Mum's The Word! The Parenting Podcast - Fox and the Moon Holistic Sleep Support

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Emily from the Fox and the Moon Holistic Sleep joins us this week to discuss ways in which we can get our child to sleep, tongue tie and the connection between antibiotics and sleep on your child. You can find Emily on Instagram @foxandthemoon_sleep or on her website www.foxandthemoon.co.ukGet in touch with your questions and experiences at [e-mail] or on Whatsapp at 07599927537---A Create Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

do you know what's really grinding my gears this week and by the way this is a me problem and it's also something that i used to do so this is not me taking any moral high ground but i see it a lot the first time mum doing these posts on instagram of mums are so negative let's talk about the positive things why why is it fashionable to be negative about parenting and this week there was like a question box of like tell me what you love about being a mum to drown out all the negative mums and like i said i put my hands up i was definitely that person as well like two days into it being like what's all the fuss about my mom's are so negative but it's really annoying because I feel like it's really fucking hard isn't it like whether you're the most positive

parent or not we live in this really high pressured civilization where we are expected still as equal as your relationship might be the onus in a heterosexual relationship i'm obviously talking about is still on the woman the expectation is on the woman and then we have to go to work if you go to work and pretend like you haven't been up since four in the morning or pretend that you know if your child's sick like it still seems a bit of a holiday isn't it i saw a tweet this week that went viral of like i'm gonna pretend i have kids so i can leave whenever i want like everybody else and it's like do you think we go home and watch netflix like we don't want to leave work but also if we do,

it means that we have to catch up on that workload. And we live in fear constantly of being overlooked for promotions. We feel guilty. And let's not forget like the cost of childcare, like there is so much against us in society. And I feel like when we talk about it, let's not forget the saying, it takes a village to raise a child. How many of us actually have a village? So I feel like we do a lot. Mums, dads, everyone, we're doing a lot and we're doing our best to cope. And when we say we're tired, or when we say it's really fucking hard, or when we say, do you know what? This is a lot and it's harder than I expected.'s like negative let's drown out the negativity and look I personally think it's not negative to be honest and it's really important to be honest

and I remember when I did a campaign around maternal mental health I think it was with Maltesers who weirdly and amazingly do lots with maternal mental health one of the biggest reasons that mums don't seek help is because they worry about being seen as negative they worry about people thinking that they're not coping so yes of course there are bloody amazing parts and we should talk about that but also don't be afraid to say like this is really hard or I'm struggling or do you know what I'm knackered and the sleep thing I find it hard because I feel like when Alf isn't sleeping which at the moment is an extended period of time my whole world kind of becomes catastrophic like my mental health like everything so tommy and i decided this week to

sleep in separate rooms and he shut my door i went to bed at 7 30 at night and i did not get out of that bed till 8 30 and the difference in my mindset from that one night I went from thinking like oh my god what the hell are we doing why are we having another baby this is awful I regret motherhood this is awful and also like taking out stresses in work like just any anything that came at me I felt like I couldn't manage and I couldn't cope and the next day I woke up and it's like it was is it Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or one of those Disney films where it's like the little mouse oh it's Cinderella isn't it and the little mouse is there and the birds were singing and I was like I can't wait to meet my baby like

and then how's my toddler and Tommy was like I'm so tired and I was like it's not that bad he's just still don't worry about it so obviously we are still in the sleep cycle and someone that's been really supportive over this period a holistic infant sleep support and education service and i really wanted to speak to someone holistically because i do feel and by the way no judgment however you want to cope with sleep deprivation but i do feel like empowerment and understand understandment that's not a word but hey we are here we are rolling and we are sleep deprived is so important that we can make empowered choices to help our child sleep better and for us to get the rest we need because ultimately that is happy mom happy baby happy dad happy baby um she is also a tongue tie and reflux advocate and a campaigner for maternal

and postnatal help she's called emily wally and her business you might know her from instagram is fox on the moon and i also love that the first thing we said to each other was are you as sleep deprived as me yep i knew i think that my son i mean I'm now both of my children sleep very well but my second son has just had a four-night stay in hospital is he okay he's okay yeah I might briefly go into that it's a whole thing and part of the reason why I do this so um so you're a mom of two Henry yeah so talk to me about yeah your journey into motherhood and how you got into doing what you do now so I was 25 when I became pregnant with Arthur and it was all I ever wanted I wanted to be a mom and I've said that since I was like four or five years old I want to be a mom I was that person in

the family that would hold babies for hours at events and just love it, like loved it. I fell pregnant really quickly with Arthur. And in hindsight, like looking back emotionally, I was not ready to become a mum at all. And that only kind of was cemented after the birth. It was very traumatic, failed induction. Don't like the word failed, but failed induction, emergency C-section. failed induction emergency c-section um and we were kind of discharged three days later um where I'd been attempting to feed him every single hour the whole time we had been in hospital and I think it was day five and I was sat at home and my nipples were bleeding and cracked and I hadn't slept for five days and I started to hallucinate and it was terrifying like the most terrifying experience I remember like having some uh infant feeding support and coming

around and and this woman just looked in his mouth and said he's 100% tongue-tied no wonder your nipples hanging off and I was like brilliant that's great because I'd asked I am that type of person that needs to know everything about everything so that I'm prepared. So yeah, we had the tongue tie cut, but I had already kind of made that decision because I was so mentally unwell to give him a bottle. And then fast forward kind of three years later, I was very much kind of, I can't go through this again. Like what if I'm that ill? What if it's another traumatic birth? And I actually put loads of work in.

I went to get some therapy. Like I knew that I wanted a second child. And kind of as we were getting that help, fell pregnant with Henry. And then he was born at 32 weeks. My waters went in the middle of the night. Considering that Arthur was kind of 42 weeks and like this 10 pound baby i was like we're gonna

have we're in it we're in it for the long haul um woke up one morning my waters had gone and utter shock so i was put on bed rest in hospital for a week given lots of drips and steroids and then um i was in labor with him for um a good couple of days and nobody, everyone was, it got to the point that it was kind of like a joke. They were like, oh, is your bowel in spasm? Is that, I don't think you're contracting. I think your bowel might be in spasm. And I was like, okay, well give me some buscopan then, like let's sort this situation out because this is painful. Because I hadn't experienced that pain with Arthur because it had such a unnatural push push into labor so it was very intense and different so this complete fear of not being heard and then when i finally agreed to get somebody to examine

me i was 10 centimeters but he was coming bum first so i was rushed into theater um put under general anesthetic and henry was born um but with very, very rare skin condition that nobody knew what it was. We weren't told what it was until I came around from having the general aesthetic and we were told he was in intensive care and there was something very different about him and nobody would know why. So this is like a whole novel of information. But to cut a very long story short, and I do talk a lot about this because it is relevant to my work. It's relevant about why I'm so passionate about finding out underlying causes of poor sleep. But essentially, Henry was born with a skin condition that he was

the 18th in the whole world to be diagnosed with. And he's beautiful now. Like you wouldn't think there was anything wrong with his skin, but he feels very different and he sheds skin. And he survived that. We were told that he possibly wouldn't, but he survived and he's amazing. And he has an undiagnosed tongue tie, which causes an unsafe swallow. So we're in hospital maybe six or seven times a year

with pneumonia because he aspirates. So that's kind of where my passion and love for what I do and kind of why Fox and the Moon exist is because of my two children, but not only what they've been through, but I feel like they've been massively let down and I feel like I was massively let down. And when I see kind of, I'd say 90% of my clients have been in a similar situation, maybe not with the skin condition and all of that, but struggle to feed, struggle with their mental health, struggled with birth trauma. And they're left with this child that cries all the time and doesn't sleep and never has. And something feels off, but they're just told it's normal and they'll grow out of it

and it's purple crying or it's colic or whatever it is um so i my main aim is to just be their voice and help them and validate them and get them out the other side of it and that's what i love to do and obviously in that comes helping a baby sleep because a comfortable child will sleep how did you feel by the way i'm so sorry that you had to experience all of that because you wanted children for so long did you feel like when you were struggling because obviously what you went through was quite traumatizing and people forget don't they like having a child a baby scream and cry and you not know what on earth is wrong and you want to soothe them and it really gets on top of you did you feel like you could be open about how much you were struggling yeah I have I've kind of always on and off

struggled with my mental health and actually recently had an adult ADHD diagnosis, which explains an awful lot as to who I am and my traits and things like that. And I'm still very much learning more about that and coming to terms with it. It's quite a shock to hear that that's what's going on. But I've always been very open about how I'm feeling, very open about my mental health.

I am very in tune with my own brain. I know what triggers kind of negative thoughts and feelings. You know, with Arthur, it was just apparent that I was very unwell. But then I think when Henry was born, everybody was so frightened of me becoming that unwell that it was almost like, okay, we're just waiting for her to crash and burn and it didn't happen. I battled, like I suffered. It was incredible trauma and the sleep deprivation

and the general unsettled behavior of Henry and not being able to work out why and I was constantly being in hospital. At one point I had to resuscitate him at home and I think that it's kind of been a three and a half year now, three and a half of kind of trauma after trauma, after trauma, after trauma. And some of that's kind of small and some of that's quite big. But I think, yeah, people were waiting for this crash and burn and it's not happened, touch wood, because I think I was just so aware of it

and so frightened of it happening again that I put so much in place this time with Henry to prevent it what can people do listening what can they do to see if their child has tongue tie because I feel like often we ask in hospital is there any tongue tie because everyone's sort of heard of it but quite often it goes undiagnosed so what what can people do if they're worried any tongue tie because everyone's sort of heard of it but quite often it goes undiagnosed so what what can people do if they're worried about tongue tie whether that's because of the latch or the lack of sleep or whatever it might be yeah i think that the difficulty with kind of tongue tie and oral dysfunction is that it's not widely understood how it impacts on

children and adults um and it's very much seen as a breastfeeding issue. So if you're not breastfeeding your child, then depending on where you live and the trust that you're under NHS wise, they might not agree to cut a tongue tie. And so there's all of that, that parents would need to kind of battle. But there are kind of a few things that you could look for, I suppose. And one of those is pain when feeding, or maybe the feeling of a low supply. And I have to be really careful when I say that because there genuinely can be issues with supply. But if there is any kind of breastfeeding pain or problem in that respect, a baby whose tongue doesn't move at all when they cry or it perhaps lifts at the corners and not the, sorry, at the edges and not the middle. A baby who is clicking when they feed

or clicking on a bottle and they're spilling milk out of the side of their mouth. And then physical, kind of as they grow up, you might notice that your baby has very, very chubby cheeks and a double chin. That's a sign of, it can be a sign of tension in the body and that can sometimes be connected to aural dysfunction. A baby that wakes hourly, that's mouth breathing, that's perhaps snoring, that might not come till later on. In all of these kind of instances, we have to be thinking about where the tongue is sitting in the mouth because the way we breathe and the way we rest at night and the way our tongue rests in our mouth is so important to our sleep cycles and our

depth of sleep and how restorative it is that's I mean it's a massive kind of passion of mine what I've been through with my children but also kind of helping parents identify this with their own children and getting them help and actually seeing just how one simple change with the tongue, whether that is a division or whether that's body work like osteopathy or whether that is kind of into oral exercises, how that is transforming children's lives and parents' lives. Do you mind me asking, um feel free by the way

not to answer anything if it's too personal but you said that henry has an undiagnosed tongue tie or basically you haven't you haven't yes treated the tongue tie yeah so why would that be so he has a 70 to 80 percent ties that means like 70 to 80% of his tongue is restricted. It was picked up. I picked it up when he was in intensive care and we took it to be treated and they wouldn't because of his skin condition. They said they were unsure how his mouth would heal. Understandably, no, why they had those reservations, but his skin is totally normal inside his mouth. And I didn't know then what I know now. And I think that's really important is that we do the best with the information we have at that time. And if you don't know this stuff, that's okay. It's not, I know I spent so, so much time feeling

guilty and really beat myself up for not pushing hard enough and not going private or not. But I didn't fully understand that all of his reflux that he had, his aspirations, his chest infections, his apneas, because he was so premature, were all related to aerophageal related reflux, which is simply put air swallowing when we drink. So if you've got a baby that's clicking, gulping, dribbling milk out the sides, coughing and choking on that bottle, then they're struggling with the flow and they're going to take a lot of air in and be sick. And it's only in the last 12 months that I have gone on this journey in my business, gone on this journey with the hundreds of clients that I've helped everywhere and started to very slowly piece it together with Henry. And I was like, this is why he's struggling. I think he's got an unsafe swallow. I think the back of

his tongue is just not strong enough for his swallow. We're now on a journey of myofunctional therapy, which is strengthening the tongue muscle, teaching him how to swallow appropriately or correctly, I should say. Lots of fun games to get his mouth involved, his mouth nice and wide and open. And essentially what we're waiting for now is his tongue to be strong enough to be divided so that it doesn't reattach and it doesn't cause further issues because just cutting that frenulum under the tongue is just one tiny piece of the puzzle and we need to kind of be looking at the rest of the body and the rest of how that child is kind of behaving or presenting

well there's so much to it that you just don't know and we're going to go on to sleep which i know is such a controversial topic and i just want to reiterate that parents should do whatever they need to do with the information that we know and the research that we have to make empowered choices. But one thing that I find quite frustrating is, and I've had this ever since he was three, four months, is an overwhelming noise of people telling me you need to let him cry you need to let him cry if you want sleep you need to let him cry and actually even in recent weeks obviously i've spoke a lot you're to the point you're probably like oh shut up we know he wakes up early um but the thing that tommy and i are bickering about at the moment is tommy keeps saying we just need to let him cry.

People in my office said that, and it's like, but he goes down fine and he feels safe in his room. Knowing what you went through, what is your thoughts on Cry It Out? Especially with the knowledge that you have now as a holistic. Yeah. Especially with the knowledge that you have now as a holistic. Yeah. So I think there is a definite reason why, you know, as a mom, as a woman, as not a business owner, not a sleep consultant, not somebody that's passionate about sleep, but just very basically from being a mother. I genuinely believed with my first child that that was something you had to do and when I say that I mean sleep training I thought and when I say sleep training I mean teaching a child self-soothe

yeah and I was told to do it by my health visitor by my GP by my son's pediatrician by family by friends books that I read social media wasn't a thing really then Facebook maybe um books that I read. Social media wasn't a thing really then, Facebook maybe. Books that I read, it was everywhere. Mumsnet, whenever you looked, that's what you had to do to help your child sleep. And I did it. I maybe lasted two nights. So what I did was I would leave him to cry and I'd go in and reassure him and then I'd come away again. But every time I went in, he would get more and more upset because I wasn't responding as he needed and wanted me to. And it's really, it's quite difficult to speak about because knowing what I know now, it's hard to know that I put him through that and actually think that Arthur is a very sensitive, very emotionally astute little boy. And I sometimes

wonder, there is always going to be that doubt in your mind, like, have I caused this by leaving him to cry? And I don't think I have. I think that repair and that attachment, that repair work after the effect of me just kind of not letting him down and holding him and things, but basically got to a point where I just couldn't do it and I stopped and his sleep actually quite naturally improved he's around eight months at the time but I remember feeling a failure like how have I not been able to do this because this is what you're supposed to do and every parent does it so I would never judge somebody for making that decision because we make the decision based on what we

think is right and the information we're consuming and i think you either go into parenthood with this expectation that that is something you're going to have to do and that's what so many of my clients have said and friends have said like i just thought that's what you did and it is overwhelming the noise around it and like you said i don't judge anyone i've like my sister did it and actually do you know what it it saved her sanity she was not in a good place of sleep like and I just found it overwhelming when I would go to like baby swim and the mums would be like oh you need to go out or they're not sleeping and it was almost like if they're not sleeping it's because you're a failure because you haven't done it but I remember almost feeling like embarrassed

to say I actually I don't want to do it or like it doesn't come natural to me and I wish we empowered people to follow their instincts but also look like I said at the beginning of the episode like we're living in a really difficult high pressure environment where we can't function on no sleep especially if you have work or you're a single parent or you're, even if you're a stay at home mom and you've got kids all day, like we cannot as humans function on no sleep. And back in the day we had entire villages helping us. So I get, I get it. But what upsets me is like you said, it's that people think that is the only way yeah and that's my um and my feelings around it shifted was having Henry this four pound dot that had a machine breathing for him for so long and was constantly

unwell and constantly unhappy and was waking so much but I genuinely thought how do I leave him to cry like I can't do this to him And it wasn't that I loved him anymore, but maybe that was kind of the trigger that made me think, this can't work for every child. This isn't okay. And then I started to, probably because of my neurodiverse brain, but very much kind of deep dived into infant mental health. I wanted to understand kind of what happened and when, and when the nervous system matures and the reasons why a child might not sleep. And then that led me into the holistic sleep coaching program that Lindsay Huckway runs. And during lockdown, I thought, I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to, you know, I'll get the knowledge. I'll maybe help a

few friends out with their children's sleep. And it locked down and I had two small children so I was like whatever I could to fit around them and my mind was just blown wide open so for people who don't know what is holistic sleep and and here's the big question can you get a child to sleep without the traditional sort of quiet out yes you. And I'll tell you why. Holistic sleep coaching is looking at the whole picture, but I feel like the word holistic and the word gentle and the word responsive is thrown about a bit too much. And the problem with that is that the sleep industry is not regulated. So I could sit here today and say to you, I've got this really gentle way of helping your child sleep through the night and then come around to your house tomorrow or do a consultation and just say, just leave him for five minutes and go in and say, like, you know, there's no regulation. And that I don't think will ever change,

unfortunately. But holistic sleep coaching in a nutshell is looking at that child's birth, how they fed, what their temperament was like, family history, intolerances, allergies. And not that a sleep coach would have all of this information about all of these things, but it's about, I always say to my families, your child is, and your situation with sleep at the moment is this jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces are everywhere and we just need to put them together again. And we'll do that by me asking you certain questions that you might not have even thought might be impacting on sleep like antibiotic usage like when they poo and during the day alphas are 5am since antibiotics is that related

because i'm like what what can i do to make you poo later Baffled a brand new podcast bringing you some amazing facts that are complete nonsense imagine a light that would get on Instagram you having a quick one up a lamppost on the moon incredible you basically saying the reason the dinosaurs

stopped living is because they all collectively made a decision to have no more children. I think until 10 years ago, I still shared the bath water that my parents were in. You can find us wherever you got this podcast. Just search for Baffled Amazing Facts. So what I think, and I think this is what I i said to you on instagram i think what's happening al's early rising i think has been has was it triggered after the antibiotics it started actually before the antibiotics but obviously he was ill um there's i feel like there's just so

much going on with him i mean he's nearly two his development in the last like two months i mean even yesterday he he he was doing like two words together but yesterday he now says how do you do because there's a coca melon song that goes how do you do so he goes how do you do and then yeah what did he say yesterday that really made us laugh tommy tried to he was climbing up the stairs and tommy tried to pick him up and he went stop it daddy no more oh and we were just like whoa but he said it really like assertively and tommy always takes piss that he takes after me and like how stubborn and assertive i am and tommy was like what the hell so there's obviously like a lot of development and he he wakes up so happy like he runs into our room mama mama up up downstairs downstairs and so it's like we even when we try

to get him back down he's just so excited and i said to tommy like i know it's really annoying and it is and like i said it affects my mental health and we cannot function getting up every day at 3 34 but imagine being that happy like imagine being that excited about life like what what i wish i had that i'm like oh bloody hell i've got to get up oh got gotta face the day so there's that then his molars are coming through then he was ill then he was on antibiotics and he's actually still got a cough so i said to tommy like what do you want to do like we try and put him back down in his bed he's not interested we like he's so stubborn he'll like an hour and a half of like fighting it

you know putting him back in the bed him trying to get up putting him back in the bed him trying to get up it's like what do you want me to do like shackle him to the bed but also like maybe he is just like in pain maybe his teeth hurt and also this is the my biggest bug bearer they might just want comfort uh-huh yeah now imagine if you had a really shit day and you went to bed and you cried and your partner was like, right, I'm going to leave her for two minutes and I'm going to come and check on her. See if she can calm down. See if she's calmed herself down.

Yeah. Then I'm going to come back in five minutes. And this is what I say. I think I actually had like a bit of epiphany when I was learning more about this. And I think Arthur was maybe four or five at the time. And I thought, would I was maybe four or five at the time and I thought would I leave a four or five year old to scream himself to sleep no I wouldn't because he can

shout mummy I'm scared I need you why are you not here I want a cuddle and then I was thinking well what's the difference the only difference is that baby cannot communicate what they need through words. So they're crying. This whole, you have to teach self-soothing. When you break that down, you cannot teach an immature brain to do something mature. It doesn't work like that. The way we encourage soothing and settling and nervous system regulation is with being responsive and giving that child what they need and i think they learn that you're safe and that my meal daddy will come in the night if they are scared so yeah and sleep needs to be viewed for them as as a safe thing if they have these from a personal

perspective i don't like thinking about what happens to a child when you do that, but essentially their brain says, okay, well, I can't keep this up any longer. Nobody's going to come. So I'm going to go to sleep, but that's not teaching them anything. There's a part of the brain that will just protect itself. And that's what's happening. And that's's a very very hard to hear if you sleep change a child because i find it hard to hear and to know and b if we know this like why are we still pushing it why why health visitors why why is the nhs why why is it the main narrative but then I completely understand how a parent would kind of be six seven eight months in and say they wake up every hour and I respond every single time and I try and

be patient and I breastfeed them back to sleep or I offer them a bottle but I cannot do this anymore and at that point it's not about, okay, well, what have you done to create that? It's because you feed to sleep. It's because you rock to sleep. It's not. Your baby isn't manipulating you, but on hourly wake-ups, kind of past the first couple of months and that are consistent, that's not okay. We can look at why that's happening and that might be a bit of discomfort that can be solved within a couple of days or it might be oral function or it might be allergies it might be antibiotic usage it might be and antibiotics are vital i'm not saying don't give your children antibiotics i'm just saying that if we understand what happens when we do

give them so this is so we kind of touched on it and then we digressed a bit. But so Al's been on antibiotics. He's waking up early. Yeah. Help me. So potentially, and this doesn't happen for every child, potentially what can happen is when we fall asleep, we enter NREM sleep and that's made of four stages

and each stage is deeper than the last. And then it tends to come to an end around midnight, 1am and then we cycle through lighter stages of sleep. And this is also generally when the digestive system starts to wake up again. So if there's any discomfort there or that child needs to poo or they need to pass wind,

that potentially, that kind of little griping pain that they have because they need to have a poo or they need to pass wind will wake them up. It's not that they're in distress and that they are writhing in pain, that's completely different, but that's enough to wake a child, a young child up. And if they've relieved loads of sleep pressure, because they've essentially been asleep since seven o'clock and this might be now four o'clock in the morning, because they've essentially been asleep since seven o'clock and this might be now four o'clock in the morning, they've relieved so much sleep pressure that sleep pressure is now really low. They're going to find it harder to go to sleep. Sleep hormones are not at play. They're all

wearing off. And then they've got this bit of gut discomfort or I need to have a poo. So I'm awake because I need to have this poo. And that what's happening the antibiotics that we give can cause this because they strip both the good and the bad bacteria from our gut so it can leave it not not all the time and it depends what strength and what antibiotics but we can kind of safely assume that it can irritate the gut lining and make it a little bit inflamed and that can that does get better in time there are some children that can maybe struggle with a bit of lactose intolerance after antibiotics. And that may present itself in early rising or more frequent wakes or really smelly wind or really awful poos that are more frequent.

That's when I'd be thinking, okay thinking okay antibiotics early rising or more frequent waking horrible poos maybe we just cut dairy for a week give them a break I've actually just bought some probiotics yeah probiotics as well and I think that's the thing with probiotics as well is that there's there's some with really good evidence base um and there's some that are not so they're kind of some are better than others and depending on you on who you talk to you might hear that because i was because my um youngest son was constantly on antibiotics and i would always say how can i improve his gut health if he's and some doctors would be like give them a probiotic that will help and others were like no there's no evidence to suggest probiotics help

um but actually um the only kind of side effect you might see from probiotics is a bit of excess wind and then you would kind of just take them off them but generally that's how you improve gut flora after antibiotic uses so that's kind of how it can cause early rising but that's you know you've got such a good understanding of Alf in his sleep and you're his mum, you know him better than anybody. And when, what I find is that parents will kind of come to me when they've been trying to figure this out for a long time, you know, and then be like, okay, we actually don't know why this is happening. And sometimes it's about experimenting with different things as well. And this is what I was going to ask you, because I do find that obviously sleep coaching, sleep training in all of its forms, it's an expense that lots of people don't have, but they're

desperate. And I'm lucky that I can go and speak, find help. But I found it overwhelming because, you know, I said online, oh, my baby's not sleeping. And then it's like, obviously everyone wants to be nice. It's from a really nice place, but it's like put him to bed earlier, put him to bed later, drop his naps, increase his naps.

And you end up suddenly, something that I never thought about. I was like, he's asleep, like follow his instinct, you know, let him sleep, especially when he's ill

and he's got a cough because who, let's be honest, when we're ill, we do need sleep to recover. So I was like, then suddenly I was like, we need to not let him sleep.

And then he'd be really overtired. I was like, we need to increase his sleep. And then we were going mad with it. And that's when Tommy and I start arguing, which is also when I sought help for sleep a year ago. Because it's like you become mad and obsessed and you don't know what you're meant to be doing. But so what can people do that isn't quite out?

So I think there's a few, I feel like from my families that i work with there are a few different camps of parents there are parents who are in the depths of hourly or less waking um every night all night they might have they might have had you know history of reflux they might be um allergy babies they might you know the potentially a few things going on and I tend to attract more of those families because of what I speak about

and then there are families who are going into parenthood with this idea that they might have to sleep train and they've kind of read things that say that children can sleep through by the time they're eight weeks old and then they come to be in a parent

and they're like oh this is actually not they're waking up three times and they're eight weeks old or they're waking up four times eight weeks old and they just need to know that it's okay and that it's normal and to carry on and then there's parents who um potentially are having very specific issues that they need to unpick and it's hard to give one answer. You never need to stop responding. You don't need to stop feeding to sleep. That's what you do. You don't need to stop rocking to sleep.

Actually just having a really good understanding of how sleep works for a child of your child's age and thinking about the possible reasons why sleep might be bad. Do you have resources of where people can find that? Yeah, so I have some guides and webinars on my website. I also try and talk as much as I can about this and do very specific posts for free for people.

And I hold kind of very reasonably priced webinars on certain things like early rising. I really want people to listen to this though and go away with some tangible things to go and do. So if your child is waking hourly, think about reflux, think about air intake on the breast or the bottle, think about oral dysfunction, think about what's possibly making that child uncomfortable. If you've only been experiencing hourly wakes for like a week, they're going through something developmental, they're poorly, they're getting a tooth, please don't kind of worry or deep dive and be like, oh my gosh, they've been waking hourly for two nights. What are we going to do?

There's something wrong. No, that's not necessarily what I'm saying. I'm saying if your child wakes hourly and has done forever for as long as you can remember and just feel or seem very unsettled and you feel as though there's something not quite right, then it's definitely worth exploring those things. If you've got a child that is just never been brilliant and kind of a bit inconsistent, I would keep a sleep diary for around five days. And this can stress people out. So if your child's a very frequent waker, perhaps don't log every single time they wake up. But kind of the information that you would get from this diary is A, how much sleep your child gets in a 24 hour period.

And you can kind of work out whether over the week of keeping this diary, okay, what's his average in this 24 hour period. And at at that point you can then tweak things to build sleep pressure to encourage you know better sleep hygiene so that might be if you know like you and alf waking really early in the morning that you kind of work out how much sleep he might need in that 24-hour period by keeping a bit of a diary and then just start to play around with timings so that sleep pressure is building more in the morning but if it is something like you know gut discomfort then um you know that can easily be resolved as well so he's obviously like 23 months now people again it's like let him go

let him have a nap don't let him have a nap but is there so if let's say he wakes up at 3 30 i think today was four should i be trying to keep him awake for as long as possible or should i be like he's been awake for five hours therefore he needs a nap now um i wouldn't try and kind of push him awake because potentially what's happened because he's he's not kind of waking at five every morning which is kind of reasonable if he's had like 11 hours of sleep for example you'd be like yeah that's okay but half three is extreme four o'clock's a bit extreme um so i would potentially give him like a half an hour nap very early in the morning like as early if he's up at half three i'd even do it like half seven eight o'clock and then do his normal kind of lunchtime nap if he has one and then build pressure up to bedtime then so let's say he wakes up two i'd be tempted to keep him awake till like eight half eight and then keep a bit of a rhythm and a pattern

going with that so every time he wakes early half an hour cat nap normal lunchtime nap and a later bedtime to increase that pressure to sleep and he might because this has been happening for quite a long time he might need like a little bit of a body clock reset so kind of as soon as the sun comes up outside in the garden for 10 minutes let him that have that natural daylight and kind of almost give him a bit of a reset the maddest thing is the sun doesn't come up for five or six hours after he wakes up yeah maybe not that is the crazy thing that i sit there on the sofa with the blanket on and i go like mama's sleeping mama's sleeping he's like mama up mama up and i'm like please just let mama sleep on the sofa how does he tell you he's tired

he asked to go to bed at night does he yeah he'll go uh bed buff hot bath oh hot bath it has to be hot bath hot bath hot bath bed and he like kind of takes you up the stairs so it's not a problem and he loves like he goes down really easily since we got the toddler bed and this is the thing isn't it like you he goes down easily you've not taught that that's happened with with him growing he loves his bedroom because you've built those really positive associations with him and he loves bedtime so his early rising is nothing to do with how he's going to sleep because you know leaving him to cry to go to sleep is not going to fix the early rising and i think this is really important is that you know i see sleep from going kind of hourly wakes to maybe three and then four and then all

of a sudden these this child's sleeping beautifully and all we've done is just learned more about that child in like a and because everybody they're all so unique and i know that's really annoying because you'll be like help me now i need to know um and i do have you know lots of specific things that you're struggling with like early rising frequent night wakes false starts split nights all the lingo um then i do give really tangible reasons why that's happening and how you can fix it i talk about it an awful lot and i think because my passion is unsettled children um it's really that you know that's a minefield it's really hard to kind of to unpick but keeping a sleep diary is so worthwhile because you can just really and parents will say because i ask people to keep a sleep

diary before they work with me um and they you know parents will come to me and say actually that just that process has been really helpful in helping us understand you know little patterns that are happening it's annoying isn't it because we want you're right like i want to be like but tell me what i need to do so that he wakes up at six or seven sometimes yeah and now you know sometimes in that situation i will say to that parent right we need to be speaking every day let me help you time things let's build pressure together you tell me what kind of cues that child's giving let me learn more about what's happening and that's when we'll see changes because often it's never oh he's waking because of this like we need to almost play around with a few things

and work it out and then follow that progress. If it just gets later and later and later each morning, then we know that what we're doing is working. But most of the time, early rising is lack of sleep pressure. So if you're struggling in general early rising, make bedtime later and just play around with the timings and don't think that your child will be able to kind of wake at four in the morning and then go through till eight o'clock at night because that was not a good idea. So what would be your final words for the sleep deprived parents that are listening obviously we know that we can find your workshops and um like free information on instagram but any words of advice especially from experience as a mom i just think if your child's very wakeful and it doesn't feel quite right for you it there's

there's something that's telling you that's perhaps not normal for your child to be waking as frequently follow that instinct do your research and get the help that you that's perhaps not normal for your child to be waking as frequently, follow that instinct, do your research and get the help that you might need. And it's never anything sinister. It's potentially just, you know, a bottle change or a change in feeding position or a change in milk or a change in, like there's lots of eventualities, but essentially, eventualities but essentially and i i spoke about this on instagram this morning the amount of times your child wakes up overnight is absolutely no bearing on how good at parenting you are and if you keep responding as hard as that is because it's the hardest thing in the world. Always follow your gut. And if you feel like you are in crisis point, then really try and put some steps to kind of build that bit of support network

if you can around you. So taking the night in shifts, if you can, getting a friend to come round for a couple of hours while you get some sleep. Like these are really, we have to be asking for help. We do not ask for help anymore we're so you know our generation of parents I think are just really bad at asking for help yeah I remember I was um speaking to a friend of mine and again I get it because I was definitely the same but she would always child free always talk about how exhausted

she was and I get it we don't own tiredness and everyone can feel tired but sometimes i'd be like read the room you know that i'm waking up every single hour of the night and i have done for the last six months and you keep telling me and then i was like oh yeah i'm really tired i just wish i could have a lion and she was like oh sending hugs and i was like don't send me bloody virtual hugs come around and take over one night but anyway very good advice and thank you so much for coming on and also for traveling all the way from manchester especially in the in the land of strikes um i do want to share a voice note from a lovely lady called katie lady called Katie. Hi Ashley I thought I would be brave and send you a voice note because I have been listening to your podcasts and absolutely love them I've been a bit obsessed that sounds

a bit weird doesn't it so I have been listening to them recently I've only started listening to them maybe a few weeks ago um so I've kind of binged listened is that a thing um and yeah I just have to say to you thank you so much firstly for um talking about the things you talk about it's helped me so much yeah like I found becoming a mum completely overwhelming this last year. I had my son, oh, my name's Katie, by the way. I don't think I actually introduced myself there. So I became a mum November the 2nd, 2020 to my son, Charlie. And so just a few days before the second, I think it was the second lockdown. And yeah, so quite similar to you, I think it was the second lockdown and yeah so quite similar to you I think

um I think you said Alfie you had Alfie in the following January so yeah not not far apart there um everything you've spoken about I've just completely relate to all and your guests what your guests say I relate to everything um how much harder it is like people don't tell you or like people do tell you but you can't you can't appreciate it until you um have a baby yourself um I think is is the main thing there um so yeah and I think the pandemic just probably threw a whole more bundle of complications, I think, into the mix. But yeah, I just didn't know anything. So I also did the whole hypnobirthing thing. And yeah, just nothing went to plan.

I ended up with an emergency C-section. So the recovery from that was hard. And my husband, luckily, has been at home working from home so at least he was around throughout all of last year however he has a very demanding job so have did feel like things were very overwhelming um essentially being on my own I felt like quite a lot um I also didn't do NCT because I didn't really want to do it over a screen. Part of me wishes I had just for some like other mum advice, but, you know, going through the same sort of milestones, I suppose, each stage. But I was so lucky to have my best friend who had a baby,

her little girl Phoebe, three months prior to me so luckily I had her which has been a massive help and I think that support I just so underestimated how important the support was and you're so right I like having that sort of mum community it's just like other mums just get it and understand um and I too I really did not realize before having a baby and my sister um has two little boys so they're mine I have two nephews and they're a bit older now but I so wish I had helped more like you don't and so friends that had babies before like oh my god yeah I just never realized like I wish I'd helped more it takes don't and so friends that had babies before like oh my god yeah I just never realized like I wish I'd helped more it takes having a baby to realize but yeah I just wanted to let you know that um yeah it's been really helpful for me listening to your your podcast

and um so I'm still I'm a stay-at-home mom at the moment I haven't gone back to work I'm a stay-at-home mum at the moment. I haven't gone back to work. I'm a teacher. I haven't gone back to work yet. I've chosen to stay at home, but also finding that it's not an easy option, is it? But yes, time is very precious. And yeah, it's just a just completely different life isn't it and I think it's also validated a lot of things for me listening to you and like the guilt over everything and the worry yeah it's been really helpful for me so um I should stop waffling now on my debut voice note to you um so yeah I look forward to carrying on listening and hope you're well thank you bye-bye hopefully you found that as useful

as I did and by the way I just want to like end it on obviously I mentioned at the beginning my little my little bug bearer about the positivity brigade but I also want to say that I get that it's also really overwhelming and frustrating when you're in your positive bubble and people say just you wait so I don't advocate for that either um but yeah hopefully we can all get some more sleep and all feel more positive and I'm going to put all the links to the fox and the moon website and instagram so thank you for listening to mum's world the parenting podcast and make sure to hit subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode and if you enjoyed the episode or you want to get in touch or you have anything to say then get in touch on whatsapp you can send a voice

message for free god i'm out of breath i've got to that stage in pregnancy uh the number is 075 999 27537 or of course you can email at askmumsthewordpod at gmail.com or you can leave a review on apple podcast and i'll be back with another episode same time same place next week