Episode 113: Biological Sleep ~ Society’s Got It All Wrong with Taylor Kulik, OTR/L

Hi and welcome to episode 113 of the Untethered Podcast. Today we have Taylor Kulik joining us. Taylor is an occupational therapist turned sleep and well being specialist. She supports families with sleep holistically with an emphasis on education about biological infant sleep patterns and responsibly shifting patterns that no longer work for the family. She can be found@taylorkulik.com Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified orofacial myologist, feeding specialist and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissue and airway space. I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to get this information out to the masses. Let's get started. Taylor, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk all about sleep and biological sleep and all the things, but first, just share a little bit about yourself so everybody knows who you are.

Sure. So my name is Taylor. I am an occupational therapist turned sleep and wellbeing specialist. So. So I started my career as an occupational therapist and when I became a mom I saw this huge need for more accurate information in general in the postpartum period and for new mothers, but especially in terms of sleep. And I myself have really struggled with sleep with my kiddos because my kiddos are very high needs, lower sleep, total kids, and they just were the type of babies that didn't follow the rule books and, and the generic schedules that you find online. And I found out now with my almost 4 year old, but both of my babies had tongue and lip ties and so that impacted their sleep as well. And so I started really diving into learning more about biological infant sleep, how babies are really meant to sleep, safe bed sharing, all of that. Because when my daughter was a baby newborn, I was obsessed with trying to get her to fall asleep by herself in the crib and it just never worked. It never worked. I was miserable, I was depressed, I was anxious. My life literally revolved around her sleep. And we hit a point when she was around six months old where my husband begged me to keep her in bed with us because it was literally the only way that we were getting sleep. And so I did, but I felt so much shame, so much surrounding it, because as a healthcare professional, as an ot, I had learned in school that we should tell parents never ever to bed share and that they could kill their baby, etc. Etc. So imagine my surprise when I start looking into safe bed sharing, which I didn't know was a thing, and looking into the work of Professor James McKenna and realized that, hey, this is actually something that so many families around the world do and have been doing since the beginning of time. And so my life was changed when I found that information and started bed sharing with my daughter. And so I started sharing this information with families. And that's when I found the Isla Grace Sleep Certification course, which is a very child led holistic approach to sleep. And so I became a sleep and wellbeing specialist. And that's where I'm at now. Just hopefully empowering and educating families about what actually we should be expecting in terms of baby sleep, and then helping them to explore root causes of why their baby might not be sleeping well. And I say baby, but I also work with children and gently and respectfully shifting patterns that no longer work for those families.

Yeah, and this is one of those topics where, I mean, first of all, you have a great Instagram account. I love it. And I feel like you're kind of like me, where sometimes we go and we speak against like the norm or what people have, quote, unquote, made the norm, even though it's like, what is a norm really? You know, it's like we need to shift a lot of what's known to be true, because a lot of what's known to be true is actually not healthy or safe or doesn't always work for every family, even when it is healthy or safe. And I love this whole concept of biological sleep. So will you tell us a little bit about, for those who are not familiar, what is biological sleep, what is normal, what's going on out in society that really is not being discussed or is really not normalized, you know, in terms of like what you do on your account versus what parents are told otherwise. Yeah.

So when I'm thinking of biological sleep, I'm really just thinking about how are babies meant to sleep, how are they designed to sleep, what is typical, what is normal? And when we compare that to the messaging that many parents, most parents are being bombarded with, especially in the first few months of life, in the first year of their baby's, life, it just doesn't add up. And biological infant sleep, what we can really expect from babies and what we should be able to expect from them is not in alignment with the messaging that we're now getting because of the sleep training industry. And it's unfortunate that it's not just the sleep training industry really. This industry and this messaging has, it's all encompassing and it's now doctors, parents are getting this from their pediatrician, they're getting it from their family members and their friends literally everywhere they turn, at least in this country, in the US and I know Canada and I know lots of other countries, but specifically in the west, that's all the messaging that you get. And so it's really confusing as a new parent when your baby doesn't sleep for eight hours straight or they don't sleep through the night at 6 months old or they still need night feeds at 6 months old because. And that's the norm. That's what's technically normal, quote, unquote normal, biologically normal. But that differs from the messaging that we're getting from even our trusted healthcare providers. And so there's this disconnect and that's what I hope to help kind of bridge that connection. And really what I do, I feel like the most of what I do is re education. And so the very first piece of that is just to re educate on what our biological norms. So, you know, a lot of us, a lot of parents, a lot of people think that babies should have consolidated sleep early on in the first year of life. And that's just not true. Most babies don't sleep through the night. Most, most infants under 12 months, even beyond 12 months, a lot of children are not sleeping through the night. We don't sleep through the night. Adults wake often. The difference is we have these skill sets that we don't always need. And most of the time, but sometimes we might, we don't usually need somebody to help us get back to sleep, but we might wake up for a drink of water or to use the bathroom, or we might be stressed because we're having a really hard week at work or with our kids or whatever. And so we're not sleeping well. And it's just kind of so interesting to me that we don't expect the same from our babies. And really they're more vulnerable than us and don't have the coping skills that we have. And so biological and infant sleep in a nutshell. Babies are meant to wake up at night. They're especially breastfeeding Babies, I mean, breastfeeding babies, breast milk gets digested in the tummy very quickly. It's very protective and normal for babies to feed every few hours. And even formula fed babies, honestly, if we're feeding on demand, as is ideal, even formula fed babies would typically be feeding multiple times at night. And all of that to say too, it doesn't mean that if a baby isn't feeding at night that that's necessarily abnormal. If they haven't been trained out of their night feeds or their night wakes, there is a wide range of normal. And so I think that's one of the most important things to realize and that sleep also feels fluctuates so much, especially in the first year of life. Probably one of the biggest challenges that I encounter with families is that families come to me at 4 or 5 or 6 months old. When their baby is 4, 5 or 6 months old and their baby has been sleeping pretty well. They would define it as pretty well. They're waking maybe once, maybe twice, going right back to sleep with a feed as a newborn. And then all of a sudden sleep changes and it gets worse and it gets harder and they think they're either the parent is doing something wrong or there's something wrong with their baby and they're freaking out because nobody told them that sleep is not linear and that it's actually really common and normal for older babies to have significantly more disrupted sleep and more wakefulness than younger babies. And so sleep kind of just is like a roller coaster that first year of life. Because literally anything can impact sleep. Any developmental leap, learning, new milestones, illness, teething, separation anxiety, all of this stuff has the potential to impact sleep. And so that's really what biological sleep is. It's just understanding what should we be expecting and realizing that most of our, you know, most of our society, societal expectations about how babies should be sleeping, they're really just not rooted in fact and science and what we know about bodies and development.

Yeah. I mean, and this is kind of a tangent, but if we were having this conversation with moms and you know, just new parents in general, moms and dads, you know, or moms and moms, or dads and dads, you know, if we were having these conversations when they came in for their well checked visits with a pediatrician and we were able to say something along the lines of, hey, how is sleep going? Oh yeah, that's totally normal. That is a very different conversation than oh, you're going back to work. Yep, time to sleep train. I mean, because that that's basically the conversation I heard, you know, was around, oh, well, you should. You know, that baby shouldn't be in your bed. That baby should be out of your room. You should, you know, four months old, you need to get her in the crib, and you should be starting to sleep train her. And, you know, blah. You know, it's just a different conversation that I know is happening because I've been there as a mom. And with Lily, she was tongue tied. And I didn't know it at the time because I was told she wasn't by several providers. And her sleep was awful. I mean, she did not want to sleep in a crib. Zero interest. And I tried multiple times, just, like, naturally, just putting her. Not trying to sleep train or just putting her in the crib. And she didn't want to even in the crib. And, you know, she also was a kiddo who did better on an incline. And so here I was, like, this desperate mom who I did have her sleeping with me in the bed, and I did nurse her on demand up until maybe, like, six months of age or so. But she was also much older than she should have been in that rock and play, which has now been, like, recalled, which I know is not safe. And to think about the fact that she was, like, on that incline, a baby who probably had a restricted airway at the time, had a tongue tie in that position, you know, yes, she was next to. To me. And yes, like, any little noise she would make, like, I'd pop up. But, I mean, babies can asphyxiate. You don't hear that, you know, and it's. It's to think about these fears that are instilled into us as moms in addition to that postpartum, you know, healing that we're trying to do and all of the hormones and our own. So we're trying to heal ourselves and deal with our own stuff on no sleep. And then somebody miraculously walks over and says to us, hey, sleep train your baby. Life will be so much better. And you're like. And then you realize, this is miserable. I mean, I have it ingrained into my brain because I did sleep train her, and I did not do that with my second one because I was like, that was horrendous. I have it ingrained into my brain how long she cried for. I can tell you to the minute that it was like 90 minutes she cried the first night, 70 minutes she cried the second night. And then it was like 30 minutes the third night. And by the fourth night, it was like five minutes and she zonked out. But to know how much stress I put her body through, like, the mom guilt of having, like, so sleep trained her, because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. And then learning later that I didn't actually need to do any of that, like, that kills me that nobody shared this information with me. Right. All of my research led me to sleep train the baby. Sleep train the baby. You're going back to work. You need to be rested. Sleep train the baby. And here I am, this nursing mom. Something about it felt off at the time, too, but here I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do.

Yeah, you brought up so many good points that I want to. I could talk about this all day long. I do talk about this all day long. But, yeah, and we're. That's the thing is it doesn't. So sleep deprivation is real. You know, parents lose sleep in those first years of life. They do. And. But here's the thing. Letting parents know that what is happening is likely normal. And if it's not normal, that's another story. Let's explain. But what they're experiencing with their baby is likely normal. It might not fix everything. It might not fix all of the effects of sleep deprivation, but it definitely helps. I had a drastically different experience with my first child versus my second child just because of what I knew about sleep. And my second child was an even worse sleeper than my first child. And I still feel more rested, more empowered and confident as a parent. Like, I can just. I can do this because I know that I'm not failing my child because he has actual. Some health issues that we've explored. Explored in his first year of life that are also impacting his sleep. And so it's really interesting to see, like, my mental health with my daughter when I thought I had sleep train. And I also tried sleep training only for a few minutes at a time because I just could not do it. My mental health suffered so much. I had so much anxiety, and that was purely surrounding the sleep stuff. And once I realized that I wasn't doing anything wrong and that there's nothing wrong with her and that she just needs me right now, I mean, the load that was lifted just was so incredibly huge. And I was able to enjoy my child. And Was I getting 12 or not 12? Was I getting 8 hours of sleep every night? No, I wasn't. But it was so much easier to manage. And I think we really discount that factor. Like, it's not just about Sleep deprivation, that is something that's important. But it's not just about sleep deprivation. It's literally about when you're telling new parents, new vulnerable parents that they're doing something wrong, that there's something wrong with their baby, that their intuition is wrong, that they shouldn't hold and snuggle and comfort their baby. That is detrimental to mental health. And it makes me so angry. And then the other thing that you touched on was, you know, your baby was tongue tied. My babies were tongue tied, too. If there is something that is really impacting sleep, and you do have this baby that is really displaying maybe not typical biological infant sleep behaviors, like waking 10 times a night, waking every 45 minutes, unable to be settled. And this is happening often, like, every night, not just like a couple nights here or there. There might be something else going on, like a tongue tie or an airway or breathing issue or a food allergy. And we're not addressing that when we're just shoving sleep training on parents that are struggling. And so it doesn't serve the parent and it doesn't serve the baby. And it is. It's horrible that this is what we're talking about and what we're doing and shoving on new parents as the only option.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So are there other red flags or signs? I mean, you mentioned tongue ties. There could be airway things going on. There could be food allergies. I mean, obviously there could be all kinds of things going on. But are there certain red flags that you share with your clients or your families to let them know, like, hey, this is a sign that something's going on?

Yeah. So red flags in general, not always related to a specific underlying medical condition or something, would be constant and frequent wakes not happening just a couple nights here or there, like I said, because it is normal for babies to be teething or just have, like, a phase where they are more wakeful. But if you. If you have a baby that has really never slept for weeks and weeks and months and months, they haven't slept longer than maybe two and a half, three hours at all. And so they're waking 45 minutes every hour, every hour and a half. And also, what's their demeanor like when they wake? Are they able to be resettled quite easily with a feedback to sleep or rocking back to sleep, or are they restless and uncomfortable? So those are the kinds of things we really have to pay attention to. It's not just how often is baby waking, but it's also what are they doing when they're Waking and what is the quality of their sleep. So discomfort, gas, pain, any feeding issues, restlessness. And this is happening a lot and not just a night here or there. That would be a red flag to me. And some of the things that can. There's, like you said, literally anything could cause. There could be anything that's contributing to sleep issues. But probably the most common ones that I see would be the tethered oral tissues, airway, breathing issues, sometimes sleep apneas, which it kind of all can be related to at the same time for a little bit older babies, sometimes anemia or like an iron deficiency, food sensitivities as well, reflux. And again, like, the reflux can be related to the tethered oral tissues, as you know. So it's really complex. But most of the. Especially with babies, younger babies, most of what I see falls into that camp of something to do with reflux. Tethered oral tissues, airway issues.

Yeah, which was all my kids, or they didn't really have reflux. They had aerophagia from swallowing too much air during feeds, which mimics reflux. They just weren't projectile vomiting up their feeds. Yeah, I mean, it was my second one. We had her released at day five. And so her sleep was different because she did not have a tongue that fell back into her airway or that blocked her, that caused her to swallow too much air when feeding. And, you know, to see the night and day difference between my first one and my second one. But even with. With my second one, we were also moving and, you know, at the time that I would have maybe moved her to the crib, like, as an older infant. And so she was in my room probably until close to a year, if not just over a year. And I loved it. I loved every second of it. I mean, she was like, my kids. I love them in my bed. I don't mind them in my bed. So I know some people maybe don't enjoy that, but for me, I enjoy having them close and snuggling them and feeding them and just making sure, you know, they're okay. And so it was just. It was such a nice, like, much more enjoyable experience to have her, you know, and to know that bed sharing is safe. Because with my first child, I was like, I can't fall. Like they say, don't fall asleep with the baby next to you. Like, you'll roll over and suffocate your baby. Like, so I would try to keep myself awake even though she was asleep next to me when I probably should have been relaxing. And sleeping like next to and, you know, nursing her or not. And was so afraid of being that tired parent who will roll over their child and hurt their baby because that's what society told me would happen. Whereas with my second one, I was like, screw that. Like, bed sharing is safe. I understand how to safely bed share. And she's going to stay, you know, she's going to stick around for as long as she wants to. So. So it was a very different experience. And I have so much appreciation for the work that you do because I think that we need to empower. Like we've talked. You've mentioned this already a couple of times today. But when we can share this information and empower families, especially new moms. I mean, we know mental health is a real struggle for a lot of moms postpartum. A lot of moms have postpartum anxiety or postpartum depression and don't realize they have PPA or ppd, but they know that. They just blame it on like, I just had a baby, I'm not sleeping. You know, I always say get help if you feel like you have anxiety or depression. But at the same time also question what society is telling you and do some research. Follow people like Taylor who will give you actual advice that's truthful and safe and might help in the long run for both you and your child. So yes, I mean, can you share a little bit about how bed sharing is done in a safe way?

Yeah. So I would really recommend the work of Professor James McKenna if anybody wants to learn more about that. He has a website, co Sleeping nd Edu and he studies, he calls it breast sleeping. So a breastfeeding baby mother dyad. And he studies it in a lab. And so he has tons of research on this website. But basically there's a couple of different things that you can search for. If you just want like a quick summary of how to safely bed chair, you can Google the Safe Sleep 7, which was created by La Leche League and it's. So there's a few different things that you have to keep in mind. But bed sharing isn't always safe in every circumstance. So that's one of the most important things to know. But the SafeSleep 7 and now I feel like I need to Google and make sure that I have all of them. But a couple of things are like you want. Ideally, your baby would be breastfeeding. Your baby would be full term and healthy, so, you know, no underlying medical conditions. You would be sleeping on a firm surface. So you know, it does matter. Adult mattresses aren't meant for babies. And so it does matter that you make sure you try to find a firm mattress or create some sort of, you know, sleep palette on the floor or something like that to make sure that it's a safe situation for baby. Baby's lightly dressed, so baby should never be swaddled when bed sharing. What are the other ones? You know, safety things. So you don't want pillows up by the face, you don't want blankets by the face. You know, if you're sleeping in bed and it's cold, you might want to like layer your upper body instead of having the blankets pulled up. You just don't want any, any suffocation risks around babies. So those are just some basics you want to make sure, of course there's no other hazards like cords from the windows or gaps that babies can fall into. You want to make sure baby is safe enough, they can't fall off the bed. So ideally bed would be lowered to the floor. So there's all this information and it is accessible online, but most parents just aren't told about it and they don't even know. And so what happens, like I think you mentioned with yourself, is that parents are fear mongered about bed sharing and then they're doing whatever they can to not bedshare. And because of that there actually it often leads to even more unsafe situations that are actually life threatening to baby. Like and this was, I did this. You know, I would be so sleep so sleep deprived when I was with my first daughter and I would be rocking her to sleep, I literally fell asleep sometimes standing up, rocking her and I would sit in the rocker, I would fall asleep with her in the rocking chair. Some parents fall asleep with their baby in the couch and that's never safe. So sleeping together on a chair or a couch is much, much more dangerous than sleeping in a safe bed sharing setup. And so there's really this huge problem that by withholding this information from parents, we're not allowing them to make an informed decision and instead they're making fear based decisions which actually then leads to more unsafe situations. And not only that, but the parents that do begin to bedshare because it is literally sometimes the only way to survive as a new parent. And it is almost inevitable. The majority of breastfeeding dyads do bedshare at some point, even when they don't plan to. And so what happens is that a lot of parents are, they feel shame because of this culture that we've created. And so they're secretive about it. They don't talk about the fact that they bedshare. They don't even know that there's a safer way to bedshare. And so they might be bedsharing in an unsafe situation.

Yeah.

And then they're also often not telling their pediatricians. So it's like this vicious cycle because a lot of pediatricians don't realize how many parents actually bed share because they've fear mongered parents. And so parents are afraid and ashamed to tell them. And so it's like this vicious cycle of the information never being provided to the people that need it most. And this information can literally save lives. I think the Lullaby Trust is also a really great bed sharing resource. I think they're based in the UK but they found that about 50% of SIDS deaths occur in the crib or the cot they call it. And about 50% of SIDS deaths. And I can't remember if they're lumping SIDS and suffocation in together. I'm not sure about that. But 50% occur bed sharing. And they found that 90% of bed sharing related deaths could be prevented with education. This information is literally life saving and we're just shaming parents and not giving the information.

Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. I would go to the pediatrician. How's sleep? How's everything? How's breastfeeding going? Great. Everything's great. I mean, I was like, I'm not about to tell you what I'm doing because I feel like you're just gonna judge me for it. And I don't want to hear it like I'm an internally referenced person. I made a decision for myself and my family and it might not be the decision that you want for us, but that's fine. So I'm just not gonna tell you. So, I mean, and how incredible that like we are holding back information because we don't want to be judged because we have to make decisions for ourselves versus that being the source of information where they should be giving safety tips and advice. Okay, well if you're going to do that, then let's consider these things. I mean, this is the first time I've heard of the safe sleep 7. I've never heard of that before. And I mean, that's insane because I've had two kids in my bed, like one longer than the other one. I did know, like you shouldn't, you know, we don't smoke in our household, so we don't have that. We, you know, I would never go to sleep with my baby in the bed if I like had a few drinks, like, you know, which I wasn't doing often because I was a nursing mother. So it was like more rare than common, you know, at the time. And. But still all of these things, like my first baby only slept either on me or like on her belly. She was not, she would not stay on her back at 3 months of age. She figured I had to flip over to her back and that is how she. Or I'm sorry, onto her belly and that is how she slept. And again, she was tongue tied and she would sleep with her little tush up in the air. It was like the, that tripod sleeping, which is, I now learned, was because of her tongue tie and airway. I think she was legitimately trying to open up her airway when she was sleeping, which scared. I mean, now thinking back on it, it's scary to think that there was something going on that nobody identified because I would love for people to look into babies who sleep like that and sids. Let's look at how many babies are dying of SIDS and if they were tongue tied and how they were sleeping in terms of position. I just feel like there's so many unanswered questions. But the more that I work with these individ infants myself, the more I look at, huh, this baby, like can barely breathe when they're awake. Like, let's think about when everything collapses when they're asleep. Like how, how much air are they actually getting if their nose is blocked and they're. They've tongue tied, it's falling back into their airway because they have to sleep on their back. Like, can they actually breathe when they're sleeping? Like, no wonder why some of these kids flip themselves over, you know, as soon as they're physically able to. So, you know, it's very, it's very interesting and I'm always so curious about that. But these are really great tips and I'm definitely going to. We'll link the article that you shared from co Sleeping nd Edu in the show notes so that everybody can look at James McKenna's work and at least have a resource to jump off with because it sounds amazing and I've never heard of him before, so he is incredible.

He also has two books and they're incredible. And I also just wanted to say, because I didn't say this, that bedsharing, not only can you bedshare safely, bed sharing has an immense amount of benefits. And so the other Piece of this conversation is that people are so quick to jump on board the no sleep train or no bed sharing ever because it's dangerous. Train and crib sleeping is the ideal. But what people aren't talking about is that just like with bed sharing, everything in life, every decision in life comes with a set of risks. You cannot leave your house without having risks. You cannot stay in your house without having risks. Right. We get to pick the set of risks that we want to take on as people, as parents. And so just like bed sharing has some risks, I wouldn't say that it's more risky when done safely. The research doesn't really show that it's significantly more risky than crib sleeping. But there are also risks to having your baby in a crib, not in sensory proximity to the mother. That's just a fact. It's not meant to shame anybody. We have to talk about facts. Babies are meant to be near their mother. They just are, especially newborns. And when you're bed sharing or at least in sensory proximity, so you can also get the benefits of this in with baby in an arm's reach, you know, co sleeper or something like that. On a separate surface, babies and mothers help to regulate their baby's breathing and their body temperature. It's a really dynamic physiological process. And that is one side of the conversation that nobody, I mean, some people are having. I'm having it, There are lots of people having it. But the mainstream is not having that piece of the conversation. We really put certain decisions on a pedestal as risk free and the 100% perfect ideal. And that's just not a thing that doesn't happen in real life. Humans and life is much more complex than that. And all decisions have some risk.

Yeah, no, I think that's a really great point. And we get to choose as parents what risks we want to take on. And it's, you know, some of us go about our daily lives and don't even think about the risks associated with every action, you know, that we choose to take throughout the day because it's just so embedded within us. But then, you know, we go and we have these babies and half of us are like, what did I just get myself into? I don't know how to do this, how do I keep this baby alive? You know, and everything becomes a question. Even I as a therapist who was like, I know all about development from birth on up. And I know, at least in my realm, right. I forgot everything. Everything was like out the window when I had my own kid. And I Also wasn't doing infant feeding at the time. I was doing toddler like 12 months on up. So this was a whole new space for me to jump into with my first child. And by the time I had my second child I felt a little bit more prepared. But still, I mean, it's just the whole sleep training thing though, it brings so much. There's so much shame and stress and guilt and just so many emotions that are so unnecessary. If we would just equip our families with the right information from the get go and give them options, give them choices, let them decide, you know. So can you tell us a little bit about like how non responsive sleep training works and why you don't recommend that?

Yeah. So this is, this is always a really touchy topic, of course, you know, so I just want to say first of all, I am not judging anybody who is sleep trained. I have tried to sleep train. I didn't feel right about it. Like I've made that decision. I really just feel compassion for parents, especially parents that feel like their only option is to sleep train. And I think we have to move on from this place of like silencing different viewpoints and silencing information because it makes people uncomfortable. In order to grow and to progress, we have to be having these tough conversations. But I think it can be done and hopefully it can be done in a shame free way. So with non responsive sleep training, that's what we typically think of sleep training. That's usually what I'm talking about when I say sleep training. That is leaving your baby unattended to cry and that might look like leaving them all at one time just until they stop crying. So like you said, maybe 90 minutes, maybe more, maybe less. But there are some other methods that sometimes are called more gentle and they're really not that are more gradual. So you might leave your baby for like set periods of time, maybe five minutes, and then you go in and comfort them and then you leave them again for 10 minutes or you know, whatever that looks like. And so all of that is non responsive sleep training. You are, you are essentially you're not responding to your baby's cries. And why I don't advocate for that and why I don't think it's the, I'm trying to use words that aren't putting judgments onto the strategy, but I don't think it's the best choice and it might be the best choice for a specific family. But that's why I think it's important to know how it works is because Babies are wired. Their brains are wired to anticipate a response from us. Their cries are their only form of communication. They do not know how to tell us they have a need except for crying. And so when we stop responding to their communication, we are potentially telling them that they should not be crying to communicate to us. And that is essentially what happens. And this is what research has shown, shown is that babies who are sleep trained versus not sleep trained do not. So babies that are sleep trained don't really wake any less than babies who are not sleep trained. The parents might wake less and they might interpret or perceive the baby sleep to be better because the baby is often not signaling as much to the parent. And so it seems like they're sleeping better, but they're not. And so there's a lot of reasons why I don't agree with sleep training. But one of it is that one of the biggest ones is we just know from lots of research about neuroscience and attachment and how the brain develops is that babies thrive on responsive caregiving. And so while we don't fully know the true risks of sleep training, and I would never make a blanket statement and say you're damaging your child if you sleep train because I think some children maybe won't be affected, whereas others will. Right. Because we all experience events differently. So I would never make a blanket statement like that. But we do know what is ideal. And so that means that when we're veering from what is ideal and we're straying from what is biologically normal and expected by baby for their brain development, we might be taking a risk. So there's that it's kind of not black and white. And this is based on a lot of factors, whether a baby will experience trauma or how the first few years of life, really we set the patterns for our baby, for how they experience the world and have relationships. And so the way that we interact with our babies and respond to our babies really does matter. And I'm so tired of this narrative that it doesn't matter and that just anything goes and anything is fine and everything is equal, because I think that does such a huge disservice and devalues the role of caregiver. It really does. And it's so frustrating to me. And we wonder why we have no maternal support because it just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you respond to your baby. Okay, sorry for my tangent, but the other reason that I've already touched on a little bit, why I don't agree with non responsive sleep Training is because if there is a reason that baby is actually waking, maybe excessively beyond what we would expect, non responsive sleep sleep training does not fix that issue. So it might not be medical related even, which we've already covered, but it could just be that baby, there's something with the schedule or the wake windows are too long, baby's overtired, baby's undertired. Maybe there's some stress involved with sleep that's making baby feel unsafe and maybe more clingy. Maybe there's some separation anxiety happening which can't be fixed. It's just a developmental phase. So there's lot. Maybe it's something in the environment. Right. Maybe there's too much light in the room and that's keeping baby awake. So there's so many factors that impact sleep. Also sensory issues. We haven't even touched on sensory issues. And like different personalities and different temperaments. There's just so much that goes into sleep. And when we are just using non responsive sleep training techniques, what that is, it's a behavioral modification technique and it does nothing to address the underlying issues that are causing the sleep challenges.

Yeah, no, I mean, this all makes so much sense. And I'm sitting here thinking about Lily and you know, it reminds me that I had painful breastfeeding for 13 months because she was lip and tongue tied. And it was not this enjoyable experience. But I was that stubborn mom who was like, nope, we are going to breastfeed. Especially because when I brought her home from the hospital, and now mind you, she had lost too much weight in the hospital. She was that failure to thrive first percentile baby. Her entire first year with the first percentile. But failure to thrive was just like the first couple of days. I opened her medical chart on my phone and was like, what, what, what, what? Nobody told me. Well, nobody told me this. And like, oh, that's just how we coded it because she lost more than 10% body weight in the hospital. And I was like, okay. And then we were going for multiple checks. You know, the day after we got home from the hospital, here we are going to the pediatrician for weight checks. And two days later and three days after that. And you know, they had given me formula to give her and she just blood curdling screams. And their response was, well, that has three milk proteins. So let's give her Gerber, good start, that only has one milk protein and see if that works for better. And I'm like, this is not like. And I just immediately shut down. Like something about me was like, nope, not giving her that. Like, yes, fed is best. And yes, I want my baby to eat. I'm not going to do anything dangerous, but also, like, I am going to make this work. So my mom, I remember, went to Target and got me, like, a hand pump because my pump hadn't arrived yet, because new mom nobody told me, order the pump before you go into labor. And so here I am, like, doing it through, like, you know, the medical insurance. And they're like, it'll be the in there in three days. And I'm like, what? No, I need a puff now. My baby's not eating. Like, she's not. This is not working. The milk hadn't even come in yet. Like, it was just this whole thing. And she was not telling my body that she wanted to pull more milk out. So it was like this whole big conundrum. She's screaming and crying. And so I think from day one, my relationship was just. It was strained, it was challenging because I had this idealistic picture in my brain of how. How it would be to have this newborn and breastfeeding. I'd never done it before. Yes, I took, you know, some classes through the hospital, but nothing was going as it should have. And then, of course, you take them into the pediatrician's office. You see the IBCLC who says, well, you're just holding her wrong. And of course, it's like you take your car to the shop, right? And it stops making the noise, right? So they reposition her in the football hold. She feeds beautifully in office. I'm like, whoa. I get her home. Can't replicate it. Does not work again. And so of course, she transferred milk during that, like, one feed, but can't get her to replicate it. And at that point, I was like, well, that person is telling me I'm holding her wrong. And so that's not helpful. And I'm not sure who else to ask. So I was like, I'm just going to figure this out on my own. And that's exactly what I did. And she was this kid where she would sleep on the go in her car seat for, like, three hours at a time. But I knew, like, she should not be on the floor in her car seat sleeping, because that's not safe. So I would literally put her in the car, and we would drive to Nordstrom because they had a great nursing room. And I would let her sleep in her car seat as I would shop. And as soon as she woke up, I went and sat down in the nursery in the mother's room, and I fed her. And then we go back to shopping somewhere, and then we go home. And, I mean, I was with this baby around the clock. And so when it came time to, quote, unquote, sleep train, and I was going back to treating a couple days a week at 5 months. She was 5 months of age at the time. I was like, oh, like, this. This will save me. Like, she's gonna sleep through the night. Like, I won't be in pain all night. I'll have time for, like, my breasts to recover because they're damaged from. You know, it hurts. It doesn't feel good to feed her often. And she, you know, and we made it. We made it to 13 months breastfeeding. But I think also for me, you know, as you're talking about this, I'm, like, now thinking back, I think it was, like, a reprieve. Like, if I can just get her to sleep in her crib, like, I can have a break. And, like, mentally, I probably needed a break, but at the same time, she slept just fine in my bed. And if I thought that that was safe, I probably. Probably would have had a very different relationship. And I've even talked about this on a prior episode where, you know, my relationship with her because I had to, like, look away from her when she would latch sometimes because it was so painful that, you know, it's a totally different bond with her than it is with my second daughter, who was, like, this very easy nurser because we got, you know, we. We took care of the lip and tongue tie at five days of life, and she just slept better, and I let her bed share with me safely. And, you know, totally two different kids, two different relationships, and I almost feel like I've had to work harder at our relationship as a mother because I'm like, the second one, it just comes so much. Like, it's just so much more not natural, but there's just something else that is, like, biologically just there with my. My younger one. Whereas with my first one, I'm like, does she know that I love her? Like, does she know that I love her just as much as I love the second one? Like, I'm about to, like, cry because it's insane to, like, think about how, by a lot, like, psychologically this impacts you as a parent.

Yeah, I totally relate to that, and I've heard that a lot. And I would be so curious to, like, study this a little bit, but I have the same experience. Yeah, no, I totally get it. My daughter, who's now Almost four. We have quite a strained relationship at times and it feels like I have to work really hard sometimes to connect with her. And I do wonder sometimes, is that because I barely held her, you know, in her first six months of life and I refused to sleep with her and I was so stressed in those first six months about sleep and getting her to be independent. Is that why. And versus my son who granted, just turned one and you know, but he's obsessed with me. Like, he's so upset. I always tell my husband, I don't remember my daughter ever being this like, obsessed with me. Like she became a daddy's girl very early on. And my son, like, it's just easy with him. He just, he's excited to see me and he just, I mean, granted, he's only one, you know, things might change. But I do wonder because I bedshared with him from day one and he had sleep issues. You know, he had his, his ties released at six weeks and we had a really hard recovery process. And feeding, feeding was really rough for a couple of months, but. And it was stressful, but with sleep, sleep was awful, but I didn't feel as stressed about it. And I never tried to force him to be independent before he was ready. And he still sleeps with me. I'm happy for him to sleep with me and happy for him to, happy to comfort him. But I can already tell that my relationship with my two kids is very, very different. And I would be so curious to explore this more because I've heard this from a lot of parents.

Yeah, well, and I kept joking that, you know, I didn't want to homeschool Lily this past year. And you know, I will say that it forced us to spend a lot of one on one time together that I otherwise would have done because I run two businesses and you know, and we have help, we've got live in help. And you know, my family's around and they help on the weekends and like we spent, we spend a lot of time together as a family. But, you know, it was, it was almost as much as I didn't want to be her teacher, it was almost nice that we had that experience together because I think that it did bond us in a way that, you know, it never would have happened if she was in school this past year. So I like to look at the silver lining in that. And you know, and it's funny you said, like your, your 12 month old is excited when you get home. Like both my kids are excited when I get home and I don't know, was that different before? Like, it just. You know, you look at this, and she was. She was such a daddy's girl. Like, she still is, but, like, such a daddy's girl. Like, way earlier. My second one is like, mama, do this, Mama do that. No, mama. Like, everything is mama. And she's three. It hasn't changed. Like, she is a total mama's girl. And we joke that, like, Lily is like an, you know, an offshoot of my husband, and Mia is an offshoot of me. But they even look, you know, even, like, their look. They look. Lily looks more like my husband, and Mia looks more like me. But, you know, I really think that so much of it is intertwined into those early experiences. And, you know, I really feel like the system failed us and really did not provide us with the support we needed, even though we asked for it. And I think I shut down early on, and I know there are so many other moms who do that because you get vulnerable and you ask for help, and then basically it's thrown back in your face and you're told what not to do. And you're not actually given all of the choices or all of the risks or all of the benefits. You're just given that one person's belief system, which is so not fair, especially to mamas who are drowning and really need the support and need options and need to know the information that nobody's ever shared with them previously. So they don't even know to Google it. You know, it's. It's just. It's so fascinating to me. And just one of those things where, like, I just keep saying, we're failing. We're failing our mamas. And that was one of the reasons why I created this podcast. When I went to look for it and it didn't exist, I was like, oh, man, now I got to create it because somebody's got to put this information out there. And it's really cool to just see how over. We're over a hundred episodes now, just, like, how it's evolved. And, you know, the intention in the beginning was for me to share my story, but also just to, like, have conversations with professionals for professionals. And then so many moms started to find the podcast and tell me how it helped them get the care they needed for their child. And I was like, this is really cool. Like, this is, like. That was so partially my intention, but not really. And it's now turned into, like, this is for everybody. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome to listen. And I hope that parents and professionals walk away with information that empowers them, but that also gives them the opportunity to empower their families and provide at least, you know, hey, I heard this episode and somebody talked about safe bed sharing. And this per this, you know, resource, like, go check this out. Just somewhere to direct a family who may be struggling. So.

Yes, absolutely.

So how do you recommend parents support or optimize their children's sleep without using sleep training? Like, you know, we've given them some resources. But are there things that you recommend families can do or at least start.

With yeah, So I think the first thing is to really balance, you know, balance your expectations against what is biologically normal. So a couple of wakings at night is going to. To be normal. 3 to 4 wakings at night for a baby might be normal. And so there's only so much you can do if what your baby is doing is normal and appropriate. And they're hungry and they're waking because they have a need. But beyond that, you can. There's a lot of things we can do. So we talked about kind of ruling out any potential underlying medical issues or things going on that are disrupting sleep. But also, I think the biggest thing, one of the biggest things that parents can do is really, as hard as it is, try to relax about sleep. Because when we're feeling stressed and anxious and we're like, carrying our baby into the nursery stressed, because we know what's about to happen, we know we're about to spend two hours in the nursery, which don't do that, but we know we're about to spend two hours in the nursery trying to get our baby to fall asleep on their own by laying them down drowsy but awake. Our babies pick up on that. They pick up on our feelings and our mental state and our energy. And so when we're feeling really anxious, which I was so, so anxious with my first child, and I think that's why sleep was so hard for her. One of the reasons was because she felt that energy for me. And so one of the best things we can do is just relax and just kind of take a step back even when things aren't going well. You know, if you're putting your baby down for a nap and they're not falling asleep, don't spend more than 25 minutes or so in the room. You know, if they're not going to sleep and you know they're not going to go to sleep, take a break. Go take a walk, everybody. Get some fresh air. They might fall asleep on the walk and then come back 20 or 30 minutes later and try again. But creating this stressful environment with sleep will not help babies to feel safe and secure enough to be able to fall asleep. So that's the first step. But then beyond that, we can look at a lot of different factors so we can look at their daytime activity. Are they getting enough movement during the day for babies? Are they getting enough free floor time to move and to strengthen their muscles and all of that, or are they in containers all day long? A lot of times babies who are practicing new skills like rolling or sitting or standing, if they're not given a lot of opportunity to practice on their own during the day, those skills will, they'll be practicing at night. That's their time where they can move freely and they're practicing at night. And some of that is going to happen regardless because they're just practicing. And so that's one of these developmental phases that is just very normal for sleep to be disrupted. But daytime movement, enough stimulation, enough sunshine, if you have access to sunshine, you know, get, have your kiddos outside in the sun in the morning and afternoon hours because that helps to regulate their circadian rhythm. So now we're kind of talking about environment so we can think about dimming lights before bed, maybe an hour, hour and a half or so before bed. Limiting electronics, because research has shown that blue light from electronics can disrupt our body's melatonin production, which helps us feel sleepy. And so again, that's related to the circadian rhythm, making sure that our children have the appropriate wake windows. And this is where it gets tricky because I think it's easy to stress about this and I don't want that either. So I think it's just finding a balance of following your child's cues and learning them. And this takes some time. It's not something that you're going to get right away. But don't pay attention to, you know, all of the Google blogs and schedules and stuff like that, because all babies are so different, especially when it comes to how much sleep they need. And I think that the majority of parents actually overestimate the amount of sleep that their child needs. On my Instagram account, I have a highlight called sleeptotals that might be helpful. But there's a chart that shows how many hours of sleep in a 24 hour period babies and children need at specific ages. And it's much lower than a lot of parents think. Yeah, I can't remember for sure, but I think like from 6 to 12 months or something like somewhere around that age. I think it's like between maybe 11 and 14 or 15 hours in a 24 hour period. And that's in a 24 hour period. So that's naps and nighttime. And if we're just reading the baby sleep blogs, what we would think is that our babies should be sleeping 12 hours straight at night, plus at least three or four hours worth of naps in the day, which is what, like 16 hours? 15 or 16 hours, which is actually more than average what most babies are needing. And so when we're putting those expectations on our babies and on ourselves to make sure that our baby is sleeping that much, we're going to be frustrated and upset because we feel like we're failing our children by not getting them to sleep as much as they need. But if your baby is generally happy and seems well rested, they're probably getting just as much sleep as they need. And you might just have to lower your expectations for sleep. So all of that to say following their cues, following their lead, letting them sleep, giving them the opportunity to sleep when they're tired and when they need to sleep, but not forcing sleep when they're not tired. That's a really big one that I think a lot of new parents do.

Yeah, no, I'm over here on your.

Instagram account right now.

Like, where is this thing? I'm so curious. I want. I'm going to go look it up.

You might have to scroll a bit. Yeah, it's called sleep totals. It's a highlight.

Yeah. No, I mean, because Lily stopped napping at 15 months, but Mia is 3 and she naps hard like that kid. I mean, then I need to put her naps a little bit shorter because now she'll be up to like 8 or 9 at night. And I'm like, no, go to bed earlier. But she's three and she needs those naps. You know, she gets a nap, she'll definitely go to bed earlier. But then sometimes she's like, you can tell her behavior is different the next day. So she definitely still thrives on more sleep than her sister did. I mean, well, Lily stopped napping it 15 months or so, which I think was a little early, but whatever. Neither here nor there. So, I mean, she. But she was developing fine for all intents and purposes. So, you know, there was nothing that majorly seemed off with her, so I didn't push it. But it's just so funny again to see how different they are. And, you know, two kids, same family.

And yeah, even within the same family. And that's why it's so important to not get roped into these one size fits all approaches. Because even when I'm working one on one with families, I would not give the same recommendations to family A as I would to family B. Because when I'm asking questions, sometimes I'll say, well, maybe they've been awake for too long. Maybe you need to shorten that wake window. But then as they're telling me more, sometimes I'll think, no, you know what? Actually I think that your baby, your child is getting maybe too much sleep during the day. And so then I change things so it's so dependent on your child. And I use totally different approaches for different families, depending on what they're telling me and what I'm able to interpret about that child. And these one size fits all schedules. I think it can be nice sometimes to have like, you know, these charts of average wake windows with certain ages and how many naps a baby should be taking and what age babies typically drop to a certain number of naps. And that's helpful to have just as averages, but to not follow it like a rule book or like a bible. Because if your child doesn't fit into that, and my children have never fit into those averages, like they're, they need less sleep than average and they drop naps earlier than average and they have longer wake windows than average and they do well on that. And so it's just important to more so follow your child's lead and not the books and the schedules and the charts.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I wish I knew that with, you know, Mia's fine. She's still, you know, it's interesting too, because Mia, I can go and just take her upstairs. I'm like, okay, it's nap time. And you know, she gets in her bed and she lays down and say, okay, see you soon. And she'll put herself to sleep and she's just like totally a great sleeper. I never sleep trained her, never sleep trained her. But she does totally fine now at night. We've kind of created this, you know, we sit in her room till she falls asleep thing. And because we've created that, that's what she expects. But during the day she totally puts herself to sleep. Or even now Lily will go upstairs and put her to sleep. My 5 year old puts a 3.

Year old to sleep.

It's the best thing ever. That's awesome. It makes me so happy. I'm like, oh, that was so fun. No, but you know and, like, I know we could, as easily as we created it, we could uncreate, right? Like, we could take that away. But I'm like, I don't mind it. It's a little challenging because I run a business where we have nighttime evening calls, and sometimes that is during their bedtime. So that makes it a little bit challenging. But, you know, it's neither here nor there. So let's talk about one last thing before I let you go today. So rocking, nursing, cuddling, all these things that, you know, in the program that I use, they were called sleep props, and we were told not to do them. The program I did with Lily and with, you know, with Mia, I totally did all of these things. And arguably, I did some of these things with Lily, too, even after the fact, because I'm like, well, she's an okay sleeper now, so now I can add some of these things back in. But I always had that guilt in the back of my head that, like, I was using sleep props and I'm going to ruin all the work that I did with her. But something about me told me that, like, no, my child needs, like, human touch. And the more I thought about it, if you know anything about nature, which I learned a lot about homeschooling, my kindergartner this year. No other, like, mama bear or deer or the animals, they're all with their young. They're all with their babies until they're 100% independent and ready to go off into nature on their own. And for some animals, that might be, like, you know, three weeks or three months, but for other animals, that's a much longer period of time. Time. And I think that we, you know, I kept thinking about it, and I'm like, humans are weird. I mean, we are the only ones who are like, we just want to push our babies off of us the second they pop out of the womb and basically tell them to live their own lives. Like, this is not normal.

We're too smart for our own good. Sometimes we really. We try to outsmart nature.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know in other, you know, other countries and other nations and other cultures, bedshare till like, 9. And, you know, really 4, 5, 9. And here we are trying to get our babies in a crib at three months because we have to go back to work. You know, the US Is just in other ways. But anywho. So do these things. Cause bad habit. What is your.

Yeah, so sleep props. I actually have a post about this because it irks me to no end when, like, someone is calling me a sleep prop. I am not a sleep prop. I am a mother. I am a comforter. I am a nurturer. You as the parent doing things for your child, you're not a sleep prop. You are a parent. You are a caregiver. And that is just another example of how the sleep training industry has totally devalued the role of mother, the role of caregiver. And it's just. It's insanity to me, honestly, because. And if you think about it, it's really hypocritical because the same industry that has created this term of sleep prep has no problem with parents using babies, using pacifiers or snooze that rock and vibrate and do all of the things or swaddles or the rock and plays or whatever. I mean, they would have a problem with it now because now they're not safe, but that's not why they had the problem with it. Right? Those things are not considered sleep props because it doesn't require parental support or intervention, which is really hypocritical if you think about it. Really, what they describe as sleep props is really human touching, connection, and human touch. And connection is so valuable. We all crave it. I mean, this goes way beyond just sleep and babies. We all need connection, and we are living in an increasingly disconnected culture, and this just facilitates that. But, no, you're not going to be creating bad habits by doing these things. I think what, you know, I could really. This could be a whole nother podcast episode. But when it comes down to it, I think the most important thing to know is that dependence actually facilitates independence. Babies are born absolutely 100% dependent on us. They're meant to be 100% dependent on us. When we are allowing them to depend and meeting their needs for them, and we're first doing everything for them, that is how they, in time, and that's years, gain the confidence and the security to then venture forth and become their own person and do their own thing. So this is based on the work of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, who is a fantastic child developmental psychologists. So if you want to look more into that theory, his work is incredible. But we never have to be worried about preventing our children from being independent by allowing them to depend on us, because if anything, that fills their bucket. It fills their gas tank of relationship and connection and attachment and allows them to be secure enough when they're developmentally ready to go off and be independent on their own. It creates safety for them. And the other thing is that this myth of Self soothing babies aren't meant to self soothe babies. And children are wired to co regulate with a calm, responsive caregiver. And so this idea that our six month old should be able to lay in the crib and self soothe is just not rooted in any science. It's not rooted in what we know about the brain. They are designed to co regulate with us. And so when we as parents are supporting our babies through sleep cycles and we're supporting them through their emotion and we're with them as they're crying and we're comforting and we're rocking them, we are giving them the skills, we are literally giving them the skills that they need to eventually be able to do that on their own. They can't know how to do those things on their own if they're never given the opportunity to do those things with somebody who can help them. Does that make sense?

No, that makes sense.

We do it first. Yeah. That's the only way they learn. So you're not, you're not impairing your baby's ability to be independent by helping support them initially. You are literally teaching them the skills to do it on their own when they're ready.

Yeah. And I can tell you that this for sure worked with my 3 year old because she is like miss, like 3 year old going on 13 year old, miss independent. I can do it myself. Don't help me. Like, whether it's pottying, whether it's like clothes, whether it's brushing her teeth, whether it's just building something or getting something out of the pantry, I mean, she wants even things that she is too little to do or things that maybe are not even safe enough yet. Like she's like, I want to cook the eggs. I'm like, no, you can do it with me. We will do it together. But don't go near that oven by yourself. You know, she is Miss Independent and she's my kiddo that I gave, quote, unquote all the sleep props to. You know, it was, you know, she bed shared. She had sleep props and you know, and I had little voices out in my, in my environment telling me like, don't do that, don't. When are you going to get her out of your bed? And I'm like, when are you going to mind your own business?

Yeah. And you know, that's so interesting because I totally agree with you. And toddlers hit this developmental phase where they are totally independent, but even when they hit that phase, a lot of times something will happen or they'll have a Day where they're having a rough time and they're maybe a bit more clingy or needy. And what I see happening a lot with my own children, but also I've experienced this with families that I work with. They will tell me about this, is that when we're pushing a child to be independent and they're clearly not quite ready, even if they were ready yesterday, to dress themselves, but they don't want to dress themselves today because something is different today. But we're pushing them to be independent, you will find that they will often be more clingy and more needy and more upset because they are literally searching for that proximity to. They are searching for someone to say, hey, or not someone, but you parent for parent to say, hey, I'm here for you. I'm going to meet your needs because I know you have more needs today. So it's also not linear. It's not always linear. And that's the way sleep works, too. But I just think people don't understand that, that when we force independence before our children are ready, it often backfires on us and makes it worse. And also, I just lost my train of thought. What was I going to say? Darn it. I had a really good point to make.

Well, I think, you know, you were talking. I mean, I love how you keep saying that it's not linear. Nothing about children is linear aside from, like their growth up the growth chart, right? Like, and even that kind of, you know, it's linear to a certain degree, but that also can fluctuate. You know, it's. If we just have this conversation with parents and say nothing about children is truly linear, like, it is a freaking roller coaster. And we go into parenthood expecting that as it relates to feeding and sleep and behavior and them gaining their independence and developing language and, you know, developing friendships and learning how to share. And I mean, every. I mean, kids are developing in so many different ways in their first year of life and beyond. And if we just have the expectation that it's going to be a literal shit show and we embrace that, I mean, how different of a conversation we'll be having, right? I mean, it might go really well, but it also might not. And that's okay because that's normal. But hey, sometimes there are other things, extenuating things going on and medical things that need to be dealt with. And in those cases, you know, that's a different conversation. But even for typically, quote, unquote, developing children, nothing is linear. And so I just love that. I love that you said that multiple times because I think that really needs to be driven home.

Yeah, I think we just have such, we can have such rigid expectations for our children and what they should be capable of when we don't even have those same expectations for ourselves. And I think we just need to really take a step back and remember that our children are humans just like we are. And in fact they are more vulnerable humans than we are. They are more, you know, vulnerable because they don't have all of the skills that we have developed and they develop within the context of relationship. And so when we're thinking about, you know, we have to teach them to sleep or teach them to self soothe. Well, no we don't. But also they're never going to learn that just by being left alone in a room to cry. That's not what you're teaching them when you do that. And so I think we, it just takes more of taking like several steps back and really looking at the big picture and thinking about what are our long term goals versus our short term goals and how we nurture development through connection and through relationship. That's beautiful. Thank you.

Well, this has been absolutely amazing. I have kept you here long enough. I know we could talk about this all day. It's such an important topic. So thank you so much for sharing your wealth of knowledge with us and I'm really excited for everybody to hear about this and just get the conversation spread a bit further.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I love, I love chatting about this. I literally could do it all day and I do. So thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to hear more of these Myo Tots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or pledge a small amount on patreon.com the Untethered podcast. If you found value, others you know in this space will too. So be sure to share this episode on your social media platforms and join us over on Facebook on my Facebook page at Halibulcan Biz, on Instagram at Alibulcan and you can head over to theuntetheredpodcast.com to grab a copy of the Show Notes where you can also subscribe to be kept up to date on the latest podcast episodes.