Fallon (00:37)
Is your toddler fighting their nap like it's a personal insult? Or maybe they're napping fine, but bedtime has become super hard, stretching way later than you'd like it to be. Or maybe your toddler is just partying in the middle of the night. If any of these are happening for you, then you might be wondering if it's time to drop that final day nap. Well, today I'm showing you exactly how and when to do it, how to know that they're actually truly ready.
and how to keep the transition from blowing up your nights and your afternoons. So let's get into it.
Welcome back to Brand New Little People, the podcast companion to the Sombelle Pediatric Sleep Clinic programs. I'm your host, Dr. Fallon Cook. I've got a PhD, a couple of postdoctoral fellowships in infant sleep, and I'm a mum of three. Well, it has been an awesome, awesome week for me. I've had a lot of fun with you guys in our coaching call clinic. I've been talking to people from all around the world.
and it's just been so lovely to meet so many gorgeous families. and it's just been such a busy time, but a really, really good positive week. So I hope that your week was also a really good positive one and you've you've had a few wins. so let's dive into it, you know, dropping the final nap. So I first of all I have to thank Pav, who actually suggested the topic of this episode.
And it's always awesome when parents come up with these really good ideas for content because sometimes I wake up in the morning and I've just got nothing. so thank you, Pav. I think it's really important that we do talk about how to drop that final nap in toddlers, because it can be a bit of a tricky time and doing it at the right time can make a really huge difference to really making sure that the nights kind of hopefully stay good and begin improving if they have been tricky.
So here's what you need to know about dropping that final nap. First up, let's talk about when you would do it. So the typical age when a toddler will drop that final nap is usually around about two to three years. So there's an absolutely massive range of normal. one of mine dropped their nap, I think they were about 20, 22 months or so. They hadn't even turned two yet, and they were just so ready for it. There was no stopping it. They were completely fine.
They had this focus on learning, they wanted to do everything, they could power through the day beautifully, and they slept really well overnight. If I had pushed to keep that nap longer, the nights absolutely would have fallen apart. So, you know, that's an example of a really young toddler being really, really ready to drop their nap and coping really well with it. Then there are other toddlers who might even have turned into preschoolers. They could be three and a half years old.
and still napping and doing well overnight. But they're probably getting to the end of the sort of range of typical there. They're probably going to need to drop that nap pretty soon. so just know that there's a huge range of variability. It's very different child to child, and like with anything to
do with sleep, really important to be thinking about the child you actually have in front of you rather than what other toddlers are doing. So, some of the signs that your child might be ready to drop their nap. So, we're talking about the ones kind of in that two to three year.
range of course, but we're looking for things like being really hard to settle for the nap or just not seeming tired for their nap. You know, you try to give it to them, but they just take ages to fall asleep, or maybe some days they just don't and they just avoid the nap altogether. You might find that bedtime is being pushed later or has just become really tricky. Often they're just not that tired at bedtime. So they're making all sorts of wild requests or yeah it just has become a little bit of a circus. That's
Pretty common one we hear. For some families, you know, the the nap might be fine, bedtime might be fine, but all of a sudden they're wide awake in the middle of the night. We might see false starts or split nights emerging where they're awake for a long time overnight. and then of course there are other toddlers where everything stays fine except they're suddenly waking up at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. So if your child's in that two to three year range and you're seeing, you know, a collection of these signs for a week or more.
it's definitely worth thinking about whether it's time to drop that nap. But there are a couple of rules I want you to keep in mind. one example is if your child is three years old or older and there is anything hard about their nights or bedtime, like if the nights are just a bit tricky, drop the nap. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the nap's just gotta go. Also another thing to keep in mind is if your child naps for more than the length of one sleep cycle,
Then before you drop the nap entirely, try aiming for just one sleep cycle length. And sometimes that means you can hold on to the day nap a little
bit longer because some families really like to have their little break at lunchtime where they can get some other things done while their toddler is having that nap. So that's really important to keep in mind. Now let's talk about how you're gonna do it. Because this is a you know a big question. And on one hand, you know, you just drop it. You know, it sounds simple, but
There's always a little bit more to it when it comes to these things. So if you've decided, okay, they're definitely ready for it, we're gonna dive in, we're gonna give it a go. My advice to you is to decide on a day when you're going to drop that nap and just drop it cold turkey is generally the best way to do it. What you're gonna do is in all likelihood, you'll add the total day sleep to the night. So if your child was having a one hour nap,
and going to bed at 8 p.m., you might find that you drop that one hour nap, but they go to bed at 7 p.m. Try that out and just see. Sometimes they drop the nap and they just get rid of that sleep and they won't add it to the night. Other times they do add it to the night. So sometimes it's a bit of trial and error. Definitely set up a quiet rest area for your toddler at around midday. Not so quiet and restful that they're gonna accidentally nod off.
but just a space where maybe you sit with them, you read some stories, and they're just getting a bit of physical rest because that can really help them with that transition to not having a nap at all. Definitely plan a lot of distractions. So you want to keep them really busy. you know, if they're feeling a bit tired and cranky, having a bit of a distraction. It could be pulling out a toy they haven't seen in a while, maybe doing some water play, having friends over to visit. They're great distractions that can help if they're feeling a bit.
bit tired and cranky and you're trying to keep them up until bedtime. And definitely avoid pram and car rides later in the day if you think that they're really likely to just suddenly drift off to sleep. It won't be forever, but often just as they're adapting to not napping, it's it really helps if we can just avoid the car and the pram at those really sort of crucial times when they're just likely to have those what I call the sneaky naps.
now some parents will say that they find a 10 minute bridging nap at some point in the day really helpful to help their toddler get through to bedtime without
sort of having a full nap. But then many other parents would say that a 10 minute bridging nap is a complete and utter disaster. So I'm really on the fence on this one. I think there seem to be families where they say, look, a 10 minute nap really helped my toddler adjust in those first few days. You know, we quickly got rid of it and we were fine.
And others say, hell no. Like if if that 10 minute nap happens, we are screwed. It's all over. Bedtime is going to be a disaster. So, you know, you might want to have a bit of an experiment with that one and see how it goes for you. If you do use a bridging nap though, aim to phase it out because essentially that bridging nap, it's still taking the edge off your child's sleep pressure. And then often that means by bedtime, that sleep pressure is just not back where it needs to be. so yeah, definitely don't keep that one too long.
And my final tip around how to do it is just to understand that it takes time. Like there are some rare toddlers who just immediately adapt and it's like they, you know, never napped. They just hit the ground running, they stop their nap one day, they never have it again, and they're just fine. that's rare. Most toddlers, I would say, have two or three weeks where
They sort of seem like they need the nap still and then other days that just power through fine. It could be really up and down. Their mood can be all over the place. I don't want you to be put off by crankiness and moodiness. It's really normal. it's just a normal part of adapting to a new daily rhythm. And if dropping the nap was the right move, then it will settle down. Their nights might improve, they wake up more refreshed, and they'll do better during the day.
without that nap, but it does take time to get there. And I say this every day to everybody, I need to have it sort of tattooed on my arm or something so I can just hold up my arm. But any one night is influenced by the whole
week of sleep prior. So if you drop the nap and the first few days feel like an absolute disaster, it doesn't mean you did the wrong thing. It just might be that they're part way through making that change. Their circadian rhythm is kind of trying to catch up with this big shift. It's trying to work out what the new pattern is.
so yeah, give it a week. And you know, if you try for a week and you think, it just hasn't gone well, add the nap back in for another couple of weeks, maybe then try again. you know, you're in the driver's seat, you're the parent, you could make a call, and it's completely fine to test something out and and see how it works for your family. So I know that there I feel like over the years we've had a few questions about dropping that that final nap, and I hope that answers some of those key questions.
there's definitely more guidance on this in the Sombelle programs as well. So if you are struggling with this, go and check out. we've got some lessons on naps. There's I think some more info about this in the troubleshooting sections as well. and I'll definitely put a link to this podcast episode in there too. Awesome. All right, so let's start with parent questions. So we've got a few this week, and I thought let's break them up into different segments where we kind of tackle
Questions that are kind of similar. we'll tackle all together. I'm gonna call this segment one, and it's all about naps and changing naps or dropping naps, things like that. so first up, let's start with Pav's question, who Pav inspired the topic of this episode. so thank you so much for that, Pav. It is a really terrific suggestion. so Pav has a two-year one-month-old boy.
Who struggled to fall asleep at bedtime for nine months. And I know all about this because as Pav mentioned, she had a coaching call with me not too long ago, where her toddler very dramatically
halfway through decided to throw himself off the bed and onto the floor. it was quite the eventful appointment, but Pav handled it like an absolute pro. yes, and thankfully her her little one's all right. so Pav
has this two year old. she's realized that he's heading towards dropping his nap. And just as I would say, you know, you've done this perfectly, Pav, you've cut it down from a two-hour nap down to just 45 minutes, which is about the length of of a sleep cycle. Pav says that he's coped really well with that. And she's on day seven of a new daily rhythm. So at the moment they're waking him up at 715 a.m. There's a nap at 1230 and bed is 8 p.m.
And she's in the process of dragging everything a bit earlier. So she's aiming to get to a 7am wake-up and a 7.45 p.m. bedtime. So very close now, Pav, which is great. Pav says he's mostly happy and energetic, especially in the mornings after a longer night, occasionally cranky in the last 30 minutes of the day, and generally doesn't seem tired before the nap or bed, yet falls asleep within about 10 to 25 minutes. On days when he actually shows some tired signs,
He settles a bit faster. She says, On night five, he woke up screaming at twelve forty-five AM, cried for about ten minutes, and she checked his temperature and he was fine. And he resettled again by about half past one. And she says she finds it really hard to read his tired signs. He can be really cranky waking up from a nap until she takes him outside and then he cheers up. So Pav's got a few questions that I'm going to go through one by one. Her first one is, is the eye rubbing and yawning a sign of sleep debt or just part of adjusting?
So 100%, Pav, it's part of the adjustment. you know, you're describing sometimes there's tired signs, other times there's not. look, there's just gonna be a little bit of variability day
to day. Like sometimes I'm rubbing my eyes and yawning at 3 pm, and other days I'm okay to get through to my bedtime. I'm I wouldn't be worried about it, and it's not a sign of a sleep debt. Pav wants to know why was night five so hard? You know, to be completely honest, Pav, I have absolutely no idea.
Toddlers are like this. They just they can be going along so well and then just randomly do something so unexpected. I really don't know. It could be that he had a bit of a pain, maybe he's starting to you know, around two years of age, they're starting to have more dreams, sometimes nightmares come into things. Can be really hard to say, but it's very unlikely that it's something to worry about.
Pav also asks on days when he doesn't seem tired for the nap but still falls asleep within twenty minutes, should she be leaving the nap time where it is or pushing it a bit later on those days? or just shift it once he's taking longer than twenty minutes to fall asleep. Look, I would say don't shift it later, 'cause at the moment you're trying to drag his circadian rhythm a little earlier and to have it, you know, an earlier bedtime and an earlier wake up. I would probably keep it where it is. she wants to know should she keep the nap at at
twelve thirty pm, which works well with the paid work that she has. you know, once she's got the bedtime and wake up time shuffled forward. And yeah, absolutely. When they're on one nap, it doesn't matter too much what time of day that nap happens. it's fine to just do it when it suits you. and she also asks, how does she know when it's a good idea to try adding sleep back in? And how would she do that?
Look, if you have shuffled along his circadian rhythm, you've moved everything a little bit earlier, it's going along really well, and you think that he is just too tired. So there's long stretches of time in the daytime where he's really cranky and really struggling to stay awake, then absolutely maybe add an extra fifteen, thirty minutes or so to that daily rhythm at the same time each day for a full week and see, does he take more sleep?
Or does he start to get more wakeful or does bedtime get tricky again? It's a great idea to test it out. but yeah, look, I'm I don't think that we're near that point yet, Pav. you know, and you're asking about how to drop the final nap because you're thinking he might be getting ready for that too. So I would think that if anything, we might be dropping a little bit of sleep from the daily rhythm rather than adding more into it. But if you think he might need more, then when all is going well.
you can absolutely try highlighting a bit more back in. just test it out, see how you go. So thanks again, Pav. It's awesome that you wrote in with those questions, and thank you for inspiring this episode. Next up we have Pippa. So Pippa writes with immense gratitude, which is really lovely.
She says, as someone who experienced postnatal anxiety specifically around her baby's sleep, she found the podcast and the program a really calming presence amid a sea of online misinformation. And she calls it truly incredible and life changing. Thank you so much, Pippa. That's really, really lovely. I I feel like, you know, it's you've
captured in a nutshell why why I wanted to create some bell.
because there is just so much misinformation out there and it's just music to my ears hearing that that's really, really helped you. Pippa says her 11-month-old boy has an average sleep need of about 11 and 3 quarter hours or maybe 12 hours around that mark. he takes two 30 to 40 minute naps and sleeps through from 7.15 pm to six a.m. She wonders if he could be ready to drop to one nap despite being under 12 months.
He's been on two short naps for about a month now, down from two naps of over an hour each. She says his midday wake window has really stretched out as he fights the second nap, and he's gradually pushing bedtime later. So you've described a couple of signs that he's ready to drop the nap there. But Piva says, should they let the second nap and bedtime keep drifting later? Or is it best to bite the bullet and drop to one nap?
He's showing no other signs, so there haven't been any split nights or early wakes. his midday wake window is up to about five hours or so, and whereas he's only having about four hours awake before bed. She says it hasn't dented his bedtime sleep pressure or overnight sleep. But nap transitions cause her a lot of anxiety, so she'd really like some advice. look, Pippa, I would say he's showing a lot of the signs, and definitely for
babies that are toward the lower end on sleep needs, so under sort of 12 hours of sleep per 24 hours, they sometimes do drop to one nap just before they hit that 12 month mark. So I'd say you're getting pretty close. Given that the nights are perfectly fine, you don't need to rush into any big changes. I would just see how you go over the next couple of weeks. And if you're noticing, hang on, the nights are getting a little bit wobbly actually.
or bedtime is just really pushing much later, that would be your cue where you could join together those two naps into one midday nap, ride out a bit of a storm for a week or two as he adapts to that new rhythm. but if you do it at that time, you're doing it at a point where you've got a lot of evidence that he's really ready for it. So chances are he will adapt quickly. So thanks for sending in the question, Pippa, and thank you for your beautiful feedback as well. It means the absolute world to get
You know, an email like that, it absolutely makes my day. and I hope that transition is super smooth for you. But you know, if it's a bit bumpy, don't let it worry you. It it will settle down, it will get easier. Hanna wrote in with some questions as well. Hannah says, Thanks to the team. She says, Sombelle has been an amazing resource for us, particularly to help us understand our lower sleep needs, baby. That's awesome, Hannah. So good to hear.
Hannah says her daughter is about to turn 12 months and she'd love to know how to tell whether sleep challenges are down to a change in sleep needs versus needing to drop a nap. Her daughter started sleeping through
intermittently a month or two ago, but after a month the wakes crept back. Now she doesn't sleep through. She's consistently waking around 11 pm for a feed, is then settled until 4 or 5 am when Hannah hears a few little fusses.
and often she'll just resettle at that time. and then Hannah gets her up at 6 30 a.m. She's sort of done a check and and thinks that the room temperature and the light levels are fine and is starting to wonder if it's sleep pressure. She says day naps are okay, but now sometimes take 10 to 15 minutes for her to fall asleep, which is longer than it was previously. she says current day sleep is an hour ten in the morning and thirty-five minutes in the afternoon.
And it makes it hard to you know to trim down day sleep unless she sort of cuts a whole so cycle, sleep cycle. So she's wondering, should she push bedtime back, trim the morning nap to 35 minutes, or drop a nap or something else? Hannah, the first thing I would do is get a read on what the average total sleep per 24 hours is at the moment. That's really going to tell you if it is that sleep needs have declined or they're just ready to drop a nap. So that
Kind of answers that part of your question. I if you're feeling like it sounds like something needs to shift. I'd probably start with trimming the day sleep to just the two sleep cycles so that we're potentially increasing that sleep pressure overnight. That could be something worth trialing for a week. Certainly I would try that before dropping to one nap, especially since she's not quite 12 months. But once she's 12 months, generally I'm just like, yeah, most of them can handle just one nap.
so hopefully that helps. It kind of gives you a couple of options to think about. So get a reading on the sleep needs at the moment, maybe trial two shorter naps for a week, see if that helps. And if that's not helping, it might be time to move to one nap. So thanks for sending in that question, Hannah. it's a really, really good one. now Kylen wrote in and they're part of our toddler program. They're a couple of months in.
Kylen says it's helped tremendously. Figuring out her toddler's total sleep needs has been absolutely key. she says her nearly 18-month-old has had split nights since around one year, and they still crop up occasionally because their sleep needs seem to drop every month, so they keep sort of tweaking as needed. Recently the split nights returned, so Kylen took some time off the nap and lengthened both wake windows to better distribute the awake time. The split excuse me.
The split nights resolved as expected, but something new has appeared. She says her toddler now wakes about one and a half to two and a half hours after bedtime
and takes around five to fifteen minutes to fall back asleep. She says they're needing help resettling about half of the time. She's unsure whether this is still too much sleep in the schedule or something else like being overtired or developmental changes.
Kylen says her shifts to the daily rhythm are usually very gentle, like maybe 15 minute changes at a time. So she wouldn't think that she's kind of overcorrected the daily rhythm. but she does wonder if maybe her toddler needs even less sleep. She's also noticing her getting very wound up before bed and naps and feels they've stretched the wake windows about as far as they can. Well, I agree with you, Kylin. If you're finding that, you know, she's really ready for her naps, she's really ready at bedtime, you're probably you know, on track.
With the daily rhythm. You've been doing some really well thought out adjustments to that daily rhythm, which is incredible. Like star student, you're you're the star of the week, Kylen. you know, well done on making those changes, and you're seeing the the effect of it, you're seeing the nights improve. Given it's just this one wake up, it's only five to fifteen minutes, and she's back asleep. What I would suspect is before I'd change the schedule again.
I would work really hard on ensuring every resettle is her settling herself back to sleep. So it might be that for a week you just go, you know what? We're not going to do all this extra stuff to get her back to sleep about half of the time when she wakes. Just stick to whatever approach it is you're using for cot settling, stick to it. Show her that this is not very interesting. Sometimes it's just one wake-up because they weren't feeling well or something.
We give them a bit of extra support and at 18 months they remember it and they're not gonna forget it. And they start to think, you know what, I'm gonna wake up and really crack it. Cause I reckon maybe I'll get some of that nice bit of time with mum or dad or whoever. and sometimes that just hangs around. There's little bit of motivation there. so before you shift the schedule, maybe just try really persistently working on the resettle in the cot and see if that resolves that night wake.
If it's stretching on, you know, much longer than 15 minutes and you know you're getting nowhere after a week of trying to resettle in the cot, that's when I start to go, yeah, maybe maybe the daily rhythm does need to shift again. yeah. all right. Hopefully that answers your question there, Kylen. Good luck. I hope it resolves quickly. toddlers can just do these random things and sometimes they just go away all on their own accord.
And I'll have my fingers crossed that's one of those random little blips in the radar that even the best sleepers can have.
Okay, and the last one for this little segment around naps is from Martyn So Martyn writes that they successfully use Sombelle to help their 16-month-old
learn to self-settle after a really tricky patch at 13 months. However, he's now waking at 1 to 2 a.m. at least three times a week with intense crying. And the advanced accelerated approach seems to worsen these wakes. They last anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours.
My heart, you poor thing, Martyn. That's really, really intense and yeah, not fun at all. and Martyn says this is creating a cycle where he only sleeps through the next night out of sheer exhaustion. Martyn says he has one daytime nap of an hour and a half. it was recently shortened from two hours to help build better overnight sleep pressure.
The room temperature's fine, he has a full belly, and although some molars have come through recently, he doesn't seem in any pain. he says he stops crying when they pat him but escalates the moment they stop. Martyn says any advice would be pre appreciated. This sounds so, so challenging, and it raises a lot of questions. I don't know I can give you the clearest answer, Martyn, but what I would think is wake ups that are that long.
where you're going in and, you know, you're trying to give support, but it's still just taking ages really makes me wonder if something is really out of whack with the circadian rhythm. it might be that they've had a sudden drop in their sleep needs, which, you know, can happen. There's a a lot of things I'd want to explore. I'd wanna wanna know if, you know, separation anxiety is part of the puzzle for this one.
Yeah, it's intra yeah. I it's really it's actually really hard to say. Sometimes we just can't give a complete answer from a question like this. And it really takes looking at a sleep diary and understanding every every aspect. Often with these cases, we look at the sleep diary and the circadian rhythm, exactly what is happening during settling. Sometimes there's little things that are really throwing the settling out of whack and causing an increase in crying inadvertently.
And then any other motivating factors in the night. Sometimes if just during one wake up they got to have a cuddle and go and look at the stars out the window, or had a little sippy cup of milk or something, they can just be like, ooh, yeah, that was that was good. I'm gonna keep asking for that. so yeah, it's kind of hard to give advice, Martyn. I think just be really sure that after a tricky night, yeah. This is probably my key bit of advice for anyone listening who sometimes has a really long wake-up overnight.
After a long wake up, you have to get them up on time in the morning. And it's one of the hardest things to do, but so important. Get them up on time. Don't let them overdo the day nap and push them through to their bedtime. Because if they are kind of playing catch-up with a sleep in or an extra long day nap, that will keep the split nights going. and then I'd be really looking through yeah, have the sleep needs dropped. so keeping the diary and really looking at what the sleep averages are sitting at right now.
and then with a settling approach, you know, if you're using advanced accelerated approach, read over those steps again, make sure you're stretching out the intervals and really giving him the space to self-settle.
yeah. And if it's really tricky, please reach out. I think a coaching call is so often needed for these tricky ones. All right, thanks so much for sending in your question, Martyn. Let's go on to segment two now. And this is a bunch of questions that kind of all relate to.
daycare in some way. And this is, yeah, again, really common one. Daycare can really shift things for sleep. So the first question is from Sarah B. We have got a couple of Sarah's today. So we're starting with Sarah B. Sarah's six and a half month old daughter now self-settles in the cot, often sleeps right through the night or might just have one to two quick and easy wake ups.
she's weaned herself off her overnight feeds. and Sarah says this is such a massive improvement because she used to be rocked asleep. She used to have three overnight feeds, she'd wake five to six times overnight. and that was all before they started Sombelle a month ago. Sarah, that is incredible. Well done. That is absolutely amazing. What tremendous progress.
Alright, Sarah says with a 12 and a half hour sleep need, they aim for two and a half hours of day sleep. So they do two one hour naps and then a 30-minute nap. They do an 8:30 p.m. bedtime and a 6.30 a.m. wake-up. Sarah says she's just started daycare two days a week and is sleeping much more when she's at daycare, and occasionally ending up having 13 and a half hours total on a daycare day.
She sleeps well the night of daycare, but then the next night or the one after is when they really feel it. She'll wake up two or more times overnight and is much harder to settle. So you've got really clear evidence that if she overdoes the day's sleep, you really see that flow-on effect. Sarah's question is after a day of too much sleep, should she reduce what she offers the following day? Maybe pushing bedtime back or trimming naps?
so that it's only eleven and a half hours of opportunity just to help get things back on track. Or do they ride out the wakes and still offer the full twelve and a half hours? First step, Sarah, if you haven't already, you probably have, but have a talk to childcare. I think so often childcare centres push back on waking up babies, but they have no idea how challenging the nights are for any individual child. And a lot of childcare workers have been taught that
More day sleep means better nights. Gosh, don't I wish I could just burn that advice to the ground. so have a really good conversation with them and even show them the sleep diary. Show them, look, when she's overdoing her day's sleep, we are feeling it overnight, you can see these wake ups. Tell them that you're not coping with it, that it's really challenging, it's impacting your well-being. You know, like really be honest with them about the impact it has on your life so they really understand that you're not just asking this for no reason.
There's a very good reason why you want your daughter to be woken up if she's, you know, napping too long. So that's where I would start. Then I would think about it more on a day-to-day basis. If they absolutely won't come to the table,
on the day of daycare, I would probably push bedtime later that night. I don't like to move bedtime and wake-up time around, but if that night maybe she has an extra hour day sleep, so you push bedtime an hour later, that's
hopefully, fingers crossed, going to prevent that sequence of poor nights following. that would be my best advice. Rather than the next day offering much less sleep, you might have a really cranky baby on your hands. It might just be that we think about that total sleep per day. and I will cross everything that daycare comes to the table and and gets on board with this Sarah, because for some babies it's super important that daycare is doing something similar to what happens at home.
So good luck. Letisha is a longtime listener writing in for the first time about her 10 and a half month old boy. She says they went to sleep school at four months and he can self-settle for naps and bedtime 99% of the time. But overnight wakes, and lately these are split nights, are the real challenge. And she admits to bed sharing out of defeat after a whole hour awake. and she's worried this is contributing to ongoing split.
Nights. Letisha, I feel you. If somebody woke me up for an hour in the middle of the night, I couldn't be held responsible for my actions. Like we don't make sensible decisions in the middle of the night, and you're just trying to survive, so don't give yourself a hard time. Letisha says he has one overnight feed at around 4 a.m. They've just started daycare, so the rhythm is a little out of whack, and he's showing some separation anxiety.
he's not eating or drinking very well at daycare. Look, that's really normal. That will resolve quickly. and she's saying she's seeing some separation anxiety at home when she puts him down. Currently, they're he's having two naps for two hours total day sleep, bedtime at 7 15 p.m. and she's looking at bringing the wake-up time to 6 30 a.m. Sort of shuffling things a bit earlier to suit daycare.
Letisha says he falls asleep within three minutes, but wakes between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. and won't settle for at least an hour. She trialed reducing the first nap to 45 minutes, but he was very cranky. Solids are great, four milk feeds a day plus one overnight. As context, last night he woke at 10 55 p.m. and took two and a half hours to resettle. There was 30 minutes of her trying to settle in the cot.
10 minutes of cuddling, 10 minutes of feeding, and then into her bed. so Letitia's questions are: does she reduce the day's sleep again and push through or push bedtime out further? And is her bed sharing
causing the persistent 11 to 12 p.m. wake, or does he genuinely need the sleep he's being given? She's booked a coaching call. awesome. I haven't noticed your name in my calendar, Letisha. You might be with one of the others, I'm not sure. But anyway, that's great. You've got a coaching call booked.
Letitia's feeling a bit anxious about her return to work soon. but thanks us for our wonderful work. And she says she just listened to the pep talk episode this morning and found it really, really helpful. So that is awesome. I love the pep talk episode. I get a lot of parents saying they found that really, really helpful. So might have to do another one soon. Pep talk round two or something. Alright, so there's a bit going on here, Letisha. I would definitely start with doing a recent read on the total sleep average per day.
split knights are always to do with a circadian rhythm. They won't have anything to do with separation anxiety, and very likely have nothing to do with motivation, because I would expect that you know you're giving a lot of support and he's still not falling asleep for an hour to two and a half hours. If the sleep pressure is truly there, it wouldn't take a lot for him to get back to sleep. So I think the daily rhythm is going to be the answer here. Look at
how much sleep is being averaged in that diary at the moment. Come up with a daily rhythm that really tightly fits that. And then stick to it and get daycare to stick to it as well. Then once you've really mastered the sleep pressure and you really know the daily rhythm's on track, we'll see those split nights reduce a lot. And then that's the time to go all in with whatever cot-settling approach you want to use. Do it when we know that sleep pressure is really, really there.
And if you're thinking separation anxiety is part of the problem, then read through the approaches and pick one that is gonna be the right the right fit. So it might be that you're staying in the room, you're being quite close by and then very gradually removing your presence from the room. excellent. So yeah, good luck, Letisha. I think you know, you've you've come a long way. You've had sleep school, you know, early on and
you know, there's the changes of daycare and everything, but it's sometimes we just have to do a bit of a reassessment of sleep needs, and that really helps us to push forward. and it's great you've got a coaching core book. That's awesome. All right, let's move on to Eliza. Eliza's almost 10 month old, was until recently an amazing independent sleeper. that go into the cot awake, be asleep within five minutes for naps and bedtime.
Sleep through the night and resettling himself. It sounds like he absolutely nailed it, Eliza. Well done. But Eliza says she's returning to work and he's starting childcare three days a week. And since then his separation anxiety has become huge. Now he won't fall asleep independently at all. He stands, cries hysterically, and tries to climb the cot. The separation anxiety approach of staying in the room hasn't helped, and laying him down to pat.
Makes him scream harder. They've had an awful night wakings, one of nearly three hours, and now have to rock him to sleep. In the day she's resorted to pram naps, and she also has a toddler and can't spend an hour cot settling. Look, just straight off the bat, Eliza, the pram naps, excellent idea. Keep doing them. It I think settling in the cot would be too hard right now. So stick to pram naps and give yourself an easy win.
Eliza says his schedule is unchanged. She's still having two 45 minute naps and childcare does the same thing, so she doesn't think he's sort of got something out of whack with the daily rhythm. he's definitely not oversleeping at daycare. Her question is should she support him however he needs right now, even if that means rocking to sleep, or push harder to preserve independent sleep? She's worried about creating long term habits in a baby who was previously so confident.
And she says she absolutely loves the podcast. awesome. Thanks, Eliza. That's that's great. this is a really, really interesting one because you kept the daily rhythm on track, but those night wakes have become so long, even if you're in the room. and he already knew how to self-settle. So it's kind of, I think, a case of really yeah, I guess picking apart each component of his sleep and really trying to figure out where things are are going wrong.
I think that I I'm probably saying like a broken record. I think I would do a check-in on how much sleep he's actually averaging at the moment. I don't think that separation anxiety is necessarily causing the really long wake-ups because you've been in the room with him. You're not actually challenging the separation anxiety. I just feel like, you know, for such a long wake up where you're giving support as well.
It probably is going to come down to something in the daily rhythm that might just need a bit of adjusting. if the sleep needs are dropped off a bit, it might be that it's time to push bedtime a little bit later. it is really hard to say. I'd definitely love to have a look at the sleep diary Eliza. I feel like that would probably tell us a lot about where the best changes are to make. But on two 45 minute naps, I wouldn't be changing that. I think it's probably gonna come down to moving bedtime around a little bit.
And maybe by pushing bedtime later or making whatever adjustments we need to increase that nighttime sleep pressure, it's just going to open the door to making some progress with the self-settling. I would be fiercely protecting the independent settling. I'd be working really hard at that. We know that he knows how to do it. it might be that once the sleep pressure is high enough, you suddenly find that you know laying him back down, staying present, giving the reassurance, but really persisting with COT settling.
will actually start to really work well. But the missing ingredient right now is that sleep pressure is a little low when you're trying to do it. so I hope that helps Eliza. Could be a good candidate for a coaching call as well if things really aren't coming together. if you're watching this on YouTube, you've probably noticed I have a little dog in my clinic at the moment who is wandering around being such a distraction.
but if you're watching, this is Lewis and he's brand new. He's a brother to George, my other whippet. There's his cute little face. He's a darling. and he's yeah, an expert at sleep actually. Sleeps probably about 18 to 20 hours a day. So you can send your questions in for Lewis to ask about his amazing sleep. All right, let's let's move into our next segment. So now I really want to focus on.
This sort of idea of how much sleep do they actually need? Because we've had a couple of questions come in with queries about sleep needs. So, first up is Sarah R. Sarah is loving the new question index for the podcast. She says it's an amazing resource. Thanks, Sarah. It was an amazing amount of hard work to set up. But I agree, it's so worth it. It's so cool to be able to just, if you haven't looked at the podcast question index, you've got to go and do it. There'll be a link in the show notes.
But to be able to kind of like type in a topic and then just see every episode that's addressed it, like it's so cool. I love it. I think it's so helpful too, rather than trying to trawl through episodes to find what you're looking for. so thanks for the feedback. It's really awesome. Sarah's question is about calculating unique sleep needs. And she's wondering how many minutes, if any, do you subtract for night wakes? She feeds her 16-month-old back to sleep in about 10 to 15 minutes per wake-up.
Sometimes it takes 30 minutes on a bad night if they've overdone the day's sleep. she says, look, feed three feeds at night means about 15 minutes each time. So she'd be taking 45 minutes off the total daily sleep. She says it feels like quite a lot. and she's wondering, do we sort of have a standard rule? Like, do we always subtract all of the night wake minutes or just certain wakes that are longer than a certain amount of time?
she's leaning towards pushing bedtime back maybe just for 15 minutes. I I guess in summary, Sarah's kind of feeling a bit unsure about how tight to go with that daily rhythm and whether to include all the night wakes. Look, in summary, Sarah, absolutely every when you complete a sleep diary, just track when they're actually asleep. So if they're awake overnight, mark it as them being awake overnight. And it doesn't get included as sleep when we look at that total.
So in your example, Sarah, the total sleep per 24 hours should be accounting for about 45 minutes awake overnight. If we keep allowing an extra 45 minutes that they don't need, then we're gonna keep having 45 minutes of awake time overnight, in essence. and you're well, you've got a toddler who's 16 months old. So
I'm guessing you're probably going to be pretty keen to drop those night feeds pretty soon. And dropping those night feeds, you really want to make sure that sleep pressure is high enough. So if you're still allowing time for night feeds, chances are they'll just keep waking for the night feeds. so definitely if you're keeping a sleep diary, please track all overnight waking. You have to take that away from the total sleep. Really super important. And thank you so much, Sarah, for that question. I'm I've got to add a couple of edits to Sombelle.
Soon I've got a whole list of things where I want to really galvanize some ideas and add some new lessons and tweak the explanations for a couple of things because as I'm getting this feedback from you guys, it tells me so much around where we can really improve or add more detail that's going to be helpful for you guys when you're making changes for your little one's sleep. So yeah, it's great to hear this. And I just need to try and get a clear run at some vowels where I can get in and make those changes. they're definitely coming.
So on the similar theme, Raylee has a seven-month-old daughter who she thinks is low sleep needs, averages about 10 and three-quarter hours of sleep per 24 hours. So that sounds like low sleep needs to me. Raylee thinks her sleep cycle is about 34 minutes or so. and she wants some tips on pinning that down. she usually just has cat naps, and her daughter is cranky when she has these cat naps. They recently tightened the daily rhythm to a strict
12 and a quarter hour budget for over a week, then dropped to eleven hours as she was averaging less. And they moved to two naps, a six forty-five AM wake up, and a nine pm bedtime. Okay, so it sounds like Raylee, you've started with probably much more sleep opportunity than she actually needed, and then you've tightened it up to eleven hours, which is a great move. So that is a really, really good plan. It sounds like you've gotten tighter with that daily rhythm.
to really make sure it's working. Raylee says she settles independently but still feeds once or twice overnight. She's breastfed only, doesn't take many solids, so calories are hard to regulate. And she's on the 10th percentile. Raylee says they change her nappy and she goes back in the cot awake after the feed and resettles herself. Despite a week on the tightest schedule, her sleep has become more restless. She's waking every three hours or so
when just days earlier she would do a seven hour stretch. So she's wondering why sleep has become more restless and how they can get back to having longer stretches without being on a roller coaster of like a couple of good nights and then a couple of bad ones. she wants to know how to be confident that her sleep need really is ten and three quarter hours like the diary shows, rather than something rather yeah, rather than it being something she's doing wrong.
and Rayleigh's over in the US, so she'd love to book a coaching call. But and if you didn't know this guys, how insurance won't cover us for anybody who's in the USA or any of the USA territories, which is really annoying. but yeah, thank you, Raylee, for sending in this question. it's a great alternative. look, I would say some babies will adapt to a new daily rhythm in a week, easy peasy. Others take a bit longer than a week.
But if you're tracking that sleep and she's averaging 10 and three quarter hours and you've previously actually been giving her a lot more opportunity for sleep, but she's just not really taking it, then I would say she's following that pretty standard course of a gradual drop in sleep needs over time. and sometimes that is gradual, sometimes it sort of drops off a cliff and it's a really big change all at once. So I would say, you know, I would stick to that 11 hour daily rhythm.
Really give it time. Make sure you wake her up on time. No sleep-ins after a tricky night. You cap the day naps as you've outlined. You get her through to bedtime. Really stick strictly to that. And I'd give it another week and see how things are going because she is independently settling. So if the sleep pressure is really nailed, it should all come together. I would just caveat that by saying some babies for as long as they're offered feeds overnight, they just keep waking up to check if it's feeding time yet.
and sometimes when there's overnight feeds, they just don't take off with solid foods because their appetite just isn't there. So it may even be time. I'm sorry, I have a dog climbing in my lap at the moment. it may even be time soon to start thinking about gradually reducing the overnight feeds just so that the interest in solid foods increases. But that is definitely something to talk about with your health nurse or your doctor.
Get their advice on that whether it is time to trial just reducing some of those overnight milk feeds and seeing if that helps with her daytime appetite. She is only seven months old, so there's no big hurry. but yeah, hopefully that advice helps to get you on track, Raylee. All right, and finally, on to our fourth little segment where we're gonna dive into our littlest listeners. So these are questions, a couple of questions from parents of younger babies. so
The first one is from Madeleine. Madeleine's son is almost five months old and doing so well on the Sombelle program. Madeleine says her siblings all used the same approach in Sombelle. So she started very gently at around three months. she says it was a really easy decision. I love that a whole family has used Sombelle. That's really beautiful. How special. thanks for telling us, Madeleine. That's really lovely.
Madeleine says he's almost sleeping through with just one feed at around 5 a.m., which is amazing for a five month old, just by the way. she says her question is about day naps. So connecting sleep cycles is a skill he just has not mastered. He wakes up fully alert after one sleep cycle and ready to go after only about 45 minutes of sleep. she's tried pushing his wake windows, particularly the second one.
trying to stretch it out a bit. It doesn't really make a difference. she wonders, is it developmental? Is it something she needs to really actively encourage and teach? Or should she just let him finish the midday nap on her? or is it fine to just get him up and play? his total sleep needs is about 13 hours per 24 hours and she says she loves the podcast. Thank you, Madeleine.
This is a really great question. This sounds like a very, very happy cat napper. And I wonder if Madeline's probably heard that advice floating around that all babies need to have a longer midday nap, which is just total nonsense. I think the proof is in the pudding, Madeleine. If he wakes up after one sleep cycle, happy, alert, and ready to go, he's had enough sleep and there's no need to resettle him. I definitely would not be Okay, my very cheeky dog is now trying to actually climb into my lap.
Let's see if we can do this, Lewis You're gonna sit in my lap and no, not gonna sit in my lap now. You changed your mind. All right. so yeah, look, I think you're seeing the evidence that catnaps actually work really well for him. Don't fall prey to that horrible advice that you know, all babies have to have a longer midday nap. And I definitely wouldn't want you to be trying to extend the nap by
holding him or introducing other ways of falling asleep when he's doing so brilliantly self-settling and pretty much sleeping right through the night. I would just go, yay, I've got a happy cat napper. This is our life right now. and the nights are great. So I wouldn't tinker with anything. over time, sometimes they start to link sleep cycles together. It might be when he moves on to two naps that he starts to do that, or he might never do it at all. And that is completely fine. Catnaps are fine. sometimes people call them
crap-naps, but you know, they they're sleep. All all naps, even cat naps, are sleep and all sleep is good. So I wouldn't be too worried, Madeleine And I hope that's I hope that's reassuring. And final question is from Maria. Maria's thanks the team for bringing so much order into our lives. She says the program should be part of the school curriculum. I love this. I'll have to contact someone at the Department of Education.
and see where we slot that in. Is it like year 12? They've got to do a little sleep class. I don't know, but I love it. It's funny. so Maria has a six-month-old daughter who is very active and alert. They started Sombelle a week ago after two months of trying an alternative approach that left them with inconsistent bedtimes, really hard night settles, and unpredictable naps.
since starting Sombelle, total daily sleep has dropped from about 12 and a half hours to 11.5 hours. She now mostly self-settles using this supported accelerated approach. she does just 45-second intervals between giving her pats and reassurance. and yeah, she has a fairly consistent daily rhythm. So it's a 6:30 a.m. wake up, an 8 p.m. bedtime, and there's two to three naps that are typically just cat naps.
She says there's so much less crying than there was than the other approach she was using. It sounds like you made some really massive changes, Maria. well done. And I'm really glad that Sombelle has felt like such a good fit for your family. That's awesome. Maria says overnight she has an 11.30 p.m. wake up with no feed and her partner just resettles the baby. At 3.30 a.m. she wakes and mum does feed, but she settles and goes straight back in the cot.
And then there's another 5:30 a.m. wake up where she wants another feed. But if she feeds, she falls asleep on mum, seems a bit tired, but without a feed, she's just very, very hard to settle. So her questions are for the 5:30 a.m. wake up, should her partner try settling without a feed, even though it's close to wake up time? Or would dropping the 3.30 a.m. feed better help to break that feed to sleep association? So I guess she's thinking it might lead to just dropping all overnight feeds.
should her partner do all the night settles or will their daughter settle more easily with mum once the feeds are gone? her partner's going back to work, so it'd help if mum was doing sort of one or two of the three night wakes. and is the drop in total sleep a concern? Should it recover as the rhythm settles or have they pushed her a bit too far? Look, babies drop sleep needs right across that first year, and often they drop a lot around that four to sort of seven-ish month mark.
I would say she's had that typical drop-off in sleep needs. Just keep an eye on it. And if it starts to look like it's increasing, you can always adapt that daily rhythm again. look, I would say the 5 30 a.m. wake up for a feed, it's probably more that sleep pressure's starting to get a bit low towards morning, and a feed just helps to keep her a bit dozy for a bit longer. I'd probably be inclined to start pushing the 3 30 a.m. feed just a little bit later, and then that 5 30 a.m. feed will become
First feed of the day, you know, the morning feed at 6 30 a.m. that's probably where I would do that work. just pushing that all along a little bit. look, when you're dropping an overnight feed, it can help if your partner resettles. If you're breastfeeding, then you just don't want your baby to see you if you're not going to offer a feed, they're gonna be wildly cranky at you.
so it would be handy if your partner is doing the overnight settles when you're not gonna offer a feed, but still your daughter's old enough to start to have some experience of you resettling without feeding as well. So just think about the timing and what you've got capacity for in terms of who's doing the settling. and yeah, not concerned about the drop in total sleep. sometimes when we go to make a sudden change, it does look like it drops off and then it comes back up to where it was.
But often it's just the sleep needs gradually dropping away. But it sounds like you're doing a terrific job, Maria. You've had a couple of months that sound really challenging, and I'm feeling really pleased that Sombelle has helped you sort of feel like you've got a bit of a sense of order and that things are really coming together. That is absolutely terrific. Well, this has been a pretty long episode, and at some point soon when I get my life and all the chaos a bit more in order.
I'm gonna go back to doing weekly episodes so that we don't have such a big build up of parent questions and you get answers a little bit quicker. Just a little bit challenging at the moment because we've got a lot going on, a lot of we're really busy, just really busy in the clinic, which is such a great way to be. but it's really tricky trying to balance appointments with you know, making sure we're really looking after our Sombelle family as well.
Yeah, but it's so wonderful. We've got people from all around the world listening to the podcast, getting great advice, starting to make really positive changes to sleep. And I just feel so proud of all of you. You're doing such a good job. Parenting is not for the weak. It is hard work and lack of sleep makes everything harder still. So if you're tuning in and you've been really thinking about your child's sleep and where you can make changes, well done. You're an awesome parent for thinking about these things.
and I hope everybody just gets a good run of good sleep this week. I feel like everybody needs it. We've got all these winter bugs going around and everyone's, you know, tired and yeah, we all just need some good, good rest. So I'm gonna send those vibes out into the universe for everyone. I don't know what difference it will make, but hoping it will make some difference. have you left a review for us yet? If you love the podcast, please, please, please go and give us a five-star review. It really helps. If you've got a minute, write something about what you love about the podcast.
It's so, so, so helpful for us in really reaching lots of tired parents. and a lot of them have kind of, you know, been force fed the the crappy advice and they're really struggling and we want to really try and correct that so that parents get good information that actually helps. and make sure you tell your friends about us. Word of mouth is amazing.
If you need extra support, of course, go and check out the Sombelle Sleep Clinic programs. I think they're pretty amazing and they're a work in progress at all times. We always want to be adding and changing and developing it so that it always suits the needs of parents. If you would prefer to work one-on-one, book in for an appointment, you know, we've got practitioners available that can help you as well. Go and search that new parent question index too. If you've got a specific question right now,
Click the link. I'll make sure it's in the show notes. Click it. Go and see if you can find the episode that answers your question. And then tell us. I'd love to hear that, you know, it was helpful for you guys. All right. Well, take care of yourself and I will see you next time. Have a great week, everybody.
