Podcast Episode 276: Why the Heck is No One Sleeping? Sleep Secrets You Need to Know Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

Rachael Shepard: let’s just give parents all the information that they need to do whatever they’re going to do as safely as possible. Like, nothing is without risk in life, right? There’s always going to be some level of risk to every choice we make. But don’t we want to be able to, have all the information to mitigate as many of those risks as possible?

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I am your host, JoAnn Crohn joined here by the lovely Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker: Why, hello, hello everybody. How are you?

JoAnn Crohn: It’s so funny. Brie has a light behind her on her bookshelf and it was like flashing police siren red and it like, now it’s blue and it like skewed my focus. And I’m like, what is that over there?

Brie Tucker: I

JoAnn Crohn: No, it’s fine. No, I’m fine.

Brie Tucker: It’s my, uh, diffuser. And I just, I like the colors, but you’re right. Like I’ve recently noticed that it started pulsating when we’re recording. Like it’s not pulsating and normal, but like, um, but I think it’s because I think, well, I’m not sure if it’s the camera or if it’s also like, I keep looking back at it now, I think it’s the water bubbling in the, uh, diffuser. Cause it’s getting low, so I probably need to put more water in it, but. I just like the

JoAnn Crohn: makes sense.

Brie Tucker: and the

JoAnn Crohn: Does that make sense? Yeah, I, it, it, smell is a big thing. Like, I used to think, I’m like, Oh, that’s all like extra stuff. You don’t need it. But , so much of your environment is shaped by all of your senses. And so if you can control for smell and you put like calming, relaxing smells in the air, like it, it affects your whole mood. I’m down with that.

Brie Tucker: I’m a huge aromatherapy person. Just huge with that. So yeah, that, that’s a big one for me. Aromatherapy. All the way, people. Love my oils.

JoAnn Crohn: Well, our episode today, Brie and I really have to dig back in time because we’re talking with a baby sleep expert, but it’s fascinating. Some of the stuff that Rachel tells us because things that I didn’t know as a mom, especially with feeding my kids and with sleep, this is going to help you look back and have those aha moments if you’re done with this phase, or it’s going to help you better support your friends or maybe family who is in this situation. Stage themselves.

Brie Tucker: Ugh, cause it’s a real stage, man. It’s real hard.

JoAnn Crohn: it is, so hard. Rachel Shepard Ota is the founder of Hey Sleepy Baby and host of No One Told Us podcast. She helps parents navigate infant and child sleep in a way that feels good for them to get the whole family more sleep. And she’s the busy mama to three ages, six and a half, four and 18 months. And we hope you enjoy our interview with Rachel.

So Rachel, welcome to the podcast. You have the phenomenal Instagram and site. Hey, Sleepy Baby. You also have a podcast, No One Told Us. And I’m so interested to hear how you got into this baby sleep field because as I was reading your bio too, I saw that you were a teacher, a former teacher as am I.

Rachael Shepard: Yes, yes.

JoAnn Crohn: And I always find it interesting when teachers become entrepreneurs.

Rachael Shepard: What did you teach?

JoAnn Crohn: I taught fifth grade.

Rachael Shepard: Oh, amazing. Brave soul. Brave soul. I taught special ed, so I taught K to 5. I had a mixed caseload. So, but my first kind of job was like paraprofessional and then I taught kindergarten for a little bit, but mostly, special ed elementary. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: See, you did all the grades. See, kindergarten, I’m like, brave soul, brave

Brie Tucker: And I think you’re both brave souls because while I love the younger age group, teaching a classroom full of children was not Brie’s expertise. Give me one on one. Maybe two, maybe two to one. That’s the best I could do.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, yeah.

Rachael Shepard: teachers more. Pay them

JoAnn Crohn: Exactly. Pay them more.

Rachael Shepard: I

JoAnn Crohn: So it’s Tell us, how did you get into the whole baby sleep field?

Rachael Shepard: Yeah. So like you said, I was a teacher for my whole adult life. I planned on just doing that for a while. and then I had my first baby and he was. Not a super easy baby. I thought like, I’m great with kids. This is going to be so chill. My husband and I are chill. People were relaxed. We have support, like this is going to be so easy and it was not.

and you know, this was, he’s six and a half now. So this was kind of before this big surge of like, Instagram parenting accounts and experts and all that stuff. So there really just wasn’t a lot out there for me to learn about or for me to try except for like sleep training. And you know, my pediatrician was recommending it.

The couple of people that I knew that had kids were recommending it like Ferber method or cry it out or something similar. and so we tried it and it was not. A good time. And it did not work. and it was really just like not a great fit for our baby or our family. And we really, I had postpartum anxiety, like all tied into his sleep.

I was just really obsessed to an unhealthy degree with how much he was napping and all of that. Like, I’m sure so many moms can relate. Like you’re constantly tracking their wake windows and tracking how long their naps are and you have to be home for the bedtime routine. It’s just,

JoAnn Crohn: Ah. Oh my gosh.

Brie Tucker: I mean, like, we talk about all the time how there is no handbook on parenting, but that stuff gets beat so, so strong into our heads that, there’s a spectrum of it. But it doesn’t really get expressed as a spectrum, it gets expressed as a must be, commandment, you must do this, or you’re going to screw up your baby for the rest of their lives,

Rachael Shepard: exactly. So yeah, it was just was really, really hard and we eventually just kind of gave up and surrendered and we were like, all right, you know what, he’s still waking up a few times a night to eat. I’m waking up at 6am to go teach all day. I’m going to be tired. This is just the season we’re in and we’re just going to roll with it.

And that was right when he was around maybe nine or 10 months when we finally just kind of gave up. And then he just started sleeping through the night by himself at like 11 months. So yeah, From that point, he was a really decent sleeper and, you know, we were getting rest again and feeling like our relationship was kind of back to a good place again and things started to settle. So what do we do? Of course, we decided to get pregnant again and start all

JoAnn Crohn: the first babies under control. Let’s bring some more chaos into our lives

Rachael Shepard: Exactly. Don’t we all do that?

JoAnn Crohn: Yes. All of us.

Rachael Shepard: So, yeah. So we got pregnant when he was about 18 months with my now middle. And I started to really spiral towards the end of my pregnancy about what we were going to do about sleep because I was like, oh, yeah, that really sucked and I definitely don’t want to do it that way again.

But I also don’t want to be sleep deprived again because now I have a toddler to care for as well. So I was really nervous. And so I just started kind of researching and I ended up finding a few different pages that. Weren’t really around or at least just weren’t on my radar when I had my first that we’re talking about more of like a quote unquote baby led or holistic type of sleep approach and I became kind of obsessed and like followed a bunch of these pages and looked into their websites and all of that and Found a certification program and I told my husband like what if I just get certified what if I just Don’t take this person’s class, but actually do this.

And he is so used to me doing stuff like this. He was like, okay, sure. Go, go for it. and I was a teacher, right? So we were broke. My husband’s social worker. So I was like, you know, worst case scenario, I learn all this stuff for our own family and use it for our own kid and that’ll be great. But then maybe I could even.

Start this as a side hustle and take some clients like on nights or weekends or during summers or something like that. So that’s really where it all started. So I got certified, during COVID. I started in March of 2020 when I was five weeks postpartum with my second. I thought it would be like

Brie Tucker: of all of that at

Rachael Shepard: yeah, I, I, I thought it would be like a fun maternity leave project. Like, I don’t know what I was thinking.

JoAnn Crohn: right there with you, Rachel. I was gonna start and get my principal certification on my maternity

Rachael Shepard: you go. We have high hopes, don’t

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. Yes, such high hopes indeed. Yeah,

Rachael Shepard: So anyway, so I just really started my Instagram account as a way to like, meet clients and for clients to just find me and to start kind of putting out into the world the stuff that I was learning that I wished that I hadn’t learned or known when I had my first. So it kind of snowballed from there and I never returned to teaching after that. So

JoAnn Crohn: isn’t it funny how that works out? Like I had the same thing kind of like I took a year off with my second and I found this business and then I just never went back because you find your passion how you can help other people and the teaching thing seems a lot less appealing in the

Rachael Shepard: Yeah. Well, especially during COVID, it was like they were doing distance learning and my son’s daycare shut down. So I was just like, there’s no way, like I can, I cannot go back. There’s just no, it’s not going to work.

Brie Tucker: I mean, but let’s just look at the posi like, one of the huge positives for me is you can pee anytime you want.

Rachael Shepard: You don’t have to ask another adult for permission to go pee.

Brie Tucker: Right?

JoAnn Crohn: uh, passing like me and the other teachers that we’re passing this meme around. It’s Ryan Gosling. It’s like, Hey girl, I’ll watch your classroom when you go pee. Like, it’s very much like it

Rachael Shepard: so good. Yeah. It’s exactly like it. Yep.

JoAnn Crohn: So let’s dig in to the whole like baby sleep thing, because I, it’s about like. 10 years in the past that I personally experienced it, but now I am watching my sister go through it. She just had a baby two weeks ago,

Rachael Shepard: Oh my

JoAnn Crohn: two weeks ago, Friday. Yeah. I hope she’s on. I hope she’s on new baby. and the thing like, I know she was seeing first of all, like the baby is sleeping all day during the day and then is up during night. So I was first of all wondering. About that and what you see in your clients and how to like kind of roll with that or go through that.

Rachael Shepard: yeah, that’s really tough and it’s also really normal. So, babies don’t really have a circadian rhythm until they’re at least six weeks old is when it kind of like starts to develop. They’re also not producing their own melatonin yet for quite a few, weeks. So, for those two reasons, they have no idea when it’s day or night and they don’t care.

Their bodies just sleep when they want to sleep and they’re awake when they want to be awake. So, It can be really hard for parents, obviously, especially, you know, if you have older kids, and you can’t just nap during the day and catch up on sleep in that way. So there are a couple of things you can try.

One is getting out into the sun and having it just be like bright and busy during the day. So taking your baby out for walks, getting them out into the sunshine in whatever way. That works for you whether it’s baby wearing if they hate the stroller, just, you know, sitting with them outside and letting them just kind of like stare up at the sky and the trees moving and things like that.

So, I know a lot of times parents think, oh my gosh, to get these naps during the day I have to just like sit in a dark room and rock and play the sound machine and, and things like that. And you really do not have to do that, especially not in the newborn stage. So,

JoAnn Crohn: What I’m hearing is it’s kind of a hopeless case to try to make babies to like stay like awake during the day and like sleep at night because they have no circadian rhythm

Rachael Shepard: Yeah, and so their sleep is really just kind of like dispersed throughout the day without much rhyme or reason. Like they could be sleeping for 15 20 minutes at a time, they could be sleeping for 3 or 4 hours at a time, and that, it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night to them, right? So, yeah, you can start to like encourage things by using daylight and using dark and calm at night so that they can start to kind of tell the difference.

and, you know, trying to encourage them to feed a lot throughout the day so that they’re not up making up for those calories at night. Those are a couple things you can do, but really it is just time and it

JoAnn Crohn: time. It’s

Rachael Shepard: better on its own. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: it is so hard when you’re, it’s just like, there’s nothing you can do and it is just time. I have the hardest time accepting that as a parent. Well, we’re going to get into a lot more sleep stuff right after this, so Rachel, I love how you said that basically babies and newborns do not have their own circadian rhythm yet until about six weeks of age. what do you like? So I remember when I had a newborn, I was just going crazy with like all the things. and you mentioned feeding

Rachael Shepard: Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: and feeding is another thing that really like caused me to go into an anxiety spiral because You were always worried the baby wasn’t getting enough food. You were always checking the baby’s diapers to figure out, Oh my gosh, is this a wet diaper? Oh, have they peed? Like, it is insane. What do you wish like new parents knew more about like feeding and sleep?

Rachael Shepard: Yeah. I mean, there is such a connection between feeding and sleep, especially at the beginning. What I find a lot, especially with parents that are a little more on the anxious side, is that there’s this constant worry, especially if you’re breastfeeding, because you can’t exactly measure. There’s this constant worry or anxiety about baby not getting enough.

Parents are always like, I don’t know if they’re getting enough. I can’t tell. My milk is drying up, like all of that stuff. And that’s actually really not very common, especially in the newborn phase. Most of us are just producing tons and tons of milk. So one thing I would say is, like, really relax.

Your baby is most likely getting what they need, especially if they are not, you know, super fussy, if they seem content, if they’re pretty sleepy. one thing that I wish I knew when I was a new mom was, like, those feeding cues and, like, the satiation cues. So one that I like to tell parents about is when your baby’s fists are really clenched, like this.

It’s a hunger cue, and by the end of the feeding, if you see their palms kind of open and relax and just like fall out like this, it’s a really good sign that they’ve had enough and that they’re good and full.

Brie Tucker: That makes a lot of sense, because if you think about it, like, when we’re stressed, right, we tense up in general, like,

Rachael Shepard: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Brie Tucker: when we’re not, so And I feel awful now. I’ve been like, um, all those years I was a home visitor, JoAnn, and I didn’t know that was a feeding cue.

Rachael Shepard: I know we just don’t know, and another one that I, another one I recently learned about actually was, like the positions too, so like if their hands are kind of up by their face, or they’re putting their fingers in their mouth and stuff like that, that’s a hunger cue, and then as they feed, they should be like kind of coming towards you.

to their hands being more midline. And then once they’re full, you’ll often see them just kind of like splay their arms out like this and just be like super relaxed. So that’s a really easy one to look at. as far as feeding. And then I also always, always, always talk about what I call red flags for not just sleep, but for feeding, because like I said, there’s like this huge connection between feeding and sleep.

Like if your little one either isn’t, isn’t Having proper feeds or they’re really just, uncomfortable after feeds or during feeds, sleep is going to be really hard. and so a lot of things that we see are things like reflux or milk allergies or tongue ties and lip ties or all of the above, like my first baby.

so I talk a lot about red flags and things to look out for to just kind of make sure, like, if you feel like, um, This is a lot harder than it should be, then it’s probably something you want to look at, right? So, my Instagram and my blog are probably the best places to go look for that type of info.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. That’s so fascinating about the hunger cues, like the fists up to the mouth and the chest. Like I’m

Rachael Shepard: Mm hmm.

JoAnn Crohn: my niece now and

Rachael Shepard: It’s really cool.

JoAnn Crohn: I’m coming down. I’m coming down. I’m going down to Tucson

Rachael Shepard: Yep. Yep.

JoAnn Crohn: just watch her. It’s so funny. Like in our podcast, Facebook group, Christie says, she feels like that until she gets her glass of wine.

Brie Tucker: The, the feeding

Rachael Shepard: We can all relate. For me, it’s my coffee. I’m like, oh, just give me my coffee and then I’m relaxed.

Brie Tucker: Same with coffee. You know, it’s funny about sleep with kids because, like JoAnn said, it’s been a while since we had little ones in our household. Like, We have a 24, a 17 and an almost 16 year old. So it’s been a, it’s been a heartbeat, you know, since we’ve had that little, but I remember my first, that boy did not sleep.

First three years, never slept through the night. Not once. And I’m coining sleeping through the night, uh, from 12 AM to 5 AM. Like never once made it through that. Never drink coffee. Never like did anything with caffeine. Man, like a few months into that kid being born I’m like lay on the coffee and it has never stopped since.

JoAnn Crohn: No,

Rachael Shepard: You know what though? I love that you talk about that. And I love that you’re just kind of like normalizing that for people. Because I think a lot of times we hear, Oh, you’re never going to sleep again when you have a baby. Or, you know. The opposite, like, Oh yeah, the first few weeks are really hard, but then they start sleeping.

And I think all of it is true. There’s such a huge range of what is normal and what people do really experience. And so I love that you’re talking about how your son didn’t sleep through the night till he was three. And like, I would not wish that on my worst enemy. I know that was probably so hard. And, you know, at the same time, it’s really important for people out there that have toddlers that aren’t sleeping through the night yet. Like it’s not anything you’re

Brie Tucker: and if you want it and if you want it a silver lining that boy now at 17 well since he was like five pretty much can sleep through a freaking tornado or a train if he had to. That nothing Nothing wakes that kid up. So,

Rachael Shepard: you go.

Brie Tucker: it those first

Rachael Shepard: There you go. Yes.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s so funny because Brie told me that when my son was very little like I first met Brie We became friends when my son was an infant and he was strapped to my chest. Yeah, right after I had him He’s 10 years old now and she told me she’s like, yeah My my son didn’t sleep through the night till he was three And I’m

Rachael Shepard: were like, don’t tell me

JoAnn Crohn: oh my gosh Like don’t tell me that Guess who didn’t sleep through the night until he was three years old my son He did it But it was one of those things where I I embraced it after a while And I know you talked about this too on your site about co-sleeping and I want to get into co-sleeping right after this so one of the things, that you talk about a lot on your site is also co-sleeping. And when my son, Was like, he would not sleep at all. He was one of those kids where I would try to nurse him.

I would put him to bed 11 PM on the dot, bam, he was up. And then regardless of everything I tried, he would not go back and sleep in his own bed. And so I ended up like perfecting my side sleep position with, you know, that arm out guarding against my husband so that he could sleep right here.

And then he could nurse whenever like he needed to. and he nursed for a good two years. But still, it was until three that he actually got out of our bed and was comfortable sleeping in his own bed. And I know that co-sleeping, if you talk to your pediatrician about it, they’re like, no, that’s dangerous for the baby. And I honestly don’t know how we would have survived if we didn’t do it. So I want to hear about what do you think on co-sleeping? 

Rachael Shepard: Oh gosh, it’s such a nuanced topic and it’s one of those things where I just have to put a disclaimer like anything that I say is just me and like the research that I’ve done. I am not telling people that they should co-sleep because that would be irresponsible because there are some things, there are some risk factors that can make it more dangerous, right?

So I would never just make a blanket statement that everybody should co-sleep. That being said. There is so much unnecessary fear mongering about it in our culture in the U. S. I just did a whole episode on my podcast, No One Told Us, about what the research actually says on bed sharing, SIDS, all of those things, with a researcher who actually Does this for a living?

She researches these stats. So if anybody’s really interested in, in that side of things, I definitely recommend checking out that episode. I also have tons of information on how to safely co-sleep on my website and mostly on my Instagram. I have a bed sharing highlight. But yeah, I mean, it’s really unfortunate that we’re given this abstinence only type of advice, like, just don’t do it instead of, well, we know that the majority of parents, and this is a scientific stat, this is from research, that the majority of parents, it’s like between 60 and 70 percent, will bed share at some point, whether they planned to or not.

Maybe that’s once, maybe that’s every night for a year, maybe that’s every night for three years, whatever it is, it’s going to happen. And I would so much rather people get the education that they need to do it safely than fall asleep in an unsafe position. Because what so many people do is what you just described, they do everything in their power to get their baby in their crib and it is just not happening.

And they’re too scared to bed share because they’ve been told, you’re going to harm your baby if you bring your baby into the bed, don’t do it no matter what. So what do they do? They hold their baby. They rock their baby. They nurse their baby in a chair. In a rocker or on the couch, which is statistically many, many, many times more deadly than bed sharing would ever be.

Brie Tucker: Oh, yeah, cause roll out.

Rachael Shepard: yeah, so it’s really unfortunate because what can happen in a chair or a couch is asphyxia, asphyxiation where the baby’s airway gets compromised or they slide down into an unsafe position. They get entrapped. There’s lots of things that could go wrong with sleeping with your baby on a couch or a chair.

So, that’s kind of my stance is like, let’s just give parents all the information that they need to do whatever they’re going to do as safely as possible. Like, nothing is without risk in life, right? There’s always going to be some level of risk to every choice we make. But don’t we want to be able to, have all the information to mitigate as many of those risks as possible?

And, and do what’s going to work best for us. And I mean, co-sleeping, like you said before, we never would have survived without co-sleeping.

Like as a, as a species, even like most, most other cultures either have always bed shared or still are bed sharing. you know, I have a couple of blog posts about this too, about just like the cultural context of it. and why it’s fallen out of favor, here, but yeah, it’s,

JoAnn Crohn: It’s crazy.

Rachael Shepard: life saving in some situations. It really is.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. I like, I would have never thought to bed share with my daughter because my daughter actually was a great sleeper. Like right from the start, right in her crib, thought like the next one would be easy. Thought we got this parenting thing down

Rachael Shepard: Oh my gosh. Yep.

JoAnn Crohn: and then

Brie Tucker: I love those first deceitful little ones that make

Rachael Shepard: I know. I know.

Brie Tucker: easy!

JoAnn Crohn: It’s yeah. But it was, and it made me so mad at the time to know that I had this open to me and yet. Pediatricians were telling me not to do it. Like media was telling me not to do it. And so many, like, it just goes on the list of long things that moms are told to be fearful about. And that like control our ever waking thoughts and just make us insane with anxiety. Like I could go on and on and on, but co-sleeping is definitely one of them. Like.

Rachael Shepard: Yeah.

Brie Tucker: But I 100 percent agree with you, Rachel. Like there is so much out there. Like, again, like coming back to my old life of having been a home visitor, for the zero to three population, like there are so many things that we were instructed, to tell parents definitely don’t do, don’t do this under any circumstances. Yet I did them at home with my kids. Because. Luckily, like you just said, I had the knowledge. I

Rachael Shepard: Mm hmm.

Brie Tucker: why we were saying absolutely positively don’t do it. So I knew what to look out for, what to adapt for all those kinds of things. And it makes it so much harder when you have all these hard and fast, no, no, no, don’t doos. That’s what makes this guilty mom culture where we’re like, Oh gosh. Dang it. I, I screwed up again because I was told absolutely positively don’t do the, like the, let’s take a second with the whole breastfeeding thing, right? Like if I can’t successfully breastfeed, there’s something wrong with me because that’s what’s best. And

Rachael Shepard: Mm hmm.

Brie Tucker: yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: Or if there’s anything at all different with your child, you’re like, what did I do during my pregnancy? Like it is, this is all my fault. It’s crazy. The amount of stuff that is put on moms. Like it, I just can’t believe it starts from such a, a young age with our kids, like as soon as their babies, because something that you mentioned, it was like abstinence only education.

And that’s exactly what this is. The same thing that our society is doing with sex, they’re doing with everything else. And I wonder why that is like, do you think it’s just because people don’t want to get sued or like, yeah, that’s,

Rachael Shepard: Yeah. I think it’s easier. I think, you know, I have so much respect for pediatricians and nurses and people that are working in the healthcare profession, but they are so overworked and overscheduled. They have, what, like 15 minutes with each patient. They’re not going to go through all of the nuances and all of the, they just don’t have time. So I think, I think one, it’s easier to just say. Don’t bed share, just sleep train.

So I think there’s that. And I think, you’re right, there is like a liability there that there’s this misconception that it’s a lot more dangerous to bed share and they don’t want anything to happen to their patient, of course. And they don’t want to get sued for telling the parent that something was okay when actually maybe it wasn’t okay for them. so yeah, I think it’s a couple of different things.

JoAnn Crohn: there’s so much of this around the whole field of education that like, I don’t know if you run into it with your business, but I mean like just the things you have to say and the things you have to preface with it with when you’re the disclaimers,

Rachael Shepard: god, constantly. Mm hmm.

JoAnn Crohn: that will ultimately help people and educate people. I mean, I remember when I was first starting my business and I was with this horrible accountant and this accountant was like, okay. Go and talk with this insurance company. And I was on the phone with this insurance company and they ended up selling me this horrible 500 a month policy because they’re like, but JoAnn, you teach the kids, think of the kids right now, think of all of the harm that could become the, I mean, like, this is our culture right now when it comes to education and parenting is like all of this fear.

Rachael Shepard: You will appreciate this actually being a former educator because I just came across a TikTok recently that was talking about this because the disclaimers are out of control. Like, when you have a business, especially on social media, and you’re trying to just put together a post that’s going to be helpful, and then there’s everybody in the comments like, well, what about me?

What about this? What about this? You didn’t talk about this. And I saw this TikTok that was so perfect because they were saying, you know, part of reading comprehension is to It’s to understand the intended audience, right? So if you’re seeing a post and you’re comprehending it well, you’re understanding who the post is mostly going to be talking to, right?

And all of the different contexts that would maybe go into making a post like that and who the reader is and who the author is and all of that stuff. and it just made me laugh because I was like, wow, yeah, a lot of people are not really. Showing their reading comprehension skills online these days because they’re just constantly attacking people for not including the correct disclaimers on everything. It’s, it was so funny to me.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, it’s, that is so funny. And listening comprehension as well. Like, I even think of that as like complaints we get from other people, even like using this in your daily life. Like, if you get a complaint from your mother in law or a complaint from like somebody on social media, you’re like thinking to yourself, okay, this is a listening comprehension issue

Rachael Shepard: you really heard things that were not there. Didn’t you?

JoAnn Crohn: Yes, exactly, exactly, because usually like I’ve been talking to my daughter about this a lot lately, and about how people view her, how people view others. And I’m like, usually it’s nothing to do with you. It’s always how that one person views the world. Like you could tell a lot about a person based on what they complain about.

Rachael Shepard: That is so true.

JoAnn Crohn: And it’s not really you at all.

Rachael Shepard: Mm-Hmm.

JoAnn Crohn: So it’s fascinating. I like digging into that.

Brie Tucker: I’m kind of curious. I’m going to, I’m going to throw a question out here. put us all on a hot seat for a minute. If we all could give, so all of us to answer this, if you could give one piece of advice, like in a 10 second span, you’re in line, someone’s got a really cute newborn baby next to them that they’re holding. What is one thing you would tell that, that mom?

JoAnn Crohn: Um, this sucks. You can cry it out to the mom

Brie Tucker: Okay.

Rachael Shepard: Hey, for I’ll be here for you cry it out

Brie Tucker: Yeah.

Rachael Shepard: I love that. Just get it out. mine would just be that everything is a season and that nothing is permanent, everything is temporary. So like. You’re going through a really tough phase right now. You have a colicky newborn or, you know, your toddler is potty training and it’s a nightmare or like, whatever it is, it’s just a season and it will pass promise

Brie Tucker: I’d

JoAnn Crohn: Three years down the road eventually

Rachael Shepard: eventually.

Brie Tucker: I’d be like, uh, you’re doing great. Find yourself a Ghost of Christmas Future friend. And what that is to me is like, find yourself a friend that has a kid that is, uh, older.

Rachael Shepard: Yes.

Brie Tucker: you need, like you just said, everything is a season. I remember there’s this one woman that worked with me at a couple of different jobs I had Kelly shout out to you, Kelly, you were my, my godsend so many times, because I would be freaking out about whatever it was that was happening because.

When it’s happening to you in that moment, it’s all encompassing. Plus when you add in the fact that you’re probably sleep deprived. at many different stages because it depends on how old your kids are and how well they’re sleeping sometimes they go through like, oh, don’t you love those like fits where they don’t sleep for like a week or something because

they have a stuffy nose or they had a nightmare or whatever, or like my daughter that saw a cartoon of the transformers and thought that her furniture was going to come to life and turn into a transformer in the middle of the night. Oh, yeah,

Rachael Shepard: Oh, poor thing. Oh

Brie Tucker: But anyways, you needed somebody to be like, listen, my kids went through that. And now they’re, now they’re in high school and they’re fully functioning, Brie, I promise it’ll be

JoAnn Crohn: fully functioning. We have some advice coming in from our Facebook group as well. Anna says, she tell that mom to ask for help. You don’t need to do it alone. Alyssa says, don’t say it’ll get better when they get older. Ha.

Rachael Shepard: It just gets different. We didn’t say, we didn’t say better. It was just that different.

JoAnn Crohn: different, different. and Christy has a story that she said our pediatrician had to sleep train our son by making him cry it out. And as a first time mama, she had such shame for not doing what she quote unquote should do. They’d let him cry for hours on end, which caused her to cry and the amount of shame she felt for letting him cry. In turn of events, The pediatrician has since left her practice and is now a life coach and has since done a podcast in one. She actually apologized for forcing the sleep training because now she realizes how it can be traumatic for baby and

Rachael Shepard: can you link the podcast please?

JoAnn Crohn: please, please, Christy. We’ll put that in our show notes

Rachael Shepard: Oh my gosh. I am. I’m dying to hear that because, yeah, I mean, ugh, I’m so sorry that happened to you because I think it happens, I mean, it happened to me, so I know how horrible that feels to feel like your power has kind of been taken away and you’re doing something you don’t really want to be doing and it doesn’t feel right. yeah, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry that happened.

Brie Tucker: to have to take showers. I would like go and take a shower while my, my kiddo, because if there was any degree of sleeping, I have a, and JoAnn knows me about this, like I have a very low tolerance for frustration. I’ve always been like that. So like, if I heard crying, I was just, I’m still like that now.

Actually, I’m having the, I’m having a, you can see the light bulb going off on top of my head right now. Like, I’m still like that now people cry and I am so uncomfortable. I’m like, let’s just stop this right now. Stop the cry. Stop the

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah.

Brie Tucker: So yeah, I’d hide out in the shower.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. Oh. Okay. Well, Rachel, what are you excited about that’s coming up for you?

Rachael Shepard: Okay, so I’m excited. I think when this episode comes out, I’m going to be in Europe. so I’m really excited for that. We’re taking our kids on our first, like, big vacation since they’ve been born, basically. I mean, we’ve done family trips and stuff, but we haven’t Really left the country with them ever.

So we’re doing Portugal. I’m really excited. So if you’re listening right now, you can probably follow along with that trip on my stories because I’m sure I’ll be sharing. and I’m also excited because, I love doing my podcast and we have weekly episodes that are coming out on, Thursdays and we have some amazing episodes planned for the summer.

And I’m excited that I have a couple new courses, so courses on how to stop feeding to sleep, stop rocking to sleep, some of the stuff that we were talking about earlier in a way that feels really gentle and gradual and will not require you to hide out in the shower while your little one is crying. so yeah, yeah, really excited for those.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, that sounds amazing and I will definitely be following along on your trip because I’ve never been to Portugal so I could live vicariously. We’re going to New Zealand this year,

Rachael Shepard: Whoa. Oh my God. What is the time difference for that? Because that jet lag

JoAnn Crohn: don’t know,

Rachael Shepard: super fun, but,

JoAnn Crohn: it’s like I haven’t looked yet, I’m not preparing myself for that, I’ll

Rachael Shepard: well, I have a blog post. I have a blog post all about dealing with jet lag in case you need it, but your kids are older. I’m sure that they can handle it. That’s going to be amazing. I hear it’s so gorgeous there.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, it’s fun. Well, thank you, Rachel, so much for being on the show. I’ve learned so much about infant feeding cues and like feeding behavior. And I’m going to go now and watch my niece with like intensity and watch for these

Rachael Shepard: Yes. Yes. Yes. Tell her to just send me a message if she needs any help.

JoAnn Crohn: Will do well. Thank you again.

Rachael Shepard: Thank you.

JoAnn Crohn: so that one tip that Rachel gave about the feeding where like the baby start with fists up and then they fist to the chest when they’re like getting satiated and then like to the side when they’re full. Oh my gosh. I am fascinated in that any little thing that gives me cues on people’s like internal states I’m all about.

Brie Tucker: Yeah, I, I could see that because like, I really like the idea of giving you something to work with. Besides it’s a different cry like that was always hard for me. Like, it’s a different cry. And like I talked about in the episode, I have a low frustration tolerance and especially for auditory always been like auditory and sensory really get me like overwhelmed very easily. So, Yeah, like the different cries. I don’t care what the cry is. Just stop. Just

JoAnn Crohn: Just stop the crying.

Brie Tucker: I

JoAnn Crohn: Let me put something in your mouth.

Brie Tucker: Right. And I say I don’t care, but I, I did care. I cared a lot. I just was like, I can’t differentiate between the cries. So visual is great for me. Like I would have. Yeah, that was huge. It was funny. My son had like a, so my daughter was completely different, but my son, my first one, not only did he not sleep for the first three years, but he did at least have a very visual cue for when he was sleepy.

JoAnn Crohn: mmm.

Brie Tucker: like his dad. I’ve never met anybody else like this. the under circle area of his eyes turn red

JoAnn Crohn: Oh

Brie Tucker: the skin underneath his eyes turn red when he was tired as a baby and his dad was the same way as an adult. I know, right? It was always the weirdest thing. for his dad, obviously it was like very overly tired when he would get red and puffy and I’d be like, you know, clearly you haven’t slept for a few days. You’re, cause he was an insomniac. But, for my son, like, it was like, I called it like his turkey baster. it would like pop when he was tired. I’m like, okay, he’s tired. He’s red. Like, it’s not hunger. It’s not gas. It’s tired right now. Cause his eyes are red. So

JoAnn Crohn: Well, that’s it. That’s the cool sign. That’s a good one It’s funny like all these things we find with our kids like getting to know them more about like What they need at the time? I remember when I was helping my daughter get to sleep when she was younger. I would hold her hand and While she slept, like I would be on the floor, my

hand through the crib and I would hold her hand and she would have a twitch, like, you know, those switches for sleep where you’re like falling, like, so she would have a twitch, but I could not let go at the first twitch. she was still kind of awake. She was still kind of aware it was the second twitch that happened. And then I’m like, okay, she’s asleep. It is so interesting. Yeah. Yeah, like

Brie Tucker: how you learn those things.

JoAnn Crohn: And it’s funny cause my son didn’t have anything like that. he just didn’t sleep at all. So I had nothing to go on.

Brie Tucker: Okay. So wait, so you mentioned in the podcast episode, how I told you how my oldest didn’t sleep. Yeah. Did that freak you out or did it make you feel any more like, okay, this isn’t crazy abnormal when he wasn’t doing it because you were used to your daughter being a good sleeper. I’m kind

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, I, it didn’t freak me out and set aside of the abnormal thing. Like I was fine. It was normal. It was more that sleep and me are two very important things together. And I was not getting any sleep whatsoever with him not sleeping. And so it was just thinking like, Oh my gosh, I have three more years of this. That’s what freaked me out. Like, I’m like, I don’t think I can do

Brie Tucker: And yet you did.

JoAnn Crohn: And I did. And I never want to go back and do that ever, ever

Brie Tucker: I know, right? Like, there was a time right after I got divorced where my daughter was like, Or not right after I got divorced because I think it was right before I got divorced. Actually, my daughter was like, can you and dad have another kid? I want to have another, I want to have a little sister.

And I’m like, oh, hell no. Like I, and I’ve said it before on the podcast, my sister, God bless her. My oldest sister gave me so much advice while I was pregnant. And she was just like, some people like being pregnant, Brie. You were not one of those people. And I’m like, peace out. I am not. I love the baby stage, like cute and like them learning and how you can see it on their face and like they develop so much in those first five years. It’s amazing, but I would never want to live through that 24, seven again, like peace. I am done with that part. Loved it. I’ll babysit, but I can’t do that 24, seven again.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. I can’t, I can’t do it either. Honestly.

Brie Tucker: our hearts are out to you, our new moms out there, and the good news is, like we mentioned, it’s seasons. you will move past it. Eventually it will be, a distant memory, this whole not sleeping aspect of it. Or trying to figure out when your kid is hungry. They’ll become teenagers and they’ll always be hungry. Just telling you now. Always

JoAnn Crohn: hmm. Yeah, that never ends

Brie Tucker: And they’ll tell you that you have no

JoAnn Crohn: ever. Oh, yeah, no food at all

Brie Tucker: Yeah, nothing to

JoAnn Crohn: You’ll make suggestions and they’ll be like, no, I don’t like that. No, I don’t like that. No, I don’t like that Yeah, so just you have a lot to look forward to in your life. There’s a lot more great

Brie Tucker: But then you can also say to them, Fine, find what you want to eat yourself. And you just go, Off my shoulders, not my problem.

JoAnn Crohn: Exactly. Well, remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you. We’ll talk to you later

Brie Tucker: Thanks for stopping by.