Episode 9

Go the f*ck to sleep

Let me preface this episode by saying this is MY experience and NONE of this is advice.

Sleep is a very sensitive topic for parents, mostly because we're getting bugger all of it but I wanted to share my experience so you can take from it what you need and ignore what you don't.

Every baby is different so it's likely that none of the stuff that worked for me will work for you and vice versa.

Welcome to the punish of teaching your kid to sleep!!

In this episode I chat about my experience with sleep training, the Snoo, co-sleeping and the phrase that will haunt you in your dreams: "Drowsy but awake."

If I had a list of priorities when I became a parent, sleep was top of the list.

Mostly because I had no one else to hand this little person off to so if I was getting no sleep I knew that was a recipe for disaster.

So, I did everything I could to create an environment where my daughter had the best possible chance of learning how to do it because that's really all you can do.

The rest is up to them and you have no idea how they're going to take to it.

But I knew I didn't want to take short cuts early (even though it would have been SO MUCH easier at the time) because I didn't want to be fixing bigger problems later.

I wanted to try and tough it out as best I could in the hopes that we could get the hard stuff out of the way early and then course correct later.

So this is what worked for me.

This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Wangal people, of the Eora Nation.

I pay my respects to Elders past and present.

EPISODE CREDITS:

Host: Rachel Corbett

Editing Assistance: Lize Ratliff

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Email me: rachel@meandmytinyhuman.com

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Transcript
Speaker A:

Hello. Welcome to Me And My Tiny Human. As the title of this episode suggests, this is all about sleep.

And please let me preface this by saying, this is not advice. None of what I'm about to say to you is me saying, this is the way you should do things.

Nothing is me saying, if you are doing something different to this or you believe something different to this is. Is wrong. Everybody, calm down. Calm down. Sleep is one of those topics that people get real testy about, and that's mostly because you're getting f

all of it, really. Your fuse is already on the short side. But people have a lot of opinions.

And also, I mean, this happens in a lot of things with parenting. I feel like people follow some people's advice.

Now, if that person on the end of that advice is saying, this is the 100 foolproof silver bullet method that's going to make your child sleep 12 hours a night, and you then try that method and it doesn't work, I can understand how that sets you up to fail. And you can feel like, is it something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my child?

But a lot of this information is just kind of out there, right? And you consume it.

And if you try it and it doesn't work, like, I don't know that you need to be shouting at people saying, like, you said that this worked for you and it didn't work for me. Every baby's different. You know, I've said before, that is the most annoying advice you'll ever get. But it's annoying because it's also true.

You might have a child that literally sleeps from the day it's born, and you never have an issue. And if that is you, well done, you. I mean, really enjoy it. And if you tell people about it, that's fine.

Again, apparently, if we have a sleeper, not allowed to tell anybody about it, we gotta go. Oh, God. In the trenches, I'm sorry, but I put in some serious, serious work getting my kid to be a sleeper.

I also put up with a lot of crying and emotional moments that were very, very difficult for me. She was fine. We weren't in a controlled crying situation where I'm leaving her in her room for four days to work it out herself.

I'm talking, like, two or three minutes. But the whole process of getting to that point was really, really tough.

And coming out the other side of it, I'm like, do I tell everybody every five seconds that she's a good sleeper? No. If somebody asks me, will I say yeah, she is good. But I say it because it took a really long time to get here and it didn't just happen by magic.

And she wasn't a perfect sleeper from the beginning. And it will probably change a million times over because already it's changed a bunch.

And I've come out of a situation three weeks ago where she was randomly getting up at 4:15 for no reason. And then I'm like, fantastic, great. Why are we here? No idea. I've done all the things on the checklist. I have not a clue what's happening.

So I thought I'd share some of my experience through this phase, some of the things that I've noticed and if it helps you, great. If it doesn't, great. Take away from it what you will. None of it is me saying that this is the way to do things.

I don't think I nailed it perfectly. For me, sleep was number one, top of the list priority because I was on my own. So there was no, you know what, It's been a big old night.

You can look after the kid this morning, babe. It was like, if we are up at 3 am, I'm on that bouncy ball or I've got the kid on the boob and then if she's up 700 more times, it is me.

Doesn't matter if she needs a feed or not it's me. I'm the one tap dancing. And I knew I was going back to work at four months. I knew I had to kind of get things under control.

I went back to work at four months, which is the exact same time as the sleep regression kicks in. So that was poor timing on my part. We'll be honest, when I was in the midst of it, I was like, this might not have been the best idea.

But anyway, we got through it and I'm still alive. But I definitely wanted to get on top of this. I read every book known to man before I actually had a baby.

I had a plan on my little notepad of what things I should expect in each of the weeks and looked at none of it, but who cares. For me

I knew absolutely nothing about the process, what you do, how you work on helping your child sleep, what happens to their brain at certain phases. I knew nothing about it, so I just wanted to understand the lay of the land at least.

So even if I knew none of it, didn't reference any of it and I didn't remember anything, well, who cares? At least I've done the work in the meantime. And maybe something goes in by osmosis.

And when I'm standing there cuddling a screaming child at 1 am Maybe something that I've read will come into my head. Yeah, I didn't use any of it, but I, I felt more comfortable going in.

And I did tell a lot of parents that I was doing that and that I had come up with a plan. And one thing that parents love to do is to just poo poo every idea you've ever had before you become a parent. Because of course, what would you know?

And I get it, what would I know? But if I want to read 900 books and put together a plan that I'm never going to use, does that matter to you?

Am I using your time to do that? Did I hire you to read through that stuff and transcribe it for me? No, I didn't. I just did it on my own. So if I don't use it, no worries.

But the number of like, oh my God, why'd you bother doing that? It's like absolutely pointless. Okay, all right, I'm, I'm over here managing my own time, so I think I can do that now.

I'm a fully grown adult, so why don't you lead me to it and just zippity your mouth. But yeah, I was really, really focused on this. So this was a bit of an obsession with me. The things that I have taken away from my time.

And it took about eight months I think, until my baby started sleeping through. That is, I have heard pretty good. But we were on that sleep training train from about five months kind of getting things rolling.

I did try to start at four months. I would not advise that. She had a really good bout of 10 days of sleeping through the night just before the four month sleep regression hit.

It hit about a couple of weeks, probably before she was four months. So I, in my naivete thought, great, we've gotten there, fantastic. But then of course, everything goes upside down.

They don't do the things that they used to do. They're waking up at weird times you don't really know. Like you can feel that they don't even know what, what's going on.

You know, there's kind of no rhyme or reason. And when I sort of started to see the glimmers of it, I was straight on the phone to the sleep consultant. What do I need to do?

You know, because the one thing that everybody tells you and the phrase that you will hear a lot is put them down, drowsy but awake. And I mean, that phrase will haunt you in your dreams until it is actually possible to do that. And until the time that it is possible to do that.

Unless you've got a lovely baby who, from day dots, just happy to go on in the cot and be like, I'm awake and I'll put myself to sleep. If that's you, I truly, I'm happy for you that, that is absolutely brilliant. But for me, probably like, it took five months.

And I, through that entire time, I was like, I actually, this is never going to be possible with this child. Like, I am bouncing this kid to sleep.

I am then putting this kid down with such precision and softness in the hopes that not a hair on her head moves when she hits that mattress and that she has no idea that she's no longer in my hands. I also had the snoo until she was too big for it. So that was good because it did some rocking motion. And I really like that.

I borrowed, and I know they're expensive and I know it's like out of reach for a lot of people. I borrowed it. I didn't pay for it. I don't know that I would have paid for it if I didn't have the option to borrow it.

But having come through the other side, I was like, that is a worthwhile investment and you can get a cheap one online and if it breaks. There is an absolute legend of a woman called the snoo lady who comes to your house. She's an ex engineer.

She basically went and bought broken snoos and worked out how to put them back together and she fixes them.

And she turned up to my house when I booked her on Facebook with her baby strapped to her chest and a toolkit and walked in and I was like, you are a flipping legend. And like, watching somebody like that who could function and have a child with her coming to work, I was just like, oh, my gosh.

Meanwhile, I'm in the throes of this hellish sleep regression time and I'm just looking at this woman going, you are a goddess. So anyway, I highly recommend that. But I was, you know, I. I just could not get my head around this concept of drowsy but awake.

I'm like, how do you put this child into a cot, anything other than dead asleep and feel like you're going to get her to stay asleep? So for that time, you'll hear that term so much. And for me, I just thought it was never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to be a possibility.

But then one day it is. And I would say one of the things that I learned through the process is that accident is your absolute best friend.

The very first time that she went into her cot drowsy, but awake and went to sleep. I think I tried to put her down a couple of times. She was having none of it.

I bounced her, she'd fallen asleep, I put her down, she woke up, she's crying. I was busting for the loo, like, wet my pants. I've been at this for, like, God knows how long. I mean, at that time

It wouldn't be unusual for you to be sitting there and bouncing this kid for like an hour, an hour and a half, who knows? So I was just about to wet my pants, and I was like, where am I going to put this kid? I can't put this kid anywhere. I have to

to put her in her cot, and if she cries, I'm just going to have to run back and get her and just do the wee and run back and get her. And wouldn't you know it, by the time I'd finished the wee, she was quiet and off she went to sleep.

Now, once that happens once, it doesn't happen every single time. So it's not like, well, problem solved.

But I would say that one of the things I found super helpful was things you can't plan, like busting for a wee or just needing to do something that involves getting her out of your hands.

That's why they say when you put them down to sleep, when they're trying to go to sleep at first and they're still learning and they will cry, like, again another thing I would flag that I feel is fundamental.

Unless you have a really good sleeper that just doesn't cry, I would think it would be almost impossible to help a child become a good sleeper if you don't want to hear any crying at all. If you don't want to hear any crying. Like, nobody wants to hear crying.

But there is certainly a point at the process where you start to register, ah, that is an I need you right now cry. That's a get the F out of my face, I'm so tired. Can you just let me sleep cry.

And I definitely started to recognize that there was a cry that she did, which was absolutely. I mean, it sounded like she was being murdered. And I worked out, she was like, I'm exhausted. Like, get me.

And she, once I put her in the cot, she would actually be fine. Whereas months earlier I would have heard that cry and gone, oh my God, she needs me.

And I would have dragged her out and bounced her and whatever. But I started to realize, no, no, no, that's the. I am so exhausted, I just want to go to sleep.

So when you get to that point, you can start to hear, okay, this isn't, I need you, something's really wrong cry.

This is just, I have no form of communication other than these wales and I'm exhausted and I don't really know how to go from being awake to being asleep. And once you get that in your head, I found that really helpful. I'm like, she's all right, she's fine.

She's just really frustrated and it's going to take her a while to do this. But one of the greatest pieces of advice, when I started to put her in, I would get straight in the shower. Cannot hear anything in the shower.

Now I would have the monitor there watching her and unfortunately had that green, yellow, orange, red light on. And it was just constantly in the red. And I'm like trying not to look at it, but I couldn't hear her. So, you know, that takes some of the pain away.

And then sure enough, like, you know, most of the time, by the time you finished your shower, she's done. Now some nights or some naps, she's not. And it's painful. And you know, you're not leaving them in there for 20 minutes.

But the kind of approach to sleep training, and I think it's got a really bad rap like that sleep training idea. Like as soon as people hear that, they think, oh, you just left your child in a room for three hours and let her fend for herself.

And it's like, no, it's not that. And a lot of it takes time. A lot of it takes a lot of time.

I did a lot of the sleep training after she kind of came through the regression and we hit that five month mark. And then I was starting by trying to get her to extend her naps because one of the things she sucked at, I mean, she didn't suck at it.

That seemed really harsh. She sucked. She just didn't know how to do it. She did not suck. It just wasn't her early forte.

She was much better night sleeper than she was a day sleeper. I was still getting up multiple times a night, but she was much better at going a bigger stretch at night than she was in the day.

Like in the day for most of her early life. Like, if I got 20 minutes, that was a good nap.

And when you are looking after this child on your own all day, every day, and the only gap you get is 20 minutes every few hours or whatever, that's not quite enough. So, yeah, I sleep trained her. We focused on that.

It was, it was really difficult, in trying to extend her day naps so that she's sleeping more than 20 minutes. She'll wake up and then you do have to sit there and listen to her cry and hope that she will try and eventually, we'll hope that she will eventually work out how to go back to sleep. So, you'll wait out there.

The thing that I would say is that I don't think you start with one minute increments and then if they're still crying after one minute, you go in, you pat them, you walk back out again. After a few days, I think it goes up, you know, or each day or something, it might go up 2 minutes, 3 minutes. I think 3 minutes was the maximum.

But she would never cry to the maximum. You know, I think I might have gone in there to pat her once through the whole process. But you reset the clock every time they stop crying.

And obviously if she's crying and then she's stopping, like we're not in disaster stations, you know, she's just frustrated and irritated and then she kind of stops and she gives it a try again and then it doesn't work and she frustrated and she cries again. So I wasn't standing outside listening to a crying baby, but because it would.

You would literally be standing there watching the monitor, then be like, please. And then she'd start up again and you'd be like, absolutely an emotional wreck for the minute that felt like 45 minutes until she stopped crying.

And then you're like, please. And that would go on sometimes for like 30 or 40 minutes, you know, while you're trying. And then eventually you're just like.

Or 20 minutes at the start, I think. And then eventually, as you're helping them over time, you extend that time out to 30, 45 minutes.

Not that you're leaving them crying for 45 minutes, but that you're doing those little incremental things for that period.

And then you go in if it doesn't work and you know, because they've got to actually get some sleep and you pick them up and you rescue the nap and you put them in the carrier and off you go for a walk. And I did that more times than I can count. Like I was doing about 30,000 steps a day during my maternity leave.

And you know, when I was looking after her because she wanted to be carried, I went to the gym, did step class in particular, all the way to the very end of my pregnancy and until my hips gave way and then I was like, nope, not going to be doing this. Had one of those belly bands that's supposed to pull up the pressure. They do nothing.

I've got this giant child and I'm like bouncing up and down.

Anyway, when I came out the other side and my child wanted to be bounced all the time, people like, did you do a lot of exercise during your pregnancy? I was like, yeah. They're like, yeah, she's probably used to movement. So I was like, well, that was a dumb idea, wasn't it?

Somebody had told me that I would have sat on my ass on the couch, I wouldn't have done this at all. But there were plenty of times.

I mean, the majority of the time I'd have to go in and I'd have to rescue the nap and then you just cut a load of sleep and that's it. If it didn't work, this today, we try again tomorrow and then eventually, over time you get there. But it takes a lot of work.

Even now when she's sick, there's been maybe one day since she's started sleeping really well where she was really sick and she would not get off me. And that was again, I think, one of the worst days of parenting. I actually recorded a little audio from it.

I thought, nobody needs to hear this mental breakdown. It's always better when you can laugh about it post rather than actually hearing somebody who's wondering whether it's all been worth it at the time.

When she's sick particularly I'm like, sleeping on me is not going to be the best thing for you. I move you wake up like you need to be sleeping in your bed because you will get the best possible sleep.

I will also get the best possible sleep if you are sleeping in your bed. And then I will be a better mum for you. You will feel like a happier kid, like we're all moving along better. This is better for everybody.

I did not want to do the co sleeping thing. Not because I don't want to be near my child or I don't want to love her or I think anybody who does it, I think it's wonderful.

Like, if you want to do that and like with anything to do with sleep, it is about what works for your family. If you want your kid in your bed, that's lovely.

But I could not work out how do I get a night's rest when I am worried about rolling on her all the time? How do I set up bumpers on the bed like the bowling alley so that she doesn't fall out the side?

How does she not wake up every time see me and be like, hello? You know, she got. Actually got sick recently. Oh, no, she was teething. That's right.

And she woke up and we were up for, God, I don't know, three hours from about one till four. She wouldn't let me put her down. She would only, stay on me if I was on the bouncy ball. The goddamn bouncy ball. If you've got one, it's great.

Until it ain't. I really need to get rid of mine. I don't know where to put it. Every time she sees it, she's like, ball.

I'm like, we are not going on that bouncy ball again. Anyway, at a certain point I was like, I actually physically cannot keep my eyes open anymore. I cannot have you on this bouncy ball anymore.

So I took her into bed and we laid down. She was having none of it because she's like, where. What is this? Why am I laying down? What is this place?

Now in my head I'm thinking, this is actually excellent that you don't want to be here. Because I don't want you to get in the habit of feeling like you have to come in here.

Because I know once it's an option for you, you'll only want to come in here. And then I ain't getting no sleep and I can't function on no sleep. But in those moments you're like, could you just shut up and sleep here?

Could we pretend that you've come in here a few times and that you know that and you love it in those moments you're like, okay, right, the sleep training thing. For this fraction of a second, if we could just forget we did all that.

And then you love sleeping next to Mummy right now because it's 4:00 in the morning. We've been up on the bouncy ball for three hours, but doesn't quite work that way. But I knew that was such a skill that I wanted her to have.

And that was going to be helpful for our family. So that's why I focused a lot on it. I was on the routine from the start. And that, I think, was amazing.

Like, I started to do, you know, in the early days, like, they're getting up 700 times a night, so you can't really do a huge amount. But, you know, there's no kind of, okay, 7:00's our bedtime. And then, because they're up again at like 9:30.

But we were having a bath at, you know, five. From about five or six weeks or something. You know, we go through the process of reading a book.

I mean, at that point they're looking at colored lights and they don't even know who you are. So. But, you know, we sort of started to get into the rhythm of that.

And now, you know, after doing that for a year, like, it's, it's, it's so ingrained. So I've found that routine really good because it also helps you move on to the next thing.

When we started to brush our teeth, then, you know, we do the brush our teeth dance. And so if she's. If we've read three books and she wants to read five more and it's bedtime, well, then I just start the brush our teeth song.

And she goes, I realize you can't see me dancing unless you're watching video of this, but she starts kind of dancing and then we circuit break, off we go to brush our teeth, and then we have a drink of water and then we go to bed.

So actually that process of, like, there are a bunch of steps that we do before we go to bed has been really, really helpful, particularly at night, to kind of like, this is how things roll. The white noise I also found really helpful, mostly because it blocks out the sound of you outside.

So you feel like you can watch a television or do the washing up and you're not like, oh my God, I'm not going to have to put this spoon back in the drawer with like, precision so it doesn't make a noise. You know, that is really helpful. So those are kind of some of the things that I found helpful.

And then, yeah, around about eight months, she got back in the rhythm of sleeping through. Now that, for me, was a game changer.

I feel like there is no surprise that the time that I felt like having a child was not a living hell's the wrong thing to say. That's not what I mean. But the fact that that's the first thing that comes to mind kind of gives you an essence of what I'm trying to say.

Once that threshold was crossed, then I was like, okay, I'm starting to enjoy this more. Granted, at eight months she's more of a person, you're getting more feedback.

But the fact that you are starting to sleep whenever that happens, that is a real gear shift. And I wanted to try and get that happening as early as I could.

Again, it is child dependent, it is parent dependent based on what you value most and therefore what you can push through. You know, you don't by any means need to have a child that's miserable to get a good sleeper.

Like I think I definitely recognized that her cries through this process were frustration. It wasn't pain, it wasn't sadness, it wasn't any of those things, it was frustration.

And I think when I got my head around that, it made the process a lot easier to go through. And then by the end of it you're like, thank God we did that. And then you have to do it again.

When they start waking up at 4:20 and you're not too sure why. And then you're back on the phone to the sleep consultant going, excuse me, I'm doing all the things that.

And then they tell you that you've been leaving her up too long at the second half of the day and you realize that she's been awake for five, for six hours instead of five. And so she's waking up earlier because she's overtired, because that makes sense. Because who doesn't get overtired and then wake up earlier?

But these are the things, these baby concepts that make absolutely no sense to anybody else in the world and that you don't know unless you do it all the time. And that's why I highly advise just getting straight on the phone to somebody who knows what they're talking about.

If things have been bedding in a good week like she was getting up at 4:24, 30, 4, 45. After a couple of days I thought this is a bit of an anomaly. Seven days later I thought this is my future and we are going to nip this in the bud.

And then after that advice that I got off the phone from the sleep teacher, the next day we were, we slept through till 6 o'clock. So, you know, pay some people some money that know things that you don't would be my advice to you. So that is my story, my experience.

I would say if I can give you any advice it is to not measure yourself against anybody at all.

Don't have a timeline for when you want your kid to sleep through, because some of them might not until they're five years old, but you can put all of the things in place to give them the best possible chance. And that's kind of how I felt. What I thought about it basically was I want to give you the best possible chance to learn this and to be good at it.

And if you're just not built for that, that's fine.

But I want to be able to put all the groundwork there so that if you are going to be able to work out how to do this, then you've got everything you need to be able to do it. And that takes discipline, routine, structure. That's not some people's favorite thing. Me, on the other hand, love it. Love it.

You tell me we're doing things at certain times, fantastic. Let's do it every day at that time. That is exactly what I want to hear. I will follow the rules to the letter. So that suited me down to a T.

And yeah, the other thing to just be mindful of is that things will always change.

You know, here I am thinking I've got a great sleeper, and then I'm up every week before every day before work at 4:20, bouncing this kid on the bouncy ball, going, why am I here again? How has this happened? And then you realize that you just got to shift a few things and you change it.

And I'm sure we'll have nights where she's teething and I'll be up for five hours. Once she starts to have nightmares, she'll be in my bed. But I guess the groundwork is laid.

And then wherever we go to from here is the wild adventure that we're both a part of that I somehow signed up for now. I love it. I do love it. I mean, do I love it? I love her. I love her.

There's a lot about the it that I don't love, but I love her very much and I'm very glad that I did it.

Anyway, if you wanted to share any of your thoughts, feelings, if you had any questions about things, there is a link where you can submit questions in the description of this episode.

If you are enjoying the show, if you want to share it with someone, even if they just want to laugh at someone doing it solo, or you've got a friend that wants to do it themselves and they're like, this is actually not a possibility, send them my way. I'm still here. I'm still breathing, still alive. I smile from time to time. Everything will be just fine if you do it on your own. I promise.

And I will see you next week.

About the Podcast

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Me And My Tiny Human
Solo mum by choice, Rachel Corbett, dives into the highs, the lows, and the 'How am I doing this?' moments of solo parenting.

About your host

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Rachel Corbett

Rachel Corbett is a podcasting expert, entrepreneur and media professional with over 20 years experience in television, radio, podcasting and print.

The first half of her career was spent as a breakfast and drive host working for some of the biggest radio stations in Australia before moving her focus to podcasting.

Over ten years Rachel has established herself as a leading expert in podcasting in Australia as Head of Podcasts for two major audio networks – Mamamia and currently Nova Entertainment.

She’s also hosted over ten podcasts and is the Founder of the online podcasting course, PodSchool.

Rachel is currently a regular panellist and occasional host on Channel 10’s nightly news show, The Project and she’s worked as a TV presenter/panellist on shows including Q&A, Have You Been Paying Attention, The Morning Show, Weekend Sunrise, The Today Show, Weekend Today, Paul Murray Live and Studio 10.

She’s also worked as a writer and has been published in The Huffington Post, The Daily Telegraph, News.com.au, Mamamia, The Collective, and Body + Soul