12-Week Milestones: Parenting Tips and Navigating Sleep Struggle S5|133

12-Week Milestones: Parenting Tips and Navigating Sleep Struggle S5|133

 

And of course it is such a cute phase. I can remember always feeling like that kind of between now and nine months old is just the easiest phase of early parenting. The reality is that they’re quite easy when they’re awake and they smile and they’re engaging and then at nine months old, well for me it was nine months old, my little ones were crawling and oh my word, all hell broke loose and then there’s no time to relax.

You don’t sit still for one minute, you’re on your feet, you’re buzzing around them. So yeah, it is, it’s a great phase of parenting. I know that all mothers think that their children are adorable, but I really just think she’s the cutest thing in the whole wide world.

And talking about that, I mean one of the hazards of being a second time mum is that he’s going to be bringing home every single germ. And you know, has that happened or has that not been your experience in the last few weeks? Luckily, she’s only had a mild snotty nose once in that time since hospitalisation. So she’s coping quite well with that so far, but you know, at one stage or another, something more serious will come along.

I’m sure that there’s no shortage of germs coming home from school, that’s for sure. How much support am I giving my baby? How much am I helping them to self-regulate? And how much am I handing the baton over to them? And am I going to cause habits forever? Like it’s just such a strong theme of this exact age. 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 Catchmaker 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.

This is the podcast where we explore every aspect of early parenting from health and sleep to feeds and play. And we often have experts on with us. And then of course, sometimes we have regular guests who are mums themselves.

And that is what we are going to be doing today. We’re to be diving right in with Julia De Silva. She is mum to Aurelia and Santi.

And Aurelia is just a little one who we’ve been tracking all the way since she was born. And she had a little hospitalization, which was really scary when she was just, I think, just two weeks old. And now she is 12 weeks old.

I cannot believe that it has been so long since we last chatted, Julia. So when did she turn 12 weeks or is that still coming up? It was yesterday. So she’s freshly 12 weeks.

Amazing. Well, welcome back. Thank you so much for joining us again.

We are going to hear all about the ups and downs of a 12 week old. How have things been going? It’s been, well, it’s been a bit of a blur. It’s quite difficult to even remember from one week to the next what happens, because as you know, things change so quickly and they’re growing so fast.

In fact, that sort of idea of growing so quickly is the thing that really sticks in my mind from the last few weeks. She went for her 10 week vaccination. So we went to go and see the nurse and she got weighed and she has put on lots of weight.

So she’s nearly five and a half kilos now, which is astonishing. I’m starting to feel it in my shoulders and my arms. And she’s also grown a little bit taller and I’ve had to pack away all the newborn clothes already, which really breaks my heart, but she’s absolutely thriving.

Yeah, that’s unbelievable. I mean, when we last spoke, I think that she had just started smiling and you actually weren’t 100% positive if it was consistent smiles. So what is she like now that she’s 12 weeks old? What sort of personality does she have? Is she smiley or do you have to work for those smiles? She’s very smiley.

Thank goodness. It’s really sweet, I have to say. I mean, I know that all mothers think that their children are adorable, but I really just think she’s the cutest thing in the whole wide world.

I do also remember being quite smitten with Santi at this age as well, before things got very challenging. But yes, she’s a real delight and, you know, generally speaking, she’s a very happy baby. We’ve had a couple of days, over the last couple of days actually, where something’s been bugging her.

I don’t quite know what it is, but even so, you know, largely, you know, 24 hours a day, she’s quite easy to please and she just has a few fractious moments. But yeah, she’s just, she’s a delight. That’s amazing.

Yeah, you know, you’re talking about something that we commonly known as primary maternal preoccupation and it is so true about how we feel about our babies. We honestly do think that they are the most beautiful babies in the world and that they are the cleverest and that they are just the most fabulous and they are the center of our world. And it’s actually very, very important for their egos and for their sense of self that they actually are the center of our world.

Because what happens is that you start off life knowing that you are the most important thing and then life starts to let you down. Like you have to wait two minutes while mom wipes your baby brother’s bottom and you have to wait while you’re crying for a couple of minutes or as a toddler you have to share or you have to take turns or you don’t get invited to something. And those are the things that life throws at you and you’ve got to feel really okay within yourself to be able to bounce back from those things.

And so primary maternal preoccupation, which is the belief that our little ones are the most important and most special thing in the world, is actually very, very important. So yeah, good to know that you’re going through it for sure. And of course it is such a cute phase.

I can remember always feeling like that kind of between now and nine months old is just the easiest phase of early parenting. Because although you’ve got some challenges like weanings coming up and sleep regressions might come up, the reality is that they’re quite easy when they’re awake and they’re smiling and they’re engaging. And then at nine months old, well for me it was nine months old, my little ones were crawling and oh my word, all hell broke loose and then there’s no time to relax.

You don’t sit still for one minute, you’re on your feet, you’re buzzing around them. So yeah, it is, it’s a great phase of parenting. Yeah, it feels easy in comparison.

I know what’s coming. Exactly, exactly. So tell us, first of all, how’s the feeding going? I remember that we transitioned her onto bottles and you transitioned her onto bottles early on.

Yes, so basically around the time she got sick and she couldn’t feed on the breast because her nose was too blocked. Unfortunately, we did have to move her onto bottles. And then for one reason or another, and it’s not a decision that I made without some, not regret necessarily, but some sadness, we decided to keep her on the bottles.

Having said that, it does offer me as quite an A-type personality, a lot of reassurance and comfort because I know exactly how much she’s getting. It also allows me a lot of flexibility and independence, which is important to me. So not only am I back at work, but it also means that my husband can feed her, which is important for their relationship.

Even Santi can feed her and of course my nanny helps me a huge amount. So it is overall a good thing, but it’s not without its sadnesses and having lost that traditional breastfeeding relationship. Yeah, it’s so interesting that breastfeeding journey, the emotional journey, I mean, take everything else out of it, the nutrition, the comfort for the baby, the bonding, whatever.

But for us as moms, it’s like such a massive thing. And I know that every mom I’ve ever spoken to, whether she stops feeding at two weeks, six months or two years or even five years old, those last few breastfeeds at the breast just feel like such a big moment for her. And there is that feeling of loss in some respects when your little one is not feeding directly from the breast.

But in terms of nutrition, she’s getting just what she needs because she is getting… Are you still expressing or have you now moved on to formula? I am still expressing. I am trying to be as committed as possible. I essentially express four to five times a day and then I’ve weaned myself off night expressing completely, which is actually great because it means that the night feeds are 30 minutes beginning to end, which is obviously easier for me.

So far it’s going quite well and I’m going to persevere as long as I can from a mental and emotional point of view because it is very taxing. No, it is super taxing. It’s a massive commitment.

Is she having a little bit of formula as well? No, not at the moment. I’ve got quite a lot of supply. In fact, I’m actually looking into donating a lot of my milk because I literally just have a freezer full of it and I can’t sort of see a world in which she’d necessarily need that much milk.

That’s incredible. I wanted to tell you something that came up quite interestingly on our podcast. It was just probably about two podcasts ago when I spoke to Kath McGaw about feeding and she mentioned some research that came out of Esbogan, which is the annual conference where all the leaders in dietetics infants feeding really go in the world, go to this event once a year in Europe.

They revealed some research this year, which is super fascinating around cow’s milk formula. They said that if you offer cow’s milk formula to your baby at any point in the first three months of life, you must continue to offer just for one feed a week from then onwards. What they found is that by doing that, you actually protect them from long-term cow’s milk allergies.

It’s just one feed, but it’s just putting a tiny little bit of formula into that, obviously not cow’s milk, cow’s milk, but formula, cow’s milk protein formula, into their diet once a week, which I found super fascinating because I think often as moms, many, many of us have had to offer formula in the first four weeks of life just because of something like a hospitalization or baby’s not gaining weight or low blood sugars or whatever it is. Then we don’t ever introduce formula again until they’re so much older. Actually, this kind of new piece of research showed that just one bottle a week of infant formula is not a bad thing for preventing allergies.

I found that quite interesting. Would that be a bottle standalone formula or would you mix it with breast milk? Either. You can mix it in or you can do it as a standalone.

It’s literally just that you want that gut to recognize those proteins. We find it with a lot of allergens where you remove something from your diet, you then afterwards can actually either never reintroduce it or you react more. Case in point, when people have slight alcohol or sulfur allergies and then they cut alcohol out, and then when they go back, it kind of triggers them even more as adults, obviously not babies.

But the point is that a little bit of tiny micro doses of exposure are actually quite protective, which I found super interesting. That actually makes sense. I did a lot of reading when I was weaning Santee around early exposure for various kind of high allergy foods.

Certainly, that research very much supports the idea that early introduction is important, so that does make sense. It’s just really early exposure. What’s really interesting is that when we carry our babies, we’re giving them micro doses of allergens because if we’re not allergic to shellfish and peanuts and so on, eggs, and we’re eating them ourselves, we’re micro dosing them through the placenta and then also through our breast milk.

Everything that you eat right now, she’s getting micro doses of the proteins as well. Breastfeeding and carrying a baby are both protective on allergies. And then after that, it really does make a difference how we wean our babies.

It’s not that we have to rush into weaning them at four months necessarily, but we certainly are not of the belief that we used to be kind of 25 years ago that late introduction was protective. We know that that’s not true. It doesn’t mean we have to rush, but it does mean that it almost gives us permission as parents to have much more control over the decision making of when ourselves, instead of having this kind of regimented line in the sand, you know, nothing until seven months or whatever it is.

Yes, exactly. It’s actually, it’s fascinating how things change. I mean, when Santi was born, my mum dug out our baby books, you know, the equivalent of the green book from the 80s.

And hysterically in there, there is a note from the nurse when my twin brother and I were, I think, eight and a half weeks old, that we hadn’t yet started solids, which I just, quite frankly, my mum said they were introducing yogurts and infant cereal, which is now not a thing people do anymore at that young age. And it blows my mind. Absolutely.

And you know, when I was born in the 70s, and my mum had this incredible GP, I mean, he’s died now, but he was probably, I mean, he delivered, when he saw a family, he was a family doctor, he delivered your baby, he saw you whole way through, he weighed your baby, he didn’t, there was no nurse involved. You know, everybody went to this incredible GP. But he told my mum, when I was about three or four weeks old, that the first food that she was introduced is avocado and oats porridge.

Those are the two things, oats porridge and avocado. Well, let me tell you that, like fast track through to about eight years ago, Kath and I are doing a talk, and we’re talking about the composition of breast milk. And we were talking about the macronutrients, you know, the fats, proteins, carbohydrate composition.

And she was saying in this talk, of course, the very worst thing we do is we take babies from a breastfeeding, breast milk diet, which has this incredible fat and protein content. And we switch them directly onto a straight carbohydrate diet, which is obviously was the rice cereal. And that was the advice that, you know, kind of about 10 years ago.

And of course, we don’t do that. So I remember saying to her, gosh, Kath, that’s super fascinating. What food would you recommend? And she said, well, if you look to nature, at the one thing that exactly has almost exactly the same composition of breast milk, what do you think it is? It’s avocado.

And I was absolutely fascinated that this GP back in the 70s kind of had it right. And of course, avocado is just the best thing to wean our babies onto because it’s got all those lovely fats and oils and, and carbs, obviously, as well. It’s a great food.

And I don’t know about you, but I found that it was one of those things that if I wasn’t knowing that I was going out, like shopping for the day or somewhere where I needed to feed my baby, like just stick a whole banana and a whole avocado in my nappy bag, literally like that, because I knew I could get somewhere, mash the avocado, mash the avocado and the banana and put it together. And that was just an incredible kind of early starter food for my little one. Yeah.

No, it’s always good to have those, those recipes in your back pocket that you’re not going to get eaten. And that’s certainly an early one. Exactly.

Yeah. And it’s such an easy one because I love it. The other one that I used to do, you know, because we had our third child was quite a bit younger than the other two.

So we were off to the spur every Friday evening for our sons. Thank goodness. Literally going to the spur tomorrow night.

And there you go. Exactly. And for those of you living overseas, it’s kind of like TGI Fridays or one of those.

I mean, like, oh my goodness. And you kind of subject yourself to the play space, which is unhygienic, but everybody’s kind of happy. But what we used to do with Emily, because now I’m dragging her along to the spur and the other two are seven and five is I would take all my butternut little cubes that I had frozen.

This is really in the early days of her weaning, butternut and sweet potato cubes. I’d stick them into a little bowl with a lid on. And then when I got there, I would go to the salad bar.

So I’d always order salad bar and I’d go to the salad bar and I’d take a scoop of either the cottage cheese, the cream cheese, or even I know this is going to sound terrible, but sometimes a piece of butter. And that was then I knew, right, she’s getting her fats, she’s getting her vegetables and we’re doing it on the go. So these are the things you do.

That’s hilarious. That’s like, I mean, the spur salad valley coming into its own. Exactly.

And the one thing I didn’t do, and now that I think about it, I don’t know why, is why I didn’t just give her the butternut off the spur counter there. I mean, one of the hazards of being a second time mom is that he’s going to be bringing home every single germ. And, you know, has that happened or has that not been your experience in the last few weeks? Well, so, well, yeah, I mean, in the three months of her life, he’s had, I think, four colds.

Well, one of them was RSV obviously early on, which he gave her. But he’s had, he’s gotten better and then gotten his naughty nose again. Nothing sort of major.

And luckily, she’s only had a mild snotty nose once in that time since hospitalization. So she’s coping quite well with that so far. But, you know, at one stage or another, something more serious will come along, I’m sure.

But there’s no shortage of germs coming home from school, that’s for sure. Yeah. And what’s going to be interesting about that is that, you know, we always say that toddlers, when they start to play school, have about 14 illnesses a year.

Like they get probably sick all the time. I mean, there’s a snotty nose, there’s an ear infection, there’s a coxsackie virus or foot and mouth disease or molluscum contagios and those little bumps on the eyes. I mean, they just bring the whole lot home.

But second ones don’t as much. And the reason is, of course, that she’s had a really good inoculation through your breast milk of all the germs that he brings home. So he brings the germs home, your body mounts the response and all those antibodies get passed through your breast milk.

So, yeah, breastfeeding is really awesome for that. It’s definitely one of the things on my mind about the breastfeeding and trying to kind of do it as long as I can, because I do think it has huge benefits in that respect. Yeah, no, it certainly does.

And the gut microbiome. I think those two are the ones that kind of stand out. You know, going back many years ago, people used to talk about breastfed babies having a higher IQ.

And I have never been able to find any research on that. So I kind of throw a lot of these things out where people say, oh, breast milk is so amazing, it’s going to give you a high IQ. Really? Show me the research.

But that was true. And it was that simple. Imagine.

Anyway, but so let’s throw out some of the myths, but certainly the two that are definitely not myths are, of course, the immunity and the gut microbiome, both of which have not yet been able to be replicated in formula milk because one is antibodies and the other one is the human milk oligosaccharides inside the milk. Well, they can replicate them to an extent, but they don’t always get it perfect in formula. But Julia, I want to get on to some of the challenges that you’re facing at the moment, because surely at 12 weeks old, there are a couple of things that niggle you at night.

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Download ParentSense app null from your app store and take the guesswork out of parenting. Julia, I want to get on to some of the challenges that you’re facing at the moment, because surely at 12 weeks old, there are a couple of things that niggle you at night. Yes, so look, bedtime’s always been a little bit fraught on the sort of, if I was thinking about it as a trend, I would say it’s probably getting a little bit easier.

We do have the odd night where she, you know, there’ll be a false start or we’ll struggle to settle her. And I think for sleep for us at the moment, the main issue is really these shorter naps, you know, the kind of nap linking issue in the daytime. Santi definitely went through that phase quite aggressively from, I would say, kind of four to six or seven months he was doing that.

In fact, I remember quite vividly the day the nanny started. So I had a nanny start at six months when I went back to work with him. And I remember pretty much that day, he stopped sleeping at night and started sleeping in the day, which drove me mad because I’d had to suffer through these short naps for two or three months.

So she started doing that. I will say she seems easier to settle at that kind of 14 minute mark than Santi was. But again, maybe it’s because she is that little bit younger still.

But I’m quite aware of nap linking and I remember being such a struggle with him and it driving me completely batty. So that is something I’m keeping a close eye on, is trying to make sure she’s having her long naps. Absolutely.

So yeah, it’s super interesting. And let’s start with what’s not normal, then we’ll talk about what’s normal and then we’ll talk about how to fix it. So what is not normal is very, very short cat naps.

And so anything less than 20 minutes, if a baby was only sleeping for 15 or maximum 20 minutes, I would then be, you know, I would be a little bit concerned. And I would want to have a look at, are they healthy? Have they got ear infections? Are they a sensory baby? What’s going on for them? Because babies must sleep for longer than 20 minutes. Otherwise they’re not really getting into the regenerative, lovely, deep sleep state.

Having said that, what is normal is that 45 minutes is a sleep cycle. And for some babies, it’s as short as like 38 minutes, maybe even 35 sometimes, but usually between 40 and 45 minutes babies come into a light state of sleep and then they wake up. Now, when they’re very little, they tend to be able to sleep through that.

And so we get these lovely long stretches, you know, kind of two to three hours sleeps in between feeds. But very often for little ones, like as early as five or six weeks old, they start to do the cat naps during the day. And by this, I’m not talking about the 20 minute, I’m talking about the 40 minute cat naps.

And they kind of just never piece it together to link them. And the big challenge, which is exactly what you’ve said, is that they have to start to link their sleep cycles. Now, unfortunately, and you’re not going to want to hear this at 12 weeks, the actual typical age that they start to link them is around about 24 weeks.

So it just takes, I know you’ve got another three months, but it just takes a little bit of time. And for me, the main reason is that at about 12 weeks, they’re on full solids and they’re having a really nice lunch. And that lunch includes nice proteins and fats.

And it seems to me that, you know, in Afrikaans we’ve got this adage that is, maag is full, oor is too, which is, you know, if your tummy’s full, your eyes will close. In other words, you’ll sleep. And so we tend to see that having a really nice hearty lunch allows them to actually start to link those sleep cycles.

So at the moment, what you can do is first things first, listen. So when she starts to stir at kind of 40 minutes, just listen to her first. And the reason for that is that very often we start over-responding.

So we pop immediately into the nursery and we kind of pat, dummy, rock, and we actually start to create little habits where they’re never going to really do it themselves unless we’re helping them. So just listen for a little bit. And I can even say like two to three minutes, if she’s just talking, iffing and butting, making a noise, don’t get into it, just listen.

And then if you do go in, first line of defense is if she’s still swaddled, which normally at about 12 to 14 weeks, they’re actually outgrowing. But if she’s still swaddled, reswaddle her, turn her on her side, and then actually pop the dummy in and just pat her back to sleep if you can. Have the white noise on, and that’s another tip, is have white noise on that doesn’t stop.

It goes all the way through the 45-minute stage, and then see if you can kind of pat and just get her back to sleep. I don’t believe in going the whole hog of kind of rocking back to sleep and like trying at all costs, because again, you’re going to cause those habits to arise. And so what happens next then is that if she really won’t settle, is to just pick her up, take her out the room, and know that your awake time then starts at the point at which she woke up.

Yeah, and I do remember this being a kind of critical turning point with Santi, where I think I definitely didn’t take the time to listen, to really let him have an opportunity to soothe a little bit himself. So it does feel like quite a critical point for me, for trying not to make the same mistakes again, because that certainly did come back to bite me big time. And so I think that is good advice.

Also, I try my hardest day or night not to pick her up after she’s gone down. I feel like A, like you said, it’s starting to create bad habits, but B, often I find I’m just, either it’s not making any difference, so she may as well be in her cot, and potentially I’m aggravating the situation even more by kind of, distracting her, by holding her, and that kind of thing. So yeah, it is something I feel like I need to be a bit strategic about.

Yeah, and you know, you bring up something really interesting there, because you’re definitely going to have mums who are going to listen to that and go, oh my goodness, but if I don’t pick them up, aren’t, you know, what’s going on with attachment, aren’t I being cruel, or whatever they’re thinking. So, and I just want to separate out two things here. So first of all, you’ve got crying that’s super distressed, where like they, you know, they really are distressed, they’re not able to re-settle themselves, they are not self-regulating, and they really do need support.

And in that situation, you should always respond to them. And a response doesn’t necessarily mean picking them up. Sometimes it means just sitting with them, stroking their head, holding their hand, patting their back, turning them on their side.

And so, you know, I think the important thing that mums must recognize is, it’s not the picking up that is the thing that solves things, it’s the response, responding and letting them feel that you’re there with them. So, and while she’s lying down and very distressed, I would certainly be stroking her head, holding her body, you know, just kind of containing her. For some little ones, that won’t be enough, and you’ll need to pick them up.

But I do agree with you that sometimes the picking up actually aggravates everything, because what it does is it overstimulates them, it makes them think that actually it’s daytime, and it gives them the signal that, you know, every time they have any distress, they need to be picked up, which in the middle of the night is a real problem. So, I think the important concept here, which you are alluding to is that response is important. It’s just, you don’t have to necessarily pick them up and fuss with them, you can actually just respond and let them lie down.

So, yeah, absolutely agree with you 100%. Yeah, and I think it’s also a case that the first few months, you know, you obviously spend so much time with them, and you start to understand the cries and being able to distinguish one from another, which I think definitely helps, you know, you can, certainly at this stage, I can tell with her what is distress and what is just grumbling, which helps because I feel less guilty not picking her up or going in. And also, I can tell in terms of response, the second I open the door into the nursery, I can hear her change.

So, she knows I’m coming, I didn’t even need to touch her yet. And I think in a sense, that’s also a response or the beginning of one. So, you know, I think it’s kind of watching all of these things unfold with her and kind of seeing, you know, as little intervention as possible that I can get away with.

Because like you say, I’m so conscious of creating these bad habits. So hopefully, yeah, the crying is a struggle for me and always has been. And you know, it’s interesting, because I think if we went back and listened to Cassidy’s journey with Max of exactly this age, and any of the other moms that I’ve spoken to of between 12 and 18 week old babies, this is probably the biggest challenge.

Like, how much support am I giving my baby? How much am I helping them to self-regulate? And how much am I handing the baton over to them? And am I going to cause habits forever? Like, it’s just such a strong theme of this exact age. You know, I think the concept here is that when little ones are kind of very little, under 12 weeks, they need all the support in terms of self-regulating, because they don’t do it, they don’t have the natural capacity to do it. And somewhere between this age and six months, they actually piece it together.

So, you know, it’s this kind of three month window of a very critical life stage milestone, which is learning to self-regulate a little bit. And exactly how we hand that baton over while supporting them towards it is actually a critical decision, and or the critical question that most moms ask. So, how much patting, how much support, how much rocking to sleep, how much feeding to sleep, how much dummy to sleep? I always said about this age is that, you know, under 12 weeks, there’s no expectations.

From 14 weeks about onwards, they start to form expectations. So try and help your little one to find ways to soothe that they will one day be able to do without you. So right now, you need to be there.

Like, for instance, and a good example would be turning on their side, you know, at some point, they’re going to be able to do that, you know, or kind of wedging themselves into a little bit of a ball or getting their hands to their mouth, or even using a dummy, which I know dummy patrol is a mission, but they can learn to do it themselves. So those are all strategies that are great strategies, because they can learn to use them themselves. So that would be my litmus test.

Can she one day learn to use it herself, because then I’ll use it now, like she can’t pick herself up. And she can’t breastfeed herself. And those are the two things that probably are the things that you do want to avoid, you know, going forward.

And when I’m talking about that, it’s obviously to sleep rocking all the way to sleep. It’s not that they can’t be rocked a little bit. And then before we finish off, I’d love to know just developmentally, what is what’s the what’s the milestone of the week that’s really excited you? Well, I mean, I’m not sure that it’s, yeah, it is exciting, but it’s also a bit kind of heartbreaking.

And again, it comes back to this speed at which time passes, which I’m just so conscious of now with the second one, because she is also my last baby. And it’s you know, it’s packing away the newborn clothes, but it’s also that she’s busted out of her swaddle. Now she’s too big and too strong, and we can’t keep her in it.

So now she’s in a sleep sack in the cot. So she’s out of her docker tot as well. She’s grown out of that.

And she’s like a she’s like a big girl now in a cot. And it’s it’s I sort of look at her and she looks like this little teeny tiny thing floating around on the mattress by herself. But it’s Yeah, it’s quite astonishing.

And it makes me feel sort of happy and sad at the same time, which I mean, isn’t that just the classic tale of motherhood? It 100% is. And you know, in the book Weaning Sense, we actually wrote it’s got its own page, this quote, that it’s the greatest conundrum of early parenting is that every day, we’re advancing our children towards complete independence, while at the same time, we desperately trying to hold on to their littleness. And it is like that.

And it doesn’t really stop all the way through adolescence as well, because effectively, that’s what we’re doing. We’re equipping our little human beings to live outside of us. And at the same time loving their littleness.

So yes, no, I hear very bittersweet moments. Well, Julia, it’s been lovely chatting. Is there anything that you want to check in on that we hadn’t touched on? No, no, I think look, like we’ve discussed already, I think the sleep is the hot topic for the next little while.

And that’s something obviously that I’m quite conscious of.