Brittni (00:01.282)

Welcome back to the Resting in Motherhood podcast. I’m so excited to sit down and chat with you today. I hope you are having a beautiful day wherever you are. If you’re listening at night, I hope you had a beautiful day. If you’re listening first thing in the morning, I wish you a beautiful day. Wherever you are, I hope that you are doing good.

As always, I will start by sharing how I’m currently finding rest in motherhood. So I am currently finding rest in motherhood by really prioritizing movement for myself. So if you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that working out is just a part of my life. It’s something that I did a lot more before I had Lila. I was in the gym probably five times a week. Now I would say I…

I would say between three to four days a week I’m working out, but I’m not going to the gym. I do everything at home. That’s something that makes it easier for me to work out because if I had to go to a gym, I feel like I probably would not be working out as much because just the process of getting Lila out the door, if there was a daycare there or having someone watch her, it just makes more sense for the stage of life that I’m in to work out at home.

And so I’ve really been prioritizing working out. So for example, today, Laila has school. We’re also then heading up to our cabin right after I pick her up. So I’m picking her up and we’re heading up. And so I had a lot of packing to do. I had to get the car packed. I had to pack her lunch for school. Luckily, she woke up on the earlier side. She was up around like 730 this morning. But part of me, like the first thing that I was going to say like, okay, I can drop this ball.

was working out. Like I was like, I can skip my workout today. And then I was like, wait a second, you’re headed up to the cabin. You don’t have like weights up there or anything. Yes, you’ll be going on walks and you’ll be going on hikes, but like this is probably your, probably your last day of the week to get weights in. Prioritize yourself. You’re going to thank yourself for it. And so I added, I took, I didn’t add in, I took 30 minutes of our morning and I worked out and.

Brittni (02:21.208)

I always work out right in Laila’s little play area in our loft area. So she’s playing around me. I’m working out. Sometimes she wants to be right on top of me. But I would say the more that I do it, so the more ingrained in our routine my workouts are, the more she easily plays around me and then usually will continue to play. So like I’ll finish working out and then I can start like putting away laundry or take a shower and she like stays immersed in her own little world. So.

how I am taking care of myself or how I am finding rest in motherhood this week is really prioritizing movement. And I wouldn’t even say this week, this is something that I’ve really been focusing on this year in general, and also intuitive movements. So I was always like a hit girl, heavy weights if I wasn’t doing hit. And then once I had Lila and actually the pandemic really kind of made me, or…

got me interested in Peloton. So I was doing a lot of Peloton weight classes, which are great, or Peloton HIIT classes. But then as I’ve started learning more and more about our cycles and just our bodies as women, I’m learning that we should really be doing different types of exercise during the different parts of our cycle. And so I’m really leaning into that and doing intuitive movement.

And so like, I’ll see how I feel. Am I feeling heavier weights today or do I feel more of like a Pilates flow or do I kind of want to mix Pilates with strength and strength? So I’ve really just been doing my own workouts and listening intuitively to what my body wants, which has been, it just makes me feel a lot better. It gives me a lot more energy. So that is how I’m finding rest and motherhood.

And if you’re new to learning about our cycles or cycle syncing or any of that, I, in the future, I hope to have someone on who specializes in cycles and fertility and all of that. And I really want to dive deep into cycle syncing and everything we need to know about our cycles as women. So stay tuned for that in the future.

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But now I want to talk about something that’s just been on my heart and been on my mind. One thing that I will say is I don’t go look at like sleep trainers accounts. I know that like some people in the holistic sleep world, they will like actively go look at sleep trainer accounts just to kind of like see what’s being put out into the world, which I do think is a good thing, right? We want to see what…

narratives are being fed to parents to scare them into sleep training. But I am not one of those people. I kind of tend to just stick to my little bubble. I don’t like to go look at those things because as an empath, like when I see those things, I physically take on…

the stress that I imagine a baby is feeling, I start like, it hurts my stomach. It makes me nauseous. It makes me like jittery. When I think about the things that these sleep trainers are recommending and telling parents that they should do for their babies, it like physically makes me feel sick. And so I just kind of try to keep it out of my little bubble when I stay in my beautiful little bubble of like holistic sleep, respectful parenting, attachment parenting, all of that.

And so I don’t really know what’s going on in the sleep training world except for what clients will tell me or like I’ll see in question boxes. Like when I have my Instagram Q and A’s, people will ask me things and I’m like, this must be coming from the sleep training industry. But I did kind of start thinking recently, I feel like I do need to be doing a better job of like seeing what’s being told to parents so that I can provide peace of mind and really give you.

the truth instead of letting you see something on Instagram from a sleep trainer and thinking, like letting it make you spiral because you think you’re doing something wrong. So I was perusing my, what is it? Like the popular page. I don’t even think it’s called that on Instagram anymore, whatever it’s called. I was like scrolling through the popular page and I saw this, like the headline was something like,

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how to get your baby to sleep longer naps. And so I was like, okay, let’s see what this is. And it was a video where they had taken a plastic glove, like a doctor’s glove, not a plastic glove, a latex glove, and they had put rice in the glove. And then they put the baby to sleep, transferred him into the crib.

which I will say I’m glad they at least supported them to sleep and then transferred them in. But they supported them to sleep, transferred them in, and then they took this hand, this fake hand, the latex glove filled with rice and placed it on baby’s chest. And they were like, this is how you get a longer nap. And so then I was like scrolling through their page and saw like other tips for getting your baby to sleep longer. So like the swaddle.

again that rice thing. There was another thing where they had literally, I forget what they did, I want to say it was like they took like a remote control something and put it so that it kept hitting the baby’s bassinet and so it was making it rock. So like it was rocking it for them. All of these things that are taking away the human connection that babies need.

And then it goes even deeper, right? Like we live in a society that is completely obsessed, obsessed with getting our babies to sleep longer and deeper stretches. Like there’s so many things. There’s so many sleep sacks.

There’s so many sleep sacks advertised or marketed promising that they’re gonna help your baby get better sleep or they’re going to help your baby sleep deeper. A big one is the SNU. And before I say this, if you used a SNU, I am not judging you. You did the best that you could with the information that you had, but I hate the SNU. I hate it.

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hate it, hate it for so many reasons. The first reason is that, especially the one that like locks the baby down, that like physically, it’s almost like putting them in a straight jacket and they say it’s the swaddle. But can we just think about like, this is a living human being that was able to freely move in the womb. They are working on integrating reflexes and the only way to integrate reflexes into the brain,

is for those reflexes to fire. So the moral reflex, which is the reflex where baby’s hands, like if they’re around their chest, they startle and they open up. The only way for that to integrate is for it to fire over and over and over again. When we swaddle a baby, so whether this be a regular traditional swaddle, and let me stop here and say that I used to swaddle for Lila because I didn’t know then what I know now.

If I have another baby in the future, I will absolutely not swaddle them. But so like the traditional swaddle or the swaddle within the SNU, they are stopping that reflex from happening, which it makes sense, right? Like that reflex is often what wakes babies up. So if we stop it, it’s not going to startle them awake. But what we’re doing is we’re prolonging.

that reflex integrating into the brain because it doesn’t have time to fire. And so then we’re actually dealt with probably more sleep disruptions once we know it’s time to wean the swaddle around the four month mark or when they start rolling. So we’re limiting that. So that’s one big reason I don’t like the SNU. The other thing is, as I said, this is a baby who was able to freely move about the womb.

They are naturally kind of wiggly, squirmy little beings. So if we’re locking them down, not locking them, but strapping them down, we’re taking away a biological norm for them to move around, to move their bodies, right? So it’s just, essentially, I don’t like the snoo because I feel like it takes away from the natural human nature of how we are supposed to respond to and care for our little ones.

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Same thing with the rocking, right? One thing that cracks me up is the sleep training industry will tell you like wholeheartedly, like do not rock your baby to sleep or don’t let them sleep in the swing. Actually, I will say it’s technically not safe for a baby to sleep in a swing because of the angle. If you’re right there and you’re watching your baby, then I would say we have to choose what feels best for us. But my point is, is they’re saying things like,

Don’t let them sleep in the swing. Motion sleep isn’t restorative. Don’t rock them to sleep. But then a lot of them promote the snoo. And what does the snoo do? It vibrates and rocks. So it’s okay for your baby to have motion as long as it’s not you doing it. Like, please make this make sense, right? Like, don’t pick your baby up. Just have a machine rock your baby.

It’s just taking away the humanity of caring for our children. It’s taking the humanity out of our children, right? Like we’re using all of these devices because we’re obsessed with getting this deeper sleep. Now let me say, I don’t want to discredit if you’re up hourly all night long with your baby, I get the obsession with wanting to get longer stretches. If you’re up every two hours, I also get that obsession.

What we need to do there though is understand that it is biologically normal for babies to wake about every two to three hours throughout the night to get a quick feed or a snuggle and go back to sleep. So if your baby is waking every two hours and you are very tired, which I get, and I do not want to discredit that, we’ll talk in just a little bit about like what we should be doing. But ultimately, if a family came to me with a four month old who’s waking every two to three hours,

our conversation would be something along the lines of this is biologically normal, but what can we change within the home, within your routines to see if we can maximize, like get longer sleep stretches because it is possible. I have had clients come to me whose little ones are waking every two to three hours and they’re like, I just want to see if we can get longer stretches. And by making little tweaks,

Brittni (13:50.264)

We’ve gone from like two to three hour stretches to four to six hour stretches. So it is possible, but I think we also need to understand what’s normal. So I would wanna be seeing like, what could we change in the home in terms of routines for sleep hygiene, but also what could we be changing in your sleep setup? So like if they’re in a crib in another room, let’s either bring them in to room share with you. So in a crib or a bassinet or a floor bed in your room.

or safely co -sleep if that’s an option for you so that you’re not getting up and down as much. If you have a partner, this one’s tricky for my exclusively breastfeeding mamas, but how can you guys split the load to maximize sleep? If you’re up all night feeding baby every two to three hours, could your partner then be waking up in the morning with baby? Let’s say if baby wakes up at 6 a and then taking baby from.

6 to 8 a so that you can get a nice solid six like those two hours stretch without baby there. Could you be going to bed with baby at the beginning of the night which I know is hard. So things like that. So I kind of went off topic but my point is is we live in a society that is obsessed with getting these longer stretches of sleep. And again I’m not discrediting how hard it is to be up all night with a baby.

But the answer to getting those longer stretches, to feeling rested when we wake up, to not feeling like, my gosh, I’m never going to sleep again. The answer to all of that is not putting a latex glove with rice on it, in it, on your baby’s chest. It’s not the SNU, it’s not the swaddle, it’s not, I don’t wanna start like naming all of these name brand sleep sacks that promise better sleep.

But I’ll just say it’s none of those things, right, that are like promising that your baby will sleep through the night. If there was truly a magical item that made every baby sleep through the night, everyone would be using it, right? Like everyone would be singing its praises. But I would still be weary of that.

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because what we need to understand is that this frequent waking, so this waking every two to three hours throughout the night, while very frustrating and hard for new parents, is actually a built -in protection against SIDS. And we also don’t want our babies going into these deeper sleep stages than they’re ready for. So a really deep sleep cycle is a SIDS risk in itself.

So what we need to understand is frequent waking is actually protective against SIDS. And we also don’t really want our baby in deeper stages of sleep than they’re ready for. So we can kind of look at it from that perspective of like, my baby’s waking frequently to protect themselves from SIDS. This is a good thing. It’s not something that’s going to last forever. And we’ll talk about like unsustainable sleep situations in just a little bit.

But just remember that babies are waking frequently for a reason. Now again, if your baby is waking hourly, that’s a different conversation that we need to have. We need to be looking into what’s causing these hourly wakings. But if they’re waking every two plus hours throughout the night, that’s their body and their brain doing what it’s designed to do. It’s protecting them because the lighter stages of sleep that they stay in,

allow them to rouse easier and let us know if something is wrong, right? Babies are designed to survive, to want to survive. So they’re not just going to like if something’s wrong, if they’re in that lighter stage of sleep, their brain is going to wake them up. They’re going to cry out for us. And then we are going to come. If we get them in a deeper sleep stage than they’re ready for, they may not be able to wake if something is wrong. So,

All of this, this obsession with getting our babies to sleep longer and deeper, and then all of these products that are being shoved down our throats, or all of these hacks, are putting us at a complete mismatch with who our babies are and what they biologically need. And it’s dangerous because we really don’t want to be pushing our babies into these deeper sleep cycles.

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So you might be thinking, and I know I kind of already addressed it, but okay, so like what can we do, right? Because I do not want to imply that this means that we need to totally.

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I don’t want to imply that we need to kind of just give up and accept like, no, I’m never gonna sleep again now that I’ve had a child. That’s not what I’m saying, but I’m saying that this obsession is not healthy. The obsession with the longer, much longer, like a 12 hour stretch or even a six hour stretch for a six month old. That is not the biological norm. If your baby is sleeping six hours at six months, that’s amazing, that’s great.

you have a unicorn baby, but that’s not the biological norm, right? So expecting these really long stretches is not healthy for us because it’s going to put sleep on this pedestal and something that we cannot attain. And then we’re going to obsess over it more. We’re going to get frustrated. We’re going to feel like we’re failing. We’re going to feel like something’s wrong with our baby. So what can we do? First, you need to, and this one’s a hard one.

But we really need to accept that babies and children are not convenient and they’re not meant to be convenient. I think the sleep training industry has packaged up this lie and beautiful packaging and sold it to us that like nothing has to change when you have a baby, right? Which also cracks me up because they’re also the ones that like make you stay in a dark room with your baby for naps and like.

the environment has to be perfect. So actually you’re stuck at home more when you do it that way instead of just like taking a very child led approach to sleep. And I talked about that last week in the travel episode if you haven’t listened yet, but we need to understand that our lives are going to change. We have invited this little human into our lives. Life is going to look different.

And this is where there’s a fine line. It does not mean that now you’re stuck doing something completely unsustainable. You’re never going to sleep again. Because I also don’t want you to think that if you choose not to sleep train, you are doomed and you’re never, you have to just essentially wait it out because that’s not true either. But I think we do need to accept that babies and children are not convenient. Their needs do not mesh with our 21st century lives.

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So as their parents, it’s going to be up to us to kind of work with who they are and work with what our lives look like, what our 21st century lives look like, what our own life looks like in our unique family. And how can we blend that in a way that’s serving both ourselves, our mental health, our relationships, and our child? Because the sleep training industry,

Only one side’s benefiting and that’s parents. A baby is not benefiting when they’re being left alone in a crib to cry. They are not benefiting. Now people, when they see my posts about Cry It Out, who have sleep trained, they often feel the need to come on and comment that sleep training was the best thing that they ever did for their child and that their child was much happier and much more rested after they sleep trained.

First off, that would be something that, that’s a subjective thing, right? Like they, they’re, as parents, we’re going to want to see what we want to see. So even like the studies that have said like, parents have said that, or babies who have been sleep trained are more well rested or happier. All of that data was literally, they just asked the parents about baby’s mood. And so we can’t just say like,

yeah, definitely baby was happier because we don’t have markers for it to decide how do we know baby was happier. Also another thing about that is studies do show that when parents sleep train, they become misattuned to baby’s emotions. So because they’ve ignored those cries, they’ve shut down that part of their parental brain to respond to cries. They’re now not as attuned to baby’s emotions. So we cannot say, we cannot take their word that baby is happier.

after they sleep trained, right? And also if parents are now getting like a 12 hour stretch because they sleep trained, they’re gonna be more well rested. They’re probably going to be like happier and more outgoing. And so their outlook on life with a baby is going to be different than it was when they weren’t getting as much sleep. So that’s just, I wanted to throw that out there too. So what can we do? Our life is going to change. First, we need to understand.

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what’s biologically normal and what we can expect from our babies. If you want to learn like a lot more about that, I highly recommend checking out my zero to 12 month course, Resting in the First Year. If you have a toddler, I recommend checking out the Rested Toddler. Both of you, both of them give you so much education on what’s biologically expected from your child, what’s normal, who they are as little humans, their biological needs, all of that.

But I’ll quickly say like for a baby, as I said, it’s biologically normal for them to wake about every two to three hours throughout the night to get a quick feed or a snuggle and go back to sleep. It’s also biologically normal for them to eat at night, despite what your pediatrician might say or somebody that you, one of your friends or whoever, just because a baby reaches a certain age or a certain weight, it does not mean that they don’t need to eat at night. I still wake up for a sip of water, right? Like,

We cannot expect that just because our children are a certain age. They’re not supposed to be eating at night So accepting things like that understanding that a 12 -hour stretch is the lofty lofty goal again I have worked with babies who naturally do a 12 -hour stretch in the first year of life, but that is very rare I would say on average I from 0 to 12 months I’m seeing babies do anywhere from 2 to 6 plus hour stretches, and it’s going to be unique to each child and

I will also say that it is, there’s usually this beautiful window between like two to four months where babies will start sleeping through the night. That’s a beautiful period. I had that with Lila. I thought I hit the lotto and then things quickly changed at the four year mark or excuse me, the four month mark. If you haven’t listened to my episode where I dive deep into our sleep journey, I recommend going and listening to that episode.

But that’s what we need to understand. What can we actually expect from our babies? Because when we have realistic expectations, it makes life a lot easier because we’re not expecting something that our baby can’t do. We don’t feel like we’re failing. We don’t feel like we need to be changing something. And so as we’re kind of working through this, the things that I talked about, like, okay, so…

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We can’t be so obsessed with sleep, but what can we do? First, accept that life is going to change. What can we modify in the home? What can we modify in our sleep arrangements and our sleep routines to work with our baby, meet them where they’re at, but also meet our needs. Understand and accept what’s biologically normal for children so that we’re not expecting something that’s not biologically normal.

And then from there, I want you to decide what actually feels sustainable and what is going to work in your home. Not your friend’s home, not the Facebook group, the mommy Facebook group that you’re in, not what they’re saying is working in their home, not what your pediatrician says, not what your mom says, no matter how much you love her, not what your mother -in -law says, not anyone, right? You need to decide what is actually going to work best.

for you and what feels sustainable. I find that when I tell families it’s biologically normal for your baby to be waking about every two to three hours at night, nights become easier. And this is kind of twofold. One, it’s just a mindset thing. Like now they know it’s normal. So they don’t have the mental load of feeling like they’re failing, which is also taking energy away from them.

but they’re also choosing sleep setups that are going to maximize sleep if they weren’t already doing that. And then another part of that is…

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Sorry Hailey, I just lost my, I was like going and I lost my train of thought. I have to like think through this.

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Maybe is it waking every 12 or?

Brittni (27:47.512)

have to maybe if I write it down.

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And lastly, they are not letting the outside noise bring them down and make them feel like they’re failing. So they now know like, okay, this is normal. I know what to expect. They’re modifying again, those behaviors in their home, but they’re also not obsessed with trying to make something happen that’s not going to happen. And I actually had to share a great story about a client that I’ve been working with, little ones, four months old.

When she came to me, she really wanted to transition out of bed sharing. And about three weeks into working together, actually our third call was yesterday. I was asking how things were. We were in the process. She had actually made great process of transitioning out of bed sharing. She had made great progress with transitioning out of bed sharing. And when she came to me in our third call, she said, I realized that I don’t actually want to stop bed sharing.

She said as soon as she was doing like a six hour stretch in her bassinet, which is right by the bed by the way, she said as soon as she started doing that, like I couldn’t fall asleep at night because she wasn’t next to me. And then I started really digging deep and asking myself like, is this something that I actually don’t want to happen or have I been like kind of feeding into the narrative of like once you get them in your bed, you’ll never get them out. It’s a bad habit. And she’s like,

And I realized that I actually really enjoy bed sharing and I don’t want to transition away from it. So it just goes to show, right? Like once we kind of let that noise go, like we had talked about in our original calls, like how normal bed sharing is, but I also was there to support her and help her make progress and what she wanted to make. So we had done the education on what was normal. She had actually started getting those longer stretches of independent sleep in the bassinet.

And then she realized, wait a second, like, I want to bed share, bed sharing feels sustainable to me. So usually when we decide what actually feels sustainable, not based off of what external narratives are telling us or family members or pediatricians or whoever, things feel easier because we’re doing things that are more aligned with us.

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and we’re doing them because they feel good and they feel aligned with our family values and our goals, right? So you have to decide what feels sustainable. Now, if you are at a place where something does feel unsustainable, again, if you’re dealing with those hourly wakes, let’s talk. Book a 15 -minute discovery call with me. Let’s get to the root cause. In the 15 -minute discovery call, we’ll chat about what package would be best for you. I can get to know you a little bit better.

or I cover hourly wakes both in my toddler course and my zero to 12 month course. But if you’re wanting to get independent naps, we need to be working with babies. So we need to be choosing a sleep space that they feel safe and secure in. We need to be building a safe relationship with the sleep space. So having them spend time in their awake, right? If we’re wanting to transition out of bed sharing, again,

thinking about the best way that’s going to work with their biology. So maybe it’s first transitioning them to a sidecar crib or a floor bed in our room so that they can still sense us through smells, through hearing. If you’re wanting to night wean, I recommend not taking a parent led decision to night wean until at least the 12 month mark. If your child night weans before that, that’s great. But if you’re wanting to night wean,

We can do it in a gentle and loving and respectful way while still helping you make changes. And as I talked about earlier with the like, okay, I’m at two to three hours stretches, but it’s not feeling sustainable. That’s where I would be wanting to look at like your own sleep hygiene. I would want to be looking at baby sleep hygiene, your routines in your home, your sleep environment, all of that to look at how can we make this better for you while still meeting baby where they’re at and allowing them.

the piece to do what they’re biologically meant to do. And again, I just want to say that I’m not discrediting how hard those really long nights are. My daughter woke hourly for her first whole year of life, actually past the 12 month mark. So I know how low it can take us and I get it. There were nights, even though deep in my bones, I knew I was not going to sleep trained. Like I was just like, maybe I should have sleep trained, right? Like it takes us deep places.

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But one thing I will say, and this is a few episodes back where I talk about like curating your social media. If you’re waking up after a really hard night with your baby and then you’re seeing a sleep trainer’s post that was like, that’s like how to get your baby to sleep six hours stretches or 12 hours stretches, whatever. Or your baby should be sleeping this amount of time by this amount of age. And that’s the first thing you’re seeing on your social media account when you log in after a hard night. I would be unfollowing that account right away because that’s

adding stress to your life. When we’re obsessing with those things, it’s actually making sleep harder because we’re stressed about it. So it’s taking energy away. It’s making us less patient because we’re stressing about it. But the other thing is, is our babies are picking up on our emotions. And so when they feel that we are stressed about sleep in their mind, they start learning, when sleep is around, when sleep is coming, mom is

really anxious, mom is irritable, and they feel those emotions. So then what do they think? Sleep is not safe, I should not like sleep, mom doesn’t like sleep, and then we’re actually making sleep harder. So the more we obsess about it, the harder it gets. And I know, I know it’s so hard to like let go of that stress, but again, I would be, if you’re in a place where you are so stressed about sleep right now, first,

Come talk to me, I wanna work with you, I want to make your life easier. Sleep should not feel like this. Or again, like I said, check out my resources, check out my zero to 12 month course. It’s jam packed full of all of the information and resources and tools and education that I wish I would have had in the first year of life. It would have changed my life, it would have made me a more present, calm mother. If you have a toddler, check out my toddler course, which is also an amazing resource.

But if you are feeling that, one thing you can do today is go through your social media and mute all of the accounts that are adding to that obsession and adding to that stress. Also, if you have a partner, I would encourage you to talk to your partner about how you’re feeling and about what you guys can do together as a couple to support each other or for your partner to support you. Ask for what you need as well. It’s not.

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shameful, you’re not failing if you ask for help. I am wishing you a very beautiful day. I’m sending lots of sleepy vibes your way. And like I said, if you are just at a place where something has got to give, you know you don’t want to sleep train, but things are not sustainable. I don’t want you staying stuck in something that feels unsustainable. Let’s work together. Let’s chat so I can change that. Have a beautiful day.