21 Weeks of Baby Steps: Milestones, Sensory Personalities, and Weaning S5|140

21 Weeks of Baby Steps: Milestones, Sensory Personalities, and Weaning S5|140

 

Welcome to this week’s episode of Sense by Meg Fora. Today we’re excited to catch up with our regular guest, Julia, as we continue to follow the journey with her little one, Aurelia, who’s now 21 weeks old. In this insightful episode we’re going to dive into the fascinating world of sensory personalities and it’s a crucial tool for parents to understand their babies better and to be able to parent with confidence.

We’ll explore how this knowledge can help you to engage with your little one in the most effective way. As Aurelia approaches the weaning stage, we go on to look at different methods of introducing solids and what Julia’s expectations are for this exciting milestone. So if you’re a parent who is preparing to start weaning soon, you don’t want to miss these valuable insights.

Plus, Julia shares her experience with the dreaded 17-week sleep regression and how she successfully navigated it. Her tips could be a game changer for many parents out there. So whether you are curious about sensory personalities, preparing to wean, or you’re looking for sleep tips, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you on your parenting journey.

Let’s dive in. Welcome to Sense by Meg Fora, the podcast that’s brought to you by ParentSense, 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 ParentSense 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. Always fabulous to have you join us.

And today we’ve got our regular guest back again. We have got Julia, mum to little Aurelia, and we have been tracking her journey all the way through from birth. And she had a little bit of a hiccup right at birth, got hospitalized just afterwards, and now has had this most amazing trajectory of a very typically developing but very precious little girl.

So it’s wonderful to have you join us again, Julia. Welcome. Thank you, Meg.

Very happy to be back. How old is our little one now? She’s 21 weeks, which is bizarre. Oh my gosh, how did that happen? No, I have no idea.

It’s whizzed by. Yeah, it really does. You want it to slow down.

I love that quote, wishing the days away but kind of holding on to the months. You really do feel them growing up very quickly, don’t you? Yeah, absolutely. Especially second time around.

I just think that extra perspective makes you more aware of time and it really makes you a bit more sort of cognizant of how everything changes so quickly. And it’s easier, I think, to tap into the joy, I guess, or certainly it has been for me. Yeah, absolutely.

I found that second time around as well. So tell us a little bit about what has been happening for our little, which is almost five-month-old. Yeah, five-month-old.

Yeah, she’s sort of become very active all of a sudden. She’s definitely sort of transitioned from what I like to call the blob stage to having lots of movement. So she started rolling.

She literally, on Monday, was the first time I saw her roll from her back to her front. She’s kind of been going onto her side for quite a long time and she’s finally gotten the arm out of the way so that she can flip over onto her tummy, which is great. And she’s also just, she’s so engaged with the world.

She’s incredibly smiley and to the point where people comment on it. And, you know, she was a little bit of a slow starter with the smiles, but now she seems to have really kind of found her way with it. And she just thinks the world is the most fabulous place.

She smiles at everyone who looks at her. She started giggling, which is the best thing on earth. She thinks I’m hysterical, which makes me very happy.

And yeah, I mean, she started drooling. I think the teeth are on their way. And yeah, she’s just, she’s really flourishing.

Yeah. So, I mean, just to pick up on a couple of things there. I mean, the fact that she’s rolling is absolutely awesome.

So, you know, rolling is such an important milestone because it really sends those little messages across the corpus callosum in the brain. So you’ve got two hemispheres in your brain with a little bridge across and that little bridge is called the corpus callosum. And information needs to transfer from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere across this little bridge very rapidly.

And it’s very important for things like coordination, but also for things like, you know, some of our cognitive skills as well. So, and language, because we’ve got to be able to understand and then respond. And so this movement across this corpus callosum is so important.

And one of the things that really does help to wire that corpus callosum is obviously rolling because it is such a bilateral activity. It requires muscles on both sides of the body to be coordinated and then to kind of shift. So it’s very, very important.

And it only happens if little ones have had some tummy time. So for all the moms who are listening and you’ve got babies who are really little, this is the reason why I say tummy time from day one is important, because if you do it between four and five months of age, your little one will start to roll front to back and back to front. And usually what happens is just prior to rolling from back to front, they will start to really play with their feet.

Have you found she’s touching her knees and playing with her feet yet? Funnily enough, no, not as much with the feet. She’s definitely a handy girl. She loves to have the hands in her mouth and bringing things to her mouth.

But I have funny enough, I was actually reading that in the app the other day and I realized that I hadn’t seen her play much with her feet, but certainly she’s using that core a huge amount of other movement. Okay, that’s excellent. So what you do need to probably do is set up a couple of activities to lift those feet because we do want her to work her lower tummy muscles as well.

And that’s particularly for crawling. We need to be able to pull our knees and hold them in towards our chest in a crawling in a four point position before we crawl. So I would actually give her some activities for activating those lower tummy muscles by raising her feet.

And you can do that with like quite a lovely activity that they just love is if you take a mobile kind of frame or a little play gym frame, and you hang a balloon from it, and you put it at the end of her body near her feet, because she’ll be absolutely fascinated that as she kind of kicks out, because she will be kicking out, it’ll actually move this balloon and then slowly but surely, they’ll learn to actually lift them more and actually intentionally do it. So that’s the one way. And then you also get little kickboards, which are toys that are put placed at your little feet at an angle, and they can kick against those and it makes little sounds.

So you can do that. And then also just actually activating it for her. So lifting her feet up and doing like a little baby massage where you massaging her feet, which are which is in the parent sense app.

And then as you massage your feet, actually have her look at them and bring your hands to them. So she starts to feel it. And then usually what happens is that they play first with their knees and then with their feet independently.

And then eventually, as they play with their feet, one day they roll over onto the side because obviously it’s hard to balance with your feet directly up ahead. And then as they do that, they flip over and they go onto their tummies. So feet playing is actually a very important little skill that you can kind of try and activate in the next couple of weeks.

Cool. So those are some great ideas. Thanks.

And then what about I’m very interested in her social because when she started off, she was a little slow to warm up in that I recall you saying in one of the episodes that you had to work for those little smiles. You’re now not having to do any work for those smiles. Have you done the baby sensory personality course? And are you aware of the baby sensory personalities? Yes, so I haven’t.

I was thinking I need to dip back into the book and check her to do that sort of questionnaire that helps you understand the different personalities. I haven’t done it with her yet. I suspect she’s a social butterfly.

Santi was a settled baby, certainly at the beginning. And then I don’t know what he became, a nightmare. But she, I think, definitely has all the kind of markers for social butterfly.

But I do need to go and kind of look at the details of it. But you can tell me a bit more about what a social butterfly looks like. Yeah.

So a social butterfly loves to seek sensory information. So the default position in any sensory situation or any situation is to seek sensory information and to seek social interaction. And that when I say any situation, that would include a very strange situation.

So, for instance, if you were in the shops or walking and, you know, after the birthday party with a lot of other children for Santi’s age, social butterflies are very interested in other people, regardless of where they are. And, you know, they really want to be interacting all the time. They tend to make lots of noises, smile very readily.

They tend to sometimes protest against sleep because sleep is boring. And so they really are very interested in being awakened and really, you know, being part of the party. And it’s not always easy to flesh this out when they’re this age.

We always say wait until about five months before you actually start to flesh it out, because you’ll see it very much in the way that they eat as well. So they tend to take very easily to the breast or bottle, shift between breast or bottle very easily. And then when they go on to solids are absolutely fascinated, enthralled and love the new flavors and textures.

Whereas on the other hand, the slow to warm up baby can also look like a social butterfly when they’re in their home environment. But the minute they’re in a strange situation, so like, for instance, that scenario of going to a birthday party with Santi, they are very clingy and they don’t want to be separated. They tend to at this age already exhibit separation anxiety, which is not typical because separation anxiety only usually comes up at about seven months of age.

So for instance, if you passed her to a strange person and she was a slow to warm up, she’d immediately start crying. Now, whereas if she’s a social butterfly, she’ll be quite interested and inquisitive and engaged with them. So at this age, although it’s difficult, we’re starting to see a couple of those kind of traits coming out.

And then also your slow to warm up little one does not like change to routine. So if you oversleep the sleep mark, they become very irritable. If you go on holiday or away for the weekend and they have to sleep in a different environment, they don’t settle.

So they tend to be a lot more picky with things like transferring between breast and bottle and even going on to solids. They initially are quite reticent. So I’ll be very interested to hear from you next in our next session, whether on how it’s been with weaning.

But up until now, just listening to that, which of those two camps do you think she falls more into? Look, I think definitely more social butterfly. There may well be elements of slow to warm up, which I suppose is normal that they’re never necessarily all one thing. But in some examples, when we’ve traveled, certainly when she was a little bit younger, that first 24 hours did tend to be a little bit disrupted.

She had challenges with sleep and settling and things like that. Our most recent trip, she was definitely a lot better, though. Maybe she’s getting used to it.

And with some strangers, she’s OK. And with other strangers, she’s a little bit more unsure. So it kind of depends on the scenario.

But overall, I would say I would lean more towards social butterfly for sure. Excellent. Yeah.

And you do say something very pertinent there, which is that it’s not all cut and dried and they don’t just exhibit one sensory personality. And also sensory personalities can shift in response to environment. Like if you were in a very chaotic, if you were a very chaotic mom, if you had a very chaotic home life, if you had maybe a lot of trauma in your environment, maybe seven children and you were very stretched, you didn’t have a nanny, your husband wasn’t involved in assisting you, she might actually exhibit more and more of the slow to warm up traits because the world is a bit more threatening.

Being that her world is just so predictable and so catered for her, she probably is exhibiting a lot more of those social butterflies. So very, very interesting. And moms, if you don’t know what your social personality is, the book that Julia is alluding to is Weaning Sense, that’s got the sensory personalities in it.

And then also, if you want to actually do a course, and Julia, I’d actually love for you to do the course between now and the next podcast, because in the course, we actually go through how to identify and what it means. And then there’s actually a little toolkit that you get for the sensory personality that helps you to cater to the world for that sensory personality. So we can definitely set you up with that.

But yeah, very interesting. Yeah, it’s really fascinating learning about the why, I suppose, as well. That was something I remember with Santi when reading the book was starting to get an understanding of how they become, you know, have these certain personality traits.

It’s fascinating, actually. So I would absolutely love to do the course. It’d be a great refresher, for sure.

Yeah, and that’s actually such an important thing that you just said, understanding the why. You know, I think that it’s one of the hallmark features of reflective parenting. And reflective parenting is obviously what we is the gold standard for moms and dads.

And that’s that we reflect on the state or the condition or the personality behind the behavior rather than just noticing the behavior. And so it is lovely when parents do understand their little one’s behavior in the context of their sensory personality. It makes such a difference.

And you know, I’ve had moms who’ve come on my sleep course as an example. And I’ll never forget this one mom, her second child was an absolute nightmare. I mean, just like, cried nonstop for kind of five, six months.

And she came on my sleep course to get her to sleep because she thought maybe the fact that she was so sleep deprived was causing the fussiness. And halfway through the sleep course, we do the sensory personality module. And she WhatsApp me crying.

And she said, I actually can’t believe it. All along, I thought I was a terrible mother. But there was something wrong with my child.

But actually, it’s just her sensory personality. So it’s very important to understand it. It just really does shed a lot of light on our little ones.

And then we’re now approaching four or five months or five months. Have you started thinking about solids? Have you started solids? Where are you on that journey? This episode is brought to us by ParentSense, the all in one baby and parenting app that helps you make the most of your baby’s first year. Don’t you wish someone would just tell you everything you need to know about caring for your baby? When to feed them, how to wean them and why they won’t sleep? ParentSense app is like having a baby expert on your phone guiding you to parent with confidence.

Get a flexible routine, daily tips and advice personalized for you and your little one. Download ParentSense app now from your app store and take the guesswork out of parenting. And then we’re now approaching four or five months or five months.

Have you started thinking about solids? Have you started solids? Where are you on that journey? I think that tomorrow is the day. She is definitely exhibiting all of the signs of readiness. So like I mentioned, she’s bringing things to her mouth.

She’s fairly stable in a sitting position. She can’t sit by herself, but supported. She’s absolutely stable and she’s comfortable.

She is very interested. I would say a month ago, she hadn’t really looked at food. She hadn’t noticed when I was eating or anyone else in the family was eating.

But now all of a sudden, she’s definitely following food with her eyes. She’s watching us when we eat and her little mouth goes. It’s so cute.

So all the signs seem to be in place. So I feel quite confident that she is ready to start. And yeah, it certainly is a fascinating journey.

I mean, with Santi, up until he got quite picky at about 16 or 17 months, I remember that quite vividly because we had gone away on a big trip. And at the beginning of the trip, he would eat all sorts of strange things. And by the end, he was like, nope, beige food only.

And sadly, that continues. But it was certainly very fascinating in the beginning, just watching them explore texture and flavor and focusing on those experiences rather than necessarily nutrition in these very, very early days. But yeah, I’m a huge foodie.

So for me, it’s a very, it’s a point of connection with my children. And we love cooking. We have a very diverse palette in my family.

And so we eat all sorts of interesting things. And it’s lovely to share that with them. And so yeah, I’m really looking forward to it, actually.

Yeah, that’s amazing. Sounds like you’ve got a very positive attitude towards it, which of course does wrap off on them. So I’m really interested because I’ve just recently had two podcasts episodes.

And they were both on weaning and the different weaning strategies. One was with Kath McGaw, and the other one was with a speech therapist called Annie Hamilton in Australia. And, you know, there’s a big, I mean, I mean, there’s always fads around how to wean a baby.

And so, you know, kind of going back 20 years, it was spoon feed, bland flavors, no allergens, that was kind of the modus operandi, and as close to six months as possible. And then we’ve now swung with weaning since in probably the last eight years, we’ve had a look at much more varied, but also spoon fed diet. So better on about four to four to six months, you know, much more flavorful, more textured and, but spoon feeding.

And then of course, you’ve got the whole baby led weaning strategy, which is you don’t use a spoon at all, and baby feeds themselves. I mean, just this week, I had such an interesting conversation with Annie, and we were talking about, you know, kind of a much more organic approach to weaning, which was kind of a little one sitting at the table and almost eating off parents plates and experimenting with family flavors from the get go, and both on spoons and self feeding. So if you think about your approach to weaning this time around, what are you thinking of doing? What approach do you think you’ll be following in which direction? So I would say similar to a lot of things in this journey, especially the second time around, I think it’s going to be a bit of this and a bit of that.

It’s not going to be one extreme approach over another. With Santi, I started with purees. Very quickly, I moved him over to kind of finger foods with a bit of spoon feeding.

So it was kind of combination of the two. I think with Aurelia, I’m going to start her on whole foods on finger foods, and be completely open minded to spoon feeding. So it’s not for me personally, it’s not going to be my primary way of feeding her.

I personally, from the research that I’ve done, and certainly this, as I understand it, the science behind it these days, there are huge benefits to having them self feed, but there’s also lots of challenges with that when they’re very little in that coordination. So I’m very much going to take it as it comes. And for example, in my mind, for her first food, I want to give her something big and resistant.

So I’m thinking something like, I mean, I’d love to actually give her a mango pit, but they aren’t in season. So I’m thinking maybe a mealie, literally a whole corn on the cob, something that she can hold easily and kind of gum on. So that’s, yeah, that’s where we’re going to start.

And I’m going to see where it goes. Love it. Really, really love it.

And I think, you know, I mean, that is where, I mean, I’ve always been middle of the road with everything that I’ve ever spoken about, it has to suit mom and baby. But I love the idea of her actually just, you know, kind of engaging with the food as it is. And then also, you can have a backup.

I love the fact that you’ve got the mental flexibility to have a backup of mush. I know that for myself as a mom, I would always want that backup of mush so that I could, you know, kind of spoon in a little bit of that as well. So yeah, it’s going to be lovely to hear a little bit more about her journey.

And we can maybe get some pictures of that because it’ll be, it’s always so sweet as they approach those flavors. And that’s actually where you’ll start to see whether she’s a social butterfly or slow to warm up, because if she puckers up her face and, you know, kind of gags extensively, then we can start to think maybe she’s a bit more of a slow to warm up. But if she’s gregariously gnawing at whatever’s in her hand, then certainly probably a social butterfly.

Yeah, I’ve got some lovely videos of Santi starting to eat in his first meal and they are hysterically funny, just the expressions on his face. It’s about this completely new sensation in his mouth. So I’ll definitely take some photos and videos and we can look at them.

Wonderful. And is there anything else that’s going on in her life at the moment you’ve got questions about? Look, I hesitate to say this out loud. In fact, I’m terrified to say it out loud.

But her sleep regression didn’t happen. I need to find some wood to touch. I, you know, and I, I’m kind of aghast the whole thing, because my experience with Santi was so difficult.

I don’t even know how to put into words how challenging it was. And I remember, certainly in the thick of it with him being so triggered by moms who seem to be having an easy time or moms who had kids that slept. And I could not relate.

I couldn’t understand how you could find joy in this process day to day when you were just broken with exhaustion, which is how I felt for a really long time. So I do say that with the knowledge that there are people who may listen and feel, you know, not necessarily positive thoughts towards me. I do completely understand that I genuinely do.

And I also say it knowing that these things may change. And in fact, I really do feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop when it comes to the sleep, because I have had this kind of quite traumatizing experience. But, you know, at the same time, I want to be present and grateful for what’s happening right now.

And what’s happening right now is she is the most sensational sleeper. And she hasn’t had the thing that Santi had where he would only have those, you know, you could do a 40 minute nap in the day, you could literally set your watch by it. And then he would sleep no longer.

She’s able to link her sleep cycles most of the time fairly easily. She goes down fairly easily at night. She has had the odd, I think we discussed it last time, where she sort of might go back to waking up at the kind of 10, 11 o’clock mark.

But it hasn’t been a sort of protracted getting her back to sleep process. There’ve been a couple of nights like that. But the majority, when that happens, have been a couple of dummies back in the mouth.

And then she does go back to sleep. And then she’s been stretching at night from she goes to bed anytime normally between about half past six and seven. And the sort of her night feed is usually between one and three, usually more like three.

And then sort of she gets up between six and seven again in the morning for her next feed. So it’s all going swimmingly. And I hope it stays that way.

So a couple of things that are fascinating. First of all, it is amazing. And I do know, I mean, my second child also, she slept through super early and she was actually a settled baby.

And I often used to feel quite guilty speaking to other mums because I had been through a whole lot different story with James, my first. And so I understand. And I also understand mums feeling resentful that some mums are getting it right somehow.

And it does have, first of all, a lot to do with the baby. So when I hear you speak about that, it makes me feel that she’s probably more likely to be a social butterfly than a slow to warm up because your default underlying sensory threshold with a social butterfly is actually that they’ve got a very high threshold, which means that they are, the underlying sensory personality is actually settled. And then they become social because they, they want to engage and they seek sensory information.

That’s actually how that sensory personality works. Now, in that situation, they can do things like sleep through those 40 minutes sleep cycles in the day and link their sleep cycles. Whereas your other profiles, which are your sensitive and your slow to warm up, they’re more sensitive and they will almost always wake at 40 to 45 minutes for their day’s sleeps.

And so mums, if you’re listening, that 45 minute sleep cycle is very, very typical between about 10 weeks of age and about 24 weeks of age. So six months of life. So in that patch, which is exactly firmly where Aurelia is, most babies are actually only doing 40 minutes sleeps or 45 minutes sleeps through the day.

And they’re having more sleeps rather than a nice long stretch. So she’s linking sleep cycles. It is somewhat unusual in that I would say that probably less than 25% of babies at this age are having really nice long sleeps in the day.

So amazing that she is and she probably will continue to. I don’t think you’re going to see a shift there. The other thing that I think when I listen is that, you know, there’ve been some things that you’ve done along the way because some of this, and that’s why I started this conversation saying some of this is inbred in her.

And so the mums who feeling like, why am I not getting this right? It probably doesn’t have everything to do with them. It’s got to do with the baby as well. But having said that, Julia, following you on your journey, there’s some things that you’ve done really well.

And I think there are a couple of things that I think people can take away from this if they’re trying to get through or avert that 17 week sleep regression. And that is that you did listen and not over-respond to her because you’d had the experience with your little white, with Santi, where you had over-responded to him. So talk to us a little bit about how you consciously approached her niggles or her wakings in order to not leave her to cry, but just allow her to take some control.

Yeah, so it’s very interesting because it’s not as simple as, oh, I had this hard experience with Santi and I identified that my response time to him was too fast. And I essentially didn’t let him learn the skill of self-soothing until he was much older. And that now I’m going to do the opposite with Aurelia because the truth is that my instinct remains to respond immediately.

I have to really fight the immediate kind of response of wanting to rush in there and put the dummy in or tap Obama or whatever it is. I have to literally pep talk myself when it happens. And sometimes I say it out loud and I just hear my husband laughing at me because I think he thinks I’m off my head.

And I have to sort of say, I literally say to myself, it’s a skill she has to learn. It’s a skill she has to learn. And I coach myself through it like that.

And he sort of says, are you talking to yourself or to me? And I’m like, no, no, I’m talking to myself. So, you know, I wish it was the case that I was so relaxed the second time around that, you know, I’m totally comfortable leaving her to niggle for a bit, but I’m not. I really have to try hard.

So with that being said, I am hyper aware of it. There’s sort of two scenarios. The one is I’m giving myself the pep talk.

So I’m going in a little bit later than I would have with Santi. And the other is I have another child and an absolutely chaotic home life and a hugely demanding full-time job. And I can’t always get there as quickly as I could do with Santi.

So those two things, I suppose, combine to make my response time, what we were talking about the other day in terms of that research on the recent episode that you did about sleep and response times and how a bit of a fast response and a bit of a slow response actually ends up being potentially the most, for lack of a better word, successful strategy. And that’s essentially what’s happening. And, you know, I think probably has contributed to her sleep being less horrendous.

Yeah. And, you know, it’s super interesting because you talk about two very clear mindsets there. The one is the deep instinct to just go in, rush in, prevent the crying.

The faster I get there, the more likely it is to cry for a shorter period of time. So that kind of deep instinct, but then also the deep breath of taking a breath and going, OK, hold on. She’s OK.

And we’ll get there in a couple of seconds. And, you know, I think it speaks to those two parts of our brain as any human being where the lower part of the brain is your reptilian brain, which is massively instinctual. It activates the vagal nerve.

So it gets your heart rate going. It increases your anxiety. And it says, there’s danger.

We’ve got to do something, which is, of course, it’s actually part of the brain that’s very activated, especially in the first time, mom, because you do feel like you’re in danger. You know, all the time, there’s this human life that you have to help survive. And so, you know, you’re vigilant all the time.

And then this other brain, which we call the green brain or the cortical brain, which is this top down self-regulation of being able to self-talk and go, hold on, deep breath. She’s OK. I’m OK.

I can take care of Santi and then I can get to her. She is safe. She’s contained and she will be fine for an extra minute.

And it’s that kind of top down self-regulation that we need to do a lot of. And I think, you know, it’s interesting. I’m actually doing a mentorship course this Thursday with a group of therapists globally.

And the theme of the mentorship course, and it’s actually it’s been so useful for me as I’ve prepared for it, because one of the things I have done is I’ve created a toolkit for parents on how to self-regulate yourself. So that’s what the theme of this this week’s mentorship is, is how do we help parents to self-regulate? Because when we’re in our green brain, we can co-regulate for our little ones. And so they will be calmer. And so I’m creating this little toolkit, which I’ll definitely push out to moms and pop onto the app as well.

But there’s a lot of that in early parenting, which is that kind of self-regulation of myself in order to help my little one to learn to self-regulate. So being and everything that you said, so perfectly articulated that. And that’s probably why we are actually seeing some some real success with her sleep, because she is doing exceptionally well for her age.

So I don’t anticipate it’s going to change. I know there will be hiccups because there always is. You know, she gets a snotty nose.

She gets does a bit of teething. She gets, you know, whatever it is, changes, goes on holiday. There’ll be a little bit of a hiccup.

But I think, you know, what I love about that ability to self-regulate is that we can always default back to that. When we’re back in our normal situation, when she’s well again, you go back there. So really wonderful nuggets for other moms as they navigate this early sleep.

Is there anything else that you want to chat about? Because our time is actually up, I cannot believe it. Every time I come to the end of one of our podcasts, I’m fascinated by how fast the time has gone. Is there anything else that you want to leave with us as you go? Yeah, it always goes so quickly.

I don’t have a no, I don’t have a question, I suppose. I just wanted to reiterate something and I hope that it’s helpful, although certainly as a first time mom, I also want to say that you could have told me all sorts of things until you were blue in the face about self-regulation and, you know, the skill of self-soothing. And I, you know, and the time passes and everything is a phase.

And, you know, I don’t know that it’s something you can innately understand until you’ve actually gone through it. So, you know, there is a certain degree of sometimes you have to just experience it. But I think something that’s been helpful for me to learn as an adult and as a mom, especially the second time around, is that there is no silver bullet.

And we’ve spoken a bit this episode about, you know, in various examples of trying to really embrace that gray area, which we’ve talked about before. And I think that in society, we’re sold the idea of a silver bullet through in lots of areas of life. And it is an absolute fallacy that, you know, there is nothing in life that has one neat solution.

And that’s absolutely true with parenting. And I think that if you as a mom, if I could offer any advice and I don’t even know that I’m qualified to do that, it would be that the best thing you can do for yourself, I think, as a human and as a mom and as a partner and a friend, is to really try and find the middle ground in whatever situation that you’re in and understand that some days will be a bit of this and some days will be a bit of that. And it doesn’t have to be one thing or another.

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that’s such wonderful words of wisdom. I must say, Julia, as you were talking there, a few months ago, must have been about six months ago, I put out a call on Instagram for moms to be my podcast guest for me to track their babies.

And I got so many people applying. And I did have some sessions with other moms. But one of the things I absolutely love about our conversations is that it’s not just about your raw experiences of the day to day, eat, feed, sleep, poo.

It’s about so much more. And you really do have an incredible wisdom to share. And I’m deeply appreciative of that.

I’m absolutely certain that the other moms are too. So thank you for yet another amazing bullet that there or another amazing nugget that there isn’t a silver bullet. Thanks, Meg.

Look, I mean, having 10 years of therapy will do that to you. Well, thank you for spending all of that money so that we could get all the benefit. I appreciate it.

Excellent. Wonderful to chat again. And we will catch up again soon.

Cool. Thank you. 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.