Dr Sophie Brock on sleep training, the tyranny of schedules, and finding her way to trusting herself

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SUMMARY

Join Carly and Dr Sophie Brock, as they continue through the second part of Dr Sophie's story and her experience with sleep training, finding her way to trusting herself and her little one, and giving herself grace in the intense times.

You can find Dr Sophie (the Good Enough Mother) on the Good Enough Mother Podcast, Facebook and Instagram

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Carly:

The Beyond Sleep Training Podcast- a podcast dedicated to sharing real tales of how people have managed sleep in their family outside of sleep training culture because sleep looks different with a baby in the house and because every family is different there is no one-size-fits-all approach to take.

I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is being recorded, the Kalkadoon people, I pay my respects to the elders of this nation and the many other nations our guests reside in from the past, present and emerging. We honour Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the unique cultural and spiritual relationships to the land, water and seas as well as their rich contributions to society including the birthing and nurturing of children.  

Carly:
And welcome back to the Beyond Sleep Training podcast. I am back here with my fabulous guest, Dr Sophie Brock, who we had in our previous episode. If you haven’t already listened along to the first part of Sophie’s story, I would highly recommend you backtrack one episode, just to make sure that you can catch up. Where we finished off, Sophie, we had been talking about… you kind of got to the stage of moving out. You were in a single bed at home, you had the support of your mother and your sister raising your little girl. You alluded to her intensity. How did that play out? Was it… was there a… you said at 3-months she slept a little bit longer, but that didn’t continue. How did it play out as she grew?

Find Dr Sophie's first episode here

Sophie:
So, how it played out was she… look, unsurprisingly in hindsight, she wouldn’t sleep anywhere but on me. And she would sometimes sleep, there were a few occasions where my sister actually could sing to her and vigorously rock her, sort of walk her around and singing and bouncing at the same time and all of that, that we try and navigate what’s going to be the thing that will help calm them. There were a few times where that quote-unquote worked, but it was always just so much easier for me to just breastfeed her to sleep, or just to rock her and hold her, have her in the carrier. She spent a lot of the time in the carrier, on me, and breastfeeding. You know, that was kind of how it looked. In the nights I would have her in that little… little sleep nest thing in the bed with me and I would sit up and feed her and pop her back down. And sleep became a challenge for me like it does for many people in how we experience what is actually very normal in our babies when they’re around that 4-month mark, and the thing that sent me spiralling was the louder that the shoulds became around how she should be sleeping. That she should be going into a separate bassinet, not being in the bed with me. That she shouldn’t be feeding to sleep, that I be able to put her down drowsy but awake and that she could learn, quote-unquote, to self-settle. Around how long she was sleeping. So, she would… would never have long naps, she would have little catnaps. And a sense of, okay, am I doing something… what am I doing wrong here? It wasn’t even a sense of am I doing something wrong? It was just assumed that I am. And so, what am I doing wrong? So, how can I fix it? And I started reading. I started looking at Google. I started looking and clicking on some of the sponsored ads that had been in my newsfeed. I started looking at what other mothers were doing, you know, in my Facebook mothers’ groups that I was a part of. And it all kind of culminated into building this sense within myself that I was depriving her by not being able to get it right in having her sleep not on me, and to not be waking as frequently as she was. And you go down this – and I know you know this well, Carly – is like you go down this rabbit-hole, and it’s like you become so in that hole you don’t even know you’re in the hole. You just feel as though you just need to, maybe this thing will work? Maybe this will be the magic trick? I spent, you know, I was on single parenting payment, did not have much money, but spent so much money on stuff to do with sleep. Like, every single potion, ointment, white noise app, machine, like oil, like every single type of routine you could think of. I tried all of those things and they weren’t working. Nothing was working. And so, the other thing that was happening at this time was that she would… when she would [5:00] wake it wouldn’t be that she would open her eyes and completely be awake. She would just be screaming. And so, she would just scream and scream and scream until I breastfed her basically. And I was trying to figure out at the time, I mentioned it to a mothers’ group friend, and I was like, ‘Does your baby do that? Like, do they just sort of scream?’ And she was like, ‘No, my baby doesn’t do that. Like, she just wakes up. And then I just pat her bum, or she just goes…’ And I was like, that does not work. Like, and I tried the whole patting the bum, and that would just make her irate. Like, she would totally lose it. And I was like, what’s going on here? And so, I started… I started reading more and I started thinking more about it. And I was like, maybe she’s just really overtired? Maybe it’s because she’s waking all of the time? So, this is more evidence to me that I’m doing something wrong and that I’m harming her. And so, I... I actually knew about the controversy with sleep training as an approach. I wasn’t totally oblivious to it, but everything that I’d… I was reading, and that I seemed to be exposed to, and the advice that I was receiving from other mothers, and older mothers as well, was basically she needs to learn. You need to let her cry. She needs to learn. She’s never going to learn unless you let her cry. And I researched and actually had a consultation, a phone consult because I couldn’t afford the home visit – thank goodness for that – with a sleep consult person. And she asked me about our routine, and I’d mentioned that in the mornings we wake up, we kind of got out of bed. I would just basically sleep as long as I could, and like if I breastfed her back to sleep and she went back to sleep, great, I’m going to be sleeping too. And this sleep consultant, when I said that we started our day at 8am and I come downstairs, and she had this little… And look, I wasn’t… you know, I wasn’t supposed to be putting her in these walkers so early, but I did. She liked it. I know it’s not good for hips and all of that. She wasn’t in it for long. But I’d put her in there and she would toddle herself around. This is, she was tiny. Like she could barely even… I look back now and just like, what were you doing, Sophie? But she seemed to like it. And she would like play with a sweet potato or something. Like touch a sweet potato while I would eat my toast and have a cup of tea and just sit and try and gather myself mentally for the day ahead. And this sleep consultant told me that I was setting her up to experience enormous challenges in school because of this routine.

Carly:
How old was she?

Sophie:
Like 5-months.

Carly:
What? School?

Sophie:
Yeah, school.

Carly:
Ah, yeah, school.

Sophie:
Because school starts so much earlier.

Carly:
Yeah. Yep, and how your 5-month-old sleeps is totally reflective of a 5-year-old. Wow. Really?

Sophie:
Yep.

Carly:
Yeah.

Sophie:
Yeah, and she was quite firm with me that I was doing a bad job basically, and I needed to sort myself out. So, that was extremely off-putting, and I was… I had enough reflexivity I suppose to interrogate the messaging that I was receiving and to question that a little bit. But also like, this is someone, this is their job. This is what they do. And I had trust in that. I had trust in so-called expertise, and I thought…

Carly:
You also had investment. You’d paid for her services. That’s the other side of it, isn’t it? Once you’ve paid for something as well, you’re quite invested that way.

Sophie:
Exactly. And so, what I decided to do, because I couldn’t afford to kind of go any further with her, was I’d buy a program, a sleep program. A quote-unquote gentle sleep training program, and…

Carly:
Just add the word gentle. That’s all you need to do.

Sophie:
Yeah, in inverted commas. That’s right. And that was an absolute nightmare. Absolute nightmare. It made everything a thousand times worse. My entire days were consumed with this. Like, that was the focus of my entire motherhood experience. It was just the horrendous nature of dealing with sleep, and I would dread it. I’d be like, I just wish that she just had the capacity to be awake all day and I wouldn’t even have to deal with sleep, because it just felt like a nightmare. And it felt like a battle. Felt like a battle that I was constantly losing. It contributed to resentment towards her, of why she was being so difficult, of why she wasn’t like the other babies, of why… why am I experiencing this added challenge on top of all of the other stuff that I’m dealing with? Why do I now have to deal with this as well? And it plain, it also just didn’t work. Like, the whole interval thing, of leaving them and count [10:00], you know, the two minutes and then going back in. It just didn’t work. It made her absolutely hysterical. I would then have to spend like hours and hours trying to actually get her to sleep by feeding her and rocking her, and then she wouldn’t latch because she was so upset, and then I would be in this dark room in the middle of the day with a white noise machine on losing my mind, and it completely sucked the joy out of my days and there was… I used to sometimes – she also wouldn’t easily sleep in the car, but sometimes that would just be, I don’t know, if I just couldn’t stop the screaming and I couldn’t get her to sleep and I couldn’t rock her and I couldn’t feed her I’d just put her in the car and just drive. And there was one time when I had washed the… she must have vomited in the car seat or something and I’d washed the car seat cover and it was drying, and so I had to put the car seat cover back on in order to then get her in the car. And I feel like crying when I repeat this.

Carly:
Aww.

Sophie:
And I just had her like on the floor in the doorway of the front door while I was trying to get this car seat cover on, and I couldn’t get it on and I didn’t know how to and I’m like trying to Google like how to, you know, Googling the make of the car seat and everything while she’s just screaming. And… and then my sister pulled up in the car to come – like, she came into the driveway, and she saw my baby screaming and she went and picked her up and was… and I was just like, I think broke down I think and started crying. I’m like, I just can’t get this car seat cover on, and I just need to get the car seat cover on so I can get her in the car, so I can drive to try and get her to sleep, because I’ve been trying for 3-hours to get her to sleep and she’s not getting to sleep and this isn’t working, and no one’s… no one can help me. No one gives me any answers. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. And my sister put the car seat cover on and got in the car with me, and we started driving and she was just screaming and screaming and screaming, and then I think I was just crying. And then I was like, I give up. It’s like, I absolutely give up. I cannot do this anymore. And I remember just in my mind, like, I just gave up. That was it. I’m like, I am not doing this anymore. I can’t handle this. And she fell asleep, of course.

Feeling low or need someone to talk to? Panda helpine is always available

Carly:
Of course.

Sophie:
And when I got home, I spoke to my mum and my sister, and I just basically said, like, I am not enjoying my life. Like, I wake up every day and like at the end of the day I will think, okay, what’s one good thing? Like, what’s one nice moment in the day? Just focus on that. You know? And I remember thinking like, I can’t even think of one nice thing. I can’t even think of one nice moment, and that makes me feel guilty and awful, because I have this beautiful baby, this beautiful gift of a child, and I’m not enjoying her, and I’m not enjoying this. And I remember making the decision basically, and that was probably like a month or so of trying the whole sleep training thing, and yeah, I just completely just made the decision that I was done with that. I was leaving all of the Facebook groups. I was not, I was reporting and hiding any ads that came up. I was – and it was around that time that I came across your group, and it had come up in like recommended groups or something. I’d seen it on Facebook, and I joined that.

And that was when everything started to change, because I realised I wasn’t alone. I realised that I was actually among thousands of people who also experienced what I was going through, and to do what worked for me and for my baby.

And so, I stopped with the cot. I stopped trying to get her to sleep on separate sleep surfaces. I just embraced having her on me for naps. That’s fine. Or having her in the pram. She would thankfully nap if the pram was moving over bumpy ground. So, on the concrete she would wake up, and if I walked on the grass – and people would like be walking past and they’d be making room for me. And I’m like, oh no, I’m happy on the grass here. Like, and please don’t talk to me too loudly. Shh. Be quiet. And I just did away with all of the shoulds basically, and I focused on what would work for us. She came into the bed with me, next to me. I started learning how to breastfeed while lying down. And, to cut a long story short, she did continue the screaming and the frequent waking. It was sort of like every hour, sometimes even more than that. And so, I went down a massive route of seeing every health professional you can think of, trying all the alternative stuff as well. When she was [15:00] about 18-months old we did a sleep study to rule out any medical things, and that was all fine. I saw a specialist who ended up telling me that he thinks she was having night terrors and just… she’ll just grow out of them basically. And I was like, okay, this is okay, but this is not helpful. And he actually said to me, I’m like, well, do I keep feeding her back to sleep? Or like, what do I do? And he said, ‘Well, she can’t scream with a boob in her mouth, so I guess.’ I was like, okay, thanks.

Carly:
Right. Yep.

Sophie:
On my way.

Carly:
Mm hm.

Sophie:
And then what actually eventuated was I found out she had glue ear in both her ears.  

Carly:
Ah, poor bubba. That hurts.

Sophie:
Yeah. So, she… we had a hearing test, and she had no hearing in one ear and only partial in another, and she got grommets inserted when she was about 20-months, and that made a huge difference. So, she wasn’t doing the screaming in the way that she was. She wasn’t inconsolable in the way that she had been, and sleep basically just started improving from there pretty much. And I also knew what was normal. I knew it was normal to support your baby to go to sleep, and that you don’t just put them down and they go to sleep themselves. So, that’s kind of a summary of where I’m at, and she’s… yeah, she’s almost 4 and I still mostly feed to sleep, but now it’s, like, life looks different. Life just looks different when you’re getting adequate rest. Life also looks really different when you’re not getting adequate rest, but you’re not bombarded with an entire world and context and your own head that is constantly telling you that you’re failing and that there’s something wrong with you and/or your baby. And it also, the reason… something that I’ve learnt I supposed from this journey as well is to always to trust your instincts, that in order to trust that you have to be in connection with yourself, and we’re living within a context that constantly trains us out of being in connection with ourselves as women, and particularly as mothers. And so, it’s actually not as easy as saying just go back and trust your intuition. But to know for me, I knew that while frequent waking was normal, I felt like there was something else bugging her, which is why I kept pursuing this journey. Which, like 6 GPs all had looked at her ears and said they were fine. You know? Like, because just her canal is just narrow and curved and so they couldn’t see. But to just know that it feels very isolating, but you’re not alone. You know, this is part of the massively challenging but important job that we have as mums to our little ones.

Carly:
Absolutely, and the screaming. Screaming’s not… not normal. Like, if they’re waking screaming, generally there’s something else at play. And so, if you are listening along and you’ve got a baby who is waking frequently and seems very distressed, screaming and whatnot, it’s well worth doing, just as Sophie did, and continue seeking help to figure out what’s going on. And that’s not going to be solved by sleep training. Sleep training does not address any of these kind of underlying situations that are actually making sleep really challenging. And a glue ear, poor bubba. We all know how painful an ear infection is, let alone having that much fluid in both ears.

Worried your baby's sleep might not be normal?

So, I’m really, really sad that it took that long to get help, but I’m so glad she had you to advocate for her through that time as well. And I was just thinking because, you know, for people who are listening along with babes at the start of their journey, hearing that you’re still breastfeeding your 4-year-old to sleep might sound quite intimidating, maybe upsetting or, I don’t know, off-putting in some way, thinking, ‘Oh my god, I don’t want to be still doing that when my baby gets to 4.’ It’s, you know, and feel like you need to sort that out. Can you explain how and why you are still breastfeeding your child to sleep at this age, and what you would like to say to someone who’s currently right at the beginning of their journey?

Sophie:
Yeah. Thank you for saying that Carly, because if I had heard this podcast when I was… I would have freaked out, and I would have also been like, there’s no way that is going to be me. So, I would say that we are never locked into any of the decisions that we make in motherhood, and we can change our mind. I could change my mind tomorrow and decide to wean her and feel solid and comfortable in that decision, and that’s what we would pursue and that’s what we would try. And I also did try night weaning her on and off but… and I would night wean, but [20:00] she would still kind of wake and need to be settled. And I just found it easier to feed her back to sleep. And then when she was sick, I thought, well, why aren’t I breastfeeding her? You know? It could… it will help her recover more quickly, and that’s what feels good for me. And now I come back to recognising that it’s a relationship that we have with our kids, and that actually it’s not about sacrificing our self and our needs and our wishes and desires, and what we feel comfortable with, to always place them as first and as the priority, but to know that we’re actually in a dynamic and in a relationship, and if something’s really, really not working for us as mothers that’s not going to be what’s the best thing for our kids. So, for me it’s breastfeeding to sleep, has been and remains the easiest way to get her to sleep. She was asleep in 5-minutes. It’s… I enjoy it. It doesn’t take long. It doesn’t take much from me. And I feel comfortable and happy with where we’re at, and I also give myself the freedom and flexibility to change my mind at any stage for when it stops feeling good for me or isn’t something that I want to continue. And, so I think actually coming back to our own worth as women and as mothers, and trusting ourselves and our babies, that this is a relationship which will shift and change - whether we’re talking about breastfeeding or otherwise – and knowing that, again coming back to right now, what is working for you and what isn’t. Is it a problem for you, or are you being convinced by someone else that it’s a problem because they don’t see it as normal or the right thing to do? So, coming back into connection with ourselves, our babies, our children, our family, and what’s working for us, and knowing that… that the answer to that may change in a month or two months or 3-years, but we don’t have to have it all figured out now. You know, we figure it out as we go.

Breastfeeding and sleep

Carly:
And I think some of that time warp that you experience when your baby’s very young can make… make this sound like it’s got such a long lead time on it, to be able to get to that 4-year mark. Like, oh my goodness, 4 whole years. But it doesn’t actually end up feeling like that. Or it didn’t for me. Is that… would you say the same, where the intensity that is breastfeeding and parenting a baby at night when they’re tiny is vastly different as they grow. There’s still an evolution, even if you might say they still wake and you still breastfeed them to sleep, it’s a different experience to when you say a baby wakes and breastfeeds to sleep. Would you agree?

Sophie:
Absolutely. I think it’s totally different. Like, in my experience – I can’t speak for everyone’s – but for me it’s totally different. And part of what also was really useful actually was letting go of the when are they going to sleep through narrative and timeline in my mind, because if I’m dealing with, you know, an hour, or two hour, or 3-hourly wakes with my 6-month-old and someone tells me that, ‘Oh, they may be 4 and not sleeping through, or 6 and not.’ Like, some kids don’t sleep through, like some adults don’t either.

Carly:
I don’t sleep through. Ever.

Sophie:
Yeah, and… and to know that actually if we’re holding that timeline in our minds, we can be setting something up on a pedestal for us to constantly fall short from. And also it… what ultimately matters is how our children are and how we are, and that we can be okay and content and happy and thriving without us having to require our kids going to sleep independently and sleeping a 12-hour night. Like, those two things do not have to be correlated in that way. And I would also say to give yourself grace for where you are at and what you… what expectations you place on yourself to achieve, in inverted commas, outside of the night-time, to recognise that night-time parenting is still parenting. It can be intensive, it’s a heavy load, it’s important work that you’re doing. But things really shifted for me around that two-year mark, and I know that’s similar for many others as well. And that’s when she got, I think she got the grommets in in like May, then in July she was… turned two, and then in August I registered my business, in September I started the podcast. Like, when I started getting better at sleep, and her… she wasn’t in so much pain, things… things opened up a bit more. How we experience time shifts and, you know, I think that speaks to what it’s like – as you said Carly – in mothering and being responsive through the night with a 4-month-old, and that looks really, really different to mothering and being responsive to a 4-year-old. They are… they are really different. And so, I think it’s important to hold onto that perspective and hold onto hope that… and recognising that it is… it is really hard. It can be really hard. And it’s okay. It’s okay to say that and to feel that.

Carly:
It is hard, and I think the… [25:00] the challenge of it too is understanding that there’s still value in that work. And so, I think sometimes the only value gets placed on the work we achieve during the day. And so, when we’ve had really hard nights, and we’ve worked hard – because that’s what you’re actually doing, you’re mothering or parenting through the night, and you’re tired from an intense night of work, and your weariness is deserved in that, you have earned it. It’s not been for nothing. And the fact that your day might be not necessarily as productive as you had imagined or wanted it to be doesn’t mean that your work that night wasn’t worthwhile. It was worthwhile. And so, I think that’s… it’s part of the seasons of life too. Not every season in your life is going to see you rocking you’re A-grain… A-game, all day every day. Sometimes you’re going to be rocking a D-side and you are still doing the very best you can because your energy and your nurturing and your patience and your time is being spread across a 24-hour period, not just those daylight hours.

Sophie:
That’s right.

Carly:
So, I think that’s really important context for people to keep in mind, because you do come out of those seasons, and you might be still breastfeeding and tending to your children at night, but the intensity doesn’t stay there forever.

Sophie:
No. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. Although, in saying that as well, like I have in the back of my mind I did research my PhD with mothers with kids with disabilities, and some of their children with additional needs, like sometimes that intense period is much, much longer for them. And… and it’s also about thinking, you know, what resources and support do we have, and how our experience of our child’s wakefulness can actually shift without changing anything about our child’s wakefulness, and looking at what other options are there and how… how can we get creative or bring someone into connection with us and they can get creative for us because we’re too tired, to try and help us sort of look at some ways that we can move the… some pieces on that chessboard around and shift things a little bit. Because sometimes those little changes can make a big difference in how we feel, and doing what we’re doing in this conversation, in acknowledging, affirming, validating, recognising our worth and our value, and holding all of that and then also saying, okay, and I am also not… my worthiness doesn’t also come from my depletion. Those don’t have to be connected. And actually, what can I do? In the morning sometimes I would just, I would have this story in my head as walking down the stairs, like – you know, I won’t swear, but like swearing to myself – like this, you know, it’s bullshit. Like, why am I… why do I have to do this? Why is it so hard? She woke, you know, she woke 13 times. And, you know, blah blah blah. And oh, this mother is complaining to me, and her kid only woke twice. She doesn’t even know how… Like, we get into this little comparison thing in our head, and you can get into this narrative in your mind around… around that. And I think it can be tricky, but an important thing to actually untangle that and say, okay, how much of this is me affirming that challenge of my experience? And how much of it can I now let go and let it be in the night? And what can I do right now to get my feet in the grass, to really breathe in my coffee, to try and just bring myself back to an awareness of presence of right now and today? To just get through, you know, and make the best of our current circumstances?

Carly:
I’d agree with that entirely. A good vent with the right person in the right space, or sometimes just to the wind, can be so helpful after those intense nights, because if you try and hold it all in sometimes you might just burst. And so, I know Sophie we’ve talked before about too, both of us actually found writing quite cathartic through these kind of times as well. Sometimes writing, talking, just letting it out somehow, if you’re an exercise person, finding your outlet to actually feel those feelings can actually give you some space in the day. Because if you try and hold onto it sometimes you just, it just follows you around. And it’s gross because it’s not like you can change it. It is what it is. It is what it was. Let it out there. So yeah, I think that’s a fantastic tip actually, the venting factor. Huge. But you’ve got to find the right target.

Sophie:
Yeah.

Carly:
Because otherwise people just fill you with advice as well. So…

Sophie:
Oh, my goodness, yes. And sometimes, you know, I also found a really useful thing – and sometimes I still do this with my daughter – is to… to know that sometimes everyone will be in contexts that funnel them in a particular way, of being the bad sleeper, or are they a good baby or are they not a good baby, and what that all means. And like, that can infect us. Like, that can really dig and bury its way under our skin. And so, sometimes I found [30:00] it really useful to just have like a little micro moment with my baby, and it’s just us, no one else exists, and I’m just looking at these little eyelashes that I created and these little hands. And… and this morning actually, when I dropped my daughter at preschool before this interview, I opened the door and she’s being playing babies and this and that. And they seem so big when they’re almost 4. You know, they seem so big, but they’re still our babies. And I opened the door, and in her car seat, and I did what I used to do when she was a baby, and I’d say, ‘Hello, my darling.’ And like I gave her a little tickle. And… and she just grinned at me, and her face just looked exactly like it did when she was that little 6-month-old baby. It just looked like her, just with more hair now. And… and she said, ‘Oh, thanks mama.’ And… and I just like, holding onto know that we are… what we do as women who are mothers, what we’re doing in parenting, what we’re doing in caregiving for human beings in their most vulnerable and dependent states, at the beginning of their lives, and at the end, like that is so important. That is… that is the most important work that there is, I think. And so…

Carly:
It’s humanity. That’s where it is.

Sophie:
That’s where it is. And so, we will get told a thousand messages from the outside world of what did you do? What are you doing? When are you going back to work? All of that, right? But just grounding in and anchoring into that, knowing that what we are doing matters.

Carly:
Absolutely. And I think just looking at the time we’re going to have to finish up our episode, but oh, Sophie. So, much wisdom shared in one episode, and I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. And before we finish up though, I just want to check in. Did you want to let our listeners know where we can find you on social media and other places?

Sophie:
Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for having me, Carly. I’ve… it’s always… it’s always an interesting experience being pulled back into different seasons of your life, and I love that language of the seasons, you know? And knowing that the change is coming and taking comfort in the inevitability of that change too. But listeners can find me, I have a podcast, The Good Enough Mother, and have a great episode with you on there, Carly. Scroll down. It was a little while ago now. And I’m on social media @drsophiebrock, and a website by the same. So yeah, I’d love to connect with anyone further who’s been listening.

Carly:
Brilliant. And Sophie’s also on Facebook and Instagram. She’s got a fabulous feed to follow if you’re needing to… just keeps you… keeps things in context, I find. And listening to your stories on Instagram can be really inspirational. I can’t recommend that podcast enough. There was an episode recently you did on maternal ambivalence, and I’ve never heard it explained so well. It was just spot on and, yeah, I’d welcome all our listeners to go across and have a listen when you get the chance. But I’ll thank everyone for listening along, and thanks again for your time, Sophie.

Sophie:
Thank you, Carly.

Carly:
Bye.

Carly Grubb:

I really hope you enjoyed the podcast today the information we discussed was just that information only it is not specific advice if you take any action following something you've heard from our show today it is important to make sure you get professional advice about your unique situation before you proceed whether that advice is legal, financial, accounting, medical or any other advice. Please reach out to me if you do have any questions or if there's a topic you'd really like us to be covering and if you know somebody who'd really benefit from listening to our podcast please be sure to pass our name along also check out our free peer support group the beyond sleep training project and our wonderful website www.littlesparklers.org. If you'd like even more from the show you can join us as a patron on Patreon and you can find a link for that in our show notes if listening is not really your jam we also make sure we put full episode transcripts on our little sparklers website for you to also enjoy and fully captioned YouTube videos as well on our Little Sparklers channel so thanks again for listening today we really enjoy bringing this podcast to you.

“The Beyond Sleep Training Podcast (Podcast) is hosted by Little Sparklers (us, we or our).  

The primary purpose of this Podcast is to educate and inform. It does not constitute professional advice or services.

We invite guests on the Podcast from time to time (Guests). In listening to this Podcast you acknowledge and agree that the views expressed in this podcast are:

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