[MEG FAURE] (0:00 – 1:24)
In today’s episode, we chat with JULIA DA SILVA, mom to the lively nine-month-old Aurelia. This episode is brimming with insights and practical advice that you won’t want to miss. Today, you’re going to learn about the milestones of the nine-month-old, how to deal with early morning wakings, and how to develop an adventurous palate for mealtimes.
At nine months, Aurelia is crawling and more often pulling up to stand and even clapping along with those little new high fives. We’ll chat about how she’s exploring the world of flavours with her adventurous eating habits and using her new teeth to tackle everything from chicken to a diverse palette of foods. We also talk about how to navigate the complexities of sleep and I give her mom tips on adjusting nap time so that you can curb those early morning wake-ups and also when to break sleep guidelines just to get some sanity sleep.
We also explore ideas on how the village of parent-friends can both enhance and support little ones social and child development. So if you’re wondering about social skills, we also talk about the benefits of play groups and organising play dates and I also touch on how different timelines in language milestones can be perfectly normal and how social environments can give language a wonderful boost. So tune in for an episode filled with lively discussions, expert advice, and heartwarming stories from JULIA DA SILVA and Aurelia’s parenting journey.
[BAILEY SCHNEIDER3] (1:25 – 2:06)
Welcome to Sense by Meg Faure, 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 Faure is a well-known OT, infant specialist, and the author of eight parenting books.
Each week we’re going to spend time with new moms 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.
[MEG FAURE] (2:09 – 2:37)
Welcome back moms and dads. Lovely to have you join us today. I am Meg Faure and I’m delighted to have you join us along with JULIA DA SILVA Da Silva today.
JULIA DA SILVA is our regular guest and mom to Aurelia and Santi, who’s a little toddler. And we’ve been tracking Aurelia all the way since she was a newborn. And this week she is almost nine months old.
So welcome JULIA DA SILVA. Let’s hear a bit about the life of a nine-month-old.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (2:37 – 3:36)
Thanks Meg. Very lovely to be back. Yes, I think we’re hitting that phase of life where things suddenly get very busy.
This child cannot be left alone for two seconds or she’s up to mischief. Since the last time we spoke, which was a few weeks ago, she has started crawling. She was on the verge of it the last time we chatted and she has now made the move.
However, she’s not interested in crawling. She thinks crawling is boring. She only wants to stand up all the time.
So she’ll crawl to something she can pull up on and that’s where it ends. So it’s quite hard work to get her to actually practise and really engage with the crawling for any length of time. She’s pulling up in her cot.
She’s pulling up on stools. She’s pulling up in the bath, which absolutely terrifies me. I have to hold her.
She’s all slippery and I’m literally holding her with a bare grip trying to make sure she doesn’t slip over and hit her head. So it’s quite full on.
[MEG FAURE] (3:38 – 4:03)
I’ve always said that the nine to 18-month-old age band is actually the most exhausting. The reason is that they’re mobile, but they are completely, they don’t know their limits. They don’t know the limits of the world.
They don’t understand physics. So we’ve got some problems and they definitely don’t understand instruction either. By 18 months old, they start to have a little bit of language and they can understand.
But gee whiz, nine to 18 months, that is the most tiring time.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (4:05 – 5:59)
Yeah. No, no, it is. It’s absolutely nonstop.
She also has new teeth. The last time we spoke, she had just cut her first tooth and we’ve been sort of waiting for months for that to happen. She now has five, four of which emerged in the 10 days after.
You know, she had four teeth by the time she, you know, 10 days after the first one. So yeah, I mean, those are, and she does this thing. I don’t know if other moms have this.
And I remember at Vividi with Santi, where she grinds her teeth together. If they’re interested in the feel. Yeah.
Makes me want to rip my ears off. It was the worst sound in the whole world. You can’t sort of explain to her like, darling, don’t, you know, grind your teeth together.
So that’s one of her other sort of favourite things to do. But yeah, the sort of teeth all coming out all at once has been great. I mean, in fact, I was actually feeding her on Sunday.
We had a roast chicken and I was giving her pieces of the chicken. And it was sort of interesting really to kind of watch her for the first time tear into a piece of food, as opposed to really kind of using her gums in the back of her, where her molars would be to kind of munch on the food. So that was sort of interesting.
She’s definitely developing and we’re kind of cutting the food up into smaller pieces as she gets a bit older and the kind of pincer grip is developing and so on. So that’s sort of evolving as well at this time. It’s yeah, lots, lots going on.
And how much is she actually self-feeding and how much are you still giving her mush or is she entirely self-feeding now? She’s quite funny. She’s not interested in being fed mush unless she has something to hold.
So there’s no scenario in which I can just give her some, I say puree, it’s not really puree, it’s just something that’s kind of blended or a little bit mashed up. But she doesn’t tolerate just being fed. She’s, I suppose, perhaps a bit of an independent spirit, but she will happily munch on things.
In fact, as much as I can, I allow her to feed herself. And she’s certainly adept at it, which is great. It also helps me when we’re in a group situation.
[MEG FAURE] (6:00 – 6:39)
Yeah. And I think that kind of takes us back to how you started your weaning journey. By six months old, you were already very much focused on baby-led weaning and making sure she could self-feed.
So that journey is amazing. And I think you’re also going to find that she will not be as much of a picky eater as she would have been. A lot of moms at about nine months old find their little ones get picky and don’t want to eat this and don’t want to eat that.
But I think when you’ve started off your journey with high levels of experimentation and involvement and autonomy, it really does hold for a little one who’s much less fussy and picky as an eater. So that’s really excellent. That is what you said.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (6:40 – 7:19)
Yeah, I hope so. Certainly, she’s still in quite an experimental phase. She seems to be interested in everything that we give her.
There’s nothing really… I mean, in the early days, she didn’t seem particularly keen on fish, although now she seems to be okay with it. So maybe that was a textile thing or a smell thing or some other kind of sensory thing.
So there isn’t really anything that I’ve given her that’s offended her. And she has a fairly diverse palate. We eat quite interesting food at home.
And as much as possible, I try to give her what we’re eating. So yeah, I mean, for her own sake, I hope she grows up with an interesting, diverse palate.
[MEG FAURE] (7:19 – 7:40)
Look, she is likely to go through… At some point, most toddlers will go through a patch where they kind of gravitate a little bit more towards beiges and less threatening foods. But I think the important thing is just to keep up the variety and always offer it.
So even if she isn’t doing a broad range of colour, always offer it because they do pass through that in their toddler years.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (7:41 – 8:38)
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s actually something that I always try and remember. I remember someone saying they can’t try a food they aren’t offered.
So, you know, I mean, I have been offering Santi cucumber since, you know, he was six months old. To this day, he will not put it in his mouth, but I continue. Fascinating.
Cucumber is such an unthreatening flavour. I wonder what that’s about. He, you know, I like to think I did all the right things with him as well.
And he was also a very interested and keen eater of all sorts of things until about 16, 17 months, I would say. And then almost overnight, he suddenly decided he was only going to eat beige foods. The only interesting thing he eats is curry.
He loves curry for some reason. I suppose it’s also on the spectrum of beige. And yeah, so I mean, the only green things he will eat are kiwis and grapes.
Vegetables? Not happening.
[MEG FAURE] (8:39 – 8:59)
Yeah. And, you know, I think it’s also important there to just keep a perspective on it. As long as they’re eating something and, you know, kiwis and grapes are great.
Keep offering those and then just, you know, pop on his plate, you know, that broccoli floret that’s been nicely, freshly steamed. So it’s not, you know, so it’s brightly coloured and just keep going with those sort of things. They do move through it.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (8:59 – 9:35)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, in the early days, there was a time where I was a bit frustrated by it.
And I thought, oh, no, what am I going to do? But the reality is that forcing them or kind of strongly encouraging them to eat whatever it is you’re serving is a complete waste of time and only backfires. So the best thing to do is just be completely nonchalant and chill.
And, you know, what’s that thing they call it? The division of responsibility. You know, you’re in charge of deciding what they’re eating and when and what’s served and when and they have to decide what it is they choose to eat.
And you can’t sort of try and get involved there.
[MEG FAURE] (9:35 – 10:45)
I mean, two nice ideas you can try with Santee and this goes for all picky toddlers is number one, get them involved in actually making the food. So, you know, make him some carrots and cinnamon muffins, as an example, you know, and, you know, those type of things and even in mealtimes and get them involved in actually making it, because often they’ll tuck into the batter and into the raw ingredients as they cook, just like we do when we’re cooking. And then the other thing is to offer a smorgasbord of choices.
So like, you know, kind of like almost like a buffet style meal where you put a whole lot of foods into small plates or onto platters in the middle of the table and let him pick and choose them. And another nice idea with that is actually to do that as a picnic. So to take it outside or to go off to Kirstenbosch and to pack into little tapas and let them graze through those tapas as well.
And that often just kind of the less pressure, the more playful, the more involved, it just means that they start to actually experiment again. And then before they know it, they’re actually realising, oh, that carrot that I really didn’t want to eat is not too bad when it’s part of a carrot muffin or grated carrot that’s going into the carrot muffin. So maybe I’ll start to eat that normally as well.
So, and if you start doing that now as a toddler, you can actually push them through this picky eating phase.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (10:46 – 11:21)
Yeah. And I will say, you know, there is a, there’s some relief in being able to kind of make all sorts of interesting things for Aurelia that she will eat. Like I was making courgette fritters the other day and, you know, she’ll happily munch on cucumber and all sorts of green things.
So, you know, at least I’ve got that to make me feel like I’m, you know, achieving. But yeah, so she’s happy and healthy and she, in terms of development, she’s started clapping, which is extremely sweet. And also giving high fives, which is also just adorable.
She’s really full of personality. She’s just so cute. That is so sweet.
[MEG FAURE] (11:21 – 11:28)
And tell me something, with those, you know, kind of with those nonverbal signals, so clapping and high fives, is she also pointing at things?
[JULIA DA SILVA] (11:29 – 12:01)
No, she’s not pointing yet. Funnily enough, I was actually, when I was looking at the app mainly to see how old she was, because I can’t keep track of the weeks. I just think in calendar months.
But, and I was going through the milestones and it said pointing. It’s one thing I haven’t noticed yet. But interestingly, she’s definitely understanding her name.
So she’ll respond to her name. And on the verbal cue of, you know, clap for daddy or high five, she responds, which is also just fascinating when they sort of, you think that they’re taking in all this information, even though they can’t, you know, respond verbally. Yeah.
[MEG FAURE] (12:01 – 13:20)
And, you know, it’s interesting because, I mean, the basis of language is wanting to share what’s in your mind and taking what’s in somebody else’s mind and actually understanding and taking it in. And so it’s really understanding that somebody else has, is a different mind to your mind. And that’s what she’s showing when, you know, when she starts to communicate or starts to obey commands, you know, like, you know, clap for mommy or high five for daddy, that those are all wonderful signals.
The pointing is an interesting one because when we point, it’s a very nonverbal cue. And so when I pointed something, instead of looking at the end of my finger, you’ll actually look where that finger’s looking at or where my eye is looking at in relation to that finger. And that’s a real sign that little ones have moved into that, that phase of language where they’re wanting to communicate.
So that’s why it’s such an important milestone and one that I’ve actually put into that, into the app. So maybe an activity that you could do with her this week is, you know, take her into the garden and, you know, when there’s an arty doll making noise or an aeroplane flying overhead or whatever it is, point at it or point at the fridge and say, where’s the milk and point to the fridge and see if she looks in that direction. And quite quickly, she’ll start to look where you’re pointing.
And then eventually start to point herself. And it’s really worthwhile playing those games with her because it’s important for, for, you know, kind of the beginnings of communication.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (13:21 – 13:51)
Yeah. Yeah. This conversation is bringing back so many memories about that phase with Santi because it was so interesting.
They just become, the communication becomes much more two-way, I suppose. And I particularly remember when he became verbal, that being a huge turning point for us, especially because we had so many struggles with sleep and so on. It was so hard to understand what it was that was bothering him.
And once he could try and express some of that, it made such a big difference. So I also look forward to that with her. Yeah.
[MEG FAURE] (13:51 – 15:13)
And it won’t be long now when she starts to actually get one or two words, you know, probably in the next two months, she’ll get herself a word or two words. And, you know, often parents worry about that, you know, when is my child going to speak? And for some little ones, it’s a very variable milestone.
For some little ones, it’s as early as kind of 10 months that they’re starting to do mama or bye-bye or ta or, you know, doggy for whatever it is, something in the environment that they’re interested in. For some little ones, do it as early as that. My firstborn was very verbal.
He had 11 words at a year of age. And, you know, and that was, you know, quite a lot of words with meaning for that age. And then one of my friend’s children, who went on to become a psychologist, had no words until 36 months, which was really interesting because it was such a wide, bright range.
And at the time I was thinking, my goodness, if you’re not speaking by the time you’re almost three, there’s got to be long-term language difficulties. And yet she went on to do the BA in psychology and my son ended up in more of the STEM and engineering. So I’m not in the space.
So it’s, you know, it’s quite easy when you’re the little ones are tiny to hang your hat on their milestones and think, well, that shows the brilliance and the capacity for life, but actually it doesn’t really. You know, so it’s just, what’s important is just to have a, you know, a very enriched environment and then hopefully they catch on to it as soon as they are, they have the capacity to.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (15:14 – 15:43)
Yeah. I do remember Santi in particular having this massive acceleration of language when he started school. So he turned two within a month of starting at his first play school and it was just three days a week, but that environment, and it was a small, it was a small place in school.
It was just five kids. That environment really developed his language in a short space of time. I was just amazed he would come home from school with all these new words.
Why I didn’t teach you that. And that was also just so awesome to see.
[BAILEY SCHNEIDER3] (15:44 – 16:21)
This episode is brought to us by Parent 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?
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[JULIA DA SILVA] (16:23 – 16:30)
He would come home from school with all these new words. Why I didn’t teach you that. And that was also just so awesome to see.
No, absolutely.
[MEG FAURE] (16:30 – 17:44)
And that’s what we call the language explosion. And for most children, for majority of the population, even if they start to talk a little late, they will actually have a language explosion between 18 months and two years old. So that’s when the words start to just fall out of their mouth and it starts to really make sense.
What’s interesting about PlaySense, I am still involved in PlaySense, is that they, I mean, the curriculum 100% focusses on language. The teacher actually gets a list of words that she has to use every week with the little ones. And those words are usually quite advanced words.
In fact, a very funny story I once heard was a little one who went to see a doctor because they had a sore throat and the doctor was using kind of almost parentese and baby talk about, you know, open wide, let me see what’s in your mouth. And the little one kind of looked up, it was about two years, three months and said, can you see my tonsils? The doctor was like, you’re what?
And he couldn’t believe it. But that is, that was a PlaySense baby. And they, we do very much focus on quite specific words that little ones need and also on scenarios where little ones have to use words.
So they’re almost forced into using their words, which is why he would have had that language explosion. So I hope you’re going to be sending Aurelia to a PlaySense school near you as well.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (17:45 – 18:34)
Yes, I hope so. That’s the plan. I love the experience.
I must say it felt so appropriate for his age. You know, he was gregarious and outgoing. And so he had certainly the right personality at that, you know, relatively young age to be in that environment.
Some of the kids who were born later in the year maybe had slightly different personalities, perhaps weren’t as comfortable in the beginning. But he thrived off it. And yeah, I just loved, I think, being challenged and loved.
He’s so social. He loved being with his friends. And, and, you know, what’s wonderful for us is that the friends that he was at PlaySense with, he then went to nursery school with the following year.
So last year when he was at nursery for the first time, he was with that same group of kids. And I think that also eased that transition. And, you know, and I hope that they’ll be lifelong friends of his.
Certainly some of my lifelong friends are people I met in play school whose children are now at school with my children, which is wild.
[MEG FAURE] (18:35 – 19:05)
Yeah. And, you know, it’s actually one of the reasons why I started PlaySense was because I really felt very strongly that children needed to be in a group within their community, because that’s how you build a village, you know? So those are the, those are the nannies that your nanny will walk with, with your kids.
Those are the mums that you’ll play paddle with or whatever. And these are the birthday parties that you’ll go to. And so you create your village instead of schlepping little ones off kind of 20 kilometres away to go and go to play school every day, you know, to go to a big school.
So yeah, community-based schooling is very, very important for that.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (19:06 – 20:12)
Yeah. I know we’ve been very lucky with that and to have a PlaySense on our doorstep and now to have a nursery school on our doorstep has been awesome. Just, yeah, again, that sense of community and knowing all those, all those parents.
And I do try to get involved in, you know, go to the parents’ evenings and all that kind of stuff, because I just think it’s important to show up for them in that way. I mean, something interesting that I was talking to some friends about was last year, because work had been a real struggle and I had been so, you know, it had just dominated my life last year, I hadn’t been as social as I could have been. And I was struggling to like, you know, do lifts to play dates and stuff for Santi.
And, you know, I feel he was suffering a bit from not being able to go and play with his friends as much and engage. I wasn’t engaging with the parents as much as perhaps I could have been. And I’ve made an effort this year and it’s already reaping rewards.
I’ve made like a real conscious effort to organise social events with his friends and parents after school and dinners with mums and whatever it is. But it really is rewarding, even though I was a little bit nervous about it, because it’s not my sort of natural inclination. It really has been wonderful.
So yeah, it’s all part of that.
[MEG FAURE] (20:12 – 21:51)
Yeah, it’s very important. You know, yeah, I mean, I had my first two children, most of my friends were very similar age to me. Well, many of them were friends from school and university, had children at exactly the same time for my first two kids, but nobody went on and had a third baby except me.
And so when Emily was born, I didn’t know anybody who had a baby or was having a baby of her age, you know, and so I realised quite quickly that I could stick in my comfort zone and just keep seeing my friends of my older two kids age or I would have to really step out. And I, of course, I stepped out because I knew that I had to find a social life for her. And I can tell you that now, my probably my closest five friends are people that I actually met through Emily and because I went out and made such an effort there.
So, you know, it was it was really interesting. And I think it’s so important to do that, even if you are not a social person, I am social, you’re social, but even if you’re not a social person and to get out there and have at least one or two friends with kids the same age is very important. It is really how you create your village.
And we had quite an interesting experience last week. We went away with 14, no it wasn’t 14, it was 12 adults, couples and 12 couples. So, you know, 24 of us on a hike and looking around the breakfast table every morning as we kind of ate before we went out on our slack packing.
I realised that these were the people who raised their children with me. We have been friends, some of us in school, some of us since university, but all of us through our children. And it’s that village that is so important for little ones.
So, you know, creating a village is very, very important.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (21:52 – 21:58)
Yeah. And it requires a bit of effort, you know, most of the time, I would say, but it certainly has its rewards.
[MEG FAURE] (21:59 – 22:14)
Absolutely. It certainly does. And of course, very importantly, as she approaches nine months, we could not end an episode without talking about sleep, because this is often the age where we can see a little bit of a sleep upheaval and people don’t know quite what to do about it.
And how’s your sleep been going?
[JULIA DA SILVA] (22:15 – 22:56)
Well, I got very excited last week because she slept four nights in a row through and then skipped one and then slept a fifth night after that. And I thought, OK, cool, this is what happens. And actually what I wanted to ask you, because I don’t have an example, having had such a struggle with Santee, of what the normal, if there’s such a thing, or typical progression is for sleep as they start to sleep through in a more kind of consistent way.
Anyway, so she did that. That’s when I thought, OK, this is it. This is what happens.
And then this week she’s been, I mean, yesterday she woke up at half past four, this morning it was five o’clock. So I don’t know what’s going on, but what’s meant to be going on?
[MEG FAURE] (22:57 – 24:02)
So a quick one, when you talk about sleeping through, because everybody defines it differently, is that going down by seven and waking up at six, is that the type of thing you’re talking about? Yeah, pretty much. OK, yeah.
So that is amazing sleep. Very, very spot on for a nine month old for certain. Probably a little on the good side in that an early morning waking is often something that we’ll see, and sometimes even like a single wake up for a little bit of water in the middle of the night as well.
So all of that would constitute normal, typical, good sleep habits. Waking up at one or two for some water, and waking up at four or five in the morning would still constitute being a good sleeper at this age. So the fact that she’s going from seven until six, almost 11 hours at night, is amazing.
So that is really, really good. What often does happen at this age is that they start to either fight bedtime or wake up early in the morning, particularly if they’re having three days sleeps, or too much day sleep. So what does her day sleep pattern look like at the moment?
[JULIA DA SILVA] (24:03 – 24:17)
So she has two sleeps. In the morning, it can vary anywhere from 40 minutes to maybe an hour and a half, not usually longer than that. And then her afternoon sleep is, again, hour and a half to two hours maybe.
[MEG FAURE] (24:18 – 24:47)
Okay, all right. So look, I mean, that’s perfect. What happens for a lot of moms at six months old, little ones are doing three sleeps a day, which is that kind of nine, 9.30ish in the morning, another one around about 12ish, and another one at about 3.34 in the afternoon. So that’s a very typical six to nine month old routine. And then at nine months old, one of the reasons why most moms will start to see a disruption is because they haven’t actually dropped to sleep soon enough. And you have in fact dropped that sleep.
And the reason, how many weeks ago did you drop that third, that cat nap in the late afternoon?
[JULIA DA SILVA] (24:48 – 25:02)
It was actually quite a while ago, I would say close to two months ago, maybe six weeks. It just got to the point where there was no, I could try until I was blue in the face, she was not going to sleep in the afternoon. Yeah, okay.
[MEG FAURE] (25:02 – 28:29)
So that’s perfect. So what you could attempt now is to pull back her morning sleep to make sure that it’s either just 45 minutes, or if she does do an hour and a half to make sure that her afternoon sleep is no more than an hour. So that would be probably what I would be recommending from nine months onwards is, you know, the kind of combined time that you would look at is 45 plus an hour and a half would be the combined time and day sleeps.
If they’re having a lot longer than that, usually that means that the afternoon sleep will be pushing over 3pm in the afternoon. So for instance, if they go to sleep at 9.30 in the morning and sleep for an hour and a half, they’ll push their afternoon sleep up to like 1 or 1.30 and then maybe only wake up at 3. And so, you know, you just need to watch that.
So try and just keep in your mind that it’s kind of going to be two to two and a half hours in combination across the day. And then and then put her down to regular bedtime. So that’s the first thing in terms of preventative.
Second thing in terms of preventative is lots and lots of movement. It’s interesting to me that she loves standing because standing gives them lots of proprioception because they tend to bounce in that position. So they get this lovely proprioception going on.
And so she’s probably wanting more and more of that at this age. So every afternoon, take on a swing. If you don’t have the time, get your nanny to take her outside and go and swing with her or give her a little bit of a bounce on a trampoline with you or with the nanny.
So give her lots of movement would be my second thing. Focus on some iron rich foods would be the third one. So making sure she’s got lots of adequate iron to get her through the night because it builds a little red blood cells and that’s good for oxygenation when we’re sleeping at night.
So those would be all the principles that I would basically be looking at. And then, of course, very importantly, but I know she must be doing this, that she settles herself to sleep for all of those sleeps, day sleeps and night sleeps. If she wasn’t, there’s no way that she would be sleeping as well as she was if you were having to rock or feed her.
So any of my mums who are rocking or feeding their little ones to sleep at the moment and they’re still waking up at night, that’s probably why. So she, I know, is not doing that. So I would start with all of those principles.
And then we get on to the 4.30 or 5am waking and it’s such a painful waking because it’s not really a time where you can do sleep training and I don’t recommend doing sleep training at that time. So there’s two options. One is, well, I mean, you can ignore her and talk to her from your room, like, you know, go do do’s now, time to go sleep.
It’s not morning yet. You can try that option. Probably not going to work.
Just going to escalate the crying and she’s not going to be happy. And then the other option that I always talk about is just to break all the rules at that time. So bring her into your bed and let her kind of cuddle next to you and see if she’ll fall asleep or even give her a milk bottle.
And I know that this goes counter to everything that I say. But as I say, this early morning when we just have to sleep in, we do break the rules. And that’s to give her a little bit of milk in her in her cup so that she can just fall back asleep on her own.
So those are the two options. And they’re certainly the ones that I use with my kids. My older two, I just brought them into my bed with me.
My youngest didn’t like coming into my bed at all. She’s always been a little bit more sensory. So for her, I would just give her a milk bottle in her cup and she would go back to sleep until six.
So that’s what I would do then. And then the third option is the unfortunate one, which is it can be morning for little ones at that age. So yeah, so I think start off with looking at the day’s sleep time and then breaking the rules.
Those are probably going to be your two options.
[JULIA DA SILVA] (28:30 – 28:59)
Yeah, that’s that’s quite validating because that’s exactly what I did this morning. I got her up. She had sprung a leak in her nappy anyway, so she was wet.
So I just thought I’d help feed her and change her and she can come and have her kind of morning cuddle with us at five o’clock, not such a train smash. Hop was full, absolutely not. I’m not interested in being awake at that time of the morning.
So I did make her a bottle and I just gave it to her in her cot and then I went back to bed and I tried to go back to sleep. Luckily, I did. And so did she.
And I had to eventually wake her up at like quarter to seven because she was fast asleep.
(0:00 – 0:12)
And so that worked well. And I mean, the funniest thing was that my little one, my youngest, I mean, she eventually learned that she could have this bottle that’s like 4.35 in the morning and that she would always get one at that time. And I was never too bothered about it.
(0:13 – 0:25)
But she worked out that I was the lazier of the two parents at that time of the morning. So we always had a policy in our marriage that I would do anything at night and he would do anything early morning. So that was kind of what we did.
(0:25 – 0:34)
And she was very little for some reason. We still can’t work this out because we were actually talking about it the other day. She started to call my husband Lillipad.
(0:35 – 0:46)
And so she’d stand in the car and she’d go, Lillipad! And I would have to stand up and go mix her a bottle. It’s the only time of day she used to do it. It was the funniest thing.
(0:47 – 0:55)
So I think somebody had probably said, Dad, Dad, Lillipad or something like that. And she then hooked on to that. So she used to get a little bottle in the morning.
(0:56 – 1:03)
And then eventually, obviously, it just disappeared. She became an older toddler and she slept all the way through. So yeah, nothing wrong with breaking the rules at that time.
(1:04 – 1:11)
Okay, good to know. I also remember doing it to Santee a lot. I can’t remember at what age because I just can’t remember that far back.
(1:11 – 1:23)
But there was definitely a phase where he was doing these kind of 5 a.m. wake-ups. And I would just literally throw the bottle in the cot and go and have an extra 40 minutes of sleep and go back to sleep. And you know, I mean, it is interesting because they don’t generalise it to the middle of the night if they’re good sleepers.
(1:23 – 1:37)
They just don’t. And so it doesn’t create bad habits. The only, I suppose, potentially bad habit that we would talk about is that, and I do still stick to this, is that preferably no milk while little ones are in their cot lying down for a few reasons.
(1:37 – 1:46)
One of which is ear infections. The other one of which is tooth cavities. And the third one of which is obesity because they’re associating sleep and milk as they get a lot older.
(1:47 – 1:55)
That’s not ideal for them. But again, you know, we do what we do because we need to sleep. So, you know, we have to break some rules sometimes.
(1:56 – 2:02)
Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, hopefully it’s not an ongoing everyday issue.
(2:02 – 2:13)
Time will tell, I suppose. But knowing what I know about her, whenever she’s kind of gone through these funny little phases, they have been just a handful of days at a time. And, you know, as with all these things, they just continue to change.
(2:13 – 2:17)
Nothing stays the same. We just have to ride the wave and see what happens. Exactly.
(2:17 – 2:29)
Exactly. Absolutely. And what will happen between now and when she’s a year old, which I can’t believe that that’s coming up, but when she’s a year old, she will probably have dropped one of those sleeps and then be down to two sleep, down to one sleep.
(2:29 – 2:38)
And when they’re down to one sleep, they generally then are sleeping all the way through until six or seven in the morning. Yeah. I wish someone had told Santi that because he didn’t believe in that strategy.
(2:38 – 2:43)
But anyway, this one, I’m convinced. A little bit. We’ll be on board with the strategy.
(2:43 – 2:54)
So, yeah, I’m sure she’ll be good. We’re going on a big trip, actually, just after she turns one. I was just chatting to Tzitzi about it and about how this thing where she’s if you hold her, she’s kind of toddling.
(2:55 – 3:06)
I anticipate she might be a bit of an early walker, which means it’s going to be a very, very long 24 hours of me running up and down the middle of a plane with her. But anyway, it’s the price we pay. Yes.
(3:06 – 3:16)
No, it will be. It definitely will be. And we can definitely deal with that when we get closer to that time because there are some little strategies that you can use in terms of medications and flight times and all sorts of things.
(3:16 – 3:20)
So let’s bring that up closer to the time. Cool. Brilliant.
(3:21 – 3:29)
Excellent, JULIA DA SILVA. Thank you so much for the chat. And yeah, we look forward to connecting again, by which time she’ll probably be approaching nine and a half or even ten months.
(3:29 – 3:33)
And but really good to chat. Yeah, lovely. Thanks, Meg.
(3:33 – 3:38)
See you next time. Thanks, JULIA DA SILVA. Thanks to everyone who joined us.
(3:38 – 3:45)
We will see you the same time next week. Until then, download Parent Sense app and take the guesswork out of parenting.
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