Surviving the Newborn Transition:Sleep and Feeding Strategies S5|EP120

Surviving the Newborn Transition: Sleep and Feeding Strategies S5|EP120

If you’re a new parent, you do not want to miss today’s episode. We’re going to be delving into the exciting topic of transitioning out of the honeymoon period with your newborn and mastering the challenges of bedtime and feeding routines. Joining me in this episode is our wonderful guest Julia, who’s going to share her personal experience and insights as she navigates these crucial weeks with her little newborn Aurelia.

Many parents know that the first few weeks with their baby is known as the honeymoon period, a time in which the newborn is typically sleepy and content. But as this period ends, new challenges arise, particularly around sleep and feeding and even fussiness. In this episode, we are going to explore effective strategies to manage bedtime routines, including the concepts of dream feeds and cluster feeds.

You might have lots of questions about whether or not they’re useful and whether or not they can help to stretch your baby’s sleep periods and make nights more manageable. We’re going to delve deeply into that. You’re also going to learn about the importance of timing paternity leave to support the evolving needs of your family and also how involving older siblings in the care and routine of your little one can ease the transition for everybody.

By the end of this episode, you are going to feel super confident in your ability to handle the evening juggle, to be able to understand your little one’s hunger and sleep cues, and then also how to establish a bedtime routine that really works for the whole family. We’re also going to discuss the long-term benefits of these early routines and how these early routines can actually set the stage for your child’s future development. So grab a cup of coffee, get comfortable, and let’s dive right in.

Welcome to Sense by Meg Fora, the podcast that’s brought to you by Parent Sense, the app that takes guesswork out of parenting. If you’re a new parent, then you are in good company. Your host, Meg Fora, is a well-known OT, infant specialist, and the author of eight parenting books.

Each week, we’re going to spend time with new mums and dads just like you to chat about the week’s wins, the challenges, and the questions of the moment. Subscribe to the podcast, download the Parent Sense app, and catch Meg here every week to make the most of that first year of your little one’s life. And now, meet your host.

Welcome back, mums and dads, to Sense by Meg Fora. I am Meg Fora, and I am delighted to have you join me here today to talk about all things parenting. So, as you know, each week we speak about topics ranging from feeding, to sleep, to poos, to anything to do with what’s going on for little babies.

And sometimes I speak to experts, and sometimes I speak to mums. And we have a regular guest who has joined us for this season. Her name is Julia, and she has a little baby, Aurelia, who is just a tiny little one.

And last week, we heard about how she was hospitalized, really, really sick with RSV. And now she’s been home for a bit. So, welcome back, Julia.

Thanks, Meg. It’s great to have you here. So, yeah, tell us how your week has been.

What have been the joys? What have been the challenges? It’s been ups and downs, some obviously lovely moments and some challenging ones. My partner went back to work after having two weeks of paternity leave, which was obviously wonderful, because having that extra set of hands, especially with two kids rather than just one, is incredibly helpful. So, there was a little bit of a sort of transition period of navigating, looking after both children by myself.

I also had my nanny wasn’t able to be with me for a few days as well, so it was quite tricky. I’m, you know, obviously kind of aware of how privileged I am, and a lot of mums in Africa to have that extra help. So, you really miss it when it’s not there.

So, that was very tricky. And how old is Aurelia this week? She’s four weeks now. So, was dad home from her birth until two weeks, or did he go back to work and then take it a little later? He took it a little bit later, because our experience with our son was that the first two weeks was basically just as easy as pie, and lulls you into a false sense of security about how easy it is.

Because they’re so sleepy, I guess, they’re kind of easier to manage. We made the decision that he would have paternity leave for sort of weeks two and three, three and four, so that he could help when things got a little bit trickier as she was growing. So, luckily it worked out well.

I mean, that is an incredible tip for other mums, because I think most of us actually get our partners to take paternity leave in the first two weeks. That’s pretty common, and certainly I did that. But you’re absolutely right.

It’s the honeymoon period, and they’re sleeping most of the time, and so rather take it a little bit later on. So, yeah, that’s great advice for other people. Yeah, and often I think you’re establishing breastfeeding as well.

So, you’re not necessarily able to have as much help with feeding, for example, in those first two weeks, because you’re kind of really trying to create a rhythm with the feeding yourself. So, I do think it is a good thing, good strategy to do. So, yeah, and it was great to have him around, and luckily he works flexibly, so he is able to be home with me sometimes, but for the most part, I’m figuring this out on my own with the help of my nanny.

And the days when I was by myself, and I didn’t have any extra sets of hands, I did find them quite difficult, often because you know, everything seems to happen once. So, for example, my son would come home from school at lunchtime, and that would be the time that I meant to feed her. So, I sort of would have to make a decision about do I delay her feed so that I can give him his snack and get him down for his nap, but then she will wake up screaming, and then you’re juggling, and he needs to go to the bathroom, and I need to make his food, and then a delivery driver arrives.

Obviously, at the exact moment, you’re trying to get one down to sleep, and it’s just absolute chaos. And do you know what’s really interesting? You know, when you have a firstborn with only one baby, you know, and you believe you should just respond to them within the minutes, like the minute they start crying, or whatever happens, your response time can be really short. And then, of course, you have a second child, and your first one suddenly needs to make a poo when the other one needs to be fed, or you know, the one’s having a meltdown, temper tantrum, and the other one needs to go to sleep.

And so, these little, these second babies, and subsequent second, third, and fourth babies, tend to have to learn to get on with things a little bit better themselves, because you can’t respond to them in the minute. And actually, on the whole, we see that they are generally a little bit better at self-soothing, because they just are given that one or two minutes, which actually, it’s a lesson for first-time moms, that actually, you know, one or two minutes while you finish something up, or if you don’t get there in the minute, they actually do learn to sort themselves often a little bit more than, for instance, our firstborns, which are getting an immediate response. Yeah, that’s absolutely right.

And I think, certainly for me, there is a blessing there in the sense that with my son, I think that, you know, although I knew all of the theory around the science of sleep, sleep was something we really struggled with with him, and I’m sure that you and I will discuss it at some point. But you know, I think that after actually I did your sleep course towards the end of last year, even though I knew everything in the course already on paper, I realized that in fact, the one thing that I had done wrong was I had always responded too quickly to him. And even though he could self-soothe in theory, you know, often he wasn’t, because I guess he knew that I would be there in a flash if he needed me.

So that’s something that I’m hyper aware of with Aurelia. And I think that, like you say, in a way, there’s a sort of blessing in not necessarily having all of my attention all the time, because I have to deal with Sunti. So it is something that is, I try and keep calm about, you know, I do sometimes fly into a stress and a panic.

But it is something I’m really kind of learning to let go of the need to be the perfect parent all the time. Absolutely. And one of the questions moms often ask when we talk about this topic, which we’ve called it the juggler’s reel on a couple of podcasts, because the juggler’s really real when you’ve got a toddler and a newborn.

So give us, I mean, have there been any little things that you’ve managed to identify over the course of the last week that you can use to do both kids at once? Like, for instance, one of the things that I did was I had a little box of books that sat next to my feeding chair. And so when I was breastfeeding the baby, I would tell my toddler to come and sit with me and I’d read him a book. And he actually wouldn’t realize that I was trying to distract him from the fact that I was feeding the baby.

He would just think it was reading a book time. Have you found that there are any strategies that you’ve been able to employ to do the juggle? Well, I think that, again, one of the blessings of having a slightly larger age gap, and again, you know, I have lots of friends who have a much smaller gap and it’s quite different, is that because he is three and a bit, his understanding of, you know, what a baby is and the way that my attention is divided, I think is much better than it otherwise would be. So that he, for example, well, he’s very interested in her as opposed to necessarily being obsessed with me.

I mean, he is fairly obsessed, but, you know, he is interested in her. So, for example, he loves to, when I’m feeding her, come and read her a story as opposed to me having to entertain him necessarily. So that’s a really, you know, engaging him in activities or distractions, I suppose, to do with her usually work quite well because he does like to spend time with her and he’s very affectionate and he wants to kiss her and hug her all the time.

I mean, he’s hit her on the head a couple of times, of course, I think all older brothers are bound to at one point or another. But generally speaking, I think that the fact that he’s a little bit older means that my juggle is really kind of logistical. And luckily, it’s less to do with things like tantrums and, you know, wanting me to put the baby down, which is something that I’ve heard a lot of other moms talk about.

So, you know, it sort of depends on the moment, but luckily, you know, he does tend to be easily distracted if I can give him, and he loves to help. I think it’s another thing about toddlers. They love control.

They love to be independent. So if I say to him, Baba, go and get, you know, Aurelia’s dummy from next door, he loves it. He’ll jump off the bed and rush next door.

I love that. So definitely giving him little jobs to do is another lovely idea. Have you had to juggle bath time on your own or how do you guys split up bath time? Bath time is, no, I’m completely intimidated by the idea of trying to bath at the same time.

I’ve bathed them sort of within a half an hour of each other, but I haven’t been able to do it at the same time. That’s a little bit too hectic for me. So at the moment, I’m trying to squeeze her baths in earlier in the day, sometimes even when he’s at school, because actually it just means, it means I’m not so stressed about worrying about him and her at the same time and making sure he doesn’t accidentally stand on her when she’s lying next to the bath and, you know, all these, these things you have to consider.

So I find for myself when there is something, a task to be done like that, if I can find a really calm space for myself, so for example, when Santi’s at school, it makes the experience much easier for me and I’m less triggered and I’m less panicked. And I can, I can overall be a kind of calmer mom. So that’s what I’m trying to do at the moment.

When she’s a bit bigger, I’m sure we will be able to tackle it together. But for now, it just makes my life easier for them to be separate. Well, there’s a number of reasons why that’s a really good idea.

So the first one is because of the juggle and, you know, having her at a different time is better. And the other reason is that sometimes for little ones, the evening can be a time when they become a little bit overstimulated and they, and bath time in the evening, actually for newborns often just really pushes them over the edge. So I always say to moms, first of all, newborns four weeks old are actually very clean, so they don’t have to be bathed every day.

So, you know, you can just top and tail her like for two days and then every third day do a bath. And then on that third day, when you’re doing the bath, do the, do the bath in the morning, which is a really good idea. And then he can have his bath time on his own.

And are you finding that she’s down when he’s having his bath time or do you just pop her in a sling on you and, and get on with it with her on you? So usually his bath time falls during her last wake window of the day. So he will usually, between six and seven is our evening routine. She will feed at six.

So my husband and I will sort of share this role. So she’ll need to feed at six. He will normally be having dinner at six as well.

Sometimes we’ll all be having dinner together, ideally. And then at half past six is normally his bath time. At which point I’m starting to think about putting her down for the evening.

So yeah, we kind of just tag team it a bit. And then one of us will read him his story. And generally speaking by seven o’clock, they’re both in bed.

So timing-wise that schedule has worked quite, quite well for us. And it’s, it’s, it’s also nice because for Santi, bath time is one of the few times in the day when he has our undivided attention. You know, otherwise he’s at school or he’s at a play date or he’s with his nanny.

And it is a very special time for us. And I do, I think it’s important for us to, to spend that time with him in a, in a focused way. So yeah, we do try and at least have one parent fully in the bath time mode.

And then at four weeks old, many babies are experiencing late evening or early evening crying. When is, I know we, when we spoke last week, we spoke about the fact that Aurelia was having a pussy patch in the middle of the night. Has that shifted at all? Or are you finding the evenings are easy? She goes to sleep straight away and that’s it for a while.

So the, the middle of the night crying hasn’t happened again. There’s sort of two, two ways that she tends to experience a bout of, of crying or kind of generally being less consolable. Yeah.

Other than than usual. And the one is when I think she’s hungry. So she generally speaking is happy on three hourly, but I just do find that every now and then she, I mean, she’s displaying all of the signs of being hungry.

And I, I, you know, I try to stretch this and I’m not sort of feeding her back to back because she is, she is on bottles. So it’s a little bit more manageable. But I do find that sometimes at two hours, she actually needs another bottle and she will flatten it.

And normally that will soothe her and she’ll, you know, she’ll stop being so fractious. And then the other time is either at the 6pm feed or after the 6pm feed or the 9pm feed, I do find that often we struggle to get her down again. So she, she goes down beautifully for every other nap and sleep.

So whether it’s a night feed and back to sleep or it’s her naps in the day after sort of 45 minute wake window, she really does go down very easily at the moment, which is great. But for some reason at six or nine, sometimes both, she will cry a lot or at least she’ll go down with a little bit of fussing. And then she’ll wake up again half an hour later or 45 minutes later.

And I do remember with Santi, when he was a bit older than she is now, having false starts being a bit of a problem for us for quite a long time, actually. But I don’t remember this early. So I don’t know if it’s a stimulation issue or quite what’s going on.

But that is sometimes our witching hour. Yeah. So that false start is super common.

And for many, many babies, it happens at about 45 minutes after they’ve gone down. For her, you said she’s doing it 30 minutes after she’s going down. And that is actually one of the day sleep kind of cycles.

45 minutes is a sleep cycle when they would naturally come into a light state of sleep and then she’s waking. And what I find is really, really useful to do with that is to do a cluster feed. So let’s say she has her last feed of the day at seven.

She closes her eyes at seven and you’ve got her down and she wakes up at half past seven, quarter to eight. I would actually treat it as another feed and give her another half a bottle. And the reason for that is that it just very often gets them to actually stretch a little longer.

So it just gets them to, instead of her waking then at 10 or 11 or 12 for a feed, she might even go to one. And that’s one of the ways that we get to stretch that early evening quite a long time. So I definitely would do a cluster feed.

It’s a time that I really do recommend. What I suggest to moms who breastfeeding is to offer one extra side. So you do both sides before they go to sleep.

They wake up 45 minutes later, 30 to 45 minutes later, offer another side. So the first side that you fed on and then, sorry, the second side that you fed on, so that you’ve alternated the start. And then with bottle feeding babies, just give her a little dinky bottle and another little amount and see whether or not that helps her.

Because she definitely won’t then probably do the 9.30. She’ll only have done the 6.30 and then she’ll, sorry, the 6 or 7 and then sleep through for a longer stretch. How long is she doing? Try that. Yeah.

Try it. How long is she, how long is her evening stretch before she needs a feed usually? This episode is brought to us by ParentSense, the all-in-one baby and parenting app that helps you make the most of your baby’s first year. Don’t you wish someone would just tell you everything you need to know about caring for your baby? When to feed them, how to wean them and why they won’t sleep? ParentSense app is like having a baby expert on your phone guiding you to parent with confidence.

Get a flexible routine, daily tips and advice personalized for you and your little one. Download ParentSense app now from your app store and take the guesswork out of parenting. How long is her evening stretch before she needs a feed usually? So I’m still actually on a routine in the nighttime with her.

So I will set an alarm but also because I’m expressing. So I like to try and express before I feed her just because it obviously makes the sort of night feeds a little bit more manageable for me. So she is still on a three hourly routine.

Sometimes she will wake earlier than that. Like I say, on these very hungry evenings, she’ll wake up after two hours since her last feed or two and a half hours perhaps. But roughly speaking, it’s every three, three and a half hours usually.

And if she hasn’t woken, do you wake her or are you letting her wake on her own? Honestly, I’m doing a combination at the moment. It sort of depends. You know, often she will wake me up.

Sometimes it’s sort of five minutes before my alarm will go off. And then other times if I’ve expressed and she is still sleeping, because I’m up, I will wake her for a feed at three hours. And essentially my plan is to sort of wait for her six week checkup.

And once we get the all clear from her pediatrician, then I think I’ll start waiting for her to wake me properly overnight. And how’s her weight gain been over the last week? It’s been very good. I mean, I thought the great thing, especially for sort of A-type people like me, the nice thing about bottles is you know exactly what they’re getting.

And I think in a way that first week where I was breastfeeding her and we were having what I considered normal feeds, but it turned out at the end of that week that she actually had only gained half of the weight that she should have for the period. I think I got a bit of a fright about that and maybe lost a bit of confidence about necessarily how much milk she was getting. So now we’ve got, she’s much more comfortable with the feeds and she absolutely demolishes every single bottle I give her.

And they’re more generous than the pediatrician has advised. If I try to give her this, she screams at me. So she’s filling out really nicely and the weight gain’s been solid.

So I probably could need her to wake overnight now. I’m just a bit paranoid. Do you know how much she has gained in the last week? I don’t actually.

I meant to be having her weight today. So I will find out today. Yeah.

So, I mean, I think the trajectory you’re on is absolutely fabulous. And the fact that she’s gaining weight nicely is lovely. As soon as she is gaining weight kind of really consistently every week, a satisfying weight, then I usually do recommend letting them wake you at night and not waking them just because we like their sleep cycles to develop normally and naturally so that they start to go for a little longer.

But yeah, I mean, my suggestion would be to keep going as you’re going until you’ve seen the weight gain. And if she’s gaining weight nicely, you can then start to stretch her feeds back to three hourly in the day and let her wake you at night, which would be very reasonable if she is gaining weight nicely. So yeah, it sounds like you’re on a good trajectory there.

Yeah, I think we’re nearly there. And I’m also starting to stretch out the time in overnight between pumping just because obviously it allows me to have a little bit more sleep so that when we do get to the point where she is perhaps, you know, when she’s waking herself at night, we maybe get more like a four or five hourly sleep. Then it means I’m not having to wake myself up to pump every three hours.

So I’m also trying to do, you know, prepare myself for that so that I’m, you know, I’m not in too much discomfort every time, you know, when the sleeps get longer. Oh, you are doing an amazing job there. Well done.

I mean, it’s that pumping commitment is, it is a thing. It’s, you know, it’s a massive commitment. It’s, yeah, it is.

There’s no real nice way to put it. It’s really, really hard work. And I was speaking to a friend who incidentally had her baby the same day as me and it’s her first baby.

And so I talked to her a lot about my experience and the sort of the tips that I would offer now doing it the second time around. And certainly, you know, the way to approach pumping would be one of them because I do think there’s also a lot of not, not a lot of education around, around pumping in terms of how much you should be doing, how often, how to avoid overproduction, how to avoid engorgement. Certainly things have plagued me and a lot of my, my friends with our first babies.

And now I’m much more, you know, I suppose, aware of the potential pitfalls of it. So I’m a bit more structured in my approach to it. So, you know, it actually feels easier now this time than it did the first time with Santee, thank goodness.

And what pump are you using? I’m using a Spectra. And is it electric? It’s electric, yeah. And it’s a double pump, which is great.

I think, you know, if you can afford and find a double pump, it is, it really does cut down the time commitment significantly. And have you seen those very clever pumps that now fit inside your bra? Have you seen those? I have. I mean, they’re amazing.

They are, they cost a fortune at the moment. I think they’re still in the, you know, I think LV kind of paved the way for them and now other brands are starting to develop their own. I think they will become more, more affordable.

But they’re, they’re, they’re incredible. I mean, what a, what a wonderful piece of technology to allow moms to be hands-free. The option with the Spectra that I’ve got is that I can actually get a bra that the, the pumps actually fit into, which would allow me to be hands-free as opposed to literally holding onto both bottles or with one hand and trying to do something else with the other hand, which is the juggle.

But yeah, no, there’s certainly technologically, they’re becoming much more advanced now. It’s, it’s amazing. Amazing.

Yeah. So before we finish off, I have to hear about the joys of the week. We’ve kind of tackled the challenges of the week, the juggle and the early evenings.

Have there been anything that she’s done this week that was just magical and you were like, oh my goodness, this is so amazing. I think that the, the things that bring me a lot of joy and that I find very satisfying are about learning who she is. You know, one of the things to do with that is we’re starting to figure out how, you know, how she, what she responds best to in terms of soothing, for example.

So I think we, perhaps with Santi were, you know, he was maybe juggled around a little bit too much as a child, you know, there’s a lot of, because he also, he had reflux, so he was throwing up a lot, you know, there was a lot of trying to burp him hysterically and make sure the burp would come out so we didn’t have to do another change of clothes and so on. I’m finding with her that she responds really well to a much more gentle approach. And, you know, for example, again, this probably is to do with the sleep and being a bit paranoid about wanting her to self-soothe.

You know, when she is lying in bed and she’s asleep and she wakes crying, I will put my hands on her with a bit of pressure, which she responds really well to, you know, and really avoid picking her up if I can. And she also loves a little head tickle, a little, little stroke of head. It’s really cute.

She kind of, it really calms her. So that’s generally my method for calming her down. And it works nine times out of 10, even if I have to be a bit patient with it.

So, you know, learning those are the things that make her, you know, go back to a calm state and feeling a bit more, I don’t know if you’re necessarily, yeah, I was going to say in control. I don’t necessarily think it’s control. It’s, yeah, I’m more having a bit of confidence in how to manage her when she is perhaps unhappy or has a wind or needs to go back to sleep.

You know, that does make me feel a bit more on top of it, which brings me joy. Yeah, it is amazing. And I think that is, you’ve so eloquently described what early parenting is.

It’s a dance and a navigation of trying to, you know, learn their signals and then learn how to soothe them and know what their little thing is. Deep pressure. I mean, the two things that Aurelia is obviously responding to are both touch.

One is the light touch of stroking her head and the other one is the deep pressure. And deep pressure is a fabulous strategy, you know, and I think often we pick our babies up because, you know, particularly, you know, if it’s sleep time, we pick them up because we’re trying to, you know, jiggle out those winds or soothe them. But actually what they really need is us to just be calm and quiet and still next to them and give them that lovely, still deep touch.

So really lovely, lovely strategies. So yeah, it’s an exciting time. And of course, you’re heading towards a smile in the next two weeks.

Has she started to make any of those little smiles that you think, is that a smile or is that a wind? I’m fairly confident that most of them are winds. Having seen at least the wind smile, I do have a glimpse of, I think, what to expect. It’s a beautiful smile.

She is a cute, cute baby. So I’m looking forward to that. Oh, that’s wonderful.

And you’re fair, nobody can see you, but you’re fair-haired and your husband’s dark. So what has she got? So she has dark hair at the moment. The fact that she has any hair at all is, frankly, a miracle because I was bald until probably the age of three.

And poor Santi also, he looks exactly like me. He’s completely fair, blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin. And she’s definitely got more of the Portuguese genes for sure.

She looks much more like her dad and she has the dark hair like her dad. So we’ll see how that unfolds. But she absolutely is physically a very different child and sort of much, much slimmer and kind of scrawnier almost than Santi was.

Santi always had like a real heft to him. So yeah, it’s fascinating seeing how they differ. Yeah, my babies, all three of them had shocks of black hair when they were born and it all fell out by the time they were six months old.

And by the time they were two, they were white, white, white hair, completely white hair. Very interesting how hair color changes. Well, that’s the funny thing as well.

I mean, my husband now has darker skin and very dark hair and he was absolutely white blonde as a child. So you never know where these things are going to land up. A hundred percent.

Yeah, you don’t. Well, Julia, thank you for your time. Sounds like you are having an amazing time navigating early parenting.

I’m sure very often you don’t feel like you’ve got any balls in the air, nevermind one in the air. So it sounds like you’re doing a good juggle. So yeah, we’ll chat again next week.

Thanks, Meg. I look forward to it. Excellent.

Thanks, Julia. Thanks to everyone who joined us. We will see you the same time next week.

Until then, download ParentSense app and take the guesswork out of parenting.