Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. Is there any realness to the phrase sleep when the baby sleeps. I mean, I have a twelve year old and a six year old, and I still remember it to this day, what it was like. It would be lovely. If you can sleep when your baby sleeps, that's great. If you can do it. I never was able to do it. We were talking about keeping an ear out. That's what I always did.
Even if I went to sleep and I had someone else watching, I was just hard wired to be listening for whatever would be happening. So if you can rest, that's ideal. It's more about prioritizing what I mean, Like, I know there were times when my kids would nap, wo be like, I gotta go and wash the bottles, I gotta go to this. Does that stuff really need to happen in that moment? Maybe you can just rest. Hillo, everybody, Welcome back to Katie's Crib. We are here today with
Dr Shelby Harris talking about momsomnia. Sleep is such a huge thing. Normally, I've done so many episodes about the baby sleeping, about the toddler sleep schedule. All of this crap. No one is talking about my sleep. So let me tell you a little bit about our guest today. Dr Harris is has a private practice in White Plains, New York, very close to where I'm from. She specializes in the use of cognitive behavior therapy otherwise known as CBT for
anxiety and depression. She's also the author of the Women's Guide to Overcoming Insomnia, a roadmap for those who experience anything from occasional bad nights to chronic insomnia. She's Board certified in Behavioral Sleep Medicine BSM by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in trees a wide variety of sleep disorders, including insomnia, using evidence based, non pharmacological treatments. Dr Harris has been invited columnist for New York Times for Dr
Oz's website You Beauty for Psychology Today. She's frequently quoted in the media, like in The Freaking New York Times and huff Post and The New Yorker. She's appeared on a Freaking Today Show, World News, Diet Sawyer, Good Morning America. The list goes on. So whatever she's qualified. Dr Shelby Harris Thank you so much for coming onto Katie's crib. Thank you. She's very qualified to be talking about this. Let's start at the beginning. How did you get into
sleep psychology? So I took a year before going to graduate school and I worked in a medical school at Brown University where I went front undergrad and I was doing research in people who had addictions, and I was going into rehabs and it was for alcohol addiction, and the study was looking at treating sleep problems, insomnia and people who were in early recovery, because a lot of
times people relapse because they're not sleeping. And what we found was getting people to sleep better actually helped to reduce the rates of relapse. And that to me was groundbreaking and eye opening to see that how many things could really be changed just by getting some good nights of sleep if it's any sort of addiction issue. But then mood, it's sleep is such a fundamental that it really made me start thinking about how I want to study it more and more in my life. Amazing, I
already have eight thousand questions. Okay, you described in the NYT Parenting column that momsomnia is where a lot of moms and some dads, but mostly moms almost become hardwired to listen for what are called sleep threats. Okay, every mom listening to this right now knows like if your kid is about to cry, you like wake up two minutes before, or like I can hear my kid open his door and start walking down the hallway like in
advance every morning. It's so crazy, and even when the threat is gone, they continue to have trouble with sleep because we're so conditioned to keep listening. Can you tell us more about why you took a particular interest in momsomnia. So when I was practicing for a long time and I was approached about writing a book, I started to They started to think, well, what area would you want
to meet, maybe more focus on. I realized that so many of my patients were a women of all different age ranges, and I just noticed that women sleep, whether it be mom ssomnie of like burning the candle at both ends not making sleep a priority, or the other thing is that insomnia of when people's kids, mom's kids start sleeping better, the babies just better. You still are keeping an ear out and you start to have insomnia.
That was just a fascinating are and I mean that people years ago we're talking about I'm so glad that it's really now taken off and people are talking about it. Women sleep just has not been focused on until recently. So now there's you know, new moms and perimenopause and menopause, and I'm so glad that we're talking about all this stuff. Wow.
I mean, it does definitely continue on. I mean I definitely feel like before and a half year old, I feel like I haven't slept in I've always been a great sleeper, and it was my first foray into insomnia and sleep issues during pregnancy, you know, like that's my first time like going to the bathroom constantly being so physically uncomfortable that you can't switch positions, you can't sleep on your stomach, and then it translates into the first
three months, which are basically just hell in a handbag. I had such bad postpartum depression with my daughter, and sometimes I think, had I slept, would it have been as bad? Probably, yes, But I don't know. I always tell people, you know, sleep deprivation is a form of torture in war times, and like that's what we're doing at the beginning. Do you deal with women who are so um that are in the postpartum area, like more recent. Yeah, you know I did not make any sense. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah totally. Yeah. The thing that I wish people would talk about more when they're about to have the baby is coming up with sleep plans based on your life, your help. You hopefully can have available conversations with your partner. I some people have night nurses, some people don't. What could a plan look like? So a plan could really It really varies from family to family. So what I did was I and I was very I talked about
it on my Instagram account a lot. I had a lot of trouble breastfeeding and I just could not produce anything. So we were we were bottle feeding and that's what we were just doing. So I took shifts with my husband. So we made it very clear that he was going to take the I think it was like nine to two shift, and then I took from two to six
every day and we bottle fed. If you're someone who is breastfeeding, you know that's something where if you're not bottle feeding, you could also think about having someone come feeding or change the baby, do all the diaper, all that sort of stuff and just hand to you if you're doing breastfeeding solely at night, so to really try to get help when you can, and if you don't have a significant other to help with it at night, then it's really about thinking about what can you do
during the day to get some rest here and there, um, But really thinking about what you're doing for feeding shifts that you're going to do, and where can you get some downtime naps or rest whatever you can during the day, and asking for help. Don't assume that you should be able to do it all yourself. That's the case. Yeah, that's really great. I I have to say, like people are like, what does the night nurse do if you
are breastfeeding? And I was breastfeeding, and I have to say it was for us worth the money, um, because yes, I would breastfeed for forty minutes, but she would, like you said, do the diaper ring get that. I would literally put the baby on my boob and then throw the baby back at her and run to my bed while she was rechanging the diaper, getting the baby back down. All of these things that are like an additional twenty or thirty minutes that I didn't have to go through.
The Other thing is if a night nurse is not in option for you, you know, Adam and I had conversations where I was like, I'm going to breastfeed and do this at night, but you're gonna do that. I'm gonna pump enough for a bottle, you know, for the ten pm feed, and I'm going to go to bed right at eight o'clock and I'll be up at two
or three. But there was a real understanding between us that if he's going to be getting the better quality, longer sleep at night, it's so that he can really fucking pull it out in the day, do you know what I mean? Like I was like, oh, if I'm going to be taking the night shifts, the brunt of them for these months, like that means that you're really getting a good six hours at night, you're gonna need
to deliver in the daytime. And he did good, good, But you see, like all that stuff is the conversation, like you can't predict what's going to happen, but you
can try and be as prepared as possible beforehand. And like I had prepared, I had planned to breastfeed, and I couldn't do it like there's all those things that can happen, but try to come up with as many options that you can in advance, because when you're sleep deprived, when you're thinking about key being a child alive, that's not the time to necessarily problem solve how you're going to work as a team. So to really be proactive
is going to pay off big time. That's such a great tip because I have to tell you most of my couple's friends, the big gass knockdown, drag out fights and the way they've treated each other like they've never done before, happened in the middle of the night where it's like they're not even because you're not dealing with like a stable personal the rational mind I was says, the rational mind is not there two in the morning. It just doesn't And you're like, go to sleep, Why
won't my baby sleep? And it's just frustration and anger and it's just is not the time to problem solve all that. Granted, baby, it's gonna throw you a million different things. You're not gonna know what exactly is gonna happen. You can't plan for everything, but to have some framework
of trying to protect some time for sleep. And what you're talking about with postpartum depression, we actually see all the time and um and and it's been proven in research that if you don't dedicate a block for at least four hours of protected sleep, what we find actually starts to happen is that if you had a prior history of depression or anxiety, you're actually at a greater
risk of developing postpartum depression or anxiety. So we really, I really want people to start thinking about it when they're pregnant, of game plans of what you can do to try and get four hours. That's all I'm asking for of a protected sleep period. Why is four hours the magic number? It's just what we found in research.
It's enough to be um protective and restorative somewhat. So you're getting enough sleep cycles of ram deep sleep to be restorative enough that then you can make up for it a little bit with naps here and there if you need to. When you first get home, I think most people are riding high from the endorphins and the
serotonin and all of these things. So to be waking up every hour to two hours to feed a baby, whether that to be a bottle or breast you're kind of still riding this high of like we did it, this is new, all of this, and then whenever that fades for people and you realize, oh no, this is what it is like, you're going to be waking up like this. That's when I I felt like, oh, I'm going to be institutionalized, Like I'm going to lose my fucking mind. I can't do this anymore. I felt like
it was like just absolutely dangerous. So I love the idea of making a sleep plan in pregnancy of how you and your support system can protect some sort of sleep for yourself because we're so focused on the baby, right, how are you going to feed your baby? How are you where's your baby going to sleep? All that stuff that we get lost in the whole thing that I think really thinking if you have a family unit or mom parent, whoever it is, if the baby is sleeping, well,
the parents are gonna sleep off. The parents are sleeping, well, it's going to help the baby. Also understanding what normal is right people often, I mean I have people contact me like, three weeks postpartum, how can I sleep my training, sleep train my baby? That's not how many really, that's not how it works so it's really also having expectations of what it should look like and then trying to work your world around how baby sleep is going to
be so you can protect some time too. Is there any realness to the phrase sleep when the baby sleeps, which is the thing that everyone tells you, and I'm like, what their naps during the day like? Is that when you're supposed to be like running to your bed and praying that you can convince yourself to fall asleep or if not, just rest right. I mean, I have a twelve year old and a six year old and I still remember it to this day what it was like. It would be lovely. If you can sleep when your
baby sleeps, that's great. If you can do it. I never was able to do it. We were talking about keeping an ear out. That's what I always did. Even if I went to sleep and I had someone else watching, I was just hard wired to be listening for whatever would be happening. So if you can rest, that's ideal.
It's more about prioritizing, what I mean, Like, I know there were times when my kids would nap, wo be like, I gotta go and wash the bottles, I gotta go to does that stuff really need to happen in that moment, Maybe you can just rest, because then if you start pretty sleep on that pedestal when the naps are supposed to happen, you're gonna make it worse for yourself. Just rest,
that's the key. Yeah. And also I like that point, which is I think a lot of moms that whole sleep when the baby's sleeping, they run to their bed and sleep isn't achievable because they can't stop their mind. And then they start racing even more because they're not sleeping and they're looking at the clock knowing that the baby is gonna wake up soon. And now you're just nothing but frustrated and anxious that you didn't get sleep.
So really, the goal should just be to lay flat on your back, close your eyes in deep breathe, chill, just chill. Find something to do to decompress. That's the goal. So and if you sleep extra benefit, wonderful, But don't force it because the more you're forcing it, like you're saying that we're frustrated and anxious, you're gonna get find something that's relaxing. Psychology Today mentions a term called emotional labor, saying that it's the invisible will work to make others
feel cared for and comfortable. It has expanded into conversations about gendered roles, which you know, women being expected to assume more empathetic responsiveness and caretaking. Can you explain how emotional labor and task management, how this impacts sleep, and how in the fuck we reduce this? Come on? Good luck with that. I think it's a societal thing too, But I do see some waves. I mean it's a
huge desidal thing. I think there's waves changing of expectations. Right, so we lose ourselves when we're thinking about caring for everyone else. That that's those moments where you need to say to yourself, Okay, the first thing is if you can sleep, Like what what has to be done? Do I have to do all these things for everyone else before I go to bed, and to really think about prioritizing what what I like to be done, what a society say that I need to have done? Do I
need to have a perfectly clean house? And he's someone steps or comes over tomorrow unexpected, my in law has come over. It's letting go of that stuff, letting go of the expectations that you have for yourself and really about prioritizing what needs to get done. Who do I need to be focusing on in this moment, What would I'd like to get done? And what can wait for
a day or a week or whatever. And if you think about it that way, what's the most pressing It will help to take some of that pressure off yourself. I think, go to bed with the sink full of dishes, go to bed with a house that's messy. No one cares. If you think that it matters, it doesn't. This has been a huge learning curve for me what you're speaking
of right now. I've always kept a very O C D control oriented house and I have had to throw a lot of that ship away to like read a book, and I've had to like reconfigure how my brain space works. I'm a virgo. I love when ship looks pretty and organized. I have a very far Are you a virgo? Yep? Oh hilarious. I when's your birthday? September? So, but like I have a hard time doing anything if she doesn't look right to my eye. And I have had to really retrain myself of like not making the bed every
day because it just fell off the list. Or like you said, leaving ship out in the living room, all over the table, not cleaning up from dinner. On some nights where I've just been like I'm done. I cannot. I promised myself I would be in bed by nine o'clock. I'm not doing it. And I have to say it's been better. It's free, right. Yes, yes, My one of my best friends said to me a few years ago, and this will stick with me forever, and I loved it.
I apologize because she was going to come over for just a quick drop off and I said, um, I apologize my house as a mess. And she looked at me and said, you never need to apologize. You're a busy mom. Your house is as it is. I will not judge you for anything. And that to me, I wish that we just said that to another right to just be out and it was so free, just like
there's no expectations. I think COVID a little bit helped with that too for me of just like getting in the habit of like oh, no one was coming over. I mean now we're like sort of opening back up. And I've definitely been like, oh my god, I'm so embarrassed. We didn't like make the bed today, which like it's ingrained in me as a child. I mean, my mom didn't let me go to school unless my bed was made. But now I'm in a relationship, which we're going to
get into this question in a minute. What tips do you have? This is big on sleep for couples who get up at different times of the freaking day. They share the same bed, they get in bed at different times. I can count on two hands the amount of times my husband and I have gone to sleep at the same time and woken up at the same time. I am so impressed at couples that do that. My sleep is always in interrupted and so is his because he comes into bed late. It wakes me up. Then I'm like, oh,
I should pee, I go pee, I come back. I wake up really early with the kids. He's asleep. We're on opposite schedules. What are your recommendations for that. I am convinced that we should all be Lucy and DESI and just be in two twin bens and like meet up for sex. Like I, this is so ridiculous that we should. You know, I agree with you. So the first thing is I think people have this old school.
I think it's changing, but I mean some of my older patients I've worked with have this idea of, like, I have to go to bed at the same time as my spouse because for whatever we have to get up, And there's this weird like association with being tied together, sleep together, meeting a healthier relationship bs total bs. Oh, that's great to know everyone ever done that. I'm so glad. Like if you go to like, everyone has different sleep schedules.
Some people are night at als, people are early versus. My husband is much more of a night owl. I get up five fifteen in the morning. I go to bed super early, and it's okay. It doesn't mean that if you try to force one person to keep someone else's sleep schedule, all that does is make more resentment in the relationship. So I try to encourage people to know what your sleep schedule is. If you're content with
how you sleep, that's the thing. Like I work with in slomnia patients sometimes and I'm changing their bedtimes and wake times and sometimes it works out with what their husband or spouses doing. That's fine, but don't try to
force it if it's not happening. Now. The other thing that you were kind of hitting on is sleeping separately, So if well before that, if you if you have to keep different times of sleep, like because of kids or whatever, there's you know, there's also a little bit of disrespect, like some people just lighter sleepers than other
and that's it is what it is. You just have to accept it and not be angry if someone comes in and gets into bed unless you have like a California king and no one gets affected by it, but it just it might happen. But there's a bit of a discussion of okay, could you not turn on all the lights? Could you take out your clothes and advance so you're not opening and being thought full about that stuff.
And the one other thing I always recommend is vibrating alarm clocks so you can get like a watch or an under your pillow alarm so that you don't need to have a huge alarm go off that wakes up the other person. So vibrating ones are really big, so people don't never heard of that. And then when do
you sleep separate? If the person snoring and has gotten evaluated enough, get evaluated if you're snoring or having pauses and your breathing, or someone's a very restless sleeper, or you just are super light, get in bed before cuddle, have sex whatever, I don't care, and then when it's time to actually go to bed, if you both sleep better separately, sleep better separately, it will actually strengthen your relationship. Really,
So okay, So if there's resentment, right right? If? Okay, Yes, I do have another couple friend who I feel so bad. She's such a light sleeper and if her husband ever wants to go out and hang with my husband or whatever, God forbid, he comes into the bed and wakes her up. He's in the biggest, fattest trouble of all time, Like he's a fucking child. And I'm like, this is not good for either of you. He wants to have some sort of social life, have some sort of companionship with
guy friends, and she wants to get her sleep. Both are completely valid, um, And he's like terrified, like I can't go because she'll be asleep and I can't come in.
And I'm like, oh my god, this is ridiculous. Sleep separate for those nights or you know, like there's a plan for everyone, And I think there's so much stigma about sleeping separately that it's so funny when I have patience, I'm like, just why don't you just you tried everything, they're still snoring even with having your appne and treated or whatever. Why don't you just sleep separately? And it's like freeing for them when I say that, because I'm
a psychologist. So we still have sex, still cuddled, do all that stuff when it's not just like go to a separate interesting. Yeah, there is a stigma touch because you even say it, and I say, oh, marriage is in the toilet, like you know, you hear those the little kids being like, well my mommy and daddy sleep in separate rooms, and you're like, oh, ship, trouble and paradise. So let's change that conversation, right, So why is sleep important?
How does it help you with your emotion regulation, help you feel stronger and closer as a couple, So all those things are really important as well. And it doesn't just sleeping apart doesn't mean that they're having about relationship. So I actually encourage people to talk with their kids about it very openly and how sleep is super important for emotional health and physical health so that they can
be together as a couple for longer. You're featured in a number of Headspace videos shout out Headspace, I love it where you talk more about getting enough sleep, exercise, writing things down, taking bads, meditations, or some of the recommendations you had to help people wind down. Can you take us through these tips and tricks that we talked about, Like, are you like big on like no screens ten or fifteen minutes before? Are you big into white sound? Tell
me yeah. So I think there's different classes of how you have to think about sleep issues. Right, If you're someone who has an occasional bad night here and there, you might not likely meet the criteria for chronic insomnia. So that's a whole other thing. But I think in general, I don't have an issue with white noise. I actually, for a long time slept with white noise because it was moving houses and I was in a temporary apartment
and we were near our highway. So white noise is perfect and some people just like that noise in the background, no problem with it. The thing that you have to think about, though, is that you might get addicted to needing that noise to sleep. So I noticed when I moved to my permanent house was very quiet. I couldn't sleep without the noise. So if you're going to introduce it, just know that you might need it when you go away, you go to a hotel or something that you might
have to bring white noise with you. Um, but I screens, so there's a lot of Like, for a long time, we would say in the field, don't look at blue light before bed because it messes with your melotone in production and it makes you not be able to get a sleepy Some people are actually debating that more and more now and research, and that's okay. The screens are not necessarily the devil. What I think becomes the problem
is the all the stuff that we're watching. So this is where that mom saw me that like, I'm not going to bed because I want the time for myself kind of thing. We're binge watching things, we're stum scrolling, we're on Instagram until like, and that's the stuff I think that gets people sucked in and not going to sleep earlier for that reason. That's what it is for me, for sure. It is not the blue light for me.
It's that I'm rebelling against. This is my only time to me and so I'm gonna watch these shows or just mindlessly scroll Instagram or whatever, and all of a sudden I look over and it's one o'clock in the morning, and why did I do that? Yeah, you know, it feels great in the moment, but it's the long term pain that ends up causing over and over again. And I think that's how people need to start thinking about it. When it comes to that mom Sambie or revenge bedtime.
There's a whole bunch of you know, thoughts on it, but you really need to try and at least set a timer for yourself something to remind yourself of why you should be going to a little bit earlier. I do that for myself because I get in the human being, I get caught and all that stuff too. Oh my gosh, I could watch Netflix all day long. So I am set an alarm, and on my alarm, I also put
a label of what's my reason why? So I'm I need to go to bed because it will make me a better mom, it will make me better at my job, whatever. I have a label to remind me of why I'm doing it, not just like you don't need to go to bed kind of thing. And then the other thing I do is I put on I turn off the auto play on like Netflix or anything. If it keeps going, it goes from show to show to show, So I just have that setting off, So I have to make a conscious decision at the end of every show if
I want to choose sleep or TV. Okay, what about people who I think a lot of this conversation has been about going to sleep. What about the people who wake up all throughout the night? This is big for moms. You thought you heard a baby cry? Phantom cries? Like nobody business? Did I hear something like? We were talking about that era at how? And then you're up. Now you've gone to the bathroom. Now your brain is racing,
what the hell? What are what do we do? So if that's happening routinely, so at least three or more times a week for a few months, that's and like baby sleeping, fine, there's no other identifiable trigger that you need to work on. Then that's when it's actually now crossed over into the insomnia around or even like if you're avoiding screens before bed or all that, and you still can't fall asleep routinely despite doing all the basic sleep hygiene stuff. That's when you want to start thinking
about something called cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia. So it takes the basic sleep hygiene, but sometimes we actually change people's bed times, so it's kind of goes against what we were just saying a little bit more or earlier.
But sometimes if people are waking up a lot in the middle of the night and they're very active in their minds are activated, I actually have people go to bed a lot later and wake up at the same time and not necessarily now, because that helps to deepen their sleep and it helps them to if they wake up, they fall back asleep a little bit faster. So I don't just necessarily say I don't willy, really go to bed a lot later. Look up CBT, FRIENDSLOM, any of
the great apps out there. My book is a good example. You can work with someone like myself, but that actually can help to deepen sleep, and that's what we usually recommend if you're that kind of phantom listener or you're you wake up and you're worried or whatever else is going on, because you would rather people go to bed later and get more solid, connected hours, really quality. I think we get so focused on the quantity quality over quantity.
I have patients that will sleep really well within awakening here and there, but they go back to sleep with six and a half hours versus eight hours of chunk chunk chunk chunk throughout the night. So we really work on doing that sort of stuff. And then it's also about targetting the worries, right, So some people will wake up worrying about anything and everything. I know, I've been there, and we talk about ways to do things before bed to do almost like a brain dump, to target some
of those worries. Or we'll do things about what what are you doing in the middle and I are you like sitting there on your phone? Are you scrolling? Are you bad? Bad idea? So I have people get up and find other things to do in the middle of the night just to pass the time, because then if you start trying to force sleep to happen in the middle night, you're gonna make it worse. So we try to take the focus off it a little less time in bed, and I work with tailoring it very much
to someone. It's a really effective treatment, and like I said, there are apps out there that can help some people cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia bbt I. It is the gold standard treatment. So if you have someone that's like, we'll just take an ambient or take this, But they never mentioned cbt I, that actually is the thing that should be started first. Wow, why is eight hours the thing? It's not the thing that's the problem. So well, where the fund did this come from? Like? Why that is
the beat of my existence? The eight hours? So it just comes from the majority of people need, meaning to feel well rested and refreshed throughout the day and have a little dip here and there, need between six and nine hours, So what's the middle seven and a half. It's easy to round it up to eight. That's where I get eight from. So I always tell people stop focusing on number eight. Paint to get in gold putting
out a pedestal. If you're between six to nine and you feel well, arrested and refreshed with dips throughout the day, and good luck. I mean big a parent retired a lot, right, But if that's happening, don't you know, don't focus on the number. How does caffeine play into all of this? So caffeine. I love my caffeine like I have a big coffee here. You know, it's the sort of thing where it's fine to have a cup or two in the morning. I usually have people limited. Everyone's a little different.
That's the problems we don't have like a good blood test to be like, you metabolize caffeine a lot faster, but usually it takes for most people about twelve hours for half of the coffee or caffeine to leave your body. So if you've had a big cup of coffee at noon, half of it has left your body by midnight. So it's okay at that point, but you know that little bit here and there in the afternoon starts to add up, and it does stay in our bodies for a long
amount of time. And the older you get, the flower it takes to metabolize it. It's not fun. Yeah, And also to think about think about medications and stuff. So a lot of people take like headache medications and a lot of women and they have caffeine in them. So if you're not sure, ask your doctor if there's any caffeine in you really read those ingredients. People, Um, what tips do you have for people who are looking to get a good night's rest but are like working shifts? Yeah,
I mean that's a harder one. It really depends on the shift. So I work with people a good amount to try and come up with tailored to sleep schedules. This is a good example of like try to have a protected environment so that someone's not coming in and out. So if you can try and have a protected, quiet, dark, cool environment. And then the other big thing is, you know,
it depends on what kind of shifts. So if you have a stable shift, so we're always working night, for example, try not to then switch it completely to the day and the time that you have the days off. So a lot of people will like sleep during the day when they're working, and then they'll sleep at night to try and spend time with their family and friends. I
totally appreciate that. It's wonderful an idea. Instead, maybe try to shift halfway, so sleep from four am to noon on your days off instead of at night to get the afternoons with him. So like a halfway shift is a little bit more gentle than totally reversing day and night. And then of course tell everyone when you're trying to sleep, make it, don't make appointments in the middle, like protect that time. Just like you would for anybody else who's
sleeping in that time. Tell me about what you touched upon briefly, just now the temperature and the darkness. Okay, yeah, So I always say to keep your room like a pretty cave basically, so dark, quiet, cool and comfortable. Right, and you know, like if you're someone whose room is really cletter to give you a lot of anxiety, like maybe try to clean up a little bit so you
feel more comfortable and relaxed in your room. But it really should be dark and not just like room darkening shades like pitch black is ideal, pitch act is ideal. What about a sleep mask. That's fine if you need a sleep mask, all for it. If you can get like life blocking shades completely for kids, it's super important. People don't often think about it, but we It's funny, we think about it for our kids a lot of times, and we do all these things for kids, but we
don't do them for ourselves. I don't have them in my room. My kids have total blackout shades, a little bit of white noise, and I always keep it at sixty seven degrees, you know, and that's the ideal temperature. Oh great for sixties mid to upper sixties is kind of ideal for most people upwards of seventy two. But that's a little too warm in my opinion. But it's funny, like we talk about wine down, relaxing, non stimulating activity for our kids. It's not like you all of a
sudden hit eight teaming. You not grow that stuff. We still need that stuff in our lives. So why do we think my room I don't have darkening shades. I can't do seventy two. If I'm sharing the bed with Adam, I'm so hot I want to kill someone. Um, we do have a little We travel with our white noise. I do too. I do the same thing. But honestly, the white noise was a big help for me, um
in stopping thinking that I'm hearing my children. The other thing I talked to a lot of women about which I'm curious about, is when to turn off the monitor. I get so many moms friends whose child is one and a half and the monitor is still right next to their head, and I'm like, listen to me. The baby's got a full vocal box. If something is wrong, you will hear it because they scream very loudly. Anything
else shy of that is not your business. Tell me if I'm not a doctor, I but I'm like, oh, so they let out a sound because they let out a fart, like whatever, it's not your business, and then that ship wakes you up and then you can't get back to sleep. So like, I have to convince myself the baby is in a crib that is safe, that does not have anything in it unless they are at of the appropriate age where your pediatrician has it is safe to do. So, um, that my monitor is off.
But I think a lot of women struggle with anxiety and mom guilt about turning that monitor off and feeling this need to know every single's peep and sound, and like my son full on screams and has conversations and is sleep talking, and I'm like, I don't want to know. He will scream mommy at the top of his lungs multiple times over if he needs me, and so will she. Yeah, that's exactly it. And I think the thing is that there's a few few things to impact. So the first
thing is the monitor. So I often will recommend start with the monitor if you're being even if it's a younger baby, like they're crying, you can hear them. If it's too anxiety rising to turn it all the way off, turn it halfway. Like, no one needs the monitor full strength. You don't need the full vine, so turn it down and then you can gradually turn it down lower. Now the bigger thing I think also is that babies what babies are noisy? They just are noisy, and I think
we have to accept that, not a renoys. Like you were saying, it's necessarily distressing call for you, so turn the volume down. The other thing that's a bigger problem though, is a lot of them, the like self monitor things that will have the alarm go off to tell you something's wrong. The new pediatric skandlines have come out saying
try not to use those things. Actually prefer people not using it because they feel like then people get kind of lucy goosey about the betting environment and they can have the nice crib betting because and they'll have something exactly. So I actually tell if you're an anxious person to
begin with espect. Now that the guidance have come out and kind of pushing against it, that's great, But in the past, if you have one trying not to use it, if you tend to be anxious because there's a lot of false alarms, and I think it just makes parents sleep way worse than any gain that you get from it,
which makes you a worse parent sleep. This is such an important episode because for me, sleep is directly related to how I parent and how I am in my relationship to add at a certain point, I remember with both of my children, I chose me and my sleep over them, and it was the moment I turned off the monitor and I was like, good luck, fend for yourselves. I've put you in a safe space. Like my daughter's crib is her safe space. My son's room is his
safe space. He is safe in there, there's nothing in there that could hurt him. And I have to go to bed and like su And I remember going on my first like vacation with Albie when he was little, and I brought the monitor and everything and and we were somewhere it was it's I love my monitor so much. It's the nanot But they it didn't work in the WiFi. And I was like, what do I do? And my mom was like, you could just do which what we did, which is you just listen and if you hear something
that's really loud, you go in otherwise it's fine. And I was like, oh ship, I can do that. So for all the moms listening, this is your permission to choose your sleep over. And I'm preaching what I've learned, which is just I had to really prioritize my mental health, which is directly related to my sleep over. Fucking studying that monitor all night long, which all these women are doing. It's awful. And the guy and your spouse is not. I got news for you, Like it's it was, it's
right next to my head. My husband doesn't hear anything. And people will come with like print outs of what time baby was possibly awake or sleep or all this, Like, how is this helping you to change anything that you're doing. It's not. It's just making even more anxious about it. There's there's a more net, like you can track things on a piece of paper and you can do it. Like it's just the constant data sometimes just makes us more anxious and we have to be aware of that.
I'm also going to say something that's very controversial. I I feel really bad that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that the kid sleeps in your room now for like a year, like why six months? Six months? But but I would tell you that the sleep field itself was not loving the year officially because it was you know, there's a point where parents sleep also has to be
prioritized to. Yeah, and I also think of babies, like you said, they make a lot of like like they're working out of fart, their digestive systems coming on track, it's vocal, they're they're taking a crap, whatever it is. But it's like if that's in your room for that extended amount of time, Like obviously everyone's got to make whatever personal choices and whatever their pediatrician recommends. But for me, and I'm going to say it here, folks, my neither
of my kids ever slept in my room. And and that worked for us. Like I had the monitor, I wanted them to love their crib. I wanted them to love their room, and I it wasn't actually until I had a night nurse, Alexandra Latin, who was actually on this podcast. She's Dutch, and she was like, oh, yeah, the babies going the crib like immediately in other country, I mean, I mean, and then there are countries where I'm sure the babies are like in the beds with
the mommy. So look, there's no right or wrong, but we're here to tell you prioritize your sleep, in your sanity if you're if you're not doing well, I was not doing and it's yeah, it's a conversation to have with your pediatrician for sure. If you're suffering and your baby is now at the point where really the risk of they're flipping over on their own and the risk of sins is significantly reduced, that is a discussion to have with your pediatrician because it will be I keep
saying freeing, but that shame. Guidelines are there for a reason, but you have to really tailor to whatever situation you're going through and talk with your doctor for sure. Um, thank you so much for all of your advice. It's it's unbelievable. Do you have any tips on us following through with such steps to help hold ourselves accountable? How
do we hold ourselves accountable? Win a week is like, oh, I'm gonna do a week where I set a timer for Netflix, or I'm gonna do a week where I'm really careful walking in the rooms so I don't wake up the person. How do you fucking sustain this? I think that mom groups are great if you have mom friends or friends who are parents in the same boat to all really try and say, you know what, I really need to make this more of a priority to
have that kind of support. Sometimes if you're asking your significant other to like call you add on it, then it causes more relationship problems, I think. But I also think you know, like just to think about your why over and over again. And I always encourage people. The biggest tip that I always give people is to just give two weeks to it. So say, Okay, I'm gonna cut a firm bedtime where I'm gonna turn off all
the internet, I'm gonna do all this stuff. I'm gonna try and make sleep propriety, or I'm gonna work on whatever insomnia I have. And if you don't see gains after two weeks and how you feel during the day, okay, fine, But a two week effort you might you will likely see some some gains. So if you can commit two weeks, you'll you'll get more motivation a long run. Love that Any final things you've learned about momsomnia that no one
told you about, or that you wish you had known. Well, I think people weren't talking about that mom somnia aspect, but like just trying to take back time for yourself at night. And I'm glad that people are talking about it now, but I think still people are just not always thinking about how it's affecting them. I think the biggest thing is if you're someone who has insomnia where you just can't sleep, no how or how hard you try,
really get that addressed. See a professional, look at the apps, books, whatever, because it can increase the risk of postpartum depression. So really make sleep that four hour chunk of priorities best you can. Because people weren't talking about that for a long time. What is the title of your book? One more time? The Women's got to overcoming insomnia get a good night's sleep without relying on medication. Oh my god, that's so great, because that's the other thing too. I'm
sorry to interrupted a lot of I see. The other thing that made me really interested in this age range or with women, is that a lot of women would say I have terrible sleep. I'm zomniac. I can't but I don't want to take the sleeping pills because I want to hear my child if they wake up at night. So to work on women sleeping better without relying on medication was one of the biggest things that made me really start doing this. Talk to me about melatonin, h
I could talk for days on it. So melatonin for UM in the US, it's not regulated by the FDA, so what you get is kind of you're just it's a little bit of a crapshoot based on the brand in the variety, and you we look for things that are USP certified, so you know that another group has looked at it and said, what's in the bottles in the bottle, but it's not really the cure all for insomnia that most people think it is. So the majority of people will come to me, I've tried melotonin. It
doesn't really do that much. It's not without side effects, so it does help some people, not everyone, though. It can make people more groggy, nauseous, cause vivid dreams and nightmares and a lot of people so if you're taking you dreams that might or vivid dreams, that might be why. And we do use it for certain things, but we don't use it all that off In for insomnia. And also if you're taking more than three milligrams to five
milligrams max, you're taking way too much. So a lot of people I see take ten milligrams no way, Oh my gosh. Interesting. What about magnesium? Magnesium has even less research by it. But I do find magnesium. I use it a lot for myself because I get leg cramps from from running. I do find it's helpful for leg cramps um and it does calm and chill some people out and help some people sleep. But again, it's not that if it was as simple as melodonnan in magnesium,
we wouldn't have insomnia now. So if it helps you, great, make sure your doctor's okay with it, but don't just keep taking more and more and more hoping that will work. Over the counter is not necessarily without side effects. Finish this sentence. Parenthood is a roller coaster. Like it. Parenthood is a freaking roller coaster, and you will feel much better about it all if you get some quality as sleep. And guess what, guys, that might not be eight hours
for you, because I really like seven. I'm not gonna lie that that last hour. I'm just like frustrated, Like this doesn't do anything for me if it's And there's some people actually saying that seven might be better than eight for a lot of people. So yeah, Dr Shelby Harris, this was so brilliant, so helpful. I hope that we can give the gift of sleep to any of the moms who have listened here to pick up any tips
or tricks or pre planning to help them. Sleep is so important, and we do not as the moms we are, and the mom guilt and being the martyrs and all of that, we don't put enough attention that a good night's sleep or two can really change your outlook, perspective, and experience of motherhood. Truly. So y'all listening, go get a good night's sleep. Please go get Dr Shelby Harris's book Recommended to any friends and new moms and not new moms who are having sleep issues CBT, insomnia CBT.
I Oh my god, I learned so much. Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode. I want to hear from you. Let's chat questions, comments, concerns. Let me know. You can always find me at Katie's Crib at Shanda land dot com. Katie's Crib is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shandoland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.