transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:02] And this is often a point I've noticed where moms especially have to hold boundaries for the first time. Like imagine those moms who have been using nursing sort of as a tool for comfort day or night. And this is the first time that they're saying, I have to say no, or I'm deciding to say no, or set rules like we can nurse during the day, but not at night. And that's really hard, I found it hard too. You just want to give your baby everything, and you know how much like breastfeeding and bed sharing mean to them. It's their safe space. You can see it on their face, the bliss, you know, and so it's kind of, it's, I always tell parents, get ready, you're gonna learn a lot and grow through this too, because it just brings up a lot of stuff. It's not easy at all.

Speaker 2:
[00:49] I'm Cynthia Overgard, birth educator, advocate for informed consent, and postpartum support specialist.

Speaker 3:
[00:56] And I'm Trisha Ludwig, certified nurse midwife and international board certified lactation consultant.

Speaker 2:
[01:02] And this is the Down to Birth Show.

Speaker 3:
[01:06] Childbirth is something we're made to do, but how do we have our safest and most satisfying experience in today's medical culture?

Speaker 2:
[01:13] Let's dispel the myths and get down to birth.

Speaker 1:
[01:24] All right, well, my name is Tiffany Belanger. I'm so happy to be here with you guys. I call myself a safe co-sleeping educator. There wasn't really anybody doing this when I started back in 2018. That's when I became a parent, and I didn't plan on bed sharing. I didn't even know the term bed sharing back then. And it was really hard for me when my newborn refused to sleep in his crib. He would only sleep on my chest or in my arms. And I quickly realized that I needed to figure out how to keep him safe in my bed, or else nobody was going to be sleeping in the house. And back then, it was really hard to find information on it. Like right now, if you go to Instagram, there are so many pages and accounts talking about how to safely co-sleep, and there's something called holistic sleep specialists. I have so many friends who do that, and it's just a different world right now, and we're so lucky to have it, like for it to be the way it is now. But back then, I was all alone with Google. And it took me a really long time to figure out how to do it safely. And so that led me to start my blog and my Instagram page, and just with the hope that I can help some parents and spare them some of that stress and anxiety in the middle of the night that I was dealing with for the first several months of my son's life. And it's just grown from there. I have a book coming out next year with Hachette, which is a big publisher, and it's gonna be available all over the world and in different languages. And that's so good because parents are co-sleeping all over the world, and they really need to know how to do it safely, especially in America, because here, as you guys know, doctors aren't teaching us how to do it. And sometimes our good best friends don't even want to talk about it. They feel like there's a stigma there, and so they're not talking about it. So that's who I am.

Speaker 3:
[03:10] Sorry. It's such an interesting topic because it's so natural and instinctual for us to sleep close to our children, especially our babies. Yet we are so resistant to it because this is the power of the medical community. It has just been hammered into our brains that you are going to be the one at fault. You are the one at fault as the mother if something happens to your baby, and it's your fault because you slept with your baby. And despite how much good information there now is out there about co-sleeping, because when Cynthia and I had children, it was even further back than 2018, way further back. And I mean, you have to go to the library and find the one book that might talk about co-sleeping, and we both did it because it was natural. It felt natural. But yeah, you certainly weren't talking about it with your friends, maybe only in your tight knit community of holistic moms who were also on board with that. But despite it being so popular now, it's still, there are so many moms who are just resistant to it, not just from a safety perspective, but also from a marital perspective, like the idea that it somehow is harmful to your family dynamics. We know that there are a tremendous amount of benefits to co-sleeping, especially if you are a breastfeeding mom, and many of the people who are part of the Down to Birth community are very familiar with the fact that we both co-slept, we both are exclusively breastfed. We talk a lot about the safety of co-sleeping and fully supporting it. But there are still some challenges with co-sleeping, especially as children get older. And we would love to pick your brain a little bit today about what some of those challenges are and how we can manage them best.

Speaker 1:
[05:02] Yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad I'm on here talking about this, because honestly, it's not my easiest podcast interview, because it's a tricky topic. And I prefer to work one-on-one with families when we're trying to transition a baby either out of their parents' bed or if we're trying to wean from breastfeeding while co-sleeping. Because those are just, I told you before we started, there's no like 10 step process to it. It really depends on a lot of different factors that are unique to that family and that baby. And it's one of the hardest things that every co-sleeping parent goes through. So, I'm glad we're talking about it, because I never want people to think co-sleeping is some beautiful golden ticket to like a perfect life. Like life is hard and it's, as you know, parenting a very young child or multiple is just difficult no matter what you've decided to do.

Speaker 3:
[05:53] Children's sleep is just difficult. Sleep as a new parent is just difficult. And while we all really believe in the benefits of co-sleeping and we know that it is one of the only ways to truly sustain an exclusively breastfeeding relationship for the long term. I mean, I do know that there are mothers out there who exclusively breastfeed and have their baby sleep separately. And I think that's amazing. I don't really know how they do it, but it can be done. But, you know, there comes a point where you kind of want your bed back. And when that point comes, it's different for every family. It's different for every baby. Infant temperaments sometimes have a lot to do with it. One woman in our community recently said, like, I'm begging for my baby to go sleep with me in bedshare with me, and my baby won't do it. It makes me so sad. Why does my baby want to sleep with me? That's just a different temperament.

Speaker 1:
[06:50] Yeah, I've heard that too. Every parent is doing the best they can, I think. Like to that mom, I would say, I'm sorry, but you're doing an amazing job. Like that's actually, that's okay. I hear that quite often, too. Now that co-sleeping is sort of like trending and more people are willing to try it, a lot of them are disappointed when they find out that it either doesn't work or they can't do it safely or their baby doesn't want to do it.

Speaker 2:
[07:15] I think what women have to be really careful of when things like that happen is the conclusions they draw and the beliefs they form. So for that woman who feels really sad about it, we can hear her situation and take it at face value. Like babies obviously have their unique personalities and needs and things that they've bonded to that make them sleep well. But to that woman, she put a lot of meaning on that. So to her, God forbid, she'll conclude things like, my baby doesn't feel safest when my baby is near me. My baby doesn't like me as much as I want my baby to like me. My baby doesn't feel comforted by being close to me as much as I want. That's where women really hurt themselves. It's when they start drawing conclusions based on the behavior of their child. So that's for anyone listening in a similar situation. If it's not about co-sleeping, there will be something else one day. We have to be careful. For example, the stages where, I know a lot of couples go through this. I don't personally remember it myself, but I know that there are stages where a baby is like, only wants the mother and the father can take it personally, or they might go through a phase of really wanting the father and wanting to go to the father, the mother takes it personally. We have to stop taking any of this personally and just allow the baby to engage in whatever brings them comfort, and just be the rock that's there in the bed at sleep time or out of the bed in daytime. Just be the rock that's there and let the child just gravitate from one comforting situation to another. That's really what we want for our child, not to only seek comfort and get an obtained comfort from one person or one thing. So, on to this topic of weaning. This is the combined expertise of both of you, more than I, because Trisha is an IBCLC and you're a sleep expert. But, as Trisha said, I did find my way to co-sleeping because as a breastfeeding mom, I found it to be by far the easiest thing. But it sounds like a really difficult thing because, I mean, like Trisha, the baby smells the mom, right? I mean, if you're trying to wean, you're right there. And no woman is going to wean by denying their baby. What have you two seen in this? Like Tiffany, do you want to start? I mean, what have you seen with moms who are trying to do this?

Speaker 1:
[09:24] Yeah, absolutely. Some moms find that they have to physically remove themselves from the room for a few weeks during this transition, which as you can imagine, if you have a baby or toddler who is, their sleep association is their mom, being there and nursing them to sleep, that's how they fall asleep. This is a really big deal and it's really difficult if all of a sudden their dad is putting them to sleep. So, but as you just said, they can smell you. And when they're half asleep, they're reaching for you or some babies can start nursing while they're still asleep, like they don't even open their eyes. And so some parents will try sleeping with the dad in between the mom and the baby, but sometimes that's not enough. The baby or toddler will just crawl right over and get to the mom. So some families, just when they sit down and decide, this is something we're going to do. And I always say you have to really think about it and you have to commit to it. You can't start one or two nights and then stop. That is really hard for everyone and really confusing for a baby or toddler. So once you're ready to do it, plan it all out with your partner because it's going to be, it's a team effort between both of you and you need to be on the same page about whatever game plan. And we can talk about some of those things, but each family will probably come up with some different ways to do it, depending on if there's already other siblings or if they want the baby to go out of the bed and into a separate bedroom to make it easier. Or if they want the baby to go into a crib instead of a floor bed. So there's just so many different combinations of things that can happen.

Speaker 3:
[10:57] And it's really important to pick a time frame where you're not going to have an interruption. For example, you start on a Monday and your husband has a business trip on Thursday. You're probably not going to be there by Thursday. So make sure you're picking a time frame where you have a good window of time to ensure that you can follow through all the way. Because for some babies, it might take two nights. And for other babies, it might take 12.

Speaker 1:
[11:25] Oh, yeah. Or longer. Well, they're so, you know, breastfeeding and sleep are so entwined that sometimes parents decide to do both at the same time. And if you have a baby with an easier temperament, that could work totally fine or be better. Just sort of rip the bandaid off. Other parents find, no, we want to do weaning for breastfeeding. And then three or four months later, take them out of our bed and transfer or transition them to a whole different bedroom or something like that. Like they space it out, knowing that that'll be easy for the baby to adjust to this one first and then the next one.

Speaker 3:
[11:58] So how do you wean a baby from breastfeeding while they're still co-sleeping? Are you saying that they're co-sleeping just with the father then not with the mother?

Speaker 1:
[12:10] Well, so yeah, that is one scenario is, let's say, a mom loves bed sharing and she wants to continue doing it. But she gets pregnant and breastfeeding is really hard and she's just exhausted. And she decides, I'm going to go ahead and night wean my baby. Because when the new baby comes, I want to be able to focus on the new baby during the night anyways. So she has several months until the baby's born. And so she and her husband or partner decide that she's going to sleep in another room for a few weeks while their toddler gets used to sleeping with the dad. And therefore changing those sleep associations. So she doesn't need to nurse in order to fall asleep. Dad can help rock her, sing the song, or they have to come up with a whole different routine. And then once they feel like, it's hard to know when is the right time, but then mom can come back and they can continue bed sharing. It's just that now in theory, that toddler won't need to breastfeed in order to fall asleep. But it's hard because I'm sure, Trisha, as you could guess, maybe mom comes back after a month and the toddler hasn't been nursing to sleep, but she still might want it once her mom's there and she smells it and she remembers.

Speaker 3:
[13:23] Exactly. Or what if you're trying this with a younger baby? Maybe you want to night wean your six month old. Now that's not something that I typically recommend from a breastfeeding lactation perspective because some six month old babies really do still need to nurse in the night if they are naturally sleeping through the night, which technically for a breastfeeding baby, we consider like a five to six hour stretch is a full night. But some will do eight, 10, even 12 hours. So they're not waking up to breastfeed, but maybe they're sleeping in the bed. And that's great. That's a perfect scenario. They're not breastfeeding in the night, but you can still co-sleep with them. What about the mom who wants to get their baby off-feeding in the night, but wants to still sleep with them because they're young?

Speaker 1:
[14:13] It might look a little bit like what we, what I was just, that example that I was just talking about. If a baby's younger than nine months, I typically recommend transitioning them into a crib instead of a floor bed. So you can, it's tricky without knowing this specific examples from the family, right? But like, let's say another family out there wanted to do this, they could utilize the crib to sort of put some space between mom and baby.

Speaker 3:
[14:44] But if there's a point where you know that you want the baby sleeping independently, but you still want to exclusively breastfeed on demand for as long as your child wants to do that, is there an age where you recommend saying, hey, let's start to transition out of the bed at this point, and they may only be waking up one or two times a night by the time they're four months of age, and they can be independent in their own room in a crib, and you can just go breastfeed them and then come back to your own bed. So is there like a developmental window of time that you recommend for the mother who doesn't want to commit to indefinitely co-sleeping and knows that they do want to still continue to breastfeed the baby, they don't want to prematurely night wean?

Speaker 1:
[15:32] I don't think there's a specific age, like a point where it becomes easier or harder. The nine month mark is sort of when object permanence comes into play, and it doesn't fully form until 18 months. But that basically means if your baby wakes up and they don't see you, even if you're just across the room, they'll think you're gone, and they might start to cry and panic, and then it takes that much longer to get them to calm down and fall back asleep. That's one of the benefits of co-sleeping, is that when they wake up and they're really young, they see you right there, or they can feel you. They don't have to go into that panic. That kind of sets you back and takes a lot longer to sort of help them calm down. So a lot of people recommend doing it before nine months. They just say, again, everyone has different opinions, but a baby who's used to sleeping in a bed and stretching out on the mattress, it might be easier to transition them into a floor bed in a different room for, let's say the mommy we're talking about. And then she could come in and lie down and nurse them to sleep in their floor bed. And then she could sneak away. That's a lot easier than a mom who has to nurse a baby in the middle of the night and then carefully put them down in the crib, which as you know, can be really tricky. And they might wake up and you have to start the whole thing again. So a lot of moms like floor beds, or they're babies or toddlers who are used to co-sleeping.

Speaker 3:
[16:52] I think that's a great transition tool. One of the questions that people ask about that is, how do you keep the young baby, crawling baby, scooting baby, or young toddler in the floor bed to keep them safe? How do you get them? How do you keep them from crawling away in the middle of the night and doing something they shouldn't be doing?

Speaker 2:
[17:10] Are we just talking about a mattress on the floor for most families?

Speaker 1:
[17:14] Yes, but you do have to safety proof the entire bedroom because that is now their bed. They have access to all of it. So that's why that's another consideration. If you don't have a bedroom that you can fully safety proof or that you want to devote to this purpose, then a crib might be a better answer for you or option. But yeah, some people will buy, they have little frames for kids' beds or a lot of families will just get like a full sized regular mattress and put it on the floor. And that way, a parent can come down there if need be, and then sneak away. So it just depends on the family vibe. There's a lot of families that are okay going with the flow and playing musical beds, they call it throughout the night. Dad might start with mom in the main bed and the babies in their floor bed. But when the baby wakes up around midnight and comes up into the big bed to nurse, dad goes down to the floor bed. It's just easier for everyone. He'll have a space and he can just sleep the rest of the night there, and the mom and the baby co-sleep. Some people do that. It just other families like more structure and boundaries, and they don't want the baby in the bed at all. And so that's often the case, parents will try to transition the baby into a whole separate bedroom instead of a floor bed in their room, because it's harder when they're in your room, they wake up and see you and they'll just run to your bed. So it's much harder in that case.

Speaker 2:
[18:40] I can see that you're really struggling without knowing specifics because in your work, it is so family specific. I mean, when a woman, if she's working, when she gets home from work, how much time she has with her baby, the situation around, I can see that it's really hard. And I just want to tell you what you're doing by giving different examples is very helpful to the listener, because they don't, for this whole notion of giving anyone a formula anyway, that doesn't work. That's not how this works. It is more of an art than a science. So yeah, it's very helpful. I can see how you want to do right by everyone, and you just want to be able to name specifics. I can see you grappling with that. But I know the listener is really, I know it's helping them to hear all the different scenarios, because it gives them more leeway and more permission to try different things and not to feel like they fail if one thing doesn't work out for them or for their partner. I mean, their dynamic of everyone is a part of this. So you're doing great with the lack of specifics that we have right now.

Speaker 3:
[19:42] I think that is probably the most important part of this conversation for families and mothers to understand that this is not a black and white program for sleep, and they're not doing something wrong because they feel like it's not working the way somebody else's situation is working. This is so individual to the baby, to the family, to your preferences, to your infant's temperament. It's just cannot be, like you said, a five-step program. But we can give pointers and we can give tips and we can...

Speaker 2:
[20:21] And options....

Speaker 3:
[20:22] scenarios and we can give options. And so much of that depends on how the mother is doing herself. Where is she in her space with sleep and her mental health? Is she doing fine? Because if she's doing fine, none of this really matters. Just keep doing what you're doing. It's working. It's working. You don't need to make a change. You don't need to do anything until you feel that you need a change. And then when you need to change, it is a lot easier to figure out what to do because it's coming from a place of like, I know I need this. I need to remove myself from the room. I need to stop waking up at 1 a.m. and feeding. I need to sleep until 4 a.m. So whatever we have to do to get there, we're going to do.

Speaker 1:
[21:05] Yeah. And you'll know when the time is, I think.

Speaker 3:
[21:08] So, but what I think a lot of people would love to know is, can you start off co-sleeping and breastfeeding and make sure that breastfeeding gets well established and is going well, and then can you transition the baby out of your room before you run into a potential conflict with co-sleeping?

Speaker 1:
[21:33] So you mean transitioning them out of your bed? We're not talking about weaning in this question.

Speaker 3:
[21:37] Not talking about weaning, just talking about getting them out of your bed. Is there like a point where you might be able to prevent some of these challenges that many mothers run into at a year, a year and a half, two, two and a half years down the line?

Speaker 1:
[21:53] I would probably recommend doing it around the first birthday. And maybe they're still young, but you can still talk to them and tell them everything that's happening. But in celebration of their first birthday, they could have a new crib if you want to transition them into a crib or a new floor bed, either in your room or another room. But make it a big thing and then start it then. Because you're right, if it's been three or four or five years, it's a lot harder. They're older, like I'm thinking of my seven-year-old now, who has his own bed in his own room. But if he wakes up in the middle of the night and I say, all right, let's go back to your room and I'll walk you there, he begs me to stay in my bed because that's his happy place. That's what he knew for most of his life. The good news is that at age seven, he's very logical and I can talk to him about it. That's different than a two-year-old in the middle of the night. If you're trying to reason with a two-year-old, it's a lot different.

Speaker 2:
[22:49] You're saying that when you walk your son back, if he does ask, you do say yes to him?

Speaker 1:
[22:56] Yeah. This is just me personally. I rarely walk him back. I usually say, all right, come on in. Then I have another son who's five and if he wakes up in the night and comes over, it would be a little bit squished for four of us in the king size bed. So usually my husband will go back with him in his room. Because both boys start out on their floor beds in their room. But for both of them, it's just having one of us in the room. It doesn't even have to be in the same bed. It's very comforting for them. So like my five-year-old is totally fine with that. If his dad comes back, he won't be in the same bed with him, but he's right next to him. So that's what works for us. And again, my husband is very kind of easygoing and go with the flow. Obviously, I do this work, so he's all about co-sleeping. He's very supportive. But I do know there are families where the spouse or partner doesn't want to get up and move. And so that would be something, as you're walking the seven-year-old back, you could just echo conversations that you're having during the day. These conversations shouldn't just happen at 2 a.m. You should be talking about this a lot more often during the day. How much you love them, how big they're getting, how much they mean to you. But sleep is important. And sometimes it's hard for dad or whatever the reason is. And so it would be easier. Let's try. If I will walk you back to your room, I will sit with you for a few minutes while you drift off to sleep. You know, like have those conversations. That's what I've noticed.

Speaker 3:
[24:17] That'll make it easier at 2 a.m. What about the family who has a toddler in the bed with them? The mother's expecting a new baby. And one of the things that we all have heard and know about co-sleeping is that the safest way to co-sleep with an infant is just with the mother, father, and baby in the bed and not pets or other children. Do you recommend that they transition the toddler out of the bed before the new baby comes? How long before the new baby comes and how to do that if they're really resistant?

Speaker 1:
[24:51] So I'll share my story with you because that's how I came up with this piece of advice. Because again, there's no program. We're all just winging it based on our own anecdotal experience. So this is what I did and it was a disaster, spoiler alert. So this was 2020 during the pandemic. Again, there were no Instagram pages, TikTok didn't exist. I was struggling. I was pregnant with my second baby and I had an 18-month-old. I read in the one book I found at the library, like you said, that it's okay to co-sleep with a toddler and a newborn as long as the mom is in between, as long as there's like an adult body blocking, like blocking the toddler essentially from being able to crawl over and land on the baby or sleep too close to the baby. So I said, that's what we're going to try. And we put a king size mattress down on the ground and a full size and packed all the gaps, like made it nice and tight. It filled the entire bedroom. This was like a bedroom totally devoted to just two beds on the floor. But that's what we wanted to do. It was a giant, a big giant cozy bed or something. My toddler called it and it was really fun. However, as soon as the baby arrived and my toddler woke up and saw my back was to him because I was curled around the newborn facing the other way, he would start screaming and crying and try to climb over me. And it took over an hour for him to calm down each time and fall asleep. And he had never really cried before in his life at night, right? Because we always bedshared and I was always right there. And so this was new for all of us. And he of course woke up the new baby every time this happened. And we tried for a few weeks making this work. And I talked to him during the day about how he might wake up and see my back, but I'm still there and I could hold his hand. I could talk to him, but I needed to face the new baby. But he had just turned two at that point and he didn't, it didn't work. You know, he was still very upset about it. And so after, I think we maybe lasted like a month. After that, and my husband and I realized this is not going to work. So we had to dismantle the big giant cozy bed. And we put one bed in one bedroom and one mattress in the other. And I slept with the newborn and my husband slept with the toddler. But we had not prepped for this. He had never been used to his dad taking care of him in the night. So now when he woke up, his dad's next to him, and I was in a whole different room. And so he would try to get out of the door. My husband had to lock it. He figured out how to unlock it. He'd come in and bang on my door. It was truly a disaster. It was the hardest thing we've ever gone through. And I've shared this story before, even though I'm embarrassed about it, sort of. But I think it probably happens to a lot of families out there. Because you can't really imagine what's going to happen or visualize it when you're pregnant. You have these big dreams and hopes. And I think that's good, too, to be optimistic about the future. But you need a backup plan. Or you can just assume it's probably going to be hard for your toddler. And so why not, as soon as you find out you're pregnant, start a slow and gentle transition to where your partner is the nighttime caregiver, not you, so that when the new baby comes, you will have all your time and energy and milk and everything going to the newborn. And you don't have to feel guilty and you don't have to hear like the screaming and the trauma that's happening and just affecting everybody. So that's my advice.

Speaker 2:
[28:20] So if you could have done things differently, you would have started this much earlier in pregnancy just to give your son a lot of time to adjust.

Speaker 1:
[28:28] Yes, I would have made a whole big thing about how we're setting up a bed in the other room just for him and daddy, how special is that? We would have talked about it every single day as my belly was growing bigger and he was seeing that the baby's coming soon. Because we talked to him about how I was going to have to go to the hospital, which would be the first night we were apart ever. So we had this little line prepped for him and I talked about it every day, how mommy's going to the doctor, but she'll be back with a new baby. I could have also been talking about how he's going to start sleeping with daddy, and daddy will take care of him when he wakes up in the night. But I'm close by him right next door. I don't know, it's just something. We had months and months to do it, but I just was like, nope, we'll just be in the same bed. It'll be fine. And it wasn't.

Speaker 3:
[29:14] So would you recommend starting that a month ahead, two months ahead, three months ahead?

Speaker 1:
[29:19] I think as soon as you find out you're pregnant, start talking about it. Yeah, and talk to your partner about if you have access to another bedroom or how you could set that up. But basically, if your partner can be the night, I call them a nighttime caregiver, but like kind of the point person for your toddler, whenever they wake up or if they have a bad dream or have to use the potty or whatever, it's pro, in most cases, it's usually the mom who does that. But if you can kind of switch it over to where dad does it, by the time the new baby comes, they'll be used to that and it won't be traumatic.

Speaker 3:
[29:52] This is one of the good reasons also to help parents understand that in the beginning, if you are a breastfeeding mom, you are going to be the one on duty in the night. And it isn't necessarily the best idea to share the responsibility of feeding the baby and waking up both of you all night every night because there's going to come a point down the line where the dad really needs to step in and be the one waking up and taking care of the baby or the toddler to help them get back to sleep, whether you're weaning from breastfeeding or just transitioning them out of the room. So what advice do you have for getting dads on board with this? Because a lot of dads are not, I mean, many dads just think this is mom's job.

Speaker 1:
[30:36] Yeah, or they don't see, they don't understand mom's worries about sleep training. They're like, let's just buy a program, they can cry it out. Like they don't feel it the same way. I don't want to make a generalization out there against all dads, of course. But I do work with a lot of families who, the reason they're coming to me is because they say they're all alone, their husband doesn't agree with them. And it's like a nightly battle about bedsharing. And I just feel for those moms. Because as we were saying earlier, it's so natural, it just feels right for a lot of us. And so it's just to have someone say, there's no way we can do this, or this is wrong, or this is embarrassing, or I'm ashamed of you for doing this. What could be harder than that when you're newly, freshly postpartum? You know what I mean? With all the hormones and your exhaustion and your healing from birth. So if anybody listening is going through that, I'm so sorry and I'm sending you a big hug.

Speaker 2:
[31:29] Yeah, the toughest thing between most couples is that she is going to be wired for more anxiety than he is. It's not always the case. I work with postpartum women, and I distinctly remember one lovely couple where he ended up with postpartum anxiety, and it was a living hell. It was brutal for all of them. Nobody saw that coming, and he literally wouldn't even cross the street with no cars in sight if they had the baby with them. So he really suffered terribly. But in most couples, the woman is the one suffering with that anxiety. And she goes so far as to think the baby will have some kind of deep emotional damage from this. The baby will permanently feel his or her needs aren't being met. That is quite a burden to put on yourself as a parent to think that you will never let your child down like you to meet the notion that you will meet their every desire and women need is absolutely not going to happen. And thank God for that because we make them very, very well and strong and resilient. But I also just want to say out there for the women who are in those relationships, and I say this in my postpartum groups a lot, it's a blessing that it's a blessing when your husband has a lot less anxiety. It would be really a nightmare if both of you had the same anxiety. The household, the households that have that suffer tremendously. It's good when one parent is like, well, they can handle this, like we can do this. I know women resent it, but thank God for it because it does help to move us all along and to demonstrate the resiliency of the entire family.

Speaker 1:
[32:59] Yeah. And this is often a point I've noticed where moms especially have to hold boundaries and like for the first time, like imagine those moms who have been using nursing sort of as a tool for comfort day or night. And this is the first time that they're saying, I have to say no or I'm deciding to say no. Or set rules like we can nurse during the day but not at night. And that's really hard. I found it hard too. You just want to give your baby everything and you know how much like breastfeeding and bed sharing mean to them. It's their safe space. You can see it on their face, the bliss, you know, and so it's kind of, it's I always tell parents, get ready, you're going to learn a lot and grow through this too, because you're going to have to think about how you were parented and, you know, the little younger version of you, how life went for them, because it just brings up a lot of stuff. It's not easy at all.

Speaker 3:
[33:54] Do you think this is a conversation that parents really need to be having before they have a baby, before they even become pregnant? Or do they need to just sort of see what happens? Maybe they don't know if they want to co-sleep, bed share. They probably know one way or the other if they want to breastfeed, or at least they're in the place of, I want to try to breastfeed. Of course, if you aren't sleeping close to your baby, sometimes breastfeeding doesn't work as well. So it seems like it's a good idea to really be on the same page with each other and understand how this process works and how the division of labor sort of might happen in the early weeks versus later months and years.

Speaker 1:
[34:33] This is why we all need to listen to your podcast. And we need to have great prenatal or pre-birth classes, because no, you're not going to know any of this stuff as a first-time parent. I don't think so. You might know about breastfeeding and say, yeah, I want to try it. But certainly not sleep, because everything you see on TV, they put, think of your favorite TV show. They just put the baby in the crib and that's it.

Speaker 2:
[34:56] Oh, you never see the baby again in Friends. I always talk about it.

Speaker 1:
[34:58] Totally.

Speaker 2:
[34:59] Rachel has a baby and you see the baby like twice.

Speaker 1:
[35:03] I know.

Speaker 2:
[35:04] It's so unrealistic. It's just crazy.

Speaker 1:
[35:08] It's so unrealistic.

Speaker 2:
[35:09] I know.

Speaker 1:
[35:10] So misleading.

Speaker 2:
[35:11] It's crazy.

Speaker 1:
[35:12] Yeah, and for a lot of people like me who didn't have a bunch of friends who had babies, I kind of relied on pop culture and TV shows, really, to show me a few things. That's where I first heard about sleep training, but I didn't know really what it entailed, because they just, like it didn't seem like it was heavy or hard to do. It was just sort of like, okay, we're gonna sleep train them. And then they put the baby down, no crying at all. And the parents go off and live their amazing lives, like pretty much the same lives that they had pre-babies, which as we know, your life, you're not the same person, your life is not the same. And that again, you kind of have to go through grief and you grow through that and it takes a long time. And that's something we're not prepared for.

Speaker 2:
[35:49] Well, I'm also having memories too, with each of my children, there was a period, and I don't remember when this was, maybe you might be able to guess better than I can recall, but there was a period with each of them where they got so active during the night, like, you can wake up in the middle of the night with a foot against your face. And it gets ridiculous, especially for light sleepers, as most mothers are, they move around, they flop around, they're sideways, they're this way, they're that way. And I remember with each of them that I actually don't have this memory, but I had a boundary. I was like, okay, this was wonderful while it lasted. I almost have a vision of holding my arms out extended with a little mini tornado on my hands, and this little tornado has to sleep somewhere else. And it was such a natural progression that I have no memory of it ever being difficult. I think it went very easily. And I mentioned this story because that was a boundary that evolved very firmly for me, like, okay, I can't sleep anymore. This isn't good for you. This isn't good for your dad. This isn't good for me. We're doing this differently. And I didn't suffer with like, oh my gosh, is it going to hurt them? And the same is this, is that, no, it went very seamlessly in both cases because it was time. So I think women also have to realize it's not always going to be traumatic and a feeling of abandonment and rejection. Sometimes it's just time for us to have a little more space between us. That is ultimately the role of the parent. It's ultimately to let go entirely. And it's a very, very slow process.

Speaker 1:
[37:15] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[37:16] It begins with the co-sleeping, going into your own beds.

Speaker 1:
[37:19] You're right. I love that. And that's why a lot of parents will start with a floor bed in their room. It's like six feet away, then ten feet away. And then after they've established that the baby, the child is okay and happy and mom still loves you, daddy still loves you, then you can talk about going to a different room. Like just, but like in my case, I didn't have the time to do that because I didn't prepare for it. So time is your friend with, when you have a baby or a toddler, it takes them a long time. So just really lean into it and make sure it's a gentle, slow transition.

Speaker 3:
[37:52] What tips do you have for the mom who is either a single mom or has a partner who is not willing or just very unavailable? They travel all the time, they can't be home to be consistent enough to help with this. How do you help that mom?

Speaker 1:
[38:10] With having another baby or night weaning or just in general?

Speaker 3:
[38:15] With weaning off, with getting the baby, if the goal is to get the baby out of the bed?

Speaker 1:
[38:23] I have some tips, but I can say I have not worked with a single mom who didn't want to keep co-sleeping because that is a really easy way to live as a single mom, sort of, because it's harder when they're in a separate room and you don't have another person to sort of go check on them or you can get a monitor if you want. But typically the single moms who I talk to are loving co-sleeping because they say, maybe they didn't necessarily want to do it, but it's helping them survive. And they usually just have one kid. And so they're just buddies. That's their bed. They lean into it and cuddle up. And that's been my experience.

Speaker 3:
[39:06] I can completely attest to that because my sister is a single mother. And yeah, with her son, they co-slept for many, many years beyond what most people would think would naturally be.

Speaker 1:
[39:19] Yeah. Yeah, it works.

Speaker 3:
[39:21] And it worked for both of them. And it just was easy and it just felt more comforting.

Speaker 1:
[39:28] Yeah. So I would just say to single moms or single parents, just do what, just be just simple. You know, what works for you, what feels good. Like no one else is home with you. This is your, like, you don't need to tell people what you're doing. If you are embarrassed or something, let's say you have a seven-year-old, that's okay. And we know, we have research on people all over the world who are bed sharing and they eventually stop. No child is going to, they always say, when they're in college, are they going to want to not go off to college because they want to stay home and sleep with you or whatever they say. No, they, most children stop around puberty. And if some cultures like in India, they will go on and sleep in a bedroom and sort of room share with siblings or grandparents or something. But like, they're still with people. Like there's different cultures and different people doing this all over the world. It's only in countries like ours where it's like a thing and we actually have a word for it, co-sleeping. Like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3:
[40:29] We make it like a thing that you have to learn about. So before we wrap, now that we have had this kind of like challenging conversation around co-sleeping and the challenges of co-sleeping, what do you say to the family who's like, whoa, well, I don't know if I want to do this now because it sounds like it could be difficult down the road. Like, what are a few of the things that you just tell parents early on about why this is a great choice?

Speaker 1:
[40:59] Well, I do know a lot of parents who really want to bed share or co-sleep for the first year for attachment reasons. And then after that, they say, nope, we're going to go ahead and start a slow, gentle transition to them in their own room. So it's so funny. Then I have people who come in with toddlers where, let's say they've had a baby who slept great in a crib or was a good sleep or whatever. But when they did that, you know, the transition from a crib to a little kid bed that happens for every two or three year old when they get too big. A lot of parents say that's when the trouble starts. Once they're mobile and they're not confined to a crib anymore, they start jumping in bed with the parents. So they're brand new co-sleepers with a three year old. So there's all, as we've been saying, there's all sorts of different families, different dynamics and different things happening every night. But I just say what I tell people is, I'm glad I share that story. Look, remember me, everybody. It was only a disaster because I didn't prepare and maybe I got a little bit too cocky. So whether your baby is nine months old or 18 months or three years old, when you get to the point where you want to transition them and have more space, you can. It just makes sure you have time and you have a clear plan with your partner. Because unless you're a single mom or single parent, you will need the support of your partner. And make sure you both understand everything you're on the same page so that once you start, you don't back off and say, never mind. And it will be okay. You can do it. It just might take longer than you want it to take, but you can do it without doing cry it out or traumatizing your child. Or you can go slow for you too. Maybe your child's doing okay, but you want to take it a lot slower because you're realizing this is very emotional for me. So just my advice is just go with the flow, be kind to yourselves and just have realistic expectations that this is hard. You know, it's supposed to be hard because you've been together since birth, probably for a long time and had these beautiful moments and it's changing.

Speaker 3:
[43:30] Thanks for joining us at the Down to Birth Show. You can reach us at Down to Birth Show on Instagram, or email us at contact at downtobirthshow.com. All of Cynthia's classes and Trisha's breastfeeding services are held live, online, serving women and couples everywhere.

Speaker 2:
[43:46] Please remember this information is made available to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is in no way a substitute for medical advice. For our full disclaimer, visit downtobirthshow.com/disclaimer. Thanks for tuning in. And as always, hear everyone and listen to yourself.