a bit of a trauma story about that.

[00:44:27] Dr. Renee White: From like an experience in the hospital. [00:44:30] Uh, just, yeah. It was, it was a little bit like, you know, I, I, I took the route of, and I'm sure you've seen them, those like zip up mm-hmm kind of sleep suit. Yep. Things that kind of, your arms inside. Yeah. [00:44:45] Yeah. So my daughter was a Houdini and she had zero interest in being swaddled in the kind of, you know, muslin blanket cause she would just Shazam arms out. That's just, I knew that within 24 hours. Mm-hmm. So I was like, [00:45:00] okay, fine. And as every first time mum does, I had way too many things in my bag.

[00:45:28] Dr. Renee White: And I was like, oh my [00:45:30] God, what is going on? Mm-hmm. And I, I felt like I had taken away part of her job because her job was to show me how to wrap my child. Like a burrito baby. Like a burrito we take. [00:45:45] I'd taken that role from her and yes, she made us take it off her and she was like, this is how you wrap a baby.

[00:46:22] Dr. Renee White: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What did you find?

[00:46:44] Prof Helen Ball: [00:46:45] And in both cases it didn't seem to us from the evidence that swaddling was necessarily a good idea, uh, for most babies, certainly not for breastfed [00:47:00] babies. Because

[00:47:03] Prof Helen Ball: that that tight burrito kind of swaddling, breastfed babies need to use their hands as, you know, to cue that they wanna feed. Um, and swaddling the, their [00:47:15] hands inside the swaddle really prevents that.

[00:47:30] Dr. Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:39] Prof Helen Ball: So the same baby was swaddled for one night and un swaddled for the other night. And [00:47:45] on the night they were swaddled, they didn't interact with their mums anywhere near as frequently. They turned their heads away. And they slept more deeply. And that's was what we found in the other review was that babies who are swaddled have fewer [00:48:00] arousals now.

[00:48:38] Prof Helen Ball: And you know all of the guidance that is given around SID'S [00:48:45] prevention is around keeping babies in those lighter stages of sleep that they can arouse from if they stop breathing for some reason. So that's why they're put on their backs. It's why they're breastfed. It's why they're, sometimes dummies are [00:49:00] recommended, why they're you're encouraged not to over wrap them so that they overheat all of those things being on their tummies, being formula fed, being too hot.

[00:49:33] Prof Helen Ball: I suppose that it, in that it suppresses arousal and therefore. You would expect that it would be linked with SIDS, but there've only been four studies that have looked at swaddling and sids, and two of them [00:49:45] found an association and two of them didn't. So the jury's out in terms of, uh, the epidemiology.

[00:50:10] Dr. Renee White: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It kind of stands to reason, doesn't it?

[00:50:15] Dr. Renee White: very interesting.

[00:50:39] Prof Helen Ball: You know, it's the same with how you feed your baby. You're making, you know, decisions to the best of your [00:50:45] ability on the information that you have available. But you know, a lot of the time, the information that we have available is only what other the parents say about how they feel about it, how it's affected them.

[00:51:03] Dr. Renee White: absolutely.

[00:51:20] Dr. Renee White: I've got one last question before we jump into our rapid fire. And I guess I always like to kind of finish up with a bit of a tangible, uh, [00:51:30] you know, question. For parents listening right now, you know, say they've got a newborn, they're struggling with, you know, sleep expectations. What's one thing that [00:51:45] they could implement tonight to start, I guess, harmonizing their needs with their baby's biology, as you say?

[00:52:20] Dr. Renee White: don't understand this 7:00 PM thing

[00:52:59] Prof Helen Ball: [00:53:00] Um, the first sleep of the night is usually their longest sleep. So I would say keep your baby with you wherever you are during the evening and put your baby to bed at the [00:53:15] same time you go to bed. And that's, you know, that's basically what bed sharers do anyway because they just kind of like take their baby to bed with them when they go.

[00:53:45] Prof Helen Ball: So it would, it makes more logical sense to have your baby go to bed when you go to bed so that you can take advantage of their longest bit of sleep. To get your deepest sleep because the, when we [00:54:00] fall asleep, we fall asleep into deep sleep quickly and then we spend a few, couple of sleep cycles in deep sleep before we start having dreaming sleep and spending more time in lighter sleep.

[00:54:31] Prof Helen Ball: Mm-hmm. But if you've managed to get, you know, three or four hours of deep sleep in before they wake up from their longest sleep, it's much easier to cope with that then more frequent feeding [00:54:45] when you are just going through your REM sleep and you're later stage of sleep because it's not as big a wrench to wake up.

[00:55:10] Dr. Renee White: that's great advice.

[00:55:15] Dr. Renee White: Amazing. Thank you for that. Um, alright, we're gonna dive into our rapid fire, which we ask all of our guests. Okay. Are you ready? What is your top tip for mums

[00:55:52] Prof Helen Ball: And have them come and do the dishes or the laundry or vacuum the floor or walk the dog or play with the toddler or whatever it else [00:56:00] it is that you need doing. But yeah, to sort out who your helpers are and prepare them for what they need to be doing, I

[00:56:17] Prof Helen Ball: it's what I always say. Yeah, you need helpers. I, I sort it out early.

[00:56:32] Prof Helen Ball: Yeah. Well, my,

[00:56:33] Prof Helen Ball: my book is the go-to resource on sleep, obviously.

[00:56:58] Prof Helen Ball: Well, this might be a bit of [00:57:00] blatant self-promotion as well, but I would, I would send them the, uh, web address for the baby sleep information source. Yep. Because that was, that was our first attempt to get this information about baby [00:57:15] sleep biology and, and anthropology out to the public was mm-hmm was that website, which still exists.

[00:57:37] Dr. Renee White: Amazing. Last question, and we borrow this one from the lovely Brene Brown. What do you [00:57:45] keep on your bedside table?

[00:58:10] Prof Helen Ball: And that this, it was savaged by one of our dogs once, so [00:58:15] he's sort of a bit better than ripped now. I sewed him back together, wrapped him in a baby blanket, and he lives on my bedside table now. Oh, I've never lost my attachment to this bear. He goes with me when I travel. [00:58:30] He's in the suitcase. He keeps my safe.

[00:58:34] Prof Helen Ball: They're my safety blanket.

[00:58:38] Prof Helen Ball: He's called. Well, he has no, when I was little, he was just called Teddy, but as we got older, [00:58:45] as as he, he by, by the time my kids were born, I'd loved this teddy bear so much. He'd pretty much lost all his fur.

[00:58:52] Prof Helen Ball: So we now refer to him as Bare Bear.

[00:59:17] Prof Helen Ball: I have all of those things too, but I figured Bare Bear was probably a bit more unusual.

[00:59:46] Dr. Renee White: Because, you know, I think I've demonstrated to you, I'm a scientist, I am a good researcher, but I was still clouded by this whole sleep regime. Mm-hmm. And broken baby like narrative. [01:00:00] Um, and I think it's people like you who are doing amazing work and being able to kind of disseminate that knowledge to everyone else.

[01:00:26] Prof Helen Ball: Yeah, so our social media are a link to the Baby Sleep [01:00:30] Information Source. So the acronym for that is Basis. So if you look for basis on Facebook or Instagram, we're on, I'm on Blue Sky, I've, we killed our Twitter account, so we're not on there anymore. And the book is called How Babies Sleep in [01:00:45] the uk it's published by Penguin Random House in the us. It's published by Balance books, which are part of Hachette and you can find it, well, you can certainly find it online at both of their, on both of their websites.

[01:01:11] Dr. Renee White: you can get it on Kindle. I got my copy on Kindle.

[01:01:17] Prof Helen Ball: I read the audio book. Did you? You can hear me. You can hear me reading my own book. Yes.

[01:01:33] Prof Helen Ball: it was very daunting when they said, why don't you, cause I was going, why don't we get some celebrity to read it?

[01:01:40] Dr. Renee White: Who would you pick?

[01:01:43] Dr. Renee White: Who would you pick, Helen? Who would you [01:01:45] love to read your audiobook if you made a choice?

[01:01:54] Dr. Renee White: No, I don't. Who is that?

[01:02:15] Dr. Renee White: Tom Fletcher,

[01:02:21] Prof Helen Ball: The other one?

[01:02:28] Prof Helen Ball: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[01:02:36] Prof Helen Ball: Yeah. But she's pretty much, she's a, she's a media personality over here.

[01:02:42] Prof Helen Ball: That's who I suggested based on my [01:02:45] daughter's recommendation.

[01:03:02] Dr. Renee White: Goodness.

[01:03:14] Prof Helen Ball: And I did that [01:03:15] again. And I read and I read and yeah, we got through about three or four chapters a day and we got it done in three days. Amazing.

[01:03:30] Prof Helen Ball: Yeah, I think I did my, did my quotient of talking for nearly a year, I think during,

[01:03:58] Dr. Renee White: Sorry that you didn't get your [01:04:00] celebrity person, but I'm sure everyone still enjoy listening to you. Helen, it's been an absolute blast to have you on the podcast. Thank you again for accommodating me such early morning in the uk. And yes, as I said, thank you so [01:04:15] much for all the research that you do. It is absolutely amazing, absolutely amazing. Thank you.

[01:04:35] Dr. Renee White: Oh, my pleasure. Um, alright everyone, until next week, we will see you. Bye.

[01:05:07] Dr. Renee White: Head to our website, I fill your cup.com to learn more about our birth and postpartum doula offerings, where every [01:05:15] mother we pledge to be the steady hand that guides you back to yourself, ensuring you feel nurtured, informed, and empowered, so you can fully embrace the joy of motherhood with confidence.