Thank you so much. I've shared your podcast with
all my baby bum friends and I've got some people messaging me
saying that things have really improved for the bitter and so
I'm just evangelising to everyone.
And so I just wanted to say a huge, huge thank you to your
Beck because. Our our life.
Is just so much bitter and with all all your advice so thank you
so so much. Beck, you and I got some really
beautiful fan mail during the week and we thought that we
might share it with the Nap Trapped community If you'd lend
an ear as we. Just.
Indulge ourselves. But this came from a lady who
did our camp snooze. So that's how two weeks of
virtual group sleep training together.
She was in our second intake and I remember when she first
inquired she was in arming and arming about whether or not to
do it before a big trip to Vietnam or to just grin and bear
it and save it for when we were after.
And I'd sort of said it's totally up to you, but there's
no time like the presents, just getting better sleep and then
let the good times roll. So anyway, she messaged us to
say hi. Beck and Sally, I just want to
say thank you so much for the camp's news.
I'm so glad that I listened to Sally's advice and decided to
camp's news before the travel. I just wanted to report back and
how amazing it was for us. Now we are travelling.
Avery is a true champion and we just created a great little
sleeper. She did an amazing on 8 hour day
flight from Sydney to Malaysia and then we're supposed to have
a one hour layover connecting flight to Vietnam.
It was delayed for two hours. She goes on to say.
Fast forward, we arrived to the hotel at 9:00 PM local time, set
up the Porta cott, we gave her an extra feed and then she
proceeded to sleep for seven hours straight and woke around
4:00 AM local time, which was her usual wake up time at home.
They've she writes about how they've been able to do contact
naps and naps on the go but always tried to prioritise being
back at the hotel for the nap. 2 and the irony being that this
baby who was eight months when we were working together and a
chronic contact Napa would not sleep independently.
Never heard of self settling, no interest in it.
Actually now prefers to nap in the cot, she says.
Can you believe it? As a serial contact pass Serial
contact nappers. Some days naps are a bit wobbly
as we are at exploring but she still sleeps solidly 11 to 11
half hours overnight. You ladies are the legends now.
We are enjoying our time here. We're well rested and happy.
Thank you so much and sorry for a long post.
PS It took us as adults three to four days to be on local time,
and she's done it in one. Oh, it's so amazing, isn't it?
It's, it's like, we love hearing the fan mail.
We love hearing. The fan mail.
We love hearing the fan mail, but we also love seeing that
it's all the hard work that our clients put in it future proofs
them four times like these, you know, like where you can go on
holiday and you've got great sleep in the bank and that they
can roll it out at the new destination.
Like I just love, I love that for her, it is always a little
bit of a gamble in terms of like how much time do you have up
your sleeve to implement new strategies before you start
something new? So either going away or starting
kinder or preschool or daycare or you know, like how much time
is enough time? But you know, when you've got
great sleep under your belt and you've got strategies to know
how to carry it onwards when you are in a new destination.
I think it's a game changer. And to be able to live and
breathe the joy that it brings in that moment, you know, like,
wow, 11 to 11 1/2 hours overnight when you're on
holiday. It's the absolute dream, isn't
it? And to have great apps, you're
exploring, you're enjoying your time together.
There's a time with a, you know, Avery to be in the cot.
And I'm sure there might be a pool neck, you know, like not
too far away where Yeah, yeah. You know, if you had the baby
monitor, you could just duck in for a quick dip and have a
cocktail and back to the room. But.
Or maybe you've got room service, who knows?
It's just really it's it's life changing to have great sleep so.
It is and I think it's really nice to hear that it's not just
a one hit wonder. It's not just that it works
really well for the two weeks of a package and then it all
spirals and falls apart. I think being able to read that
this family have been able to take the skills that they've got
the troubleshooting, like she knows when to do an extra feed.
She knew what was and wasn't hunger in a different time zone.
She's got on the schedule and to see it actually play out in in a
very real life scenario. It's not just a a band aid fix
and this this beautiful baby was waking multiple times overnight.
Lots of milk feeds when we first started early rising and didn't
want to bar of the cosh during the day and she now overseas
self settles, sleeps through the night and takes 3 naps.
She was one of those babies where we got to one step and
then she just progressed to the next step really easily.
And then the next step after that it was like it was one of
those sort of seamless runs, you know, to get like she was.
And Mum put in all the hard work like it's, you know, like we
say, it was a seamless run, but mum's doing.
The Oh, no, those words, yeah. Yeah.
And, and, but that's the benefit of having one of those virtual
camp snoozes is that you can ask lots of questions along the way
and you can gain the confidence of knowing that this, this is,
this is happening. I've got the support behind me.
I can see the other members of the campus still are
experiencing similar sort of things.
Like, you know, that whole solidarity of like, you know,
sleep isn't linear. Like you always say, it's
sometimes 2 steps forward, one step back.
But to be able to gather all the information and the tools to
move forward and implement it out of Kemp's news is what it's
really all about. And.
And I remembered this mother in particular, we, you and I hadn't
started them on naps, but I think she must have listened to
all the other mothers being like, Oh yeah, we've popped baby
down. And I remember one day she put
this beautiful baby just down for nap because usually on a
three night schedule, we start on nap 2.
So we're working on nap 2 and then up for notes.
To us she's like, Oh no, I put her down this morning for nap 1
and she fell asleep. And we're like, this is amazing.
Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
What have we been waiting for? Like, let's get the show on the
right. This is amazing.
Like we, we took confidence from it too, because we're usually
like slowly, slowly. And she was like, no, no, I
already did that. Yeah, that's the confidence from
the group. Yeah.
Because it's like, yeah. So it's.
A precious deal for us. For sure, for sure.
So good. Thank you so much for reading
that. Yes, so.
Lovely, yes, It's just so great and lovely.
I think for other families to hear it not come from us as well
that this is all possible. So thank you so much and enjoy
that trip. I'm looking forward to having,
I'm actually going to Vietnam in the middle of the year.
We're going as a family. So hopefully I'll get some
recommendations of where to eat and drink amazing from that
family. All right, let's dive in to our
main topic today. Today we are talking all things
Eat, Play, sleep, not to be confused with Eat, Pray, Love.
Although I wouldn't mind all his travel talk and I do love Julia
Roberts. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. She's wonderful.
I do.
I'd love her here. I'd love to have her here.
She's I just like I'd. Less unstyled.
Cool, I have loved her for girl. Yeah, Notting Hill, Runaway
Bride. I used to watch that on repeat.
Pretty. Woman.
Pretty Woman. Speaking of fan mail, this is
now just become a Julia Roberts fangirling moment.
So not to be confused with that, although we could clearly talk
about it, we're talking about 8 play sleep.
What is 8 play sleep? Like?
How? How do you define it?
So eat, play, sleep I think is just a rhythm to your day where
new parents can sort of get into a like a sequencing of making
sure that their baby is really well fed, having some activity
in between the feed and going down mainly to create an
opportunity for babies to potentially just to not feed to
sleep. Yeah.
So I think that's creating a gap.
Yeah, the driving force behind it.
So there is some recognition, I guess from other people that
there are, there's a significance or a significant
sort of prop in terms of the feeding to sleep like like how
we always sort of say, you know, for an older baby, there's a.
So it's sort of it's helping to avoid falling into the trap of
and there's the strong sleep association that can be a
legitimately unsustainable sleep association of feeding to sleep.
So if you sort of follow the mantra of feed, place, sleep,
then you've eliminated the feed to sleep aspect that can be
tricky for so many families. Correct.
And it can work. I think it's a great strategy to
give new parents. Absolutely.
I feel like it's easy to do for a lot of families, obviously
when they're really little, like you don't have a lot of time up
your sleeve. A lot of feeds can take 30 to 40
minutes. But before they're sort of
they're completed and you know, there might be a little bit of
digging around in between like you're changing nappies and so
forth is a bit of a vom. There's lots of things going on.
And for, you know, tiny babies, their awake windows are only 45
to 60 minutes. So you're you're working against
the clock in terms of trying to put an activity or the nappy.
Change is the activity. That's the activity, yeah, for
sure. Dazzle.
Yeah. And then of course the feed is
so close to going down that it can really like, you know,
they're really like there's a, there's a nappy change in
between the feed and going off to sleep.
So, so at least you've put something in in the mix, which
is great. And then, you know, when they're
little for a lot of families as well, the babies are taking sort
of quite decent stretches. You know, so the, the naps in
they can sometimes be an hour and a half, two hours long,
which in which case you're sort of like really cheering, like
think like I've got a great sleeper.
And then all of a sudden babies tend to wake up.
And that could be around that sort of two week mark where, you
know, two to four weeks, your naps start to sort of have a
little bit of a decline in the length of time that they're
sleeping for. And and then this is where and
not sort of in the 1st 6 to 8 weeks, I feel like it can be a
really great strategy to use. But at some point, whether
that's eight weeks, 12 weeks, four months later down the
track, there is going to be a point where the feed, play,
sleep doesn't work anymore. I find it has a shelf life if
you end up with a cat napping baby.
I actually have no issue with the concept of feed play, sleep
as a concept. In fact, it makes sense to me as
a sort of an ideology for families to take into How do I
create some structure to my day? Like what do what step comes
first? And because you and I are always
wanting to future proof to avoid having to undo feeding to sleep
when it becomes unsustainable, we can sort of have avoided that
by following this ideology of feed, play, sleep.
And so and I also think it's a very clear way for a tired brain
to just know what's coming next, even for an older baby.
I full transparency, I followed it.
I followed it with my first I, but I never had sleep issues.
I never had cat napping and I never had feeding issues.
So by the time she woke it, it was kind of just a great spaced
feeding, But I didn't necessarily, I didn't, I wasn't
watching the clock, so to speak of like I'm not going to feed
before now the problem where it arrived, well, where the problem
arises for me. And a lot of people then think,
I don't know now what to do with this.
Like I'm trying so hard to follow this prescription is when
your baby sleeps for 32 minutes on the dosh and then you're
meant to feed again. But you just fed an hour and a
half ago and this baby's eight months old and you're stuck in
a, you're feeding them like a newborn because they're going to
do a short nap awake window, a short nap away and you're just
feeding constantly. And that's the snacky cycle that
a lot of families find themselves in when they're
following it by the book of literally feed, play, sleep,
like immediately feed upon waking.
It's really, really common. Yes, it's a great strategy.
And this is what when I'm reading logs from, you know, new
clients and I've got a 48 hour log coming in, it's probably the
most common thing that I see is that, you know, babies awake and
they feed and so forth. And, and it comes from a place
of wanting to do the best for avoiding the feeding to sleep,
like, yeah, because if you're, if you're wanting to sort of be
actively working on sleep, a lot of families will employ this
method because that they want to avoid it.
However, the, the subsequent issue that comes from avoiding
the whole feeding to sleep is that like you said, we start to
have these snacky type feeds. So instead of feeding like every
3 to 4 hour leaf, depending on the age, you can be feeding
every 1 1/2 to two hours. And those feeds aren't complete
feeds. They might start feeling like
complete feeds because you're so used to a feed being done within
4 to 6 minutes. And so you're sort of thinking
that's a full feed for my little one.
And with everything's coming along hunky Dory where, you
know, we're feeding every like 2 to 3 hours.
A feed is like 4 to 6 minutes. We're all done, but you're
topping up, not tanking up. And so this is where it can be
really hard to start working on naps or extend naps because two
things happen. Your baby is topping up so
frequently that their internal clock is wired into expecting a
feed every two hours. And so if their wake window is
quite short and you're putting them down to have a nap, so
let's just say at five months, you've got a wake window of say
2 hours. And so you're fed when they woke
up. So let's just say 7:00, they're
awake, they're fed, and then they've gone back down at 9:00.
But they typically feed every two to three hours.
Then it's really hard for them to link a sleep cycle and extend
the nap because they've only just had a really tiny feed at
7:00 because they're feeding all through the night, every two
hours. They've only just topped up and
now they're they're going through a transitional phase of
sleep. So that 20 to 30 minute mark and
now it's 9:30 and they want to take over into a deep sleep
phase, but their internal clock is saying, hey, you normally
have a feed about now and that's more enticing.
And then they're starting to get those sort of hanger hanger
hunger pangs all over again, which means then that they're
stimulated enough to wake and actually have a full blown
arousal. And now they're waking because
they are genuinely searching out a little bit of extra food.
It can be really hard to work on on lengthening out naps when
you're stuck in a feed play sleep cycle.
Yes, we need to. I think it's the place to start
though, particularly if you're just wanting to make change from
moving away to feed to sleep. Absolutely start moving towards
the concept of feed play sleep. We're going to take it one step
further though, and actually move to surprise, surprise,
anchored feed times. So technically it is still feed,
play sleep, but there's a gap in between, in between the I wake,
you'll immediately feed me after.
And the other thing to remember is that babies are sort of
primed to feed upon waking, whether it's a 20 minute nap or
a two hour 20 minute nap. And so it's actually takes a
little bit of practise and to nudge the body clock to know, Oh
no, this is when we're going to start the feed.
This is when I get hungry, this is when I nap.
And it only takes a couple of days.
But we're it's we do sort of feed play sleep on steroids, if
that makes sense. Like it's it's we move to space
feeding when we are looking to fix a problem, if you will, like
me, where baby just takes great naps, the timings kind of a
line, you've got no issues, no big deal.
You don't need to change a thing.
It's if you are stuck in. I'm really trying to do feed,
play, sleep, but it doesn't make sense because we have a cat
napper and then a snacker and then a short wake window and so
the cycle continues. The other thing I think can
sometimes become confusing is even when families listen to us
and say, OK, we're going to move to space feeding.
I have a cat napper, though, and by the time they like your
scheduled feed would be when they next go back down.
That's where we sort of, it's never about one thing in
isolation. We would actually be looking at,
well, how do we structure your naps and how do you resettle and
how do you assist your baby to go to sleep at these times and
stay asleep so that we can break out of the cat napping cycle so
you can get your great beads in. Yeah, and it all kind of needs
to flow on together. It probably sounds complicated
listening. It's actually once you see a
plan, it does all make sense. But feed, play, sleep is the
concept. We take it one step further and
have your anchored feed times. This is true.
There's sometimes like when we're doing anchored feeds if
like if the naps have been a little bit wonky, which you
know, that's just babies and life.
And yeah, that's not where there's times, particularly in
the second half of the afternoon where it might be that the nap
lands directly after a feed. So you, you know, all like
they're due for a feed at the same time they're, they're due
to go down. And in these moments, it's not
about the feeding to sleep. It's more about the calories.
It's more about getting the great calories.
And because there's, it's, it's better to have a baby who's got
a super full tummy and they've had a really great milk feed.
And don't sweat the self settle because you've got, you know,
you've got bedtime, you've got overnight, you've got the other
two or three naps through the day that you can work on.
Like it's, we can definitely create moments where it takes
the pressure off, like taking the pressure off, having to do a
self settle because ultimately the way that we work is these
anchored feeds, the more calories we've got in the system
through the day, those naps are organically going to be easier
to take and lengthen out. So we're not hyper focused on
the self settling ordinarily in those first few days.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When we're initially making the
change, yeah, we actually got a question that came through on
Spotify, which I think is a great catalyst for how that we
could unpack this topic a little bit more.
So Rach says I'm trying to space out feeds for my 5 month old on
4 naps. A sleep consultant has told me I
need to follow feed play sleep religiously to stop the four to
five night wakings. I can't seem to make the math
math with naps and for hourly feeds.
For example, if he sleeps for 60 minutes I can't feed yet because
it's only been two hours, etcetera.
How does this work with a feed play sleep routine?
Any tips would be amazing. Let's do a let's do a little
deep dive on how we would structure this and why feed,
play, sleep isn't going to work in this scenario.
Yeah. So 5 months old on 4 naps.
I think the issue for me that jumps out immediately is that
the feed you've been told to feed play sleep religiously
because you are stuck there. You have no wriggle room to do
anything but be at the whim of the length of a baby's nap if
you have to follow it religiously.
Yeah, that's right. And the 4th so.
Already the math. The 4th nap as well.
Yeah. So the 4th nap doesn't really
give you a lot of time. Like if you're trying to jam 4
naps in plus a four hour wake window, that actually tends to
sort of move into quite a late bedtime, I would imagine.
What do you mean just? Trying to wake window.
You mean 4 hourly phase? Four hourly phase, Yeah, sorry,
sorry for anyone, that's anyone that's just tuned in.
I had to put my fan on quite high in the office because I was
literally melting away. So my my brain melted a little
bit as well. So I'm just getting it back
together now as I cool down. So if you can hear, if you can
hear the fan on in the background, I do apologise, but
it's the only way I can. Turn No, we don't clearly need a
puddle. Yeah, that's right.
Look, OK, so yes, that whole religious I, I think I
understand where the sick consultant is coming from
because she is trying to avoid the fate to sleep association
creeping in, but she's banking on the naps being really good as
well and sort. Of has to, don't you in order to
yeah, they have to be good in order to get great feeds in.
But they're obviously not that great because there's a fourth
nap happening at five months. So that's the second thing.
So the second biggest catalyst for why this can't work is
because there's the fourth nap in there.
And in order to have three naps, you're going to have to work on
the naps. And for us, the way that we work
on improving naps at this age is, is literally anchoring the
feeds in so that we know we've got 2 great boobs going in or a
really great bottle of 180 to 240 mills. 2 great boobs did the
major going in. Yeah.
But it's, you know, we just want those nice full feeds.
Yeah. Going in four hourly so that we
know that baby is tanking up. No more of the topping out, we
have to go into the tanking out kind of strategy and we're
shifting the internal body clock.
So we're we're creating moments in time for the anchored feeds
to line up with the internal clock.
So the internal clock then understands when to release the
appetite hormone. And then if we've got beautiful
nice four hourly anchored feeds in through the day, the internal
clock repeats that process overnight.
Overnight. And so that's where you can have
just off the back of structuring your feeds in through the day
organically, your nights can improve without doing a lot of
sleep training or any sleep training Like you can often see
results happen like that straight off the cuff.
I also suspect this sleep consultant has got the right
idea in that if we can get more feeds in during the day, then we
give the calories back to the day and either baby will
organically sleep a little bit better overnight or we can
resettle some of these wakings versus feed feeding all of them.
But what this listener is experiencing is the common
stitch up with this. It's the right idea, but the
math doesn't math. She's exactly right.
And what we often find as well is that it feels messy.
It feels super messy. Day one of like, I got to get
these, these four hourly feeds in.
It's really hard to get a longer nap in.
It can also feel intimidating. Like just listening to this, it
could feel like that's all well and good.
My baby will only do 30 to 60 minutes.
Oh yeah. How on earth am I meant to
restructure this? I'm going to tell you two
things. One is you will be surprised
when you get even the first of the four hourly feeds in or the
second one in. The next snaps will subsequently
already improve because your baby has not snacked.
And that's just going to have to be.
You're just going to have to take our word for it.
Yeah. It's magic, OK, Trust the
process. The other thing is this is also
a short term messiness. It takes a couple of days for
everything to start to feel like it's making more sense.
When you get your structured nap timings, you've got your
anchored feed timings, baby starts taking it.
Supply and demand catches up. It takes a couple of days.
Again, trust the process. The other thing is, is that we
work a little bit differently and I've we've never going to
step on another sleep consultants toes.
And no, I'm not saying that this sleep consultant has or hasn't
said this, but we would tell you to throw every other rule out
the window of how you try and get these longer naps in.
It can feel counterintuitive that when we're wanting to work
on getting better, more independent sleep and move to
anchored feed times that Beck and I would say you're going to
do a 12:45 till 2:15 nap in the car.
Yeah, as your sleep. Consultants or in your arm the.
Pram Yeah, What should you want to watch?
Netflix or pop baby down, have a wee 32 minutes sleep cycle.
You're going to hold them for the rest of it and rock on the
rocking chair and listen to this podcast or something more
entertaining. We won't play this, but that's
how you do it. That's how you do it initially.
This is about sustainable staggered sleep and by
relinquishing the like, the idea of having to do anything
religiously, I think is what will give you the freedom to be
like, I'm going to rescue this nap because I just need to get
it in. Look, we've made it to the next
4 hour. We feed, gosh, this one's
already bigger. We've had a happy awake window.
This baby just went down for the next 1.
And that's that's the process. It is the process and it also
means that you're going into bedtime well rested and then if
you can get bigger chunks of the night, say instead of waking
every two hours for a feed overnight and so forth.
But now you're, you've got 2 feeds overnight and you might
have had one or two quick resettles.
Your baby's already had more restorative sleep overnight than
they probably have had the night before.
If they're going into the day more well rested again, they've
got a better chance of doing extra better, extra better,
extra better for their naps. Yeah, it's it's the work through
the day helps the night, the night helps the day.
It's all everything goes in hand in hand.
And quite often it's hard to know where to start.
And we we tend to sort of loosen the idea that we have to do all
the work all together. We just focus on our feeds in
through the day, the naps, however way we can get them to
improve the nights first, because we all know we're not
all of us. I guess that's sort of like a
sweeping statement, isn't it? But the nights will fall into
place so much more easily than the days.
And so we want to give you the best chance of feeling that yes
moment that'll give you the energy and the enthusiasm to
then keep going because you have to see some wins somewhere,
right? But one of the the first things
that you'll notice is when you move from the feed place, like
when it stops working to the anchored feeds within the second
or third feed, you're going to have that moment of yes.
Now I feel like this is working. I can see why this can make a
big difference. And the beauty in that is that
you will already go into the night.
Let's say this mother might be feeding every the four to five
times for each of them. Your babe will either sleep a
little bit longer because you've had these much better satiating
feeds throughout the day. But you know that you will then
automatically mirror your four hourly feeds from the day into
the night. So anything that happens between
those four hourly feeds is just a resettle.
The confusion is automatically taken out.
You do 4 hourly feeds during the day, four hourly feeds,
overnight resettle, everything in between.
And again, initially we don't care how you do it.
You could be bouncing on that football until baby goes back to
sleep. We've had parents that have just
stayed in the on the floor mattress together just while we
work on shifting the overnight feeds.
We will then get you to 7:00 AM. That baby's going to be so happy
to take the breast or bottle then, as Beck would say, 2 huge
boobs at 7:00 AM. 2 great boobs. 2 great boobs.
Sorry. 2 great boobs. Huge will do.
Interchangeable and it's the domino effect in the best way
possible. And you've just dropped a couple
of night feeds. We've given calories back to the
day and it starts to make sense. And you then trust the process.
Initially you just have to do what we say and hope for the
best. And then you'll watch it fall
into place and you'll know, You'll know it's working.
So I think this is where there's actually a fair bit to unpack.
But the thing that's keeping your hands tied is this idea of
religiously working to feed, play, sleep.
Because what if baby does a 30 minute nap?
You got to feed then versus 60. Like you could end up with feeds
all over the place. Well, it's, it's very commonly
starts to fall apart at the four month regression because if
you're doing feed, sorry, feed, play, sleep and your baby has
done, you know, we have lots of little ones that will have two
feeds in the night, maybe one feed until the four month
regression. And now they're waking up every
two hours and it feels, well, maybe they go through a growth
spurt, maybe they're doing this, maybe it is a regression.
I'm not sure how to manage that. And so if you're doing feed,
play, sleep, then they're waking up so frequently that you are
feeding frequently and then it all starts to unravel and then
your days fall into that same category.
So, so there is absolute merit. There is absolute merit in it
and we understand why. And it's obviously a tool to use
to encourage families from the get go to appreciate that there
can be a sleep association with feeding to sleep, with feeding
to sleep. And here's how to try and avoid
it. And that's great, I think.
I think as a concept it's great and it's a great place to start.
We need to take it one step further in our experience for
this exact scenario that so many families are facing.
It also works really well if you just have a great sleeper.
Again, you and I work with not so flash sleevers and so it's it
becomes a sticking point as well and it definitely has a shelf
life when baby is cat napping. Absolutely it gets really
tricky. So it's a great.
Question. It was a great question and it's
a great way for us to unpack the feed, play, sleep concept as a
whole. Happy with that?
Happy. Yeah, great.
Hopefully I came back to life. Indeed, Yeah, I hopefully it
makes sense with what we were talking about at the beginning.
Yeah, Yeah, we'll be able to piece it together.
I think we've covered it. We've covered it.
That was a perfect question for it.
All right, let me get sleepy days up.
OK. All right.
For the lovers of our Sleepy D section, welcome to sleep
detectives. We've just put our monocles on
and our. Sherlock Holmes caps actually my
daughter. Where are you guys?
No I was just going to say so many people DM me to say they
love the sleep detectives. The.
Sleep detectives, we really love it.
We really my daughter actually got for her birthday from her
teacher at after school care was a monocular.
Oh wow, cool. For bird watching.
But I just just made me think about this.
We do so much bird watching. Wow, how amazing.
Guess what you're doing on the weekend?
Exactly. But for that, let me do
something I actually know about. I just made me sleep.
OK. This question came through on
Spotify off our early rising protocol episode said thank you
for this. My baby wakes between 5:30 to
6:00 AM with a 7:30 PM bedtime and typically goes back to sleep
if I put the passe back in. Someone in a different form said
my baby is just low sleep needs and a naturally early riser.
Is it possible to train him to settle in the crib without the
passe? Am I doomed with low sleep
needs? I have so much to say.
All this Beck. This is a great.
Question. Wow, what a what a statement.
That is a really interesting statement to use about what's
happened to someone. Else's baby yeah, yeah, it
doesn't make sense to me so first of all, full disclaimer,
we don't know how old this baby is we.
Don't know. We don't know.
What we do know is that we know that the dummy is working.
Yeah, I my first thought is there's no way I would read that
and think that a baby that is then going back to sleep is a
low. It doesn't make sense.
The baby's going back to sleep. If they were truly a low sleep
needs baby, they are not going back to sleep because they have
met their quota of sleep and they are up.
Yeah, and like a low sleep needs baby for me would be I'm just
going to throw numbers out like 10 hours through the night and
then still not even maxing out on day's sleep, but absolutely
loving life sick. Yeah, happy, so happy about it.
Like they're not unhappy, there's there's no meltdowns,
they're all the things, you know, like that.
But to me, what time is this child going to bed 6. 7:30. 7:30
and then waking at. 5:30 to 6:00 typically goes back to the same
if I put the passy back in. For me, that's called the snooze
button. They put the pasi back in in a
really fragile time of the morning and baby goes back to
sleep. That is not a low sleep needs
baby. And I say that to encourage this
mother just be like. Yeah, totally you.
I wouldn't think about taking the the Pasi away.
And like nothing, nothing like all of this looks absolutely
rosy to me. Like 100% nothing to see here.
Like you've got a great sleeper. The things if we were to take it
one step further in true sleep detective style where we start
to use our imagination is I would then think OK, are there
any other potential causes for this ongoing restlessness that
requires a passing. If it is a 5 month old baby that
can't put replace their own pacifier or dummy and you're
just popping it back in and we'll see you at 6:45.
Fantastic. No notes, nothing to see here.
And you can leave that forum now.
It's not serving you. Yeah.
Otherwise, you know, is there just a little schedule tweak, a
little nudge in the right direction that maybe we could
iron that out? Maybe also is this baby now old
enough where we could do a little bit of sleep training in
that hour to say instead of me popping it back in could you
replace it on your own or put yourself back to sleep without
me needing to do it? Let's say at 12 months old they
can find that dummy or that passy and put it back in
themselves. But nothing in this screams to
me naturally early riser or just low sleep needs, let alone both.
None of the above. No, which is great news.
Well, I think it's and I'm so glad that she asked the question
because, yeah, it's, it's so you can get really heavily
influenced by other people's opinions.
And some of these labels are quite triggering, you know, for
some families, you know, like you and I get.
Triggered by low sleep needs. I do, I I, you know, I really, I
really do. I get triggered by split nights
and yeah, those split nights and yeah, and and low sleep needs.
But you know, it's so easy to to become overwhelmed with.
Oh my gosh, I've just been told we've got a big problem here.
And then to hear from like the experts, actually, there's
nothing to see here. I hope helps her to feel some
relief and that she's fine. It's OK.
And even if this baby or toddler, whoever how old 18
months to whatever. If a dummy, if you go again and
putting the dummy back in and the child goes back off to
sleep, even at 18 months, what about totally fine.
If you're OK with it, I'm OK with it.
If you wanted to stop, if the child was an 18 month, 2 year
old and you and you wanted to stop going in and doing the
dummy run because you know that they can actually find and
replay it with themselves, then just stop going in and doing it.
But you know, and like, that's, that's literal advice.
Like that's what we would, that is.
What? But I think this is also a point
of difference of you and I Beck, is that we would never just say,
OK, well, early rising. That's just early rising because
this is a baby. Just surrender to that.
We we will put in the hard work to get you more sleep in the
early hours of the morning. Yeah, there's only a handful of
consultants I think that actually dedicated to resolving
an early rise because it is tricky and there's a lot of
it's, there's a lot of hand holding that goes along with it
because there because it doesn't, it's not necessarily
something that ties up in a nice little bow within a couple of
days. Like there is repetition,
consistency, persistence. Persistence is the one.
It's a slog. It's, it's a long slog for some
families, but it's absolutely worth it.
And, and some sleep consultants are just, it's too much for them
to want to manage and deal with. And I understand, yeah, that
would, you know, like, but we're ready to tackle that and
encourage you to do it and to encourage you to understand that
the majority of babies that we work with and toddlers really
can get there 11 to 12 hours overnight.
And once you've completed your early rising protocol, it's
something that you typically don't have to revisit that
often. And if you did have to revisit
it 678 months down the track, it would be a really easy
resolution and you've got the tools to be able to do it.
It's something that will future proof you for a really long
time. And we do the early rise
protocol because we are literally looking forward to
when your child is 3 or 4 and they're going to daycare and if
they're getting up at 5:30 and then daylight savings hits,
that's 4:30. Like I literally think about
these numbers and I'm like, there are families that are
starting their day early and their child is going off to
childcare. And we've got Meltdown Central,
we've got behavioural. It's a very long day for.
Everyone, because it's so hard, like these children are really
little. And if we can help a family get
through a little later in the morning and have a child going
off to childcare and enjoying their day, and you can still
enjoy a family meal at the other end.
Yeah, Yeah. That's not true.
Afternoon. Yeah, then then that's what it's
all about, right? So, so we do love fixing the
early rise for families. It's I reckon it's one of our
callings as. It is, it is, but there is
almost nothing to fix in this scenario unless it's not yet.
We're not reading it yet. We've gone off now one of our
tangents. But if if you are curious, like
a schedule review is all, it would take just your eyes and
cross your T's. So yeah.
Actually, that's something that we can sort of, you know,
there's so much information within our podcast that if you
did have a schedule review and say you booked in with like a 60
minute consult or something with either of us and we went through
a fine tooth comb your, your scheduling and so forth.
You could potentially have all the tools within these podcast
episodes to, to, to DIY it. Like, I mean, we obviously give
you all the tips and tools, but you've got us in these podcasts
cheering you on, like giving you the support backing you.
So yeah, it's This is why I love doing the podcast with you,
Sally, because we're just this is our jam and I.
It is their jam. Helping people and.
Just be like, tell me why. Tell me why you love Take the
Podcast. But like the the review that we
got earlier, you know, like the fan mail, you know, people can
Pierce things together just simply from the tips that we're
giving. I don't know, I just, I just
love it for that reason. So nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love.
Listening to your voice too, Sally.
You're just like you're, well, curls of Winston.
ASMR of Sally. OK, let's And on to the next
question. OK, where to start with sleep
when it's all gone to shit. To be fair, was never good.
But now insert cyclone tornado emoji nine months old.
First of all, you're just not alone.
Yeah, you're just so not alone. Beck.
And I will say all the time, 6 to 9 month old babies, a dime a
dozen for us. This is the most common age
group that we work with. It's really tricky.
There's a lot going on and it's really normal.
Also that sleep has never been great.
And then you hit a stage where you like we've hit rock bottom.
Where to if? It's if it's never been great,
quite often you're at the peak of assistance, you know, so
you've probably graduated from padding and shushing and rocking
and holding and swaddling and bouncing and yoga balls and, you
know, car drives and feeding to sleep.
And you've graduated from all of those and you literally have
nothing left up your sleeve in terms of, I don't know, like now
we've this is escalated beyond and now we're up for hours like
nothing is actually working. And it really does feel like for
better words of the listener, like an absolute shit show.
And where do you start? Well, we'll bring it all back
to, you know, what we were talking about earlier in the
episode? Yeah, which is your anchored
feeds. Like that is the first place to
start. Even though we're thinking about
sleep, it boils down to you've got to be confident.
Confidence starts from knowing that you can resettle without a
seed of doubt creeping in that this child could potentially be
hungry and then unravelling all the work that you're trying to
put in. So feed times are really
important. When I write a sleep summary
after a consult or even our camps news plans back when we
write those together, I this is the sequence that over the years
that I have followed and maybe it's a good way just a little
itemised checklist for families when you're wanting to know
where to start. The first section I always write
is the environment. Is baby warm enough?
Too cold, too hot, too bright, too dark?
Have we got white noise on? Have we got dummies?
Have we got comforters? Have we set up an environment
that is conducive to great sleep, that is working with your
baby's biology? Tick, tick, tick.
All of which is within our control.
Nothing has to be pretty. You whack a blanket up against
the curtain, doesn't matter. You can do that today.
Once I've ticked all the boxes for environment, I then move on
to scheduling, getting on to a great age appropriate schedule.
And don't forget, Beck and I work with babies who'd love to
not follow the play and still take short naps.
But we're talking about when is up time in the morning.
If your baby sleeps longer, even if they've had a shocking night,
you are going to get your baby up at the same time every single
morning. Open those blinds and start the
day with a great milk feed or breakfast.
If they're much older you can, you're going to have the timing
of your first nap and that's not going to budget that really it
rarely for us will budget. And then that starts your day
off in the right direction. You're going to use your wake
windows. It also includes feeds as you
were just talking about where are your milk feeds?
What are the volumes, the two great boobs or a full bottle?
What does that look like? Also solids.
Where are solids and what would that look like?
How many tablespoons? How many cups?
All age dependent. We will tell you where to put
that. Which then brings us to the
bedtime routine. This is the sequence of steps
you were going to take to get you to bedtime.
And then we're going to talk about how to teach your baby to
self settle at bedtime and how to then follow that through with
resettles overnight for anything that's not a fade.
And so that's really how I break it down.
I go environment schedule feeds and overnight feeds and then a
settling technique. Yes, correct.
Thank you for so easy does it. Yeah, totally.
Well, we're, we're exactly the same.
The, the, the sleep environment is super important.
And something that interestingly, I'm seeing a lot
of recently is a reluctance to use sleeping bags for warmth.
I actually don't think I've ever seen as many clients come to me
in the long, long time that I've been doing this.
This is probably this last year. I have seen so many parents not
not swaddling or using sleeping bags or blankets anything like
nothing. They'll just pop.
Baby back down. Do you think it's it's that that
fear of overheating? Yeah, because I heard I went to
an in home a few weeks ago and she said yes, she because she
said that in the hospital they have said to her cold babies
cry, hot babies die. Isn't that the most?
It is disgusting. Yeah, horrible saying.
I think it. Yeah, I see it all the time in
my comments when I make anything about how to dress a baby
overnight. And I had only heard that
because you had told me that somebody had said that in your
comment thing. And I was like, God, that is so
gross to say that can you you can't.
And like even just repeating it, I feel like I've got like
shivers going down my spine and for hospitals to be saying this
to new families, like now I understand why I'm seeing so
much of it because there is like parents are petrified, literally
petrified of their child not making it through the night.
And in doing, in feeling that way, they are doing everything
within their power to make sure that doesn't happen.
And so they, you know, and, and so it kind of makes sense like
in a, in a, in a really, gosh, in a, in a big stretch, you
know, I would rather, I don't want to risk them being hot
because it's summer. I don't want to risk them being
hot in a sleeping bag. What if the .5 tog bag is too
hot for my room? Because first time parents, you
really have no idea, you know what I mean?
Like you're literally winging it and you can be reading all the
information that still feel like you know absolutely nothing and
listening to us and still feel like you've got no, no real
information coming through that makes you feel good about a
scenario. So I can understand now why this
is happening and I feel a bit sad about it to be honest,
because. It's a really.
Shocking thing to say. Playing on the extreme where
where we do know, you know, research shows that there is a
link between overheating and seeds, we're not talking about
overheating when we're not talking about that.
We're talking about using a really appropriate, thermally
regulated TOG rated sleeping bag in the matching temperature.
Room. Yeah, these bags have been
thermally tested for these particular temperature ranges.
And so that's where you can get your confidence that you are
dressing your baby appropriately.
Yeah. So you know, so that's where it
sort of stems from. I'd love for that to be reviewed
in terms of information. Yeah, yeah.
We just ditched that saying and educate around how to use a
sleeping bag appropriately. Yes, but going back to where do
you start? Absolutely.
Environment sleep environment sleep, environment, scheduling,
confidence techniques. All the things, All the things
we. Can do and also reaching out for
help if you've hit nine months and you just think I can't I've
I've been doing all of this for so long.
I have tried so hard to pace it all together.
Hello, welcome to now Trout. We will take care of you whether
it's together, whether it's separately, whether it's in
content. This is what we do.
This is exactly what we do. You just relinquish the thinking
to us and it's such a great age. It's a great.
Place so possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
No more messing around. OK, well, that was sleep
detectives meets our what is it soapbox?
I'm not sleeping bags. You're welcome.
And star wife Beck, what have you got for us for our Fast 4
this week? Fast 4 I'm just going to leave.
This up to you. OK, of course.
OK, so surprise for. So is that staying in or am I
doing an intro the fast for this week?
We're going to discuss in. Oh, the suspense slow for.
Because I was going to say because like last week we said
Fast forward and I was like Fast forward, Fast forward.
And then it ended up being a really long winded 4.
It's on brand. It's on brand.
OK so Fast forward this week which will probably turn into
quite a slow 4 is 3 hours later the introduction.
I want to write your favourite biscuits because I just love
biscuits. Biscuits are my vice.
I don't like, you know some people love chips, some people
like ice cream. I am a big biscuit person, I
love them. I could get around biscuits each
and every day, that would be my jam.
What do you like in a biscuit? What's your favourite?
You go first because I got to think about this for a second.
OK, well, I there's two different types of biscuits for
me. There's there's the like the
classics, and then there are like the treat biscuits.
Oh, OK. And and so my, my, I actually
love a classic biscuit. You're probably going to laugh.
My favourite biscuit of all time is the milk arrowroot.
I just love them so many ways with the milk arrow beiges.
I know, I know. In an Oval shape.
I isn't it, but then then there's.
Like a yucky or Yum I'm. But I do, I love it, but I feel
like I can have like a milk arrow root at any time.
Do you dip it? Yeah, that, you know how like
when you put it in a cup of tea and there's the magic, but it's
the magic, like how long is too long?
Because you leave it in like a fraction too long and it'll just
fall into your tea. It's a risky because it's very
risky. Maybe it's like, I like the
challenge. Maybe I like the challenge.
Yeah, so have a cup roses our roots with my green tea and then
but then I'll just nibble on them through the day as well,
like. I feel like green tea.
Not even a tea. No, no, not into an English
breakfast. It's a normal tea.
And then I just also wanted to because when I was thinking
about it just then, I was like, the Milk Arrow route is in the
same part as like. And I never even know how to
pronounce these ones. This is the shredded wheat meal.
Also love that too. But the Mari biscuit?
Oh, they're the same. Is the Mari changeable?
I would have said Mari, I think. It's a Mari and then the other
one that you can't quite remember the name of or remember
how to pronounce is the Is it the niece or is it the nice
biscuit? I have absolutely no idea what
you're talking about. You don't know the nice, the
nice, the nice biscuit. Oh, it's literally coming up.
Nice biscuit. I think it's pronounced.
Nice. Oh is that got the sugar
crystals on top? Yes.
OK, gotcha. I had no idea that wow, I'm a
surprise actually. That's that's your treat.
Biscuit Beck, The nice biscuit would be the treat.
Biscuit with sugar. Crystals on top but wow the
sugar is so. Shocking.
Wow, OK, Fast 4, Fast 4. Tell me then, why do you feel so
shocked by that and what would be your favourite?
I just think of all the biscuits out there to go with two
glorified pieces of. Bread in.
A green tea is surprising, but to each their own.
Their own I I want to talk to you about the Iced Vovo.
Oh. I don't.
It's not that that's my favourite biscuit.
There is something so quintessentially Australian and
the nostalgia I have for an iced Vovo.
I even have iced Vovo earrings and one of my needle minders for
needlepoint is an Iced Vovo that someone made on Etsy.
And I think I am enamoured with the Iced Vovo.
It's really a unique biscuit to Australia.
I used to work in the Uki used to work in an in in in cutting
it. There was a antipodean shop.
So that's like it's sold. New Zealand treats, New Zealand
treats, South African treats and Australian treats.
A lot of Vegemite and a lot of Vegemite, a lot of Tim Tams.
Oh yeah, a lot of Villies pies over here.
You don't have a Villies pies and then iced photos Yeah, a lot
of I. Took a photo at AI was walking
past a gift shop and they had measuring spoons, you know, that
come in a set as different ice fovos.
Ice fovos with the measuring spoons.
Yeah. And I took a photo.
I love an ice FOVO, I just think.
And also then like my grandma would always have served ice
Fovos. Always.
I've never never enjoyed an ice FOVO.
I don't know what it is, but. To see, that's the thing, I
don't necessarily want to eat it, but when I think about a
biscuit. That would be your favourite.
Biscuit because I'm not a big biscuit.
I'm not the biggest biscuit person.
I would prefer cake or like a brownie, something like a slice,
but the if then then I would have to.
I do quite like a waggon wheel and I really like a homemade
waggon wheel. I think the combination of the
jam and the marshmallow fluff is delightful.
Also nostalgic that I used to catch the bus home on Wednesdays
begrudgingly. How dare my mother sent me on.
I'm not in her chauffeur service and my nanny used to pick us up
and she would open a packet of waggon wheels on a Wednesday
afternoon, so that has a soft spot for me and I quite like a
Monte Carlo. Oh yeah, but I want.
To pull it apart, twist it and then like scrape off.
The icing. My teeth in the middle there's
a. System.
Yeah, there is. Yeah, Monte Carlo's and
Kingston's don't last long. Oh yeah, yeah.
Kingston is also delightful. Yeah.
And that's sort of like if I'm at an office or like the nursing
tea room. Oh yeah.
They're usually one of those those the.
Classic The classic creams from. Artist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So then onto the chocolate biscuits.
Tim Tam's double coat. Love those.
Yeah. You like.
But if I was going to pick a packet of biscuits, it would be
the TV snacks. They're not ones.
How good are they TV? Snacks The TV snacks are so good
and I just introduced my children to them and they are
still just as good as ever. TV snacks.
I will agree with you on that one.
The blue box or the yellow box? The sticks, not the stars.
No, I don't want the stars, I want to stick.
Yeah, the sticks so good. Yeah, they don't last long
either. I usually buy two boxes.
I have one on display and 1 hidden so the kids only think
there's one box. I saw.
A. Hilarious video on TikTok about
a mother made a video for her group family group chat that for
30 years, on the back of a shelf in the fridge was a tin of
yeast. You know, like live yeast.
And that it's always sat there for 30 years and that she
confessed. She brings it out in the video,
opens it and it's got a secret can of Coke that she keeps in
the back of the fridge and like, no sodas allowed, no nothing.
And she unveils, well, for 30 years she has had her secret can
of coke. Oh my.
God, yeah. Wow, That would be like the
secret. Yeah, the secret box of all
brand that like no one touches no kids touch the all brand.
So I could probably hide something in there and then you
think it might. Be all the secret.
You might be like Oh my God, nobody know.
About my lover boy. It's fine Beck, you can have the
all bread soap. Berry biscuits, the Mari's.
Oh I'm so I'm so risky with my TV snacks now.
Well, now I want to. I want you to time how long it
takes for it to. Go the perfect beer just before
so then you get. Floaties.
No, sorry. That's where we're going to have
to agree to disagree on the old biscuit front.
On that bombshell, we will love you.
Just I just want to say for any New Zealand this is I hate the
ginger nut. Hate it?
Bottom ranked gross. We just alienate our whole New
Zealand. You can.
Cut it out. All right, on that night, don't
have a biscuit back? Dip it in.
Enjoy your soggy piece of toast. That's Friday, I'm going to
enjoy a nice noose biscuit. Yummy.
All right, I'll I'll stick with the I'll go and check out the
ice bovos. All right, everyone, so lovely
as always to chew your ear with absolute nonsense.
We will see you on the next episode of Nap Trapped.
Bye. Bye.