When it comes to baby sleep, I'm not coming at you as an expert - I'm coming at you as a mom of four who has been in the trenches and figured some things out the hard way. The biggest thing I want you to take away is this idea of anchors - rhythms and routines you can float around and return to, not rigid schedules that are going to stress you out when life doesn't cooperate. For me, those anchors looked like paying attention to sleep cues, thinking about total sleep needs in a 24-hour period, swaddling in those early weeks, and helping babies work through that day-night confusion.

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I also really want you to hear about Safe Sleep Seven, because whether you plan to bed-share or not, the reality is most of us are going to fall asleep with our babies at some point - and knowing how to do that as safely as possible is something that honestly should be part of every hospital discharge conversation but isn't.

Mentioned in this episode:

Safe Co Sleeping: The Safe Sleep Seven

Helpful Timestamps:

• 00:00 What You Need to Know About Baby Sleep
• 01:42 Why Baby Sleep is a Spicy Topic
• 06:53 Anchors Not Rules
• 09:15 Follow Your Gut
• 10:34 Safe Sleep Seven
• 16:19 Newborn Rhythm Basics
• 18:49 Foundations for Better Sleep
• 27:40 Wake Windows and Cues
• 31:11 Common Sleep Myths

About your host:

🩺🤰🏻Lo Mansfield, MSN, RNC-OB, CLC is a registered nurse, mama of 4, and a birth, baby, and motherhood enthusiast. She is both the host of the Lo & Behold podcast and the founder of The Labor Mama.

For more education, support and “me too” from Lo, please visit her website and check out her online courses and digital guides for birth, breastfeeding, and postpartum/newborns. You can also follow @thelabormama and @loandbehold_thepodcast on Instagram and join her email list here.

For more pregnancy, birth, postpartum and motherhood conversation each week, be sure to subscribe to The Lo & Behold podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen!

👉🏼 A request: If this episode meant something to you, would you consider a 5 star rating and leaving us a review? Yes, we read them, and yes, they help keep L & B going! ♥️

Connect with Lo more on: INSTAGRAM | TIK TOK | PINTEREST | FACEBOOK

Disclaimer

Opinions shared by guests of this show are their own, and do not always reflect those of The Labor Mama platform. Additionally, the information you hear on this podcast or that you receive via any linked resources should not be considered medical advice. Please see our full disclaimer here.

Additionally, we may make a small commission from some of the links shared with you. Please know, this comes at no additional cost to you, supports our small biz, and is a way for us to share brands and products with you that we genuinely love.

Produced and Edited by Vaden Podcast Services

Mentioned in this episode:

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I don't love the word schedule when it comes to baby sleep at all.

I prefer words like, or vocabulary like rhythm and routine, because schedules can be really inflexible.

So I really like the idea of rhythms because those are something that you can fall back on.

Sleep changes constantly.

Every baby is different.

You are allowed to pivot and change your mind if something doesn't feel good or right

Motherhood is all-consuming.

Having babies, nursing, feeling the fear of loving someone that much.

Then there's this baby on your chest, and boom, your entire life has changed.

It's a privilege of being your child's safest space and watching your heart walk around outside of your body.

The truth is, I can be having the best time being a mom one minute, and then the next I'm questioning all my life choices.

I'm Lil Mansfield, your host of the Lo and Behold podcast.

Mama of four littles, former labor and postpartum RN, CLC, and your new best friend in the messy middle space of all the choices you are making in pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.

If there is one thing I know after years of delivering babies at the bedside, and then having and now raising those four of my own, it is that there is no such thing as a best way to do any of this, and we're leaning into that truth here.

With a mix of real life and what the textbook says, expert insights and practical applications, each week we're making our way towards stories that we participate in, stories that we are honest about, and stories that are ours.

This is the Lo and Behold podcast

All right, you guys.

I'm doing something that feels very dangerous.

It's probably not the right word for it, but dangerous today.

And then I wanna talk to you about baby sleep or baby routines and sleep, and we're gonna do this.

I'm coming at you from more of a perspective of purely a mom, a really experienced expert, if you will, mom.

And I say a lot online, " I'm not interested in the baby sleep world, like, that's not my space.

That's not my place," and that's 100% true.

There's a lot of experts out there.

There's a lot of non-experts out there.

There's a lot of kind of division out there, which feels like, man, baby sleep is a really spicy topic.

And I get it, right?

Because it's super hard when a baby doesn't sleep, and it's exhausting, and if you think you have the answer, you think everyone who doesn't have the answer is being crazy or, you know, vice versa if they got their baby to sleep in a way you are so adamantly against.

So all that to say, I'm not a baby sleep expert.

This is not my area of education, and it is not an area that I think you should come to me and say, "Let me buy a bunch of resources from you and, and teach me," right?

I don't have those resources for you.

That's my birth stuff.

That's my breastfeeding stuff.

That's my postpartum stuff.

But baby sleep is a huge part of postpartum, right, of how you feel in general as you're going through all those stages I just talked about.

And so I do think that I have a lot to share related to raising my four kids and getting them all to sleep, and I would say getting them to sleep successfully in ways that I feel, you know, proud of and, and, you know, finding rhythms and routines that felt good and right even in the midst of the chaos that I think is baby sleep.

So when I share what I share, what I'm about to share with you, remember it's all coming from more of this personal perspective, right?

So you're probably gonna hear something, and you're like, "I don't agree with that," or, "I don't like wake windows," or whatever, okay?

But these are rhythms, routines, foundations, things that I thought were really important for me with all four of my kids, things that I'd read about, then I'd learned about, and then I learned about through hard-fought-for experience and then realized, ooh, this doesn't feel good to me.

Like, all of that kind of in the fire type stuff is the way that I've learned this and then really rooted myself in it as I had especially, like, baby two, three, and four.

Caveat to that, every single one of my kids has been incredibly different.

And for me, I, in this space, I say I have raised four newborn babies, and let's say babies and toddlers too, 'cause sleep stuff continues, right, in all of these years.

So I'm pretty darn proud of that like, fact.

That's a lot of experience.

And while I'm not saying someone who's only had one baby can't speak to this topic, I am saying that I've done this four times, and so I feel like I have a good handle on nuances or just recognizing that our children are not the same.

And so y- my perspective really coming at you is from someone who's- who's utilized similar, not even tools, again, foundations.

That's what I wanna hear you.

Like found- I want you to hear foundations and ideas.

Have utilized this over and over again, gotten different results, but been really comfortable with utilizing kind of the same foundations and ideas over and over again while things played out differently with my kids, but also like umbrella term, like big picture look in a really consistent or healthy way.

All of them did not sleep through the night, and we're gonna get into that, at the exact same time.

They were not all unicorn kids who were just incredible and slept 12 hours by 12 weeks, or like none of those things were true.

I did not get the same results.

But I did continue to kind of anchor myself around the same things.

I think those things are valuable, and I wanna share those things with you.

So the first thing I wanna get into in this whole conversation, okay?

Knowing I've just prefaced all of it like that, okay?

Do not forget that as we talk about all the rest of this is when it comes to baby sleep, just in general, you're gonna hear a lot about schedules sometimes, and you may immediately go, "Ugh, don't like them," or, yeah, I'm a schedule person.

I'm Type A. So am I, if you're curious about that.

so I don't love the word schedule when it comes to baby sleep at all.

I prefer words like or vocabulary like rhythm and routine.

And you can say, "Hey, that's just a word," but I also think the way we think about this really matters.

And so for me, it's really important to think more about having certain rhythms that make sense to you as opposed to this idea of schedule.

And the reason is because schedules can be really inflexible, right?

Inherently, they suggest that we have like times that things are supposed to happen and consistency that I don't think is ever going to be true with our kids.

So I really like the idea of rhythms because those are something that you can fall back on.

They don't always look the same.

They won't always play out in the same way, but it is a thing that you can return to that feels really comfortable and safe.

So I like that idea of having things to return to, things that feel safe for you, even as other factors, external factors, schedules, what's going on day to day, as all those things change.

This stuff became incredibly important to me, this specific idea, as I had more children too.

Because what my first baby could get from me, what I could give to her when it came to sleep or what the world gave to us in terms of what was going on outside of our little bubble, you know, in the home or whatever, that changed a lot when I had two kids, three kids, four kids, and capacities, margins, et cetera.

So I love the idea of rhythms, routines, things to come back to preferentially, not into the idea or vocabulary of schedule when it comes to baby sleep.

One of the ways I really like to think about this, this is my analogy, and I mentioned it when I first started chatting with you, was the idea of an anchor, right?

So I'm sharing with you kind of anchors for me, and if you think about anchor, and I'm a fisherman's daughter, you guys, so I have a lot of knowledge about boats and anchors, okay?

So trust me on that one.

An anchor is something that holds you in place but doesn't lock you into place, right?

And so these things that I'm sharing, these ideas I have about sleep or what I've come back to, these were just anchors for me.

And so they weren't end all to be all like the boat, right?

This metaphorical boat.

It's not like we never drifted.

It's not like we never got battered by sleep storms.

We definitely did, right?

But the anchor kind of held us.

It was a place, these anchors, they were places for us to kind of come back to when babies change, when things change, because they do.

I always kind of had anchors.

I'm like, "Okay, today was a crap day. Like, let's try again tomorrow with some of these anchors and see if they can help kind of bring us back to something that feels good or give me something to focus on because today baby and I both just, we didn't have it. We didn't have it going on together."

Okay?

So I really love that idea of, of anchoring yourself in things that feel good for you and having, giving yourself grace and freedom to kind of float around those as sleep consistently changes.

I'm sure you know this as a general idea, right?

That baby sleep, it matters a lot, right?

But I also think like, don't get lost in it, right?

That's really important to not have it become an end all to be all that's causing anxiety and stress because those implications for you, your baby, your family are too, too big, right?

So yeah, not getting sleep is really hard.

Yes, you probably want your baby to sleep so you can get sleep, and that changes how you heal, how you recover, how you feel, how you maybe mother other children.

That stuff's incredibly valuable.

But also we can get so caught up in baby sleep that it also is detrimentally impacting us.

And so there's such this sweet, gracious balance of knowing it matters, wanting to care about it, likely wanting your kiddo to sleep as well, and also not letting it impact you so significantly as things change that it's to the detriment of you, you know, maybe your brain space or even your family.

So what a dance, what a balance for sure.

And I felt that a lot, man, with my like third and fourth baby and having those toddlers at home was super hard.

Like to show up well in any of these ways when maybe rest wasn't perfect or wanting it to, to be better and just figuring out how to, to dance that dance.

The internet, like I mentioned too when we started, it makes us, I think, feel confusing, but also really divisive.

And so the whole conversation can just feel really tough.

So encouragement in this kind of idea, this matters, but also calm down or, you know, take a breath or have some grace.

The encouragement there is I really want you to follow your gut, right?

If something doesn't feel good for you, even though it feels like a really good plan for them, you c- likely can't do it, right?

And so you just have to let that thing go because if you're not feeling good about whatever your plan might be related to baby sleep or whatever the reality is, well, then you can't-- that, that reality, whatever it is you're trying to implement, is not going to hold, right?

It's gonna eat at you.

Conversely, or also maybe in addition to that, is also if, like, something is working for you right now, you don't have to make a change, right?

And I think sometimes really plays into social media as well 'cause we can get this idea of, "Oh, shoot, my baby should be independently napping for about ninety minutes, you know, twice a day at XYZ time," and maybe they're not, or maybe you're baby-wearing for all those naps.

But if it's working for you, and they're not independently in their crib because someone has told you they should be or a book, you know, maybe even a book that you love has told you they should be, you don't have to make a change if it's working for you and your family.

So kind of that idea of, yes, this really matters, but also you have to find solutions that work for you guys, okay?

I'm gonna have a little bit of a safe sleep conversation with you guys only because, we're not gonna go down this.

Could be an entire podcast episode.

But I just want you to hear this because I think it gets left out of your hospital discharge education got left out of mine.

And so I just want you to hear it.

Maybe this will be the first time, and then it'll get you thinking and, and that will be a win for me is if, if you walk away from this and it helps you set up something better.

So I'm sure you guys know about like the ABCs of safe sleep, right?

This AAP driven idea of babies should be alone, on their back, and in their crib, right?

That's that ABC.

And this idea, that's the safest sleep setup.

So separate from you, no co-sleeping, bed sharing, right?

Alone and on their back.

And that is what is going to be taught at a hospital.

That's why they don't want you sleeping with your baby, even in the hospital bed when you're postpartum patient.

Those are the safe sleeping practices that you're going to hear about a lot.

And a lot of people like those, are for those, they want those.

That idea of this is the safest thing feels really good to them.

And, you know, the evidence related to it, related to maybe SIDS, like sudden infant death syndrome or some other things feels really good to them, and that is the goal, right?

But what I want you to hear is if that's you and you're in that camp, or if you're not, either way, what I want you to hear is that the AAP, who has established kind of those ideas based on lots of research and all the things, also acknowledges, like in their sleep policy statements, that parents fall asleep or caregivers fall asleep with babies a lot, right?

That this idea of babies sleeping alone and on their backs and in their own space, even if it's the quote unquote right thing for the AAP or to you as well, that it doesn't always happen in the reality of having a child and being home with a newborn baby.

And so I think the conversation that gets lost that you don't hear when you go home from the hospital is if you were to fall asleep with your baby, like, what, 99 out of 100, 100 of us are gonna do once, twice, multiple, multiple times, especially like in these first weeks.

If you were to fall asleep with your baby, what, what does that look like?

How's that gonna be safe?

If your baby will not sleep in a bassinet and they're two and a half weeks old and you want that, or you think that's right and they still won't do it, what are you gonna do about it?

And so that's where this, this conversation is the one that I want you to hear and that you might not always hear from your hospital, is this idea of bed sharing and what the safest setup is for you if it were to happen.

So whether you want it, right?

And so also this conversation is for you if you're gonna bed share or co-sleep, I'm kind of using those interchangeably, or even if you don't want it, recognizing it happens to all of us.

Yes, hands up.

Like, absolutely.

I think it happens to all of us.

So how do you make that as safe as possible?

So big picture, Safe Sleep Seven.

If you've never heard of it, I want you to hear it.

Put a note in it.

I'll go through it really quickly.

But this Safe Sleep Seven is a way to co-sleep as safely as possible.

And I know I keep saying this, but even if your intention is not to sleep with your baby in your bed, whether that be tonight when they're one week old or ever, there is a way to best set up your sleep environment so if it were to happen, it would be as safe as possible.

And that's what the Safe Sleep Seven is all about, right?

And so I'm gonna bust through these and then I really say go do more research on them.

I'll get someone on here who can speak to this whole topic in a beautiful, like really comprehensive way.

But just to put them in front of you really quickly.

Safe Sleep Seven is no smoking during pregnancy or postpartum or bed sharing with a smoker Parents in the bed, whoever's in the bed, sober, right?

There shouldn't be any children or siblings in the bed per the Safe Sleep Seven.

But sober parents in the bed, so that's no alcohol, medications, things that could impact your alertness, arousal, things like that.

That you would be breastfeeding, so baby's eating at the breast day and night, okay?

So that's part of the Safe Sleep Seven, that's like the third thing.

Healthy full-term babies, that's another part of this as well.

The baby would be on their back, so still applies when they're in the bed or bed-sharing, co-sleeping with you.

The baby's lightly dressed.

This is the idea of you don't want them sweaty.

You don't want them swaddled as well, which is-- we're gonna talk a little bit more about swaddling later.

And then that the surface they're sleeping on is safe.

And so this is a firm mattress for you, no extra pillows or covers.

So you'll see people, you know, show or example a Safe Sleep Seven setup, and that is, you know, like a blanket just up to their hips and then no pillows.

And then they're in this kinda C shape curved around a baby on their back.

No strings, no cords on blankets, things like that.

No gaps between the beds and walls, so depends on what your setup is.

And baby is next to you, not between you and whoever you might be bed-sharing with.

And so that's important, too.

It's like you kind of curled around this baby in terms of setup.

Extra considerations I already mentioned them, but no one in the bed except those parents.

Baby next to you or next to a guardrail, a safe guardrail between you and, you know, if there's a gap between the bed and the wall or something like that, you wanna pack it, right?

So they're up you and then that safe edge.

And then thinking about, like, your jewelry, your lingerie, your pajamas, things that have strings or something like that, okay?

So kinda flew through those.

I want you to look more into it, and then I also want you to maybe look up even images of what this looks like.

There's lots of Instagram accounts that also share about some of these, you know, safer co-sleep and bed-sharing practices.

But I want you to hear it because, again, the AAP acknowledges that we fall asleep with our babies.

And so if we were to do that, how do we do that in the safest way possible?

And that's what I want for you because, personally speaking, when I brought my first daughter home, my husband and I, we were taking shifts to get some rest at night.

And every single time, he and I, one of us would have her out on the couch, and we'd fall asleep with her on the couch or in a chair instead of being in the bed.

That is way less safe than safely bed-sharing, like via the Safe Sleep Seven that I that I just mentioned to you, right?

And so I don't want parents doing what Cal and I were doing, falling asleep with a baby in a chair over and over and again 'cause sometimes it's almost like we've been terrified or scared to fall asleep with them in our beds.

And there's a way to do that that's a lot more safe than ever falling asleep with them on the couch or in a bed, okay?

So I want you guys to hear that, look into it more.

I needed to share that in this episode, okay?

Let's talk about just newborn rhythms, right?

Like, going back to that idea of rhythms and routines and kind of what that might look like with your, with your newborn specifically.

So you've probably heard about eat, wake, sleep, or eat, play, sleep, these kind of cycles that babies are in.

You might instantly think like, "Ugh, I don't like this topic. Like, I'm not into that. My baby doesn't do that." I just want you to hear that typically, at a, like, basic biological level, what this just means is that babies have little cycles of time where they're eating, where they are awake, and then where they will need to sleep again.

This is just true for all of us.

It's true for you, too, right?

As an adult, like, this is kind of how we're built and how we are made.

Of course, within that, there's a ton of nuance related to how and when those things occur, how often they occur, eating and sleeping rhythms.

Some babies go a lot longer between feedings, some eat more on demand, and, and so it's not this really clear, like, that they're awake, and then they eat, and then they go right back to sleep, and three hours later we do it again.

But this cycle, this idea, is kind of where that idea of a three-hour life of a newborn is, is rooted, right?

It's this idea of they're gonna definitely be eating every two to three hours.

They're definitely gonna be sleeping.

They're definitely gonna wake up, and they're gonna do this again.

So that's just this idea of there is this slow- not return to, right?

But they fall into these rhythms at some point in their life, and these are normal.

And again, you can see these in, in your own life, right?

One thing that I do think is interesting just in general is newborns' wake time, if you were really, like, trying to get specific about that, is they're eating while they're awake, and they just fall back asleep.

I just don't know that you see a really specific kind of break or pattern in that rhythm, right?

Like, oh, they're gonna be awake for forty-five minutes, and they breastfeed for ten, and then they sleep.

Some kids breastfeed for forty-- my first, it took her forty-five minutes to do a feed when she was really, really little, right?

And so she was basically just awake and eating, and then, like, fell right back to sleep.

But in general, you start to see this kind of rhythm that flows throughout all of our days.

So for example, let's say eighteen-month-old, when it feels maybe a little more clear.

They likely nurse, eat breakfast when they wake up if you're still nursing, so they might nurse.

And then they play, and they're awake for a while, and then they take some sort of midday nap, right?

Maybe around eighteen months, most kids are down to one, to one nap.

Then they wake after that nap.

That's that food and wake time, whatever that looks like in the afternoon, before they go to sleep at bedtime.

So that's really spread out.

Like, we don't have tons of cycles like a newborn will.

But you can see that eat and wake and sleep cycle.

They still have a nap in there, and then they cycle back towards bedtime.

So you can see how that happens throughout all our lives.

So our babies are entering into that right when they are born.

So when it comes to baby sleep specifically and some of these, you know, anchors and roots or foundations that I've been talking to you, let's go through a couple of those.

So one of the first ones for me is this idea of consistency.

I believe that rhythm helps both you and your baby.

So if you can find places that can be rhythmic in your day, then I think that's beneficial to both of you.

And while I don't necessarily think that means you have to set the alarm be up at seven AM immediately every day and breastfeeding, you know, even if you were just up at six AM breastfeeding and back to sleep or something, I do think that that we thrive in rhythm.

I think all humans do.

And so for me, I'm looking for ways to create rhythms.

Even if it doesn't work throughout our entire day, I'm looking for spots where I can say, "Okay, we always do this when it comes to sleep," or, "We do always wake up between-" 7 and 7:30 or so.

So having flexibility and not rigidity within that, but to me, I think it's important to look for places to have some rhythm.

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Okay, let's get you back to the episode

And the next thing is this idea of independent sleep.

And remember, we're kind of talking about newborns right now, too, 'cause this conversation, independent sleep, I mean, it persists throughout, right?

But we talk about that idea of the AP rec is that they're alone and in their back or on their back and not sleeping with you, right?

But it is so wildly, incredibly important for you to understand that most babies do not want to sleep alone at all, at all, at all.

They are wired for closeness.

They have been with you for the last 10 months, and they want to be with you when they get out here as well.

And so that is not abnormal, and you are not spoiling them when you give them that closeness.

My advice there is that you then acknowledge, "Okay, how do I give them that and also consider sleep as well?" That's why I like that, you know, safe sleep seven conversation.

If they refuse to sleep in that bassinet like many of my babies did, well, then what are we doing about that?

Even if bassinet or more independent sleep is the goal, okay?

So just recognizing to me it's not just this black and white.

They'll sleep there.

That's how it's gonna start from day one, and that's it.

I think there's a lot more nuance inside of that and that it is very, very hard to have a baby who won't sleep independently, to hear that they're supposed to, and then to have this little 18-day-old who doesn't wanna sleep anywhere but with you.

And that's, again, very, very, very, very, very normal.

Okay, swaddling.

To me, this is kind of a foundation as well, but some people instantly are gonna go, "Ugh, don't swaddle. I don't like swaddling." People-- Some people don't swaddle at all.

I love swaddling.

So for me, one of my like anchors or rhythms, okay?

It can help with that startle reflex, right?

Which is something that wakes them up.

There's conversations about like their sleep wake, their rhythms and patterns while they sleep are important, right?

And so there is a whole conversation here, but I think it mimics that womb and that closeness and that startle reflex that can kind of wake them up.

And so I really love swaddling for the first couple of weeks at, at least, right, when they're just brand, brand new.

And so I prefer that, and that for me is one of my foundations is to try it.

my kids have, not all of my kids have loved swaddling.

We've dropped the swaddles at different times.

Sometimes babies want a hand out.

Sometimes want little both hands out.

There's a lot of, you know, nuance in that conversation as well, which is, you know, it's like the fourth time I've said nuance, right?

So there's a lot of nuance in all of this, okay?

Another one that I do like you guys to think about or consider as you're prepping for babe is the idea of day-night confusion.

So babies are born and they don't have this circadian rhythm set up yet, right?

And so we have to consider that they have to slowly work through this day-night confusion.

Some of my kids, like my first babe, she, I swear, was over this just almost immediately, right?

We had hard weeks.

That's why we were falling asleep on the couch with her, right?

but she kinda fell into it really quickly, and there are things we could do, right?

Like more light during the daytime, making it darker at night, getting outside during the daytime, super important, super valuable, and just slowly helping them adjust to like, hey, these 14 hours of the day are daytime, and these nighttime hours are the ones when we sleep.

I can talk about this separately, but I love talking about kind of the baby's first one to two weeks and some of their rhythms related to feeding, from breastfeeding and/or formula feeding, either way, just related to feeding.

And there is definitely part of that conversation is this day-night confusion and how that plays into them, you know, being up all night and cluster feeding and that being really normal.

And then eventually we get to this place where hopefully they're eating a little bit more during the day and eating less at night because they have started to have or recognize that circadian rhythm in life, right?

My third, my son, took forever, I felt like, to figure out days and nights, even though I was doing light during the day and naps during the day and trying to get longer sleep at night.

Like, it just took him forever.

And so I think that recognizing this is a thing and also knowing some babes, I think, figure it out really quickly and some can take longer, even if, like I said, when we started, you're doing the exact same things.

They don't all just figure this out at the exact same time.

So day-night confusion, something to think about as well.

The other thing is total sleep needs in a day.

I really like this conversation too.

Obviously, the numbers that you'll hear if you Google that term are averages, but I think that they're important to understand that in 24 hours, all of us, including you and I, like need a certain am- certain amount of sleep, and this is obviously changing a ton for our babies from when they're born until, they're adults.

Particularly, you know, this first, let's say, like zero to three years or whatever, as they're still getting naps and But just thinking about there is kind of a total sleep need for every child, and the ranges here again are big.

And so when you think about a baby who might sleep 13 hours at night and also take a two-hour nap, and your baby sleeps 11 at night and only takes a one-hour nap, like both of those things can be normal.

And so recognizing there is a number and there's a lot of averages within it.

And the other thing just about sleep being cyclical, right?

And so babies and younger, younger babies, newborns, they can have really short cycles.

They might be better at connecting sleep cycles, you know, as we're-- as they're working towards their total sleep needs in a day.

But some are gonna have shorter cycles or repeat cycles more often, and other babies are gonna have longer cycles.

So obviously, I'm not telling you like how to figure all this out, but I want you to know that that's true, right?

So a 45-minute sleep cycle, maybe someone else's baby has a 90-minute sleep cycle.

Maybe your baby's doing 45.

You soothe them or breastfeed them back to sleep, and they will actually go to 90.

Like, there's just a lot of nuance.

Again, I said nuance.

A lot of nuance there, but there are these little cycles that they go through.

And so essentially, they're learning to connect sleep cycles.

That's something that typically they need support through and that they're learning from us and with us first year beyond.

But there are these cycles happening, and all of them are typically or, let's say, ideally getting them to meet their total sleep needs in a day, which means in a 24-hour period Another part of this conversation or another route for me is wake times and sleep cues and how those go together.

We're gonna talk about it a little, a little bit more, so I'll just say put a pin in that but I think one of the big things you can start to focus on when it comes to your baby's here and you're thinking about sleep as you're doing all the other things, is just learning their sleep cues, right?

And this plays into their wake times, and we're gonna get back into that in just a second.

And then the last one for me is, I call it like a bedtime reality check.

I think I thought that my babies would go to bed between 7:00 and 8:00, let's say, kind of like an average, you know, here in the US a lot of rhythms are like, oh, 7:00 to 7:00, right?

Not that those are necessarily perfect, but we'll get into that, too.

But I have found that when I had these newborns, there was a little bit of surprise of, wait, why, why are they staying up until 11:00?

And then it seems like maybe they'll start doing a three or four or five-hour stretch.

I thought they were gonna go to bed at 7:00 or 7:00, 8:00.

was not true for me at all.

I've always found that newborn bedtimes, if you wanna call it that, are more like 10:00 or 11:00, and their, that earlier bedtime or more typical bedtime started to come later.

Like maybe 12-ish weeks or so I could put them down between 7:00 or 7:30, and they'd give me that longer stretch or, or we'd do a dream feed and then they'd sleep, you know, maybe a longer chunk.

So newborn bedtimes, I personally always found them to be a lot later than what I thought they would have been before I had my kid.

Okay, coming back to wake windows, 'cause I told you to put a pin in it.

These are helpful.

I like them.

Some people hate them, but I like them, okay?

I just think you need a ton of flexibility in here 'cause the ranges of a normal wake window changes all the time.

They're averages.

And as baby gets older, these like continually change.

So if it's something where you are feeling panicky trying to keep up with what their wake window or their wake time might need to be, which is kind of that time between the different times they need to sleep, then just don't even worry about them, okay?

I really like them They're also not strongly evidence-based, which I think is interesting and important.

There's not a ton to support them, but they're talked about a ton.

I also think they're real, right?

Everybody, even you and I, sometimes it's like, okay, I've been awake for a while.

I'm ready for sleep again, right?

So just that general loose idea that we can be awake for a while, and then we need some sleep.

How I really like to think about it is just this idea of I do think sleep pressure builds the longer your baby is awake, the longer, I'm awake, right?

And so we have this pressure to get sleep, and it continues to build as our wake window, whatever that is, gets bigger.

Wake windows are averages.

I already mentioned that, so I think that's really important.

I think they're more helpful when babies are littler too.

So they change a lot and kind of have to pay attention to that.

But I do think they're more helpful when they're little.

And then when my kids are older, it's like, yeah, technically maybe someone thinks your wake window is XYZ hours, but you're gonna be fine handling it being longer.

You know, whereas a newborn baby might be a little more sensitive to, to a window getting too long or something like There's no strict timing rules here either.

Like I just talked about, sometimes you get too long, too short It happens.

This is life, right?

We're floating around with these anchors.

And so I just don't think these should be incredibly strict.

They don't universally apply to every baby at a specific age.

And I think what you really need to hear is wake windows and sleep cues should go together.

So if you're gonna like wake windows and buy into them and think about them and consider them, do not think about them without firstly, in my opinion, thinking about sleep cues, okay?

Not the clock, what's your baby showing you, and then maybe you can add that into, "Oh, also you've been awake for 60 minutes. I'm seeing these cues, too. What is that telling you?" Right?

So sleep cues almost I would say first, and then you can add whatever information knowledge you have about wake windows to that.

Sleep cues probably could be a separate conversation too or a fuller one, but I'll just give you a few in case you're thinking like, "What does that even mean?" Right?

Essentially, it's this idea that your baby's gonna tell you when they're tired.

And some examples of a sleep cue might be they kind of zone out, and they get this glazed look in their eyes.

Their eyebrows can get really red, like this funky redness in their face.

It's always interesting to me.

Yawning, jerky movements, rubbing their eyes as they get bigger, and they have that hand control.

Getting fussy or really almost hyperactive actually can be a sleep cue.

There are early cues versus late cues.

Some of those are going to be similar for, for kids kind of universally, but I also think each kid is really different.

And you can say, "Oh, if my kid is yawning, they are incredibly tired, and maybe I missed, you know, the perfect, quote-unquote, perfect wake window," right?

And so, uh, different kids are different.

You can look these up, and you'll find kind of lists, and I think they're gonna be mostly true, but you're gonna have to learn your baby, too, and what some of their specific cues are and what those mean for you.

But I do think our babies clue us into when they're really tired or when they are getting to the point where we can support them to sleep, however that looks like.

So start figuring those out and paying attention to those, and remember that your babies, if this is like second, third, fourth baby, or your baby versus friend's baby could be really different in, you know, what the thing is that really signals, " Oh, let's go.

Let's go, you know, try and lay you down or get you in that baby carrier or whatever it is you guys are doing for sleep."

Okay, last thing I really want to talk about with that, okay?

Those are my kind of some roots, my rhythms, the things I come back to, is just kind of some sleep myths or some isms that you might hear and how these kind of play into making choices or making decisions related to baby sleep.

So the first one for me is the idea of sleep begets sleep, which is basically this idea that the more your baby's sleeping and the better they're sleeping, the more they'll continue to sleep or the better they sleep.

Okay.

In theory- This to me is true.

Like a well-rested baby or a well-rested person typically is going to continue to rest well, right?

Because over tiredness often leads to it's harder to initiate sleep or get into sleep.

So then that means shorter sleep, less sleep, broken sleep, et cetera.

However, we've talked about this.

You also have to balance that idea with total sleep needs, okay?

So let's say if your baby technically needs, mm, between 14 and 18 hours a day per some chart you found online, and we're saying, "Hmm, we know that that could be like loosely true. You know, you gotta figure out what your baby needs," right?

So if that is true, and then your baby takes a four-hour nap and a two-hour nap, you can't then expect them to also sleep 12 hours at night.

'Cause you say, "Oh, sleep beget sleep. They slept so great today." Well, they're probably sleeping-- That's like more sleep than they need in a 24-hour period, right?

And so I think the idea of a well-rested child, and I keep saying person 'cause this applies for us too, will continue to sleep well is true, but we also have to think about how much sleep does one person, does my baby need in a day, right?

And so we have high sleep needs babies.

We have low sleep needs babies.

You're gonna learn this about your baby.

And so they're gonna have different averages and things that feel true for them.

And so just thinking like the more they sleep, the more they're gonna sleep, it doesn't always apply.

So yeah, good rest can lead to more good rest, but we also have to think about how much rest does this one tiny human even need in 24 hours, right?

And so as they're accumulating rest over the day, that's gonna add up in different ways and likely play out differently at night too.

So that's how I feel about sleep beget sleep.

Next one, never wake a sleeping baby.

Some people aren't gonna agree with me on this one.

That's fine.

I told you this is all personal too from my, I was gonna say my work with my kids, but my time with my kids.

But I think that you, you can wake sleeping babies because if your goal is more sleep at night or maybe like longer stretches at night.

So for me, this ties in a lot to that idea of total sleep during the day.

And if I'm like, "Ah, I think I have a higher sleep needs kids," my first was super high sleep needs.

And I think, "Oh, she needs like 18 or she's just a disaster the next day and she's unhappy." You know, if I think, "Oh, she needs 18 hours and, you know, 12, 13 of those come at night," so then I'm adjusting or I'm kind of thinking about that based on nap times and the sleep that's happening at night.

So for me, my kids typically weren't sleeping longer than like a two-hour nap in the earlier months because Typically, they would take another nap, and then at night I would be hoping they'd give me a five-hour stretch, or then maybe an eight-hour stretch, or then maybe that 12 or 13 or 11, whatever that overnight one is.

And so I didn't let… That sounds bad.

I know you don't, not everyone likes the term let, but I didn't.

I would wake my kids 'cause I wanted to be breastfeeding them more during the day, get the more calories during the day.

So I am someone who wakes a sleeping baby.

You can do what you want, but for me, that was something that I thought was valuable as we considered total sleep feeds in the day and how those play out, both the naps they're getting during the day and at night.

One caveat there is that recognition of when your baby needs more sleep.

Are they sick?

I'm not waking my sick little baby.

They can sleep on me as long as they want, right?

Did you have enough rough night the night before?

Well, they're probably gonna take a hell of a morning nap, right?

Or ideally they will.

Or maybe you can help them connect some sleep cycles so that they then get back some of the rest 'cause we had a crappy night together, right?

So recognizing that stuff, learning as you go.

But I personally was comfortable waking a sleeping baby.

So that's me.

Next one, keeping a baby up so they sleep better.

This one feels really generational to me, and I could be wrong here, and I don't wanna put all of you in a box from prior generation, but a lot of times it's that like, "Oh, baby doesn't seem tired. Like, you can just let them stay up with us." This is where, to me, wake windows and sleep cues and things like that come into play.

A lot of times some sleep cues like hyperactivity and getting kind of, I'm gonna say crazy, are actually cues that they're really tired, right?

But to someone or maybe to grandma or grandpa or whatever, that can look like, "No, they're wide awake. Look how they're hanging out with us." And so to me, I don't agree with that idea, like keeping them up makes them sleep better.

I'm sure you guys have heard that as well, like an overtired baby or human or toddler typically leads to one that's actually a lot harder to get to sleep.

So to me, the wake windows, conversation can be really valuable there as you're kind of just watching your baby and knowing kind of what they need and what their signals are that actually they are tired, even if it doesn't always look like that to maybe those who are around you.

Don't feed to sleep.

Next one I wanna talk about.

To me, this is total BS.

Yes, I like rhythms and routines, and yes, I understand why someone could say that that's a sleep crutch or something, I guess.

But to me it's biological.

It makes sense to feed your baby to sleep.

And I don't think this is a black and white thing either.

So I don't, this is an all or nothing to me.

I'm keeping mixed approaches.

All of my kids, I fed 'em to sleep sometimes.

Sometimes we put 'em to bed- But without sleeping, sometimes, you know, later we introduced bottles, someone would do that.

Sometimes I would nurse them back to sleep if they took a bad nap, and I thought, "You know what?

I think you're still tired," and I would nurse them a little bit, and they'd sleep another 60 minutes.

Like, I just do not agree with it, nor do I think it has to be all or nothing.

So I walked into it saying, "We're gonna do both," and I feel really good about that.

And that kind of goes back to that conversation of what feels good and right to you guys.

So we shaped it in a way that felt good to me, which was I'm not telling them no, and I'm also not always gonna have it be just me, and I'm gonna try and see how that can look.

So what it looked like for our kids was I pretty much always fed them to sleep at night.

And then a lot of times during the daytimes, eventually, this is like down the road, we tried to get to places where we could lay them down without nursing them to sleep.

And so nap times, they often were not nursed to sleep.

But then I would often nurse them back to sleep when they had some short sleep cycle or couldn't nap well.

And then I did nurse them to sleep at night.

So do what you want here.

I don't agree with the fact that you can't nurse your babies to sleep at all.

And I think my kiddos are living proof that you can, or you can do both.

So that's my thoughts on that one.

Last one, babies sleep through the night, should be able to sleep through the night, let's say, by four to six months.

It's a pretty, like, common thing you see by about half a year or so.

I think the first thing important there is defining that sleeping through the night, which most people say is around 12 hours, right?

That seven to seven schedule that I mentioned prior, or that seven to seven rhythm, routine, either way, right?

Don't like that word schedule.

That actually sleeping through the night in a lot of literature about baby sleep or, like, stuff that looks at cycles is actually more like a five to seven hour.

So for a lot of people, their baby technically could be sleeping through the night and someone might say, "Oh, like, not great. You're not where you need to be." And they're actually doing a pretty great job connecting cycles and getting a big chunk, right?

So I think it's helpful to understand that, to talk yourself off the ledge if it's feeling like, "My baby's not sleeping 12 hours."

It's like, well, actually they are sleeping pretty great, you know, if you're diving into the research or you're getting this one stretch that's actually really incredible.

So sometimes that perspective I think can be really valuable, just recognizing that 12 hours is actually not the standard of what sleeping through the night means, okay?

You can still set your goals, however, and there's lots of programs and resources and things that are working towards 12 hours.

And I, I mean, I was ready for my kids to eventually get to that place too, right?

I'm, I'm not some, like, perfect unicorn who just didn't care if they never slept all night.

But I also think it was really helpful to learn that 12 hours is actually not some specific evidence-based thing that is what the standard is and what they should be reaching at a certain time.

And actually, that the sleeping through the night number, when you get into the research, is a lot smaller for what they could or should be achieving.

All right, you guys, that is all I am giving you.

I know I did not tell you how to get your baby to sleep.

That was not my goal.

My goal was to talk about this idea of rhythms, routines, foundations, anchors.

These are things that anchored me.

I tried all the things with my kids.

We tried different things.

We came back to things.

But this, these things, they all kind of became anchors.

And so I think that's the most valuable part of this conversation for you is figuring out anchors that feel good to you, that feel good to your family, and that you can kind of float around and return to as maybe you try different things, different programs, maybe different ideas from a consultant, maybe a course you take.

Whatever those things are, they need to feel good to you, and I think they need to be things that you can return to, that you can consistently say, " I feel good about this, and I'm comfortable continuing kind of to walk forward in these choices or these anchors that we have decided that are important to us in our family."

Personally, I think it's really rare that any specific program could be universally applied, and that goes back to just my own experience of raising four kids, working on sleep for four kids.

It's just looked really different even with these anchors that I continue to float around with all of them, right?

So I think you can have those foundation anchors.

I don't think that you can get the same outcomes with every single child with some sort of specific program or book.

You can come at me, and you can say, "That's not true, and I did this all four times. They all did the same thing at all the same times." I'd be shocked also, like anything could happen, right?

And so I'm sure there are some stories like that.

But I just think in general, I like inviting the grace into the conversation that we're all really different, and we're different as dyads, meaning you and baby are really different, and you and each of your other subsequent children, if you have more than one, are going to be really different, and that you and your friend and their baby, that those two mom-baby dyads, that those partnerships are gonna be really different too.

Sleep changes constantly.

Every baby is different.

You are allowed to pivot and change your mind if something doesn't feel good or right, and try not to compare, whether that be between one of your children and the next one or between you and your friend's children.

Thank you so much for listening to the Lo and Behold podcast.

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