Apod Shape Production. Welcome back to another episode about I a Bad Mom? Podcasts The question we continuously ask am I a bad mum?
I was having a little chin wag too. It sounds weird because I'm a trainer and then I have a trainer. But he just had said, what have you done this morning? I said, I went for a walk and he went, oh, good, did you listen to a podcast? I said, actually, listen to my own podcast? Am I a bad mum? And that was to just try and get my head back in the game because I was a pretty shit mum yesterday. He was like, Okay, great reflection piece. I was like,
it's a great podcast. I know you don't have kids, so probably don't listen.
Not if you ever are planning to have them, don't listen to this podcast.
It's going to put you off off. Am I a bad mum?
For flipping the rules?
What are the rules?
Yeah? It comes off the back of a couple of nights in a row, consecutive nights in a row, because I think you'll know where I'm going now. And I started to like beat myself up on it because I was like, oh my god, I'm flipping the rules. Of what I've tried to install for nine years, which is when they come down if they have a bad dream, yeah, fair enough, Like if it's only a couple of hours, so we wake up, then I'll let them sleep in the bed.
When they were little, little.
Like freshy, I would co sleep off and on because else obviously it was a little bit harder as a baby, but I wasn't a huge co sleeper.
Yeah.
And then when they're old enough, then they migrated from the cot beside the bed into their room. And I've sort of tried to be really not a stickler with it, but I understood why I was doing it so that I didn't create habits or patterns.
Yeah, later in life. Now fast forward nine years and.
She's like, oh I had a really bad dream.
Yep, come on in.
I completely agree with the flipping the rules because I was very much that you sleep in your own bed. Honestly, Rachel, I don't think I've had the girls sleep overnight in my bed ever. The only time they ever have been allowed to come in is if they've been sick. It's like, yeah, yeah, I just come in, come in the middle. But I was exactly the same. I was like no, otherwise we're going to create bad habits. Like I had it in my head that if they came in and slept in
our bed one night, that would be it. We would never get them back in their own beds again. And I think I was quite strict because I had twins. I think it was stricter because I kind of had to have that sort of military operation of these are the rules, because otherwise I'm getting no fucking sleep.
I can't have two of them in there.
But I agree with you, and I actually wish that, Like if I had my time again, I would definitely do things differently. I would definitely be a bit kinder. I would definitely be a bit more nurturing. Yeah. Yeah, we've got a friend and I see how she is with her baby now that for me, fifteen years ago, I would have been like, no, I cannot do that, creating bad habits. Kids never going to be able to sleep on their own, you know, they have to be put down.
But now I'm like all for that.
I'm like, yeah, well, because when you start looking at things like abandonment traumas, and you know, I let my girls just cry themselves to sleep and turn the monitor down I look back at that and go, oh my god, I would so do that differently now.
It was funny. It was only until I was at work this morning and I was chatting with one of the members and she's my mom and we just have this chat after class and we were chatting and I said, oh my gosh, it's the third night in a row.
It was like the end of the earth for me because I was like, the last two nights, Elsie has watched something whatever it is, on TV, like it was a kid's thing, but it's enough to trigger something in her head that she was like, I got to sleep with you tonight, and I was like, why dal didn't say anything? But then last night when we were laying there, she said, I watched this thing and she started to blurt it all out, and she'd worked herself up into
such a tears over this. I was like, oh, Dar, I was like, why didn't you say something when you were watching it, or like I could have sat and explained it with you why you were in it, so that you understand. But she'd held on to it all day and that's what she'd watched three or four days ago. She'd watched this program again and something else had happened in it.
I know, something with dragons and something. That's what started this.
So now by the third night, she's now not coming in the middle of the night, she's coming in before you're in a bed, going please don't make me sleep by myself.
Can I just input here, because we've hung out a few times recently over the last couple of weeks, do you have any idea that my husband Jay has been talking to the girls and telling your girls about the true times that he's been making Oh my gosh, that's probably what it is said to him at the time. Stop scaring them. You're going to scare them. And they kept coming back for more. You know, kids arelike kept coming back from more. Tell us about the other one day,
tell us about the other one. He's there loving himself sick. He's got an audience of kids around him. He's telling them about, you know, the fact that this girl killed her grandma and what she did. I was watching them all I was watching from afar.
I was like, what are you doing.
You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't let someone do this to your kids, knowing that they're not going to go to sleep. This might be the problem.
I reckon, I reckon that's what it started from, because it's only been like it's consecutive, but it's been like the last three to four nights.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's tasteful. Oh god.
I was like laughing because she was trying to tell me about it, and she'd worked herself into such a spin, and I was like, we had to do the whole I am safe. I said to her, I've locked every draw in this house and she was like, yeah, I know that, And I was like, well, we needed some times understand that things are pretend. How to get to that, I was like, especially TV shows pretend. You have to
tell yourself that they're so pretend. Now it's not even the TV show, it's your bloody husband with his true crimes. Well you at least know that the true crimes is working.
I know there's some good stories there, some great stories.
Yeah, sorry about that. I mean, it wasn't technically my fault, but I did chin and intervene.
He had an audience of kids, so it wasn't just your kids, it was their cousins as well. So if your brother's kids are finding it hard to sleep.
There, that's the reason why I'm going to text him. I do think so that.
It's fine to change the rules. I think we're just moving with the times. I think if we look back and we talk about this all the time, about how we grew up and how our parents were with us, and it was the case of you know, off, okay, come back when the street lights are and I remember my mom even saying this, but children should be seen and not heard.
Yeah, imagine that now. Yeah, I know, we wouldn't even be allowed. It wouldn't work.
No, my kids turn around to me, and so you can't speak to me like that.
I'm like, I was like, let's not get into that, because I've had a few of those in the last few days, and I'm like, oh, you're teetering on the edge. I was like, just pack your bag, go find a new family. I was like, time right now, nor the energy. But just going back to what we were talking about, which is that flipping of the rules, It's kind of like I haven't had a problem with it. I've been yes, yep, sure, nurture,
extra nurture, extra nurture. Yeah, I've just been a little bit more nurturing and lenient than what I am normally, and I got myself into such a tiars and two women this morning at work literally had said, it's okay, just be a little bit kinder to yourself. It's okay, you're not undoing what you've done, allowing this for a few nights.
This is the thing when I look back at the sleep stuff and they're not letting them in the bed, Like really, I know, logistically, you know it's not the best thing for you'll be sleeping together for your own Like, I don't know what. I could never sleep like if they were in the bed. So that's not great because you're just going to be really tired and uncomfortable. But is there ever a time where you.
Can give too much love?
No?
No, So really, if they're loved and they're with you, Like the co sleeping thing was something that I was always like, no, put them down, otherwise they'll never settle on their own. Now, I'm like, there's a reason why they do skin to skin when a baby's first born, right, Yeah, because they need the Yeah, they need the bond, they need mum. So why shouldn't they be on mum?
You know, as much as you can pare it.
I think, ask me in another week of this sort of distorted sleep pattern that I've had for the last.
That's the thing, it's not practical.
I don't know how people I know, I know people that sleep with their children all the way through. Like my hat's you, because I don't know how you do it, because I need absolute disconnection from them. And I know we don't talk about it much on here, but like energetically, you're in each other's energy twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, whether you like it or not. There has to be a time where you disconnect it. And that is when we go to bed. And yeah, look, Elsie's.
Not the lightest of sleepers.
So she is kicking and punching and scratched like she goes nuts and her sleep she's fighting off obviously whatever your husband's told her. And then I end up with a swift kick to.
The guts and I'm like, oh, I just got to send the.
Kid back, give them the love and then send them back for your own sanity.
Give them the love, nurture them, tell them that they're safe, go back to your bed. Ye, I've got to try and get her out. Now we're nearly at a week. Yeah, thanks, Jay Jay