There’s a lot of opinions on baby sleep. Scroll through Instagram; spend some time on google; talk to your pediatrician; ask a friend or family member….everyone has ideas about how your baby should sleep. The problem is that many of our deeply held beliefs about baby sleep are more cultural belief than biological fact.
Read More“I know I shouldn’t compare, but I can’t help comparing my baby (or toddler) to how other babies are sleeping.”
I hear this sentiment a lot. Gather any group of parents together and they generally start sharing what their baby or toddler is doing. Hearing how other littles are sleeping and developing can really draw you in to the comparison trap, even if you know it’s not helpful. When you have a more wakeful, intense, or sensitive little one, these comparisons can really start to take a toll on your mental health and confidence.
Read MoreYour baby’s sleep is not a reflection of your parenting. Sleep is involuntary and not in anyone’s conscious control. A parent’s role isn’t to force or micro-manage a child’s sleep, but to set up conditions that support sleep. The goal is to create an environment where your child is tired, relaxed, and feels safe and secure in order to sleep well. And well for a baby includes some amount of waking.
Read MoreFor many parents I talk to, this first month of 2022 has felt like a whole year of stress and overwhelm all on its own. To be truthful, we’ve been feeling that way in our house as well. When life is hard, when sleep is hard, when our children’s behavior is hard, the most important thing we can do is focus on self-regulation. That’s you, the parent, regulating your own emotions so you can show up in a calm, well-regulated state to support your baby or toddler.
Read MoreOne of the most common questions I get this time of year is how do I support sleep during the holidays? Whether it’s travel, hosting family, or just a lot of different events, there is a lot to navigate. You want to enjoy the time without undermining your littles sleep too much, and there can be a lot to consider. Below are some of the most common questions and areas of struggle I hear from parents struggling with what to do about infant and toddler sleeping arrangements during travel.
Read MoreYou may have heard, or identified with a lot of different parenting labels: Attachment parenting, positive parenting, gentle parenting, respectful parenting, conscious parenting, peaceful parenting, intuitive parenting, responsive parenting….Likely I’ve missed a few . All of these various labels are variations of each other. They may differ in how the core elements are presented, but they share a lot in common. Sleep is part of parenting, and how we parent around sleep is part of how we parent over-all. In fact, some of your sleep parenting decisions are the first big ones you make that either emphasize connection or separation, emotional availability or emotional distance. Responsive parenting includes night time parenting. Those decisions and approaches are connected.
Read MoreMost parents I talk with want bedtime to be a peaceful, connected time they look forward to. They want their little one to fall asleep after a bedtime routine everyone enjoys. Sometimes bedtime comes, and that lovely shift from day to night becomes a bedtime struggle. When it happens enough times, it can feel like bedtime is a battle and there’s no clear path out of the pattern. They start dreading bedtime. When the days end like that, it can start to wear on your mental health. Here’s how to shift things when you start dreading bedtime.
Read MoreWe live in a sleep training culture. There’s no doubt about it. Sleep training is the number 1 thing recommended to parents of infants and toddlers to both preventively tackle sleep or in response to sleep struggles. It is so much the default that many parents don’t even know that there are other ways to support sleep. Not all parents sleep train, however. Here are some things you can try when you’re feeling pressure from others to sleep train, and know you do not want to.
Read MoreBeing a responsive parent is parenting against the mainstream. It’s easy to feel isolated and as though you are the only one parenting this way when all your friends and family parent from a different philosophy. While they mean well, being the only responsive parent in your support system often means lots of unwanted advice, pressure, and even criticism. Here are three things to do when you’re feeling alone as a parent.
Read MoreSo many parents reach out to me with concerns about contact naps. Sometimes they are worried about long-term sleep independence. Sometimes it’s more about sustainability. Sometimes is just an overwhelming need to start moving away from all contact sleep. Both my kids have been huge contact sleepers, so I know the struggle!
Read MoreIf you are the nursing parent doing all or most of the nighttime parenting, you may have a whole lot of mixed emotions. You may love the closeness of those quiet, snuggly feeds in the middle of the night or feel touched out. You may love feeling needed while also wanting some more freedom and to share the effort with your partner. You may cope ok with disrupted sleep or be desperately tired.
If you are the other parent in this dynamic, it’s easy to feel helpless. To want to support your partner, but to have no idea how.
Read MoreStress, worry, and anxiety have a negative impact on our sleep, regardless of how often our child wakes in the night. From everyday concerns to more intense clinical depression and anxiety, mental health and sleep are connected. And once you have trouble sleeping, you often add worry about your own sleep to the mix! There are things you can do to help when anxiety keeps you from sleeping.
Read MoreThere’s so much conflicting and confusing information on baby and toddler sleep. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and stuck between what feels right and what everyone says you should do. So often parents feel as though they have two options, sleep train or do nothing and struggle along until time improves things. However, there are a range of gentle, responsive ways to support sleep without sleep training.
Here are three shifts you can make to improve sleep while decreasing overwhelm.
Read MoreEveryone loves to share their opinions when it comes to parenting around sleep. Whether you ask for their input or not, you get a lot of advice. So, what do you say when the advice is unwanted or at odds with your parenting approach?
Read MoreHolistic sleep coaching is an alternative option that is based on biologically normal sleep, responsive parenting, and gentle, family-centered methods. When you are struggling with your baby or toddler’s sleep, knowing the right path forward for your family can seem daunting. The internet and baby books are full of strict schedules and sleep advice that conflict with parenting instincts. You may feel like you have no other choice except to sleep train to improve your family’s sleep, but sleep training isn’t the only option.
Read MoreNighttime parenting is hard work. It’s helpful to have some tools to support yourself when your doubting your parenting choices or up in the middle of the night and feeling completely done.
Here are a few tools centering around how we talk to ourselves about nighttime parenting with some specific affirmations and reframing ideas.
Read MoreThe word gentle is popping up everywhere! So many professionals are using gentle to describe what they do. It’s become a marketing buzz word, and the more it’s used, the less clear it is what gentle actually means.
Read MoreRoutines and rituals are an essential part of family life. They create predictability and security. They provide comfort and connection. They give us familiar structure for our days, for our transitions.
With so much uncertainty and upended routines, finding family rituals and routines to anchor and connect you during these times is a powerful tool.
Read MoreSo many parents start asking “When will my baby sleep through the night” early on in their child’s life. Our culture places a strong emphasis on babies sleeping through the night. This view shapes new parent’s focus and expectations. From friends to family to pediatricians the questions and messages are the same. It is your responsibility to get your baby sleeping through the night as soon as you can. If your baby doesn’t sleep for long stretches, then you are doing something wrong, hurting their development, and undermining their ability to sleep forever!
Read More
