Sleep & Sanity with Sammy Merritt

Summary

In this episode of The Moms Are Alright, Dr. Hila and Dr. Caroline welcome Sammy Merritt, a registered psychologist specializing in pediatric sleep. They discuss the complexities of baby sleep, the relationship between sleep and anxiety for new moms, and the nuances of sleep training. Sammy emphasizes the importance of understanding individual needs and the evidence-based approaches to support healthy sleep habits in children, as well as the importance of considering maternal mental health in making sleep decisions. The conversation also touches on the long-term effects of sleep training and offers practical tips for new mothers navigating sleep challenges with their babies.

Takeaways

• Baby sleep is often a source of anxiety for new moms.
• Sleep training is different than 'cry it out'.
• Understanding your baby's unique needs is crucial for sleep success.
• Research shows no long-term mental health differences from sleep training.
• Division of Responsibility: New moms should focus on offering sleep, while letting babies to decide if/how much to sleep.

What’s covered in this episode

00:40 - Meet Sammy
04:18 - The intersection of baby sleep and maternal mental health
08:52 - The role of control and anxiety
13:00 - Expectations vs. reality of baby sleep
17:41 - Debunking myths: sleep training and co-sleeping
26:20 - What’s the deal with wake windows?
34:50 - Sammy’s top tips for new moms struggling with sleep

Where to Find Sammy

• Instagram
• Website

Disclaimer: While Sammy Merritt is a counselling psychologist in Alberta, any information she shares here is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for psychological treatment, advice, or therapy from a mental health professional, nor is it medical advice. There are no guaranteed outcomes from consuming this content, including no guaranteed results for sleep and wellness. If you need mental health support, please seek mental health care from a licensed professional in your jurisdiction.

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If you're interested in working with us, we'd love to connect! If you're located in New York or Florida, learn more about Hila's practice here. If you're based in California, check out Caroline's website here.

Disclaimer: Information shared in this podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes only. It is not therapy nor a replacement for therapy, nor is it medical advice. If you need support, please seek mental health care from a licensed professional in your jurisdiction.

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Transcript

Hila (00:40)

Hello and welcome to The Moms Are Alright. I'm Dr. Hila Sax.

Caroline (00:45)

and I'm Dr. Caroline Dickens.

Hila (00:47)

And we are so excited to have Sammie Merritt with us today. In this episode, we're going to cover all things baby sleep and how it relates to anxiety for new moms.

Caroline (00:56)

Samy Merritt is a registered psychologist who provides therapy in Alberta, Canada, and one of her areas of specialty is pediatric sleep. She provides evidence-based sleep support for babies, toddlers, and children that is responsive, attachment-focused, and mindful of mental health. She's also a mama of two, so she's walking the parenting journey alongside you.

Hila (01:15)

Welcome, Sammy. We're so happy to have you here.

Can you please tell our listeners a little bit more about who you are, what you do, and what drew you to this line of work?

Sammy (she/her) (01:26)

Well, first, thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited that we get to hang out. So yeah, so I am Sammie and I am a counseling psychologist and part of the work that I do is in pediatric sleep. And so that's the merits of sleep is where I do that kind of work. And that's because my last name is Merit. So a little word play.

And so I help families with babies, toddlers and elementary aged kids get more sleep in ways that nurture the connection between parents and kids while holding loving boundaries around sleep. And so whatever those boundaries are, right? Whether it's you're fall asleep independently, going to sleep in your own bed, going to...

I'll be with you and then I'm going to give you some space or whatever the boundaries are because it depends on the family and depends on the kiddo. But as long as that connection and tuning into the child is at the forefront, that's my main focus. And I have been a therapist for a decade But I got into the work of pediatric sleep much more recently and it was thanks to my own kids.

And so my first baby, she's seven now, so was a long time ago that she was a baby, but she was a terrible little sleeper. We had a real rough go and I was so worried. I'd heard about sleep training, but I was so concerned about hurting her, hurting our connection. And so I essentially just lived in fear for months. And I think...

being a psychologist worked against me in that particular vein because there's all this stuff about attachment and attachment is one of the main focuses of my work. And what I was missing in my sleep deprived fog was that a lot of this information gets shared as opinions and isn't evidence-based. So it just like scared me out of making any, any changes. So I know now I was totally misinformed.

And so I am really passionate about educating parents, supporting parents so that they aren't sleep deprived like I was and also that they can like they feel informed to make their own decisions. So I have no interest in telling parents you should do this for sleep. I want people to know, okay, here's my options and here's what I want to do. Here's what works for me.

want to trust my intuition here, tune out the noise and do this for sleep. Because if we in any area of parenting, if we feel like we're doing what aligns for us, it's going to be so much more successful. And because sleep can be such a hot button topic, I feel like it's especially important there to know what like you want to do.

Caroline (04:18)

I love it so much. Anyone who follows my Instagram account knows that this is an area of postpartum that I really struggled with in the same way because it feels like there's all these really rigid rules out there and people are so opinionated about the right and the wrong ways to be doing things and it really...

throw you for a loop when you're doing something you've never done before and you have no idea like what's the right way or the best way. So with that kind of thread here, let's talk a little bit about the intersection of baby sleep and postpartum mental health because as we've already been discussing, it can be just such an extremely anxiety producing aspect of new motherhood

Sammy (she/her) (04:41)

Definitely.

Caroline (04:55)

So how do you see this coming up in your work with parents and what are some of the signs that you look out for in the way that a mom is approaching sleep that might indicate that perhaps she's struggling with her mental health in some way?

Sammy (she/her) (05:06)

It is a big, big topic because sleep and mental health have a bi-directional relationship where they impact each other. mental health issues, whether anxiety, depression, can cause trouble sleeping. Sleep challenges, including sleep deprivation, can cause mental health challenges, right? And so we can get into this cycle and we know that sleep loss is part of being a new parent.

Babies cannot sleep in super long stretches. They have teeny tiny stomachs and teeny tiny bodies that are getting used to being in the outside world. And so it's like it is developmentally normal that they sleep in smaller spurts. Their sleep patterns are different, right? That's why they have naps during the day and sleep in the shorter stretches they do at night. So we are going to have sleep loss.

So it's a risk factor, for some mental health stuff, right? It doesn't mean it's a guarantee. And it also, obviously in the work that I do, it's like, there's things we can do to help with the sleep loss, but there are for sure factors we wanna be aware of. And so to your question Caroline of how does this show up in my work, some of the signs that I watch for, a big one is trying to control sleep.

So whether that's like obsessing over the baby's sleep, trying to get like the perfect schedule, tracking it constantly and like, okay, if they are awake for 37 minutes, they need to have a nap at this time and no, they had a short nap, I better do this in the next wake window and just really struggling to pull away from the tracking and the trying to set it up, quote unquote, perfectly.

Also, like putting yourself in baby sleep jail where you won't go out, won't do things because it might interfere with like the baby sleep schedule and like watching the baby monitor like a hawk. You know, how long did it take them to fall asleep and how long are they asleep for? And okay, they woke up, now what do I do? And like, okay, now I'm gonna put in my tracking app that they slept for 42 minutes and what are we gonna do with that information?

Hila (07:11)

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (07:24)

and, and so this like a strong desire to control something that like, unfortunately is uncontrollable, And that's a huge, we know about anxiety. It's a strong desire to prevent bad things from happening. And, and so we do that by trying to control, right? That's one of the ways that we do it. So it's a huge sleep is a huge opportunity to try to control, but it is uncontrollable.

Caroline (07:40)

Mm-hmm

Sammy (she/her) (07:52)

And then also another piece in addition to the control piece is like taking the baby sleep personally, feeling like you're a failure, feeling like you're a bad mom, a bad dad because of how the baby is sleeping. The baby had short naps and so now your whole day is a mess and you're a terrible person, right? This leap that gets made from a mental health.

Caroline (08:04)

Hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (08:17)

perspective is for sure something that I see and that I want to watch for and attend to. And when these kinds of things are happening, so when there's those signs of anxiety, whether you know, the control, the perfectionism, the feeling like a failure, one of the things that I really hold to and help to share with parents is the division of responsibility. And so this came out of like food, right? You decide

The parent decides when and what food is offered and the child decides how much to eat. Ellen Sater's work, That we get to offer sleep as parents, and it's the child's job to sleep.

We cannot make them sleep. cannot decide how long they sleep for. That's up to them. so knowing what's in our control, right? Whether that's the sleep environment, what time we put them down, how we put them down for sleep, whatever. And it's up to them though, ultimately, how much and whether or not they're gonna sleep at all after that.

Hila (09:22)

I really appreciate that perspective, Sammy. It feels like a lot of what you do with new moms and new parents is helping them set and maybe accept appropriate expectations. And what I find really fascinating, especially as it relates to maternal mental health, is how many ways anxiety can show up for new moms, especially as it relates to baby sleep.

I know that we just mentioned a couple of ways that anxiety can trouble, whether it's perfectionism or control, whether it's like a sense of rigidity and hyper-focus on, you know, keeping a baby scheduled to be in a specific way. one other way that I could think of was...

that showed up recently in the therapy room was when a new mom finally managed to get like a great sleep schedule going with her baby by following her intuition and using guidelines and what worked for her. However, she was almost like waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was like this anticipation of her baby going through another sleep regression and their sleep schedule changing yet again. And it was causing her major

Sammy (she/her) (10:17)

Mmm.

Hila (10:32)

anxiety. She was worried that she would go back to those early days of postpartum where baby wasn't sleeping, she wasn't sleeping, and she was at her lowest point of depression and anxiety and just overall poor, poor mental health and wellbeing. And so I'm curious in your line of work, how do you...

set those expectations with parents.

Sammy (she/her) (10:52)

Mm. That's a great question. that's, you know what, Hila, you're so right that expectations are a huge part of new parenthood. And I think especially because we live in this age of information overload. Right?

and so I think having those realistic expectations can be really important. And one of those realistic expectations is that change is going to happen. So I heard this definition of anxiety once that has stuck with me ever since that anxiety is a combination of uncertainty and the sense we're not gonna be able to handle it.

Because uncertainty, like there is uncertainty everywhere. Like that baby likely will go through another sleep regression. regressions, they're not evidence-based, but it's from this idea that when a baby physically develops or cognitively develops, their sleep is interrupted.

And babies go from having five-ish naps a day to one or two naps a day by 12 months old. There is huge change. And so there is going to be change. And then instead of dreading, and I can also totally appreciate the dread of, I was so sleep deprived and I don't want to go back to that. How can I prevent that from happening?

Caroline (12:18)

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (12:24)

But instead of trying to control, it's about having that expectation that, OK, change is going to happen. Do I have a plan? Do I have a reasonable plan for like, here's how I'm going to respond? If there is a disruption, how do I want to handle it? How do I want to tune into my baby? That's in my control.

And then how do I know beyond that? Because it's not my responsibility whether my baby sleeps or doesn't sleep. How am I going to tolerate the uncertainty and know that I am capable of handling it?

Caroline (13:01)

I think that right there is where all of that kind of urgency around control comes from because it's just the most unpredictable time of your life and you're like grasping at straws trying to build in a little routine trying to have this sense of like, kind of know what's going to happen tomorrow. And being able to tolerate that piece is how you can find a little bit of freedom from

like the sleep jail that you're describing. And by the way, all of the examples you gave were like as if you were a fly on the wall during my first couple of months postpartum because it was it was all exactly that checking the monitor and freaking out about the wake windows. And I think one of the pieces too that is so challenging is that the way that this is presented out in the social media world and all of the sleep courses and books out there is that it's like so straightforward.

Sammy (she/her) (13:30)

Thank you.

Caroline (13:42)

It's like, do this, and then your baby will sleep seven hours through the night. And so you have this expectation that like, well, I'm doing the thing. Why is the thing not working? So I think that this emphasis on like, yeah, sure, do the things. That is what you have control over. And then you also have to be willing to accept whatever your baby does with that. And it's not a reflection of you. It's not a failure. It's just babies aren't robots. And that's the way it is.

Hila (13:44)

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (13:44)

Yeah!

You guys.

Hila (13:52)

Totally.

Sammy (she/her) (14:07)

my favorite saying, Caroline, babies are not robots. Or also babies didn't read the books. I like that one too.

Hila (14:07)

and the

Caroline (14:10)

Ha ha ha!

Right? Totally.

Hila (14:15)

I love that. Especially because the one book will say one thing and be so sure that that's the right way and then the next book says something completely opposite and they're so sure that that's the right way. It's so confusing for new parents that are trying to have some sense of control.

Sammy (she/her) (14:30)

So confusing and so lacking of nuance, which like, that's the stuff that if we're on social media, that's the stuff that picks up traction, right? In books, like a self-help book kind of, a parenting book are written to be like digestible. And so it's like, you just got to say something. You can't say, and this exception and this exception and this exception, like all of a sudden your book's like 700 pages and nobody's going to buy it.

Caroline (14:35)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hila (14:49)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (14:59)

But they don't come with like, part of my issue with that is they don't come with that kind of disclaimer. Like they just present, this information is just presented as like, here's the facts. And it's like, no, no, here's an option. Can we please explain that this is not the only way to do this and that you have options and you can decide what to do? I think it is empowering.

Caroline (15:04)

Mm-hmm.

Hila (15:09)

Mm-hmm.

Caroline (15:12)

right here.

which is so empowering, right? Like to know there's multiple ways of doing this and doing it this way is not gonna make or break anything. And if that doesn't work, try one of the other ways. And like, there's so much more flexibility than it seems. And Hila and I were actually just talking before you signed into this chat that that's one of the reasons we love your content. There's no click bait. You talk about the nuance. You're presenting the information. You're like, here's some of the things that you can try. And that doesn't work for you.

Hila (15:26)

Mm-hmm.

Caroline (15:51)

cool, like try one of the other ways. And it's just such a breath of fresh air in this space that feels very like follow eight steps A through D and like your baby will sleep and then you're banging your head against the wall because it's not working and yeah, it's a vicious cycle. So thank you for being that relief.

Hila (15:55)

Totally.

And then you question yourself, what's

Sammy (she/her) (16:04)

Well, that's the best I'm just blushing over here. That's so sweet.

Caroline (16:06)

Hahaha

Hila (16:09)

Yeah, I feel like it's a difficult position to put yourself in, in going against quote unquote, the research that people put out there and saying, no, this is really nuanced. It depends on you. It depends on your baby, what works for your lifestyle, what's in line with your intuition. It's

Sammy (she/her) (16:28)

I'm so glad, since this is like an audio media, people can't see that you put air quotes around research and I wanna thank you for that. One time, somebody came for me on the internet as people do to tell me that like my content about sleep training was like, I'm telling parents to harm their babies and I was like, my God, I certainly am not. have research.

Hila (16:35)

you

We're all eye rolling if you can't see.

Caroline (16:50)

I know, I roll and sigh.

Sammy (she/her) (16:53)

I have research to back it up. And I was like, I am always open to read research. I'm like, great. I think I've read everything, but if you have stuff I haven't read, I want to see it. I want to be informed. I want to be like, that's important to me. She sends me a study. about rats and rats being deprived of water.

Hila (17:02)

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (17:11)

I read it I was committed to be like how are you making these connections and I still couldn't I don't understand But that's the stuff that's like out there and people are like here's my claim and here's my quote-unquote evidence I'm like those aren't the same. No, no

Caroline (17:28)

Totally.

Hila (17:28)

I think that brings us to the next question like perfectly. You know, anyone who spends any time on social media will know that debates about baby sleep can get really heated. And even within the therapy room, I constantly hear new moms like battle out the different theories with themselves. And so I'm curious, can you?

Sammy (she/her) (17:44)

Yeah.

Hila (17:49)

tell us a little bit about what the research does actually say on some of those hot button topics like sleep training and co-sleeping and wake windows.

Sammy (she/her) (18:00)

I would love to. I love debunking myths.

Hila (18:02)

Can't wait.

Sammy (she/her) (18:03)

And I'm not going to cite any particular research because that would take us so, long. But for anyone listening, if you're like, want to know the studies that you're talking about, connect with me. Send me an email and I will send you citations. got them.

all I got them all I'm ready for you. So okay, so sleep training. I think it's really important to define sleep training when we're talking about like, what is this thing, right that people talk about, because it gets, there's this misunderstanding that sleep training means cried out, or extinction, which is like the clinical name for the method where you put your baby down or your child, you close the door and you don't see them again until the morning.

That is not what sleep training is. So sleep training is a behavioral intervention in how parents respond to their child's crying in order to support their baby, their child in falling asleep independently. So it's about parental response. Cry it out, there's no responding. That's not like, and so for me, sleep training from an attachment lens, which is what I do, is tuned into the child.

We're tuning in to what they're communicating with us, what they need, what they want, because sometimes what they want isn't what they need and we are able to hold boundaries around things, but needs we wanna make sure we're meeting and it's responsive. So parents are responding to their child while holding that boundary around sleep. Sleep training methods vary in how responsive they are.

Her mom's out there that have heard of no cry sleep training. First of all, it's fake news because we cannot control whether babies have feelings. But what it really means is that they're responding immediately to the cry. Like as soon as the baby makes a whimper, the parent is right there responding. So that's what that idea means. And then they vary to being less responsive. So some methods might give a little bit more space.

Hila (19:52)

Ha ha.

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (20:11)

and then respond. And so there's a whole continuum there of responsive sleep training for me. And then there's ones that are not as like I talked about, it out. I would call that it's not responsive. So it's not what I do with the families that I work with. It's not when I talk about sleep training, I'm not talking about cry it out. But it is important to know that what the research says, most of the research on sleep training is actually on

Cried out.

And it's been researched countless times over the years, including like double-blind research studies, like the gold standard as far as empirical research, and the findings are consistent. Sleep training can be beneficial in that parents report babies have longer stretches of sleep and there is no harm to these little ones in using sleep training. And so I am like,

As I said, I don't feel great about non-responsive sleep training. But to know like even the non-responsive stuff is not causing harm, this responsive stuff, there's no way. You know, it is attuned and it's attentive and it's, you're right there. You're right there. How could that be harmful? And these, they've even studied kids over like five years later.

So we've done long-term research to show there's no differences in these kiddos, whether they were sleep trained or not. There is no sign of like mental health issues, attachment issues, emotional regulation challenges. There's none of this evidence. And so from a research perspective, we can say really firmly, sleep training is a safe choice for families that want to make it. And...

because you know I love nuance. No matter what the research says, you don't have to sleep train if you don't want to. You get to decide what works for your family. And so one of those other hot button topics that you name that some families choose instead is co-sleeping. So from a definition perspective, co-sleeping actually means sharing a room. So like having baby in a crib or a pack and play.

in the same room as you while you sleep in your bed. But most people, when they talk about co-sleeping, they actually mean bed sharing. For me, it's really important to, even if we're talking about research, acknowledge there are two sides to this conversation. So from a research perspective, there are safety concerns to bed sharing. That is why both Health Canada and the American Academy of Pediatrics don't recommend bed sharing, because it is

there is an increase in SIDS risk with bed sharing. So we want to, particularly if the mothers are smokers, that's a high risk factor. And if the babies are newborns. So those are particularly like high risk factors that we want to be aware of. The other side of that is we know abstinence based education doesn't work.

Hila (23:20)

Hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (23:21)

And so there, so with like a a disclaimer that this is not quote unquote evidence-based because research has don't do it. This would be practiced based evidence of finding what are those risk factors that where you can reduce the risk factors. You can't make it perfectly safe because the safest thing for a baby is to sleep on their own sleep surface with nothing around them.

And so that, you know, a grownup is around them, we're 0 for 1 in that department. But there are things we can do to make it safer. So some of those things include the mattress is really firm. So one of the anxiety questions that I get, anxiety related, is like, well, now my baby can roll over and I'm worried they're going to not be able to breathe while they're sleeping because they're sleeping on their tummy. I thought I was supposed to put them on their back. Do I flip them over?

And so what I tell them is from a safety perspective, if your baby can roll over themselves, they are strong enough to sleep there. They can move their head, they can move their neck to make sure they can still breathe. And also crib mattresses are very firm and very breathable.

Adult mattresses are not designed the same way. And so if you have a baby on an adult mattress, you do want to make sure it's quite firm, right? So having the mattress on the floor and be firm is one of those ways to reduce risk factors. No blankets, no pillows, right? Nothing that the baby could lose, like could suffocate on.

Right? Which is like a really awful topic to have to talk about. Nobody wants to hurt their baby. But if we can make it as safe as possible, I think that's important to do. And also no swaddling if a baby is bed sharing because they need to have full access to their limbs. Parents need to be sober. So no drugs, alcohol, smoking, and also no sleep meds. Right? No meds that impact their wakefulness because they need to be alert and available.

And a parent always needs to be present, So there's no like putting your baby down and then walking away like you could in a crib. And a couch or a chair are the worst places to sleep with a baby. if someone's like, I'm just gonna like, I'm just gonna hold them in the rocking chair and then I'll put them down, but you know you're gonna fall asleep, please move out of that, out of that space. And so, yeah, I think it's important to acknowledge both sides.

that there's a safety risk and here's if you're going to, there are things to do that can make it safer. And then the other hot button topic is the wake windows, which we've talked a little bit already with the scheduling and how that can contribute to anxiety. Here's my PSA everybody. Wake windows are not evidence-based.

Hila (26:05)

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (26:14)

This is why if you Google sleep schedule for a five month old, you will see 700 options.

And again, most of them don't include this disclaimer that like this might not work for your baby. And so we have research on how much sleep in a 24 hour period is typical for babies as they age and kids, including roughly kind of how much sleep they have in naps versus nights. And so it's...

this anecdotal thing that got created about, well, if you need this many naps and you need this much sleep at night, probably you need to be awake for kind of this many periods of time, you know, two hours, three times, four times a day or whatever it is. But that doesn't mean it's gonna work for your baby. So it's important to be mindful of, we have different sleep needs.

some, lots of people would be average sleep needs, right? That would be an adult that needs like seven to eight hours of sleep a night. Then you have low sleep needs who they are just fine as adults has like six hours. They're like, I'm good. I got all I needed. I'm good to go. And then some that are like, I need a solid 10 or don't talk to me. Right? So there's this high sleep needs. So that's part of how we're born.

So babies and kids have that too. And so these wake window idea, one, they're based on averages. So kids with, babies with average sleep needs. And two, even for a kid with an average sleep need, they might still not follow those things to a T. So I have like two views on wake windows. One, no, it's not evidence-based and that there's no rules.

So anyone that tells you this wake no no needs to be longer and this one needs to be shorter fake news. If you want to do the trial and error, if you want to find what works for your baby, it can be helpful because if a child a baby is like the appropriate level of sleepiness, they're more likely to sleep.

It's a tool. My other view is, if following that tool is harming your mental health and taking away from you being with your baby, you do not have to use them.

And so it's really what works for you.

Caroline (28:31)

Yeah, which is so freeing, like having this, everything you just said, I'm like, my gosh, feel like a weight has been lifted. I know the information, I can make the decisions that work for me. And at the same time, it's almost like that same feeling of when you get an assignment that's like, do it on whatever you want. And you're like, well, I don't know, like, where do I start? I need someone to kind of like give me a little bit of direction. And that's why I think that this sleep industry can feel so overwhelming and also like...

Sammy (she/her) (28:52)

Hold on.

Caroline (28:57)

a little predatory, because it feels like they're preying on these new moms who are just craving stability, craving predictability, craving some sort of sense of direction. When what I'm hearing from you is that really there's infinite ways you could approach this and there's really not a right and wrong in it. Yes, there's more safe, less safe. There's more responsive, less responsive. These are considerations that you can...

Sammy (she/her) (29:00)

I know.

Caroline (29:22)

bring into the calculus of it for yourself. But at the end of the day, you really have to make the decisions that work best for you and your family. And that's hard to do when you're brand new at this and you really aren't sure yet what your philosophies are and what you're comfortable with.

Sammy (she/her) (29:36)

It is really hard. I think part of it, like we get decision fatigue too, right? I think that's it. And so when you are having to make all of these decisions and I went down the Google rabbit hole, I did it. I read everything I could get my hands on. It was not helpful to me because then it's like, now I just have too much information and I don't even know where to start. And so I think...

Caroline (29:58)

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (30:06)

That's where these, here's the one way, here's your magic wand. You don't have to make a decision anymore. Very tempting, right? Can feel so nice to be like, great. I'm so glad trying to make a decision was just killing me, right? It's too much, the mental load was too high. And so I think that that's part of why I'm like, how can I like distill this down?

Caroline (30:34)

Mm-hmm.

Sammy (she/her) (30:35)

So it's like, here's the high points that you need to know from that. I hope you feel like you can make a decision without feeling like you're drowning in the information and without feeling like I better take the first magic wand that comes because all of their magic wands are

Caroline (30:52)

they're, you know...

Sammy (she/her) (30:52)

And there is nothing wrong with you as a mom, if you try these things from the internet and they don't work for your baby. There's nothing wrong with you, nothing wrong with your baby. It was not meant to be designed for your baby.

Hila (31:08)

I feel so grateful that we have you on the podcast right now because with the baby coming up very shortly I have a lot of follow-up questions for you

so the first one is very straightforward. I just was curious, you know, in the study on sleep training, they found that after five years, there was no differences in the child's mental health, mental well being development. After five years, did they find differences in the child's sleep though, long term?

Sammy (she/her) (31:39)

Great question. when they measure them at so they would be like almost six There was no marked difference in their current sleep as young elementary school aged children in this study. And this is a study from 2012, but it was a randomized trial and, you know, some assigned to sleep training, some assigned to not.

And so there is this sense that kids will grow out of it. And like a lot of children do, and I think that's important for parents to know, like if you don't sleep train, it doesn't mean your child will never sleep. Some children, I do work with elementary aged kids. So there are kids that do need support, but if you are like, this works for us now, that like the baby is up a lot or the two year old is up a lot, it works for us.

Great. Nope, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. There isn't a guarantee your child will grow out of it, but it is absolutely possible that the child will start sleeping longer stretches. And I also think about, so I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful that whatever choice you make, these babies are going to be okay.

And I also know that sleep deprivation can have impact on mental health. So if you're in the trenches and you're like, don't think I can wait. then because maternal mental health is a primary predictor of parent-child attachment. And so if you need to make some changes to know, okay, in five years we're gonna be okay no matter what. But right now I'm not okay.

It is okay to make changes if you need to.

Caroline (33:24)

that piece around attachment because I think that that is exactly where people get really worked up and really fearful about making these decisions. I don't want to do anything that involves any crying because I don't want to damage my attachment with my child at the expense of my own mental health.

Sammy (she/her) (33:33)

They do.

Caroline (33:41)

which actually is damaging the attachment with your child if it's really severe. so I just appreciate that piece kind of coming into the picture because I think that that's often left out. And of course, my bias working with moms mostly is that like, you got to take care of yourself. If you're not getting sleep and it is really damaging your mental health, we've got to find a way to.

to make some changes

Sammy (she/her) (34:01)

Yeah, totally. And that was me, That was like my main fear was my attachment with my daughter is the most important thing to me. And I don't want to do anything that hurts it. And you know we did instead? She cried and I cried because she she wanted to sleep and she couldn't and I wanted her to sleep and she wouldn't. and so.

Caroline (34:16)

Right?

Hila (34:21)

Ha ha.

Sammy (she/her) (34:23)

For us, sleep training was the best choice we could make at the time and a choice that I know now was the right choice for our family. But whatever is going to build up your mental health as a mom is going to benefit your child. And when it comes to sleep, they will be okay with whatever choice you make. And so it does matter that you're gonna be okay. It's really, really important.

Hila (34:50)

We gotta protect the moms and their sleep at all costs.

Sammy (she/her) (34:54)

We do! We've got to protect the moms so that they can be there for their babies.

Hila (35:00)

Yeah, that was really helpful. And then my second follow-up question was related to the wake window, How do you help parents identify what their baby's sleep needs are? What are things that we need to look out for

Sammy (she/her) (35:16)

So I do use starting points. So I have, and on my Instagram even there's like a little chart people can go look at that's just like a starting point of, okay, based on the age, this is average. And then we look at how they're sleeping. So how are their naps? How are they sleeping overnight? And we wanna watch for signs of...

Being like under tired and over tired are things that we want to watch for. So under tired, they tend to like happily refuse sleep. So they'll just be like up for like an hour in the middle of the night from two till three. They're like, this is my party time. And your parents like, absolutely not. It is not a party. That or, you know, they nap for like 20 minutes and they're like, I'm good. You're like, no, nobody's good. That's because they're not tired enough. So they don't have enough sleep pressure to help them sleep longer.

The other side of the continuum is overtired where they've been up for too long and they start to get like cortisol coursing through their little bodies. And so they get quite upset. So they have, when they wake up, they're mad about it and they're mad when you try to put them to sleep. They can also get a second wind where it's like, they have so much energy because of the cortisol, it's hard to get them to settle. And so those are kind of, if either of those things are happening, then we know we've got a,

They're under tired. need to be awake longer. Over tired. They need to be awake for a shorter period, period of time. but generally like how's their mood? How's their development? Right? Are they getting, let's say 10 and a half hours of sleep overnight and they're good. You know, they're, don't seem like they want to keep going back to sleep. They seem like they're rested. They're developing well, or are they like, no, you need like 11 and a half or you're a mess.

They need the longer, they need more sleep. And so it absolutely is some trial and error and we learn from our babies about it. And that's why I like to focus on the baby versus like what the internet says. But yeah, having those starting places and then reducing and adding kind of as needed.

Hila (37:36)

It's really helpful. Thank you. I never thought about it in that way before, but it feels very similar to adult sleep where the sleep is almost like a balloon. throughout the day, you have to kind of blow up this balloon to have enough need for

Sammy (she/her) (37:38)

I'm so

Yes!

And then if you have a nap, if you've had like a two hour nap in the afternoon as an adult, you've deflated the balloon, right? And so then it's harder to go to that's such, I love that analogy, That's so good. And with babies, when they have a nap, the balloon deflates a little bit, but not all the way. So sleep pressure actually accumulates through the day. So by the end of the day, and then they have melatonin coming in to help them be sleepy.

Hila (38:00)

Right, exactly.

Sammy (she/her) (38:21)

Sleep pressure is at its highest at bedtime. And so that's the, if you are, as a side note, if you are looking to change sleep habits, that's always where I start, is at bedtime because you have the sleep pressure on your side to help increase the chance sleep is gonna happen anyways.

Caroline (38:39)

Well, we have covered so much ground here and I feel like we maybe need to have a follow up with you because I have so many different questions and toddler sleep as a whole, different beast as I am learning as a almost two year old mom.

Sammy (she/her) (38:52)

Yes.

Caroline (38:54)

But given how much we could cover during this episode, I'm curious just to kind of bring it back into the practical. Do you have like a top tip, a top skill, top strategy, like one piece of advice that you would give to a new mom who's struggling with sleep?

Sammy (she/her) (39:10)

division of responsibility. That it is your job to offer sleep and it's the baby's job to sleep.

And that if they're not sleeping well, it's not a reflection of you, not a reflection of your parenting. You are a good mom, no matter how your baby sleeps and your baby is a good baby, no matter how they sleep. And I think, know, as we're just talking about that,

Second top tip came to me, which for me is to look at crying as communication. because crying can come up at sleep time and it feels harder to handle than crying during the day. I think it's this part of it is that control piece, right? It's sleep time. You're supposed to be sleeping. Why aren't you sleeping? And also sleep is a time of separation. And so we want to be able to bridge that separation to support it, to say, I'm still here with you.

Even if you're sleeping in your own sleep space, I want to bridge that. And so I think it's really important to understand crying is communication. They're telling us they need something or they want something and we can still be there for them. We can support them. We can meet their needs and we want them actually to express their emotions. Right? If we work to, okay, as soon as they make a peep,

we try to stop it, of like put a plug in the sink, right? Stop that, stop, I don't want any overflow. We're actually showing them we're scared of that emotion. And so to actually say, you know what, I'm gonna support you through this. I'm right here with you and maybe they will settle and maybe they won't, right? Maybe it'll take them some more time. Whether or not they cry, also not a reflection of your parenting.

It is a reflection of them expressing their emotions and to know at sleep time, you can respond to that. You can show them you are there for them. I think that is a really important thing to hold because crying can be really triggering. And like we are biologically primed to respond to their crying. It activates our amygdala. So absolutely, you feel like it's doing something to you? It is doing something to you. Take some breaths.

settle your nervous system so that you can then be there for your baby. Crying isn't bad though.

Caroline (41:40)

Yeah, I love that. Crying just happens to be the way a baby expresses emotion, but it doesn't always mean that it's an emotion that needs to be solved or fixed, which is so true for adults as well. So taking that pressure off of getting rid of the emotion, which is not what we want to be doing, but helping them through it feels like a really helpful reframe.

Sammy (she/her) (41:52)

See.

Exactly.

Yeah, riding the wave with them, right? Being their anchor in the storm versus telling them we can't handle this.

Hila (42:09)

Sammy, I'm dying to know where can our listeners find you?

Sammy (she/her) (42:12)

So the best places to find me I am most active on Instagram So at the merits of sleep to ours to tease in merit just like my last name and then my website the merits of sleep calm and If you're in Alberta, you can work with me one-on-one

And then, yeah, I try to share as like much free information on Instagram as possible, because I want people to have access to the information so that they can be empowered to make decisions on what works for them.

Hila (42:42)

and I highly recommend all of our listeners to check you out because there are drops of gold on your Instagram. And you're very funny too.

Sammy (she/her) (42:49)

Thank you, that's so sweet. that's the best compliment you could have given me right there actually. I love making people laugh.

Caroline (42:55)

I love it.

I always get a kick out of it. This has been the best chat, Sammie. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. I know that our listeners are going to be taking notes as you're walking them through all of this different information. So grateful to have had you on and definitely go check out Sammie's Instagram and her other resources.

Hila (42:56)

We do, we're confirming

Sammy (she/her) (43:16)

Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.