Seize the Bébé // A session on sleep regressions

to Seize the Babe. I'm Sarah Davidson, a lawyer turned f entrepreneur who hung up the suits and heels to co found Mata Maiden a Macha milk Bar, become a TV and radio presenter, and of course host The Sees the Ya Podcast. This year, I added motherhood to that list, which is the best job I've ever had with our beautiful baby Teddy, and this segment was designed to house

all the conversations we've been having about parenthood. We'll still do our regular episodes, and just like real life, it's a constant balance between our parent identity and everything else. I hope you guys enjoy this segment as much as I have enjoyed creating it. Lovely neighborhood, we are back with the third installment of Seize the Baby, on a topic that's already been the most requested in my dms, and that was actually before this segment even came up.

I think it might be the reason that I thought of the idea to move some of these answers to

podcast form because I had been screenshotting AUNT. I answered one person's question in as much detail as I could, and then I just couldn't repeat that over and over again because it was I tried to put as much detail as possible, and I ended up just literally copying and pasting sending out these terrible screenshots of my answers, and I still felt like there wasn't enough real estate in single story frames to cover everything that I wanted to try and say to be reassuring or to just

share our experience. I felt like it really deserved a full, proper ted talk length episode. So that's what's going to come in your ears. And I also think it's a topic that sparked a level of desperation in me for information that I have never experienced before. And that is saying something because new parenthood, you're always for information about what to do and so to be able to pick one thing that sparked the most desperation, like that's saying something.

We're talking, of course, about the elusive and emotionally charged topic of sleep, and particularly the dreaded sleep regression or regressions as supposedly joy there are several Even within parenthood, where most topics are already a bit emotional or judge, sleep seems to be especially sensitive, and I think that's often because you're usually only talking about it if you're

not getting enough, which is never anyone's best version of themselves. So, as with all of these episodes, a big disclaimer to start, this is all anecdotal. It's not an exhaustive, fully researched guide to sleep. I have no professional experience or scientific backing. I'm just answering your questions about what we did, and there are many sleep specialists or pediatricians or experts who you can turn to if you need actual advice. I'm

not trying to give any advice. I've just been asked the question a lot of times and want to give as much detail as I can. Every baby and family is different, though, and what worked for us this time might not work next time. But having said that, when I was in the depths of it. I didn't care about disclaimers. I didn't care that anyone was saying this might not work for you. I still wanted to know what everyone else was doing, just because, Yeah, like I said,

you're so desperate for information on what might help. So I'll just lay out what we did. But I just want to remind everyone that this area is very specific to you and also to the age of your baby too. Yeah, it's very specific to so many factors. For context, I'm talking about our experience getting through the so called four month regression, which is the first major one that gets

talked about, and Teddy was born two weeks early. This hit us almost exactly at four months and two weeks, so at his perfectly adjusted age of four months, he's so punctual that boy, oh my goodness. Look, we've barely started, and I already again have to add a little note

that there's already some division around the term regression. So before we even start talking about sleep reggressions, there's some division around whether they exist, and secondly, there's some division around if they do exist, are they called progressions not regressions. I'm going to call it a regression, because that's just the most common description when you're googling, when you're doing your own research, and I did feel like Teddy's sleep

went backwards. But I do appreciate the positive slant of the name progression, and it comes from the idea that the sleep disruptions that happen during a regression often happened because your baby's learning a new skill, so they're actually going forwards, not backwards. So it's kind of putting a positive on something that feels otherwise quite negative. So I do appreciate that that's a really positive, yay kind of way to look at it. But I'll just still call

it a regression because it's easier. As to those who say they don't exist. I'm not sure on the exact science, but as I understand it, at least for the four month regression, there's a big shift in the way baby sleep. It's just some babies don't show a disruption or any symptom in that shift. That's how I understand it. So I think when people say they don't exist, they don't mean that, like I think all babies do necessarily go through the shift. I think just some babies don't show

any symptoms. So in that sense, they don't exist. I'm not one hundred percent sure if that's the way that kind of school of thought comes about. But for me anyway, there was enough material out there for me to personally accept that they happen, and then our experience was very textbook on all the symptoms of the so called four month regression. So to me, it exists. Each to their own.

Please go and do other research on the different terms and all that stuff, but I'm just going to continue as if, you know, treating it as if the four month regression is a thing, because it was fast. So for some more background, there are a few main regressions that are talked about, with four being the first, and then I think there's sort of eight, twelve, eighteen months.

There might be a few more or a few less, but they seemed to be the main ones that came up when I was looking at everything from I understand, and the four months regression is when a baby goes from newborn sleep, which has no real cycles. It's just kind of whenever. They don't have Ciccaian rhythms, they don't

really know day or night. It's just chunks of sleep, and that tends to sort of improve and get longer as they develop a little bit more, and then they shift from that newborn sleep to cycles of sleep, which is what adults have. We sleep in cycles. But what happens when there are symptoms is that they can't link

those cycles. Again. I don't know what the actual science is, but that's how I understand it from a kind of lay person's view, that they move from not having cycles to having cycles, and then in between each cycle whatever wakes them up, and then they can't get back to sleep themselves. They can't kind of link those cycles into big chunks of sleep. So that means going from longer sleeps to waking up very often, which is exactly what

happened to Teddy. And that kind of tends to be the main description of what a sleep regression is is just disrupted sleep. And I'm not sure that I realized initially for us, because it was masked by jet lag. You guys might remember we took Teddy to Italy and we came back exactly on his sort of four and a half month marker, but he went from sleeping for eight to ten hours in a row, and that was like a dream. I didn't even realize how good we

had it. But he'd just been inching closer and closer to eight to ten hours in a row without any wakeups. He went from that consistently to waking every hour to one and a half hours overnight, which continued well past jet lags. So at the start, I was like, Okay, cool, we've obviously taken him overseas. He's changed complete time zones and weather and everything. It's disrupted. That makes sense, big

changes to routine. But then it went on for weeks and weeks and weeks, so I eventually realized, obviously it must be something else. And that's when I personally accepted that the four months regression is a thing and it was happening to us. I thought it would resolve naturally. I think that's kind of you know, you give things a bit of a chance before intervening to resolve themselves, maybe as he would get more used to his routine and got more used to being home, But it didn't.

It continued, I would say for maybe six weeks before I sort of actually thought about what to do. I didn't even you kind of almost don't even realize that something has become such a thing, and then my approach was, yeah, during that time, was just do anything to help him get back to sleep. When he would wake up every hour, I thought, well, he's not going to go back to sleep himself. I need to help him get back to sleep, especially in the middle of the night. You're just like,

I'll do anything. So I started a habit at that time of feeding him back to sleep. But then I was feeding him so often that then he'd wet through his nappies, and then his appetite would change during his daytime feeding because I was feeding him too much at night, and so many things get thrown out of kilter during that sort of sleep disruption. It becomes such a hard cycle.

I won't talk about it again too much here because I've already spoken about it in a lot in the Juggle episode, which was with my dear friend Genevieve Day,

so you can go back to that one. But yeah, this is the period I was talking about where I really started to spiral and had the hardest time I've had so far in the parenting journey because I just wasn't getting enough sleep and it affects everything, your physical health, your mental health, and I mean every hour for weeks on end is really quite brutal, and I really really found it was the first time I felt like I

was spiraling out of control. So if you are going through a sleep regression, it's you're so worried about your child and helping them get back to sleep, but it's also that your life kind of feels like it's spiraling out of control. And one thing that I got told a lot by so many mums who were so reassuring to me during that time was sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. It is literally not the state that humans are supposed to exist in. It's not

when you're going to be operating at your best. Like often I think there's a comparison between being sleep deprived and driving under the influence of alcohol, Like it affects everything about your thinking, your mood, your everything. So it was a really, really hard time. And yeah, you can go back to that episode to listen to sort of the emotional side effects of what was happening, But here I'm just focusing on, like physically what was going on.

So yeah, we got into a really difficult cycle physically and mentally. And it's really interesting because I think a regression is often the first time, or it was for us. The four months regression anyway, was the first time that we started to think about sleep is something that you have to do anything about. Like before I just noticed Teddy was sleepy, I put him down, and then I

waited until he woke up. And of course it's you know, the sleep deprivation is hard at the beginning because they're waking up a lot, and you know, their little babies, and but then it kind of improves bit by bit and then yeah, you're just kind of going following their lead. But I never really thought that I had to do

anything about it. But then when there starts to be this disruption, this constant, unsustainable disruption, it was the first time I thought, oh, I actually have to proactively do something about his sleep to fix it, so to speak. And the hardest part when you get to that junction in your parent or journey, is well, what do you actually do to fix it? Like what is the action that you can take? So here is where it gets really

hard because it becomes so personal to you. And basically there is an entire spectrum of options on how to approach sleep when your little one is struggling with it. And this is only you know, at this four month regression age, we haven't gone through anything further than that. So this is again even more specific to this particular

regression versus others. I have no experience on any that are further down the track, but I mean, even with the basics of setting up your baby for sleep, generally, it all depends on your personal preference on whether you room share, whether you bed share, whether you have a snoop whether you don't, whether you have the heat or on, do use sleep sacks, do you swaddle like There's just so many variables even with the environment that your baby

asleep in. So for this episode, I'm going to assume that you've already covered those basics and chose and what's right for you in terms of white noise machines, blocking out the light in the room, the wind down routine, sleep, clothing, temperature, the room setup, all of that, because that information is rarely available everywhere and there are just too many variables

to kind of cover. But just if you are having trouble with sleep, think about those basics of setting up the room and the environment for the most positive sleep that you can. For me, in this time. My desperation came from having ticked all of those off and still not getting anywhere, still kind of having this constant waking up and knowing that it wasn't for any of those reasons. That's where my kind of research here came about. But do go on research all the other things that you

can do if you're not already doing those. There's also a lot to think about in terms of how many hours each day your baby needs overall of sleep, which again varies so much, and then what's over or undertied for one baby is different for another. So there are all those factors at play in terms of helping them

get the best sleep. But I'll just focus on the actual techniques to help help with fixing the sleep progression once all those things are sorted, and then you're still getting a no dice, because yeah, that's the question that I get asked the most. So the spectrum of options at one end there is do nothing, just keep going as you are, and that involves what I had been doing the whole time. It's not doing nothing, but it's like kind of not taking on an actual approach to

fixing the sleep. It's just getting them back to sleep in the moment, So that involves yeah, doing whatever helps them get back to sleep, feeding them to sleep, co sleeping, whatever helps in the moment get you and your child back to sleep. That's kind of the do nothing end of the spectrum, and I think there's a lot of judgment in that area. I mean, like I said, most areas of parents are to judge it, but there's even more judgment about you shouldn't be feeding your baby to sleep,

they should be falling asleep on their own. That phrase put them down drowsy but awake. There's a lot of controversy around coast. I think it's widely misunderstood. I think there's been so much like centuries of healthy co sleeping in other cultures, Like there's yeah, it's very loaded area and I won't go into it there, but at least for the purposes of this episode, there is one end of the spectrum where you just do anything to help your baby get back to sleep, without sort of teaching

them anything or fixing anything. You're just doing. You're helping them, like you're kind of doing the putting them to sleep. Above all, I'll say, if it works for you and doesn't upset your balance. It's absolutely fine to just stay in that space. There's nothing wrong with feeding your baby to sleep every hour, Like, if that's absolutely your prerogative, if it doesn't affect your ability to function or enjoy

your life, then absolutely go and do that. I think a lot of the literature now that's trying to say you don't need to fix that situation is Yeah, if it doesn't bother you and you're okay, and you know it's not taking away from your job or your mental health or whatever, then you absolutely can refeed to sleep,

co sleep, do all those things. The only reason that I needed a solution to stop that, which I had been doing for sort of six to eight weeks, is because I got to the point where the sleep deprivation of me helping him to sleep every cycle was just taking such a heavy toll on my life. But I did definitely continue on that way for at least a

few weeks. And I think the other thing is that there's so much information out there that sometimes it's actually harder to make a decision and easier just to keep struggling. So I knew from four or five weeks that it was unsustainable. I couldn't work and function and be healthy and be a good mum. If I was waking up that often, I was getting resentful, I was crabby, I was tired. I just was in a haze all the time. But I didn't know what else to do, so you

just kind of keep struggling on. So yeah, it lasted again like another month before I could even process the information about what to do. So yeah, I think at that end of the spectrum, there's often you're sitting in it because you don't know what else to do. But if you choose to sit in it because it works for you, then absolutely that's fine. But for me, it inevitably got too hard, So that's when I started looking

at other options. At the complete other end of the spectrum on kind of fixing the sleep is what's called sleep school, and that is often a residential program where you kind of check in with your baby, and that's the end goal is fix the sleep disruption or the regression, or if it's outside of a regression, it's just to fix the sleep generally and teach them to sleep. If it's inside of aggresson, it's obviously to fix the regression. There's also I mean again, there's also a lot of

judgment at that end of the spectrum. There's a lot of judgment everywhere, but at that end of the spectrum, I think the main controversy is kind of around the idea that they're often associated sleep schools are often associated with crying it out, kind of leaving the baby overnight to just cry without you intervening. There's a lot of Again, these aren't my personal views, this is just sort of what seems to be the bulk of material out there.

Judgment comes from the idea that you know, your baby might feel abandonment and all that kind of stuff. So I won't go into the moral or value based discussions because again, it all so heavily depends on your personal values, on your priorities. I'm just laying out the factual options in case it's helpful for you to know. But yeah, at the other end of the spectrum, there's sleep school.

I know many people who have done this. Actually, when I first said that I was really having trouble with Teddy sleep, the answer I got, like the recommendation I got the most was for people having done one of the residential programs and saying that it has really set them and their family up well from a place of having really really struggled. So yeah, lots of people have done this and swear by it each to their own.

For me, it wasn't quite in line with the approach I wanted to take, but that rapidly changes as you get further into sleep deprivation as well, so you kind of as you get more and more desperate, your views

on things definitely change. And yeah, you just can't judge what any decision anyone else makes, so I did always have it up my sleeve and we live very c by to one of the sleep schools that's really well recommended, So at the time I wanted to try other things first, but it was definitely still always kind of in my mind. It may still be in future. Again, I can't rule that out either, But if you did want to research this, A few options that I got recommended a lot in

Melbourne at least were Masada or Waverley Private. I'm not sure for the other states, but you can go and research that. And that's also it depends on you personally as well, if you don't have the physical or mental capacity to do any kind of sleep training at home, or it depends how many other children you have, and anyway, it depends on so many different things. But that's the

other end of the spectrum. In the middle is a whole range of different approaches to I think the middle bit between nothing and sleep school is called sleep training, where you help your child with sleep, and it has varying degrees of sort of strictness or varying degrees of intensity, so to speak. And there are so many options. Like I almost didn't even do this episode because I was like, it's just too hard to explain everything because there's variables off,

Like the chart of options is just too drastic. But again, I just got sick of copying and pasting my terrible answer, so I thought I could if I could be as comprehensive as I can for anyone who's listening, who's at the bit of her journey where she just can't process it and need someone to just lay out the map. Hopefully this is somewhat helpful. So there are so many

options in this kind of sleep training bracket. If you don't feel like you can do it unsupported, there are a lot of in home consultants who do this as their job, and they can kind of come and do if you don't want to do, you know, check into a residential program, which is often like five to seven days full time. There are home consultants who can come to your house and they can help you with it, sort of hands on. There's also a program I heard

of recently. Actually, my incredible podcast editor Sam from podcast Butler Big shout out to him. He's just such an incredible human being, and we've had babies at a very similar time, so we've been through a lot of this. He also suggested a program called Tresillian, which is you can do it online, but it's also like having an in home consultant kind of on call to look at, you know, the cues that your baby has and guide you through it with a more hands on way. So

that's another option to look up. We didn't do that, but I know he had a lot of success with it. So I wanted to do the in home consultant option because I didn't think that I'd be able to kind of tolerate any level of crying from Teddy and do it myself. I just wanted the structure of having someone

come in. But the people who I had turned to at the time totally understandably he didn't have any bookings like that night, which is the stage that you get to Usually by the time you're researching, you want an answer like that night, or at least to be starting something that night or the next day. And I couldn't get anything. I think it was three days away, which just shows how you feel when you're in the depths

of it. That three days felt like an eternity, and I was like, I can't wait that long, like I'll book it, but I'm so desperate that I have to feel like I'm doing something in between. So I had three days at my sleeve, and I was like, well, I've got nothing to lose because I feel so awful that I'll try one of the DIY methods. And the DIY methods kind of fill in the whole rest of the bulk of that middle bit of options. Some are quicker than others, some are more intense than others. There's

a again, like so many options. It's really confusing because everyone uses different terminology. But you might hear words like the chair method, pick up, put down, shush, pat space, soothing. There's like so many different names. Basically, the idea is there from gradual or really gentle to kind of more intense and a bit quicker. So, as I said, they

all have different names, it can be very confusing. Then some are tailored completely and don't really have a name, because if you see an at home consultant or an online consultant, they'll make something custom for you. I'm not going to lay them all out because there are just

so many variations. But yes, they involve different levels of of going in and out of your baby's room after you put them down for bed, different levels of soothing when they do get upset or wake up, whether picking them up or patting them or just being in the room. And then there's different timing of the intervals of coming in and out or patting or shushing or whatever you're doing.

You can see how many variables there are and why it's just going to be impossible to lay them all out what we did though, Oh my goodness, you can see why I had to copy and paste so many different things to give everyone that context before I got to this part of the answer. So you guys know that we have taken Teddy to babyspa since he was very young, absolutely loves it, and they firstly, babyspar has helped so much with his sleep because he actually gets

tired out, and yeah, it's amazing for baby sleep. They also have in house sleep consultants and they saw me week by week getting more decrepit and struggling and offered to give us a bit of guidance on sleeping. And at the same time an amazing pedatrician called doctor Golly, who many of you will have heard of. He's a pre eminent pediatrician who consults out of Kabrini, which is where Teddy was born, but also has so much online information.

He has an amazing Instagram page. But he also has these really comprehensive guides for all the way from newborns to toddlers and young children on everything but particularly sleep. They're routines, they're eating settling techniques. These guys are absolutely amazing. He also has some books, and a lot of my friends had used him as a pediatrician and had a lot of success with his guide. So I actually bought the guide for Teddy's age group, and I hadn't needed

it because he hadn't. I sort of just hadn't opened it because I hadn't actually opened the sleep part anyway. Until this regression, and both of those things at the same time had detailed two main types of approaches and they were quite similar. And so that you know, when something you hear something from kind of more than one source, that's when your brain can kind of process it. So yeah, Doctor Gollie's guides have been amazing more broadly and gave

us so much guidance. Also with all the other basics I mentioned, like the overall day plan, the sleep routine, the sleep environment, the impact of whether or not they're on solids on their sleep, what solids they're eating. Literally every aspect is covered in his Big Baby Guide, so separately, but including the sleep regression context. I highly recommend that guide and I purchased it. This wasn't sponsored or anything.

I will put the link in the show notes. And he has since become our pediatrician, so that yeah, wasn't at the time, so there was no yeah. I just was trying it out and then we liked him so much that we've moved over. So back to the two front running options that we thought we had. The first one is a bit more gentle, and that's got lots of different names. I think doctor Gollie calls it the cudle to cot method. This one doesn't involve sort of leaving a baby to cry it out by themselves for

any amount of time. So it's, like I said, a bit more gradual and a bit gentler, And for that reason, I think think a lot of people start with this, but you do have to be very patient and very consistent over quite a while. So the overarching idea is that you put your baby down to sleep and you

stay in the room with them. When they start crying, you can settle them, you can pat them or touch them or whatever kind of soothing method that you choose, and then if they continue crying, you can pick them up, you give them a cuddle, you wait till they stop crying, and then you put them back down, and then you

keep doing that process. There's a bit of variation around how long you wait when they do start crying again before you pick them up, but because you're able to console them and physically do so, you're not leaving the room and leaving them there, it is considered, yeah, a bit gentler. I was a bit more desperate at the time that we had started to read about these methods, and as much as I originally would have thought this would have been my choice because there is no crying

it out. I had those three days, as I mentioned, and I really had been reassured by hearing that there was an option that And actually one of the consultants that Baby Spas said to me on the days when I was about to begin, saying, you will see results with this method. By sort of day two, you'll see some change, and by three you'll probably be back on track. And that, I mean that level of certainty sounded firstly

like too good to be true. I was definitely a bit skeptical when I heard that, but it also sounded like I had to try because I was just so desperate. So the second option, which is a bit more intense, is called spaced soothing. That was the same terminology between Baby spar and Doctor Golly and a lot of other sources. I feel like it's maybe the most consistently named approach,

and it's a version of controlled crying. But unlike crying it out, where you just leave the baby by themselves for an indefinite amount of time, this allows you to go in and check on them at spaced intervals, hence the spaced soothing, so it's not as intense, but there are still, of course some periods of crying, which I

found absolutely devastating and so difficult. But coming back to the level of desperation I was at, but also someone pointed out to me that once, of course you've eliminated they're not in pain, they're in a safe place, they've got to clean, nappy, all of those things. They are just crying because they've gotten used to one thing and

you've taken it away. It's just a change in routine, and they're crying out because you've gone from literally feeding him every hour and he wakes up expecting milk and then you don't give it to him. Of course he's going to have a little bit of a fuss about that. So that perspective really helped me get through those hard moments.

Plus the duration of those intervals, which are your hard moments when you're out of the room, you're teaching them to self soothe, you're choosing how long those intervals are. Basically everyone kind of has a space soothing table with the recommended intervals to use, but then you choose what feels right for you. So yeah, I don't think there's any strict rules, and I think every table that I've seen for space soothing is different from all the different

places that you'll find it. But we ended up following doctor Gollies and I'll put the link to that in the show notes. As I mentioned, so basically, what you do is you put your child with this method into their cot while they're awake, and then the idea is that you want them to fall asleep in the same place that they're going to wake up, so that, yeah, they don't get sort of scared when they do wake up in a different place, and then they can self

settle themselves between the sleep cycles. So yes, you're trying to get them to fall asleep, but unlike the first method, you don't stay in there with them. You put them down and then you leave the room if they do start crying. Instead of the first method where you would sort of touch them and where you can pick them up, you go into you can go back into the room to check on them, but you don't pick them back up, and do you only remain in there for a short

amount of time. I think it's around one to two minutes that you remain in the room, and then even if they don't calm down, you go back out again for another interval. So this method involves pretty much checking in and going in and out of the room, so you're never leaving them there for like an hour, you know, at once, but you are allowing them to cry by themselves for a bit, which is absolutely brutal and it

hurt myself so much. I mean, it really is difficult, and I was in such a desperate position, but I did feel reassured that I could go in and I could reassure him and check on him at those intervals in between kind of leaving him for periods of time.

And all of the tables will have intervals set for the first time you wait the second weight, the third weight, and any more weights, and then it will say what those are for day one that you try, Day two that you try, they get a little bit longer, day three they get a bit longer, and it kids going, And that's the bit that will change depending on who

you're using as your guidance. Then, of course, if your child is getting really really distressed, or if there's any intervening circumstance like teething or something, you know, like they went through their nappy, then of course you sort of abandon it and you know, go and do what you need to do to take care of them. But in a neutral world, you are following the interval table of going in and out, and you're using a timer a lot as well, and five seconds feels like five hours.

But I will say that what the baby Spark consultant said to me was absolutely true. Day one, it took an hour for him to fall asleep, But that wasn't an hour crying, you know, consistently without me. We were going in and out, in and out, in and out. But it did take an hour, and that was absolutely brutal. Day two it halved. In one night, it got down to thirty minutes for his first fall asleep, and that felt incredibly positive, even though that half an hour was

still absolutely devastating. By day three it got to six minutes. So in three days I'd gone from I will never see the lad again, I'll never sleep again? Who am I? What is the universe to I've tried this thing. I had nothing to lose because we couldn't physically book in anyone until that three days time. But by day three he went to sleep by himself, and then when he did wake up crying he could resettle himself and he went back to sleep again in six minutes by himself,

which blew my mind, like could not believe it. So again, this is not you know, advice backed up by anything for anyone specific. This is what worked for us. But I did find it so so reassuring to hear that this had also happened for some friends of mine, and then the fact that it did happen quite quickly for us was what I needed personally at the time to know firstly that I could get some sleep again, but also that Teddy could get some sleep again, and both

of us thrived from that moment. It's been a week since then and everything has continued to be wonderful. He's sort of sleep trained, so to speak, and it just kept improving every day. There are obviously way more details in between and nuances to each technique, and that's where you sort of can go and purchase a guide or you can google it yourself. So the technique, as I said, is called space soothing, and I'll include doctor Gollies programs link as well. But the other thing is that it

takes dayne apps a little while to catch up. Like often people will say work on one or the other and then the other one will follow. You don't need to kind of be fixing everything at once. You can have a couple of days like when there's teething or when they don't feel well, or daylight savings or whatever, when a routine change and travel that will feel like you go backwards a little bit, but then you just get back on track, going back to the method, and

you kind of restore and find yourself again. So we did fall off the bandwagon a little bit in Fiji where we didn't have the same sleep environment. Obviously, it was a big change of routine, and I did fall back into feeding him to sleep a little bit to help him get to sleep, and then we just returned to the space soothing again when we got home, and that took two days and now we're back on track.

So that's me answering the question in as much detail as I can for you guys, hoping that it is a little bit reassuring for anyone who's in the depths of it, and not that you should do exactly that, but just the fact that there is something you can do and maybe a starting point for you to go and do a little bit of research for yourselves. But above all that, you know there is an end insight,

and it's hard no matter what you choose. Sleep deprivation is just so brutal, and this area is so emotionally charged. But I just am sending so much I'm literally speechless. I'm sending so much love to anyone going through it. It really is one of the most brutal things I've ever gone through. And who knows if I'll use that same approach next time. Who knows what next time we'll

look at. Above all, I really am at pains to say that this is anecdotal only and hopefully just a guide reassurance if anything, like all of these episodes, but I did want to just make sure I had it all set out somewhere so that yeah, my silly copy and paste or literal screenshots of my typing stopped being sent and I could send a proper link to an episode where I laid it out as best I could. So sending you all so much love. I'm so glad

you're enjoying this segment. I probably should have got doctor Golli or one of the babis Bar consultants on to add a more authoritative voice, but yes, that's me answering as best I can, and there are lots more topics to come. As always, let me know if you have any further questions or any feedback or any request for further topics on the next season baby episode. And we also have some other amazing guests coming up. So I hope you guys are all loving it so far and

in the meantime seizing you're yay. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk