Navigating Month 4: Routines,Teething Myths & Sleep Strategies for New Parents S5|135

Navigating Month 4: Routines,Teething Myths & Sleep Strategies for New Parents S5|135

 

Are you just emerging from the first trimester of your baby’s life? Well, in this week’s episode, we are decoding the wonderful complexities of a baby’s fourth month. We’re going to dive into routines, teething, and the art of thriving amidst the unexpected. In this episode, we reconnect with our regular guest, Julia, and we dive into the world of her little one, Aurelia.

The discussion is packed with essential insights for you if you are navigating this three to four month stage. It’s an exciting but quite a transitionary shift for little ones, so an important stage in development. We do start by exploring the ideal routine for babies of three to four months old, and we focus on a principle-based routine.

So I go through what are the principles for bedtimes, morning wakings, day sleeps, and day feeds. It’s really, really useful, and understanding these routine principles can help immensely if you’re looking to establish a sense of normalcy and anticipation for you and your little one. Also on the agenda today is teething.

Julia was asking me about whether or not little Aurelia is teething, and we talked a little bit about the principles of teething, how to manage it, and whether or not it’s possible that a little one between three and four months old is actually teething. And then Julia had a turn to teach me some things as well today. She spoke about the concept of thriving in the gray, and it’s a philosophy that I just found incredibly valuable.

It’s an approach that encourages parents to find balance and flexibility amidst the uncertainties of parenting. And then lastly, we look ahead to the 17-week sleep regression. So if you are preparing for that, this is an episode you do not want to miss because we go through the key strategies to prepare for this challenging phase, and hopefully you’ll be equipped with the tools needed to help yourself and your little one get through it smoothly.

So it’s a great episode. Join us now as we unpack these topics, providing clarity and confidence for your parenting journey. Welcome to Sense by Meg Forer, 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 Forer 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.

This is Sense by Meg Forer, and I am Meg Forer. And this week, we have got our regular guest Julia De Silva with us, which is absolutely wonderful, Julia. We have been tracking the life of little Aurelia.

And yeah, I’m really excited to hear how she’s been doing in the last week. How old is she now? Hi, Meg. She is 15 weeks, nearly four months, which is wild.

Oh my goodness. You cannot actually believe. Yeah, that is pretty much four months.

That’s so exciting. And we’re going to be looking back at week 14. So for those mums who are listening, if your little one is under four months of age, this episode is definitely for you.

So how has the week been? What have been the highlights and the lowlights of the week? So it’s been, look, it’s been pretty good. I think we are still in a really good routine. I think I’ve mentioned before, routine is something that I find quite comforting.

As an A-type personality, it gives me a lot of solace. So I do find it helpful, and I certainly find that she responds well to it. I know it’s not necessarily for everyone, but for us, it works well.

And it makes her somewhat predictable, which again, I find quite helpful. As a lot of mums of more than one baby will know, it can be quite chaotic at times to be wrangling not only multiple kids, but a home life and trying to keep a home together and a job and hold down all these different elements of your life. So routine is something that works well for us.

And I’m glad to say that it remains in place. And she wakes at a similar time every night, and she goes down well for naps after her awake times in the day. So that’s all working very well for us.

I would love to pick up on that, because it’s so interesting that you kicked off there. Because literally this week, I was thinking about what would be really useful for mums to hear on this podcast with you. And I must tell you that about a week ago, I did a little poll on my Instagram post, on my Instagram feed to ask, what do people want to hear from the themes on the podcast.

And it was incredible, because more than 50% wanted to hear from real mums, which was quite interesting, I thought, as opposed to kind of the experts that I get on quite regularly as well. So I was very happy about that. And then I thought, you know, what is probably quite interesting for mums is to hear what sort of routine other babies are in.

So I would love to know the week of a 14 week old who is in a fairly good routine. What does that routine, flexible routine look like for you? So at the moment, she’s still feeding three hourly in the day as part of the kind of strategy to make sure she’s getting her calories in the day. So her day will start at six o’clock.

I’ll come back to that when I get to the end of the of the day cycle, because I do usually have to wake her up at six. Sounds dreamy, but it’s only because I think she’d wake up anyway. But I like to keep her on the schedule, like I said, so she’ll feed at six and then she’s normally awake for about 45 minutes, sometimes an hour and a half, although the wake window is longer later in the day.

The sort of first one of the other day is usually on the shorter side. And then she’s fed every three hours, like I say. And in the evenings, she it works out well because she has a little half an hour nap towards the end of the day.

So usually that’s between half past four and about five. And then she’s up and playing and five o’clock is always a bit kind of chaotic in the house. So there’s a lot going on.

And roughly around half past five, we start doing her evening routine. And so that involves getting her to her room and we put on what I call the plinky plonky music and the low lighting. And we have the bath ready and we have a little baby massage and she has her bath.

And then at six o’clock, she’s having her last bottle of the day. And then she goes down about quarter past six, I suppose, for her sleep for the evening. And then she she’s still usually waking sometime between nine and 10.

But if she doesn’t, then I do actually dream feed her. And that’s mainly because for my own sanity as a working mom, I need to try and get an extra couple of hours of sleep. So I’ll make sure she has a bottle around nine or 10.

And then usually she’ll wake up between one and two. Last night it was half past two. I mean, what luxury.

I went to sleep at nine o’clock. It was wonderful. And then she has a and that’s lovely and quick that feed actually now because I’ve weaned myself off expressing at night.

It’s literally half an hour. So it’s really manageable. And generally speaking, it’s easy.

She feeds, I change her, she goes straight back to sleep. And then I have my alarm set for six o’clock and nine times out of 10, I will have to wake her at six. Sometimes she’ll wake up just before and then our day begins again.

I love it. Well, I’m sure that there are a lot of moms who are fascinated by this routine, and I’d love to just pick up on a couple of themes that you’ve spoken about there, because it really is interesting. So the first is the day reset.

And I’m sure there are a lot of moms wondering whether or not this is a good idea or not in terms of waking your baby if they haven’t woken up. And often we’ll actually have babies who start to wake at maybe only kind of four in the morning for a feed and then go back to sleep. And then it’ll feel very unintuitive to be waking them up at six.

So in terms of that, I don’t think moms have to. I mean, obviously everything is their own choice, but rigidly setting your alarm for six a.m. is not necessarily necessary, which, of course, the fact that you do it is absolutely perfect because it works for you. But I do think that waking babies by seven a.m. is important.

So and I’ve often said to moms, you know, babies wake up time is usually and should be anticipated to be anywhere between five and seven. Five is on the early side. I certainly wouldn’t be setting an alarm to wake a baby at five.

No mother in their right mind would. But it’s actually often wake up time for most babies, and parents often have to get their head around that. So five a.m. is the earliest that I would consider a morning waking.

And if your little one is not awake by seven, I definitely would wake them. And there are good reasons for that. So the fact that you’re setting your alarm at six is perfect.

But for other moms, if you if your little one isn’t awake by seven at this kind of three to four month stage, I would definitely be waking them by seven. So that was the first thing that you mentioned. Second thing you mentioned, which I think is really interesting, is the way that you’re following the awake times.

And moms, for those of you who aren’t following the Parents Sense app, download the app. The awake times are on the home page of the app. So you’ll know exactly how long those awake times should be.

And you said something very interesting, Julia. And it’s a good principle. And that is that awake times in the morning are often a little shorter than awake times in the late afternoon.

And we do find that that we give you on the Parents Sense app, we actually give you a range of approximately what the wake time should be and 45 minutes to an hour and a half. In her case, probably an hour to an hour and a half. And usually the morning one is the shorter.

I realize I said 45 minutes. I meant 75 minutes. Okay.

All right. Yeah. 45 did sound a little short because that’s for newborns.

But yeah, 75 minutes to 90 minutes for her age is appropriate. And she’ll probably do 75 in the morning and probably do 90 in the late afternoon. So again, mom’s great tip that you guys can take on as you set up your routines.

The other thing that you mentioned was her three hour feeding routine. And that again, I really like. So again, feeding doesn’t have to be a rigid affair.

You don’t have to kind of set your clock to have your little one feed at exactly the same time. But at this age, three to four hours is a good stretch. Anything less than three hours probably means your little one’s either comfort feeding or potentially you need to look at your milk supply.

But certainly three to four hours for an express breast milk bottle fed baby is absolutely perfect. So that was the other thing that I picked up on. And then the other thing I picked up on, sorry, I’m going through the list because you just mentioned so much amazing information there.

The other thing is the evening routine, which at this age, all moms should have an evening routine and it should be something you hang your hat on. And that is very important, even if you are not a routine mom. In other words, you’re more as a fair mom.

You like to go watch your baby signals and rather go with their lead. An evening routine is something that has been shown in research to conclusively shift the way that babies sleep at night. So an evening routine starting at 530 or at six is definitely something that I advocate.

And most evening routines should be one hour. So for instance, if the little one is going to sleep at seven in the evening, start your evening routine at six. So really good advice there.

And then the last thing to pick up on is that dream feed. And you know, because I heard it in your tone of your voice, that I’m not a huge fan of dream feeds. And the reason for that is that although it gives you extra time because you potentially won’t have a feed then at 12, I would actually hazard a guess to say on the nights that she actually skips that nine, 10 o’clock feed, she might actually stretch through to one anyway.

And I think often what happens with the dream feeds is that we interfere with their natural ability to lengthen their night sleeps instinctively. And I have a feeling and it might be worth you just experimenting it with it this week, Julia, is that if you actually left her and she did wake up, she might only wake up one anyway, because what’s effectively happening is that at kind of 13, 14, 15 weeks, she’s actually still having two night feeds, which is the 10 and one. And you might find that she actually stretches to only have one night feed, which would then be at 1am.

So up to you. But certainly, I’m not a massive fan of dream feeds, because I do think it does interfere with setting up their own kind of evening circadian or diurnal rhythms, I guess. So there you go.

I loved your routine. And mom’s just to say that routine, as Julia very accurately said, is not for everybody. But in general, I find that babies do do better when there’s some predictability to their day.

So yeah, good for you, Julia. Sounds like you’re on the right track. Yeah.

And, you know, in my case, it helps the mom too. So I think it’s got double benefits. But yeah, I know that that dream feed thing, it’s been on my mind that I know that it’s something that I need to start experimenting with.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about. And it’s a case of psyching myself up for. So yeah, I think it is something that we need to start playing around with and seeing because I do get the sense she’s probably close to being able to drop that feed.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting. Good. Excellent.

So what have been the highlights of the week? I mean, she’s very cute. You sent me a picture this morning. First time I’ve seen such a grown up picture of her and she’s really filling out beautifully.

Tell me all the delightful things that happened this week. So we continue to get lots and lots of smiles. She’ll smile at anyone.

It’s really sweet. And also now she’s starting to giggle a little bit. It’s not a full blown laugh, but a little kind of wheezy giggle, which is really, really charming.

I feel like she’s slowly but surely wrapping me around her finger. But yeah, that’s that I must say is the highlight. So of course, we spend all our time trying to make her laugh now.

Oh, so gracious. And I’m sure she’s got daddy firmly wrapped around her finger. Oh, yes.

No, no. Look, I saw that coming, I must say. So I think that’s probably taking a fairly predictable route.

The two of them are kind of obsessed with each other. So it’s very, very sweet. And it’s lovely because it gives him a nice basis for a relationship with her, and especially because he is so helpful and so involved.

Yeah. You know, a couple of weeks ago, we had an episode. It was just around Father’s Day, actually.

So if anybody’s looking for it, it’s around about the June episode where we interviewed somebody on fatherhood and the importance of dads in children’s lives. And, you know, I think, and I’ve seen it with my own girls. I have a very involved husband.

He has, I mean, my girls absolutely worship him. He is their benchmark for what a good husband would be, because they’ve been very fortunate. And I know that not every girl has that in their lives.

But I do think that, you know, it is so important for women’s self esteems, that relationship with their father, you know, because the way that your father treats you will be the minimum viable kind of outcome that you would expect from another partner. And so I think it is quite protective against things like abuse and all sorts of things. So, yeah, you do want to ensure that it’s a very important relationship.

Yeah, absolutely. And I certainly had and continue to have an incredibly fulfilling relationship with my dad. So it’s something that I’m very conscious of, and I know how important it can be.

And, you know, Vito also had an incredible male role model. Vito’s dad was a wonderful man. And so he was brought up with a lot of affection from both his parents, but his dad in particular was always full of love for his kids and wasn’t shy of sharing that.

And Vito does it with our children, which is lovely to see. It’s so important. And, you know, it’s interesting because in this episode that I did with Craig Wilkinson on fatherhood, we spoke about that.

We spoke about the gentle heart of the father and the warrior fighter kind of that’s also important, strong man. And, you know, and it’s such a it’s two sides of the same coin. It’s so important for them, for children to see both in their father, you know, the man who’s going to be strong and lead and then also the man who’s going to be soft and gentle and cuddle.

And, you know, it’s very, very important. So lucky girl to have that in her dad. Yeah, I know she’s a lucky girl.

So you’ve covered off some really delightful moments in the week. And now let’s turn our attention to some of the things that have challenged you over the past couple of weeks. This episode is brought to us by Parents Sense, the all in one baby and parenting app that help 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? Parents Sense 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 Parents Sense app now from your app store and take the guesswork out of parenting.

So you’ve covered off some really delightful moments in the week. And now let’s turn our attention to some of the things that have challenged you over the past couple of weeks. So look, I think second time around, I think I’ve said this before, I think the things that are tricky tend to not be as kind of distracting as I suppose they are the first time around.

You can kind of really get stuck in problem solving mode. So the things that do seem to crop up, like for example, in the last couple of weeks, she seems to be having every few nights a kind of a screaming fit in the style of the sort of, you know, zero to six week old baby. And it’s not anything I can kind of pinpoint a reason for.

So, you know, we think maybe it’s her tummy, because sometimes she’s kind of, you know, doubling over and looking a bit uncomfortable. It might be very early stages of teething, potentially, I’m not sure if maybe she’s a bit young and actually come to think of it, I wanted to ask you if this is a myth or not. I don’t know where I got it from.

But when they have those little red hot cheeks, is that to do with teething or is that just vaguely high temperature? Yeah, so super interesting. I mean, you’ve dealt with a lot of stuff there. So let’s start with the question directly about the red hot cheeks.

First of all, look, I mean, yes, red hot cheeks do accompany teething, but not normally as a signal kind of weeks before teething. It’ll really be as that tooth is erupting. So, you know, teething is very often at around about this age.

Parents ask me whether or not their little one’s teething because they’re sucking on their hands. They’ve got an acrid smelling nappy and a terrible smell of teething poos. They’ve got a little bit more uncomfortable.

And so the parents think this must be teething. But actually, it is exceptionally, exceptionally unusual for little ones to teeth before six months. It’s like literally less than 10 percent of babies teeth before six months.

And it is there’s no evidence to show that teething takes kind of three months of the tooth rising and falling in the gums. That is really a fallacy. So real teething discomfort, accompanied with a little bit of a rash around the mouth and potentially pink cheeks, that really will only happen after six months.

And it will be associated with the eruption of a tooth within five days. So I absolutely do not think that her upset tummy or her crampiness, her red cheeks have to do with teething. I would I would be very surprised if next week when we chat and you say she teethed, you know, she produced a tooth.

I would it would be highly unusual. It does happen, but highly unusual. So that’s the first thing.

I don’t think it’s teething. Second thing is that that red cheeks is quite an interesting thing because it could be slap cheek, which is a little a virus that little babies get and toddlers get. And very interestingly, I follow a woman in America who’s she’s called the epidemiologist.

She kind of sprouted this business stroke email in the covid because she’s an epidemiologist. And so every week she updates everyone on what’s going around. And of course, at the moment, it’s it is covid.

It is monkey pox. But also it’s Parvo, which is the slap cheek virus. And that can make you a little one run a little fever and not feel great.

It’s very, very common in toddlers, a little bit less so in babies. And it wouldn’t come and go. It would be there and it would disappear.

So that is something you can hold the back of your mind. But I would say that the unsettledness. So the pink cheeks is potentially that or the fact that she’s maybe just very hot at the time and you can just have a look at how you’ve dressed her.

So that’s what I would look at for the red cheeks. Red cheeks after six months can be teething if it’s an isolation and she’s grimacing and an irritable. I would look at slap cheek syndrome or slap cheek virus and otherwise look at how hot she is.

So I would look at that. And then in terms of the unsettled tummy at this age, you know, it’s actually quite unusual for little ones to be very unsettled after 12 weeks because it really that colicky patch really dissipates by 12 weeks. So the fact that she’s still showing it means a couple of things.

One is that one of the questions in my mind is, has her diet changed? In other words, are you starting to introduce some formula into the express breast milk bottles or is she still exclusively on breast milk? No, exclusively breast milk still. Okay. All right.

So it isn’t that, but that could, I mean, that does sometimes lead to changes in digestion and in particular constipation, which then can make little ones a little bit grimacing in their tummy for a couple of nights. So failing that, I would probably think that it’s just a day of overstimulation and just a kind of how she is that day. And, you know, I think often we don’t really notice because we’re adults, but we don’t really notice the toll a day has taken on a baby on a sensory level, but maybe she missed a sleep.

Maybe the sleep was a little shorter than usual. Maybe she’s been dressed in an outfit. I know this sounds bizarre, but maybe she’s been dressed in an outfit that’s decreased her threshold.

And, you know, sometimes I could say a fancy pair of dungarees or a little lace or label or something that actually causes their threshold to reduce because it’s, it makes them a bit more sensitive. So, you know, I would definitely be looking at her day. What has she been wearing? What has the outings been like? And what is her sleep schedule been like? Yeah, I think, look, instinctually, I think that’s probably it more than anything else.

You know, I was chatting to my nanny about it yesterday because the night before last, she had had one of these kind of screamy nights and, you know, we did determine that her long kind of midday nap had been very fractious and she had been up and down a bit and had a nice good rest, I suppose. And, you know, it was possible that she was effectively overstimulated, overtired. And that’s why she took her a long time to settle in the evening.

And like I said, that does feel like the most likely suspect. Yeah, no, it definitely does sound like that to me. So, yeah, maybe just keep an eye on her routines.

And look, I mean, the one thing that we do talk about, and there’s some good episodes of the podcast where we do talk about baby’s thresholds, but your more sensitive babies and, you know, she was quite colicky in the beginning. And so maybe there is an aspect of, you know, of slightly, you know, she is slightly more sensitive, but the thresholds do take time to improve and they do increase. So the threshold of a newborn is much lower than the threshold of an eight month old, you know, so it just takes time to kind of get a threshold up a little bit.

So, you know, you can have those niggly patches. So, yeah, I understand navigating it is tough though in the moment. Yeah, but you know, like I said, I think it is so much easier to kind of ride out when it’s your second or, you know, third, fourth child, because your experience is that these things don’t kill them and they don’t kill you. The first time you’re convinced that the crying will literally end your life.

So it’s, you know, it’s easy to say, okay, well, last night was not ideal, all a bit tired, but let’s try again tonight. You know, last night, she was an absolute dream. She went down beautifully, didn’t make any squawks, and, you know, it was wonderful.

So it’s easy to sort of snap yourself out of the kind of inclination towards panic, I suppose. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I mean, I think it’s such an important thing.

You and I have spoken on podcasts before about being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, and a lot of parenting is like that, where, you know, you want to fix things, you want it to be perfect, you want your little one to be happy all the time, but that isn’t life. And it’s life is not perfect. And so, you know, having that awareness that, okay, so right now, she’s niggly, doesn’t mean that it’s going to be forever.

It’s just for now. And I think that’s an important thing to take away. And also, you know, and I don’t know if you listened to our recent episode with Professor Mark Tomlinson.

It was episode 123. I did. Isn’t it? Wasn’t it incredible? Yeah, I mean, I’ve never clicked so fast on a podcast in my life.

Like this is completely up my street. I literally, literally listened to it while I was doing an iFeed. Yeah, I mean, it’s just, it was such an incredible episode.

And, you know, what I really loved was that research that he cited from the Netherlands, where they, you know, they looked at babies where parents were over responding all the time, hyper responding, getting there before their little one cried, soothing them, you know, within an inch of like, of them crying, and just, you know, being hyper vigilant around help making sure the little one was soothed all the time. And actually, those little ones had insecure attachment. And that absolutely fascinated me, whereas the little ones, where, you know, moms had that idea of, okay, I’m trying my best, but this is life, and we’re all going to be okay.

And, you know, if there’s a little bit of fussing and irritability, we’ll all survive it. Those little ones are actually the securely attached little ones. And I found that really, really interesting and quite comforting.

Yes, that’s the thing that really stuck with me too. It felt like a very good reminder that you can thrive in the gray. I mean, I think as a person, that’s something that I really had to learn as an adult.

I’m drawn to black and white. I certainly was drawn to black and white and kind of living like that. And something I’ve had to learn is to be a lot more comfortable and kind of embrace, you know, the middle ground.

And I think that’s effectively that piece of research proves it quite beautifully that it’s, it’s a little bit of, you know, quick responses and a turns out to be the best way forward. Absolutely. And, you know, I’ve never heard that phrase thrive in the gray, but I really love it because I do think that, I mean, certainly for us ATAP moms, and many of us are like that when we go into parenthood, because we’ve, we’ve, we’ve managed big careers.

We’ve, we’ve studied, we’ve done our academics, we’ve, you know, we’ve plot and planned our lives out. And suddenly along comes this little one who no plot or plan works for. And it is, it’s super gray.

And to be able to thrive in the gray is, I love that phrase. It really is what parenthood is about, I guess. Yeah.

I think that’s, that’s what it teaches you ultimately. It does. Yeah.

And so you coming up now to the four month mark, unbelievably. And are there any things that you kind of looking ahead to with the perspective of a second time mom that you are thinking about? Well, I have slight PTSD from the four month sleep regression with Santi, because that was when I remember the wheels falling off rather spectacularly. I remember in particular, that was when he really started these short naps that he just wouldn’t go down again.

So at the moment when she stirs after a 14 minutes nap, usually I can get her back down again by just popping the dummy back in. She’s not difficult to kind of get her to continue that sleep a bit longer. And then, and so with Santi, I remember that becoming completely impossible.

And just in general, that becoming just much, things got much tougher at four months. Now I probably blocked a lot of it out. So what am I, what do I need to expect? Yeah, interesting.

So those shorter day naps are actually quite a typical thing with all babies until about six months of age. So I usually actually from about two months to six months, little ones will do a 45 minute day sleep. And you’ll either have to resettle them with a dummy or patting or repositioning, or you’ll have to consider the sleepers over and then actually start watching the awake time from that time.

So that’s, that’s pretty typical. And I certainly wouldn’t get PTSD over that. I would, I would just, I would take that, take that in your stride.

You know, if she does a 45 minute sleep, won’t resettle, you just pick her up and make sure you’re watching those awake times. And, and then she’ll have more sleeps than, you know, obviously because she’s having shorter sleeps. At six months that changes.

So as soon as they’re on full solids for lunchtime with a little bit of protein and nice fats, that’s typically when they start to link that one lovely long day sleep. And at six months, moms can expect a morning nap of about 45 minutes, a midday nap of an hour and a half and a late afternoon nap of 45 minutes. And that’s pretty typical for six months olds.

And between now and six months, you’re going to have a little bit of a gray patch where she might, you know, do the shorter sleeps. The bigger concern though, with the sleep regression for me is not around those short sleeps, because I consider that quite typical and quite normal development. And I actually, it’s not a red flag for me when a mom says her little one’s only doing 45 minutes.

What is a red flag for me and is certainly a red flag for moms is when their little one starts to take their night feeds from doing only two night feeds back up to three or four night feeds. And even actually just reintroducing one extra night feed feels like, you know, an enormous, you know, thing for parents, because you just seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and now suddenly you’re doing extra night feeds. So there are a couple of things that I do think that the first thing is, you know, I would, if I were you, experiment with doing, with not waking her for that dream feed, and actually having the expectation of her to just navigate her sleep herself and listen to her at night.

So, and in fact, Mark actually mentioned that in that last podcast as well, in the podcast 123. And that was that, you know, you kind of listen and, and see what she does. And if she’s doing a little bit of iffing and batting and don’t respond to her.

And the reason that that is important at this age is that this is the age where they actually start to piece together self soothing. And if we’re doing it for them, then there’s no point in them learning. They don’t know how to learn to self soothe.

So this is definitely the age and you know, I often say to moms, because moms asked me very often, you know, how quickly must I respond? Is this message controlled crying as an example, and under 14 weeks, I’m always quite rigid on saying, make sure you’re responding quite consistently and timeously, because your little one actually can’t self soothe. Having said that, from this age onwards, I then start to say, leave a little bit of space to allow them to do it themselves. And so that is what I would be doing now, I would actually be listening before I respond at night, I would give her the opportunity to actually settle herself.

And I don’t, this is not controlled crying. This is not, you know, elimination crying, letting her cry it out for 1015 minutes, this is just listening. And if she’s just iffing and batting, not actually going in at all.

If she starts to cry, they’re obviously going in. Yeah, I think that that is something that, again, kind of I struggled with with Santi big time. So I think it’s actually really good advice.

And it’s good to have it in my head going into this phase of her life. Because, you know, this is where I feel I fell down with him. And I think it had a, you know, knock on effect that really put a lot of strain on me.

So yeah, that is something to keep in mind. Yeah, so it is, I mean, and it’s the early stages of them learning about self soothing. You’re not abandoning them, you’re not letting them work it out themselves, you’re just listening and then going in and if it has been less than kind of, you know, kind of four or five hours.

Also, I mean, in your case, what I would probably be doing is if she does it between any any time after 10 o’clock. So if you leave her and she anytime after 10, she iffs and bats and eventually cries, I would go in and feed because you have been doing that. And then the next stretch must be four hours.

So let’s say you leave her and she gets to 11. Then I would say the next one must then take her to, you know, at least three o’clock and see whether or not you can really just rather soothe her with just touching and patting rather than actually feeding. The biggest risk at this age, and you know, I mean, I would say almost the only risk at this age is that you start the feed to sleep.

And that is the one that then turns into a whole lot of problems because what happens with the feed to sleep is that they start to learn that the only way that they can fall asleep is on the breast or in the bottle. And that is at bedtime, whether it’s the dream feed, whether it is one o’clock in the morning, whatever time it is, they must not feed all the way to sleep because that is what forms habits at this age. And that’s when often the wheels fall off because then somewhere between now and six months, you’re just permanently feeding to sleep or dummying to sleep, which is also the other risk.

So, yeah, so that’s kind of how to handle that at the moment. Cool. OK.

I listened to a great podcast a while ago. It was by a kind of a sleep consultant, I suppose, in the UK. And she said something that I found incredibly interesting.

And perhaps I only really could take it on board, you know, after the fact. And that was that she was talking about the nature of crying or fussing in these babies around this age. And that her mother had pointed out to her that she was struggling with listening to her son cry and wanting to know how long she should leave it.

And her mom said, listen to your baby. He’s not in need of you. He’s angry with you because you’re not, you know, you’re not in the room like you like you normally have been.

You’re kind of trying to stretch that a little bit, to teach these self-soothing techniques. And I thought that was so interesting because it’s something I’d never considered. You know, I hear a baby, I hear my baby cry and I think, you know, immediately the baby must leave me desperately.

I must run there, which I’m ashamed to say I’ve done on more than one occasion. I literally run across the house. And it was a really good reminder that, you know, all cries are not necessarily purely about need.

Certainly, as they get older, sometimes they are just expressing themselves. Yeah, look, I mean, that’s an interesting perspective. I don’t know that I would be projecting the emotion of anger onto infants.

I probably wouldn’t actually agree with that. Yeah, I wouldn’t agree with that. And I also wouldn’t necessarily agree that they don’t need you.

You know, I think there is a need that doesn’t have to be fulfilled in the moment, you know. So, yes, maybe your little one is needing you, but actually they’re also OK without you. And so that’s, you know, so that’s why something like, you know, I need to eat breakfast, but I can actually wait another hour, you know, because I’m doing a podcast with you or whatever it is, you know.

So I think, you know, I think little infants do have needs and particularly emotional needs to be met of a responsive, consistent, loving caregiver. I think that’s a very real need. And that’s why responding to little one’s emotion is so important.

But that need has to be seen in the context of, you know, time is OK to give them a little bit of breathing space to get there when you can and to do it, you know, to do it appropriately. And also another need they have, which must not be ignored, is the need to learn to self-soothe. And, you know, that is, you know, I don’t think that that should be a contentious issue.

And that’s why I loved Mark’s podcast, because it was so grounded in science, is that the responsibility or the skill set to actually self-soothe and self-regulate is something that babies can and must learn. But they only do it in the context of a relationship and with somebody helping them to learn to do it by responding enough, not all the time and teaching them, you know, how to self-soothe themselves. So, you know, I think that there’s a lot and that’s why, I mean, we’ve kind of moved into a very deep topic here just on the basis of what you said there.

But and I do think if there are any parents who are interested in that, they must go back to episode 123 and just listen to what infants needs really are and what our responsibilities are, because ultimately that’s what it is. It’s a dance between what does my baby need? What is my responsibility and what can they take on? It’s this kind of dance that happens between a mother and an infant. Yeah, I think you used the word skill there, which if I remember correctly, I think that’s how you describe it in the sleep course as well, that you’re essentially helping them to learn a skill and that by, you know, depriving them of that, if you don’t take this opportunity to do it, you know, has long term effects.

And I am absolutely living proof of that because I do think that’s what happened with Santi. And to think of it as a skill is also a very helpful paradigm, I suppose. Absolutely is.

And it also to make it super concrete, to understand it in a very concrete way is that skills happen at developmental stages. So let’s take the skill of walking. It happens anywhere between nine and 18 months.

Nine would be very early. Eighteen would be very late, average being 12 to 14. So we all know that.

We all accept it. We know and we have this real expectations that our little ones would walk, you know, I mean, very much so. Like if I said to you, well, you know, maybe your little one’s never going to walk.

You would be, oh, my goodness. I think this is a real issue because, you know, you’re thinking forward to a 15 kilogram child and you’re thinking, I can’t carry them forever. So they have got to learn to walk.

So we understand that skills are essential and we understand that they are have developmental norms associated with them. The other side of that is that we have to have a responsibility to help them to actually learn that skill. So if you never put your baby on the floor and carried them nonstop or and this has been proven, by the way, in research, if they were left in a cot and those Romanian babies in the Romanian orphanages who never were outside of a cot, they did not learn to walk.

And if you never put a child down, they would never learn to walk. And the reason is that you have to have exposure and a little bit of stress because there’s some stress around being left on the floor. And you’ll remember that from Santi at 11 months old, wanting to be picked up all the time.

But there’s some stress around it. But as a parent, you’re going, yep, but you’re going to learn to walk. You need to be able to learn to walk.

And we see it as a life skill. We see it as we have a responsibility and we see it our little ones need some exposure and some discomfort to learn the skill. Now, self soothing is exactly the same.

It is a it is a developmental skill. It is a necessity. It happens along a developmental trajectory.

And we have a responsibility. So you can package all of that together. Know that that there is a time in which little ones need to learn to self soothe.

What’s interesting is and probably nobody would debate what I’ve just said, I hope, but maybe people would say, well, when should that be? And my feeling is that the research does lean towards in the first kind of six months of life, little ones can start to piece it together, not completely depend on themselves, obviously, but they actually do start to piece it together. And we have a role in that. So, yeah, interesting, interesting topic.

Yeah, yeah, no, this is going to be a very interesting next few weeks, I must say. Well, let’s track it. Let’s see how she goes.

I’ve loved chatting today, Julia. Thank you so much. As usual, just, you know, lovely tidbits for other mums, all the joys of early parenting, as well as the thoughts and the challenges.

So really been super to chat to you today. Yeah, thank you. I’ll chat to you next time.

Excellent. Thanks a lot. 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.