Mel Fryer-McLaren on parenting a medically complex and extremely wakeful baby, and how to block out the noise so that you can trust your instincts.

Background Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

Summary

Join Carly and Mel as they discuss Mel's little one's start to life with a NICU stay for birth injuries, followed by diagnoses that impacted his sleep, and what it was like parenting a medically complex and extremely wakeful baby. Mel shares how to block out the noise from others so that you can trust your instincts, get the support you need and meet your little one's needs.

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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:
Welcome back to the Beyond Sleep Training podcast. I’m your host, Carly Grubb, and with me today is the wonderful Mel Fryer-McLaren. Mel is one of our volunteers for the Beyond Sleep Training Project, and I’m very grateful for her coming on today. Welcome Mel.

Mel:
Thank you.

Carly:
So Mel, would you mind introducing yourself and your little crew so that our listeners get a bit of a feel for who’s who in your crew?

Mel:
Yeah. So, it’s myself, my wife, and we have a two-year-old son, Bowie.

Carly:
Lovely. And so, how old’s Mr Bowie?

Mel:
He… yeah, so he’s two. He actually just had his second birthday.

Carly:
Oh, sorry. You just said that.

Mel:
Yeah. He just turned two last week actually, so we had his second birthday in lockdown, which was…

Carly:
Ah, you’re in Sydney, so lockdown family. How’s that been going for you?

Mel:
Yeah. It’s good. He, luckily, is two, so he has absolutely no idea. He just loves spending more time with us, so…

Carly:
Lovely.

Mel:
Yeah.

Carly:
Would you mind starting us off then with like what, before you actually had Bowie had you and your wife discussed how you might handle sleep when your baby arrived?

Mel:
Look, I don’t… I think it’s… it’s a funny thing being pregnant, because you sort of focus on the pregnancy and you focus on the birth and then all of a sudden you’ve got this baby and you haven’t even thought how you’re going to parent, or that was the case for us. I think we, you know, we never thought of the challenges. We didn’t… yeah. It wasn’t something that we discussed. I think we just imagined it to be this, you know, beautiful, easy thing with a little baby along for the ride.

Carly:
So, had you set yourself up with a nursery? Like, did you have, like have a cot or a bassinet or anything like that?

Mel:
Yeah. So, I went into panic mode I think when I was about 30 weeks pregnant. What they like to call nesting, that was me big time, and I needed to have absolutely everything ready for him. So, we had a cot, we had obviously like little change table and everything in there. We had a bassinet for in the room. So, it was always my plan for him to – and I was sort of across, you know, what I thought was safe sleep. So, you know, the very standard baby in a bassinet, and move them to their cot when they’re six or twelve months. So, that was very much my plan. Obviously, things didn’t go that way. Yeah, so I loved doing all of that, but he never, ever slept in there. I actually sold my cot just before we recently relocated interstate, and it was basically brand new. So…

Carly:
Good resale.

Mel:
Yeah. Well, it was actually. Never slept in. I had a few people being like, ‘Ew’.  I’ve had quite a few people say that when they’re selling their cots that their, you know, their children just never slept in there, so we weren’t alone.

Carly:
I remember we sold our cot, I had to get my husband to sell it because I told him I felt like I was passing on bad sleep juju.

Mel:
Yes. Not wrong.

Carly:
Anyway. Okay, so let’s get back to it. So, when Bowie actually arrived, how did it look for you guys then?

Mel:
Oh, so we had a little bit of a traumatic birth. So, Bowie had… he actually had quite a few different injuries. Had a head injury from the birth. He had broken bones. So, he immediately went to NICU after he was born, and then they were sort of monitoring him for a… for a head injury. And the first… so, he was allowed to come into our room that night. I think he’d stayed in NICU for about, you know, maybe eight to twelve hours at that point. And he was allowed to come into our room that night. And usually I think they say that babies seem to be quite settled then because they’re still in that sleepy mode, but he was so extremely unsettled from the get-go. At that [5:00] point we didn’t realise that he had a broken collarbone, so I think, you know, he may have just been in pain because we were laying him on his side to avoid his head injury.

Carly:
Bubba.

Mel:
Yeah. So, anyway, that… he stayed with us that night and I think we had our first moment of, ‘Oh my gosh, what have we done? This is really hard.’ And we were still at the hospital, so that should have been probably a warming of things to come. But, yeah, the following day he ended up having, you know, some breathing issues, and we ended up having a three week NICU stay. So, you know, from the get-go it was already very different to what we had, you know, imagined. I thought by the Monday I’d be home with my baby and, you know, things would be cruising along, but that wasn’t the case for us. So, I was breastfeeding him. So, luckily the hospital that we were at in Adelaide, it was Flinders Hospital, they were breastfeeding-friendly. So, I was so lucky that they had a room there that I could just stay at next to the ward and we were able to continue our breastfeeding journey. Because his issues weren’t with… with feeding. When he was on oxygen he was feeding absolutely perfectly, but he just couldn’t breathe without oxygen. So…

Carly:
Oh, bubba.

Mel:
Yeah. So, obviously then I would sleep in a different room. He would sleep, you know, in the actual NICU ward and they would just come and get me whenever he needed feeds. So, I guess for that first three weeks we were almost sleeping… that was probably the most separate that we ever slept. So, by the time we got to take him home, I think from there I had, you know, he was still quite unsettled. And he ended up having tracheomalacia that they diagnosed at the time, which is like a floppy airway for people that don’t… don’t know what that is. And that was sort of cutting off his… his ability to exhale, so breathe out air. When we got to go home, he was still having oxygen desaturations overnight, but they sort of attributed that to the… to the tracheomalacia. So, you know, we took him home. He was still quite an unsettled baby, and then, you know, I just wasn’t able to put him down. I was holding him constantly. He would… he was so, so unsettled he would have like, you know, 30 minute naps for a newborn. And he would sleep so well in my arms, but we had… we weren’t in this position where we weren’t even able to really sit down with him in our arms. We had to be constantly rocking him. So, yeah, it was obviously just so exhausting and a real shock to the system because that wasn’t what we were expecting at all. And then a few days after we… we took him home he started pooping blood. He had blood in his stools. Yep. So, there was this whole other thing. We were in a… we were in a panic again thinking, gosh, maybe they missed something at the hospital. So, we… we were back in… back in hospital and then we were told that he had a dairy allergy. So, dairy and soy. And I had to… it was pass – the proteins were passing through my milk, so I had to remove those from my diet and, you know, we went on a big… a big journey with our allergies as well and it was sort of part of the explanation and the full picture why he was, you know, such an unsettled, little guy. You know, so for the next four months that was… that was part of our journey as well, was removing things from my diet and trying to, you know, figure out what it was that was causing him to, you know, to be so upset. And a lot comes, I think, with that process. And stop me if I’m speaking too much, Carly, but…

Carly:
No way. This is… wow! What an absolutely horrific start for you all.

Mel:
It was.

Carly:
It’s like… that’s a true baptism of fire.

Mel:
Oh, it was. It was absolutely, yeah, I did not see it coming at all, and it was day by day and we were just trying to get through it because, you know, at the peak of his… his intolerances and, you know, all of this, he was having 20, 30 minute, you know, blocks of sleep. So, it was just such a shock to the system. So, obviously at that point, you know, we had initially tried to have him in the bassinet and, you know, he would always just end up in bed with me. So, immediately that went out the window because I just couldn’t cope with, you know, having to get up to the bassinet, pick him up. It was just, yeah. So, I had him in bed with me and he was sleeping next to me and then I could just sort of feed as he wanted and then we’d both just fall back asleep. But, yeah, that… that journey was really interesting as well because I had a lot of guilt around having him in my bed. I, you know, obviously was told that that’s not considered safe sleep, and that’s actually when I found the Beyond Sleep Training Group, because… I don’t even really know. [10:00] It’s hard to think of how I found it. I think I was just in such a deep Facebook search at that point that I was trying to figure out what was going on with my baby, and I stumbled across the group. And that’s when I found out about the Safe Sleep Seven. So, you know, learning to bedshare safely. I think before that I would fall asleep probably with him in my arms in a rocking chair or, you know, because I just wasn’t informed, and I guess that’s not really something that you learn about when you have the nurses come out and see you after you have your baby. They’re really about this safe sleep bassinet situation and they never covered off that you could, you know, have a safe environment in your… in your bed with a baby.

Learn more about safer sleep

So, yeah. I found out about that, and I think that started to ease the guilt of having him in my bed and doing what we had, you know, we needed to do for survival. And you know, from there I think I started to feel better about that whole… that whole process. And… and… and yeah, we just sort of went from there. Things for us from four months didn’t actually get much better. When he was four months old, that’s when we actually got on top of all the allergies. So, you know, his stool was normal, everything was normal. We got on top of the allergies, and I was so proud of that because, you know, I no longer had that anxiety around feeding. But the sleep, the poor sleep continued. So, I thought, ‘Oh, maybe when we finally get on top of this I’m going to have this baby that’s really…’ You know, he was settled. Definitely really settled during the day and a happy baby and you could just tell the difference in… in his personality and him. But yeah, the nights were just not… they were shocking. So, yeah.

Carly:
He remained your little sparkler. So…

Mel:
He… that’s it. And…

Carly:
How interesting. You could see the clear change in his… his like irritability and whatnot, but there was still that inherent personality side of his being.

Mel:
Yeah.

Carly:
And sleep needs. Like, you know, that’s… yeah, obviously if he was healthy and developing as well as he was then you were meeting his sleep needs even though they were extremely challenged to keep up.

Mel:
Yes. Yes. And, you know, I remember at four, at that point in time thinking like, am I doing the right thing? Like, am I…? I had so many doubts as my, you know, of myself as a mother because you have sleep training thrown at you from all angles and, you know, I think at that point I was really thankful to the group, because that actually is what helped me remain confident in my decisions, even though – don’t get me wrong – I still had the voices where I was thinking, you know, questioning myself. You know, I saw other mothers’ experiences and I saw, you know, the stories of, you know, the trust that their babies had in them and the confidence and, you know, all of these positives and I thought, you know, for me that’s what I really wanted for my son. And after everything that we’d been through I think, you know, with the NICU stay and his health and all of these things that, you know, became something that I was so focused on. So, yeah. Things continued from four months. We hit the dreaded regression, or progression as I like to call them now. Obviously, that change in language has been helpful. And, you know, his sleep just continued to get worse. So, I think six months was one of the…

Sleep and Development

Carly:
Was that day and night? Day and night as well? Like, how… what were days looking like?

Mel:
Well, we… he was still doing, you know, 30 minute naps. He still very much needed his naps. It wasn’t like he was fighting. He never has been a sleep fighter. So, you know, he’s not… I know that, you know, people have challenges sometimes getting their kids to go down for naps, and that’s never been a challenge that we’ve had. It’s just that, um… you know, that he… the wakes and the staying asleep for long periods of time. You know? He needs his sleep, and he knows that but, yeah, he has challenges with… with…

Carly:
Maintaining.

Mel:
Yeah, that’s right. He needs a lot of support, so yeah. So, six months I started to think this can’t be right, there’s something more. I don’t know if, you know, I’m missing something in his intolerances, even though I knew that, you know, he was… he was otherwise so settled and happy and, you know, everything had, you know, we’d had cleared in those aspects. But yeah, I started to really think that something wasn’t right, and I had this gut instinct…

Carly:
Was he… I was going to say, was he still having desats? Because I remember you said at the start when he’d come home… Was he still having night-time desaturations?

Mel:
Yeah. So, it was interesting because at that point I wasn’t… I was down the research path of is it… could this be coming from the tracheomalacia? Like, is it, you know, [15:00] an issue that happens with babies that do have tracheomalacia? And, you know, his issue has al… had always been that he was having these desaturations during sleep. So, it wasn’t, you know, necessarily when he was awake. It was always when he was asleep. So, I hadn’t heard of, you know, I started to hear about adenoids and all these other things, which I started to think maybe it’s, you know, something happening with that. You know? Because he was sleeping with his mouth open and I saw again on the group a lot of people talk about their, you know, sharing their experiences with that. Because you do find, you know, in that group that… or in our group people do share those challenging sleep experiences more often than I think they sometimes share the positive ones, because people are always reaching out for help as we know. And I would see the replies, and I started to think maybe that’s us? Like, maybe that is, you know, an issue we’re having. So, I… I guess at that point I took him to our GP, who again started asking if he was self-settling. I think that that can be a language that comes from healthcare professionals sometimes. Is he settling on his own? Are you, you know, trying to help him sleep independently? And obviously, my answer to that was no. You try getting this baby to self-settle after, you know, everything that he’s been through. It’s just never an option for us and believe me I tried. I tried to do the… the drowsy but awake, you know, situation and I would put him down and he would scream. There was no… there was just no option for that in our house. So, obviously then I had to say, well no, he’s not self-settling. I kind of, you know, tried to brush over it a little to my GP. Like, you know, sometimes he self-settles. That was not true. But I just didn’t want to feel like a complete failure as a mother to  my GP.

Worried your little one's sleep isn't normal?

Carly:
Yeah. And sometimes if you sort of do that then they might take it more seriously as well.

Mel:
That’s right.

Carly:
And stop thinking that that’s just the problem, which it’s nothing to do with. 

Mel:
Yeah. Right, because when… when I did say that I think then he started to think. And I said, ‘Look, can I get a referral to an ENT?’ I wasn’t sure what we needed or who we needed to see, but I felt like, you know, I need to see somebody. I need to have this addressed or have this investigated. And I think a lot of the time if you don’t put your foot down about these things with your healthcare professionals, they just tell you that it’s normal, or they tell you that it’s your parenting, or they, you know… you know, they don’t address your concerns. And I think as mothers, you know, we know when something’s wrong, we have that gut instinct. And I just… I knew it wasn’t right. So, he did. He gave us the referral. It obviously took a little while to get into an ET… ENT, sorry. So, I think at that point he must have been… seven, eight months at that point. And he was still doing 30 minutes wakes. We got to about, you know, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes he would do an hour, sometimes he would do an hour and twenty. It wasn’t, you know, these full hourly sleep cycles either, it was just all over the place. So, I think, you know, at one point it was 15… about 15 wakes a night, which…

Carly:
It hurts.

Mel:
Oh, it was so painful. I just still think it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but also something that I’m the most proud of because, you know, I know that I always met his needs and, you know, that feels good. To make it through something like that and be at this point that we’re at now, it feels really good. So… so, yeah. We went to the ENT. We were then referred to a… a sleep specialist. Like a respiratory sleep specialist, not a sleep consultant.

Carly:
Yep.

Mel:
And we went over to him. Had another little waiting list. By that point he was like nine months old. And he then referred us to a sleep study. He said, he looked at his history with the tracheomalacia. He looked at his history with the intolerances. And he was like, there’s something more going on. So, thank god that was all sort of validated for me at that point. I was like, okay, yes, me pushing has been what I needed to do. And he sent us off for this sleep study. So, that was an interesting experience as well because a ten month old at that point is just… he was walking already. And, you know, they’re attached to a million different wires and, you know, you’re trying to keep them settled. In a cot mind you, which he had never slept in in his life. So, I think I just resigned myself to the fact that [20:00] I was getting no sleep that night.

Carly:
Yeah, that one was a write-off.

Mel:
Yeah.

Carly:
A necessary write-off probably. Just get it done.

Mel:
And do you know what? At that point, ten months, I was so used to it that I could function. It was just unbelievable. I think you get to a point where you just realise what your body can do and I was, you know, I’d wake up in the morning and I’d feel a bit tired, I’d have my coffee and off I’d go. So, yeah. Your body is an amazing thing. Anyway, we had the sleep study and it turned out that all along he had had a central sleep apnoea. Yeah, so this is actually like a sleep apnoea that comes from the brain. So, it’s not due to like an obstru… you would know. But it’s not due to an obstruction. It’s actually, you know, a message… the messaging from the brain which isn’t constantly communicating that you should be breathing. So…

Carly:
Yes.

Mel:
That’s why he was having these desaturations. And at that point I think the score is something like 5 that they need… If they score over 5 they need oxygen, and he scored 4.8. So, he was just under the threshold, and what happens with a sleep… a central sleep apnoea is it actually resolves over time. So, what he sort of indicated at that point was that, you know, it was likely he had this from birth and the hospital had diagnosed his tracheomalacia and, you know, thought that was the full picture. But in fact…

Carly:
Left it at that. Yep,

Mel:
In fact he had this… this apnoea this entire time. And, you know, at one point it… it may have been likely that he probably did need oxygen overnight, but we were sort of released from hospital anyway. So… so after that we were told there isn’t really much we can do. We were also told from the respiratory sleep specialist who was quite old school that the only thing you can do in that point in time is… is to sleep train.

Carly:
Are you kidding?

Mel:
No. So…

Carly:
Your kid who is waking because his brain’s like forgetting to breathe needs to sleep… be sleep trained?

Mel:
Because obviously at that point you’re not teaching the child to sleep. That’s  obviously an impossibility because it’s a physical thing. But, you know, you’re teaching him to stop calling you. That’s right. So, you know…

Carly:
That is horrific.

Mel:
Yeah, and he must be about sixty. So, he’s very old school. You know, he… when I, you know, when he said that to me I just… I don’t even think I really even responded at that point. I just thought obviously that’s not for us. I’m not going to make it this far…

Carly:
Yeah.

Mel:
… and then sleep train my poor child who has a health issue. And…

Carly:
After all that you’ve been through, and perhaps maybe he could also attribute the fact that you’ve been so responsive with the fact that this apnoea hadn’t actually caused further health concerns.

Mel:
Well, and that’s why I often think about that if he was, you know, you know that the reason that babies, when you sleep… you know. I have read a lot of the work of Dr James McKenna and about, you know, the relationship between, you know, mother and baby, and what happens when we co-sleep and, you know, part of that is obviously, you know, it’s a… it’s a safety mechanism that, you know, we… you wake the baby in your movement, in your breathing and, you know, that’s obviously protective against SIDS. So, I often think about what would have happened if we had taken that path or we had sleep trained or we had left him in his bassinet. You know? Would the situation have been different? I don’t know. You know, you never know. But, you know, I’m always so thankful that we didn't go down this path of sleep training. And it was partly because of the Beyond Sleep Training Group, but also partly just for pure survival at that point that we did because, you know, you just never know if he… he would have been probably a big candidate for SIDS. So… so, yeah. That was our little journey.

Carly:
The one… So, I’m just looking because we’re coming up to our 25 minutes, but I’m actually…

Mel:
Oh, sorry.

Carly:
No, no. You’re doing so well. I was just wanting to check though, so you’ve got this diagnosis, you’ve decided that like you’re not going to sleep train him. So, you kept at it I’m… I’m sure. But did you see… has there been like… has he grown out of the central sleep apnoea now? Or is he still showing signs of it at two?

Mel:
Well, what they do say is that… it’s interesting because they say 18 months is, you know, it can be almost like a magic age for this central sleep apnoea. And I think a lot of the research they have is around premature babies. It happens a lot with prems as well. Bowie was born term but, you know, they’re not exactly sure what [25:00] causes it, but they do say that it resolves on its own. So, it’s just one of those things that can resolve with… with time. A lot of babies end up on oxygen and then, you know, what they do is these sleep studies on an ongoing basis to see if they can, you know, come off the oxygen. So… which probably would have been what happened with us if he had of been diagnosed as a baby. So, yeah. It has resolved. Actually, for the first time last week he slept through the night.

Carly:
Wow.

Mel:
I know. I thought we would never get there. But he did it and I’m so proud of him. And I’m, you know, we’re still… I still responded to his every need. We still co-slept. We did a lot of things, you know, to survive as a family. We… instead of, you know, sharing a bed, the three of us, at one point because the wakes were so insane what we did was we actually built a little floor bed. So… and we built a double size so that we could always, you know, have someone in there sort of co-sleeping with him. It did, you know, it was me most of the time because of breastfeeding, and that’s always what he wanted when he woke up, and also what was the easiest thing for us because it was just a quick way.

Breastfeeding and sleep

Carly:
The fastest way. Yep.

Mel:
So, went five minutes and he’s back asleep. So, yeah. So, we did have a floor bed. My… Sian, my wife, would sleep in a separate bed and Bowie and I would co-sleep in his bed. Or, you know, we did a bit of musical beds. Sometimes we’d start the night together and move apart. You know, she was working and I, you know, sort of ended up putting off going back to work purely because I did think that it would be a massive challenge. But also, I guess I think, you know, over our journey I ended up becoming quite a gentle parent and, you know, so focused on attachment, and I just wasn’t ready to, you know, go through that separation with him. So, yeah. It was… it was an interesting thing. We’ve actually just, you know, changed our sleeping arrangement again and we’ve got a super king bed, which is ridiculous. It is like this giant, square, two metre by two metre bed, and that has been the best thing that we’ve ever done. So, he, now being two, just sleeps in the middle of the bed. And he sometimes will sleep sideways. He’s all over the place. But we’ve all got so much room. So…

Carly:
He could starfish and you’ve still got space.

Mel:
Yeah. I think for our family, you know, the biggest thing to get through it is just to be adaptable and do what works for us. You know? We’ve… we’ve changed how we’ve… we’ve slept, you know, over the last two years so many times. But yeah, we’ve just come to this whole point after going through all of that now, and I just can’t believe that, you know, we made it. It’s just such a crazy feeling. It really is.

Carly:
Oh, no. Congratulations to you because surviving a really sparkly, little baby is no mean feat, especially with all those extra medical challenges.

Mel:
Yeah.

Carly:
And can you tell us, so in… through all of this with your partner, obviously you were the breastfeeding parent.

Mel:
Yeah.

Carly:
But how was she able to support you best?

Mel:
So, we had to do a lot of… you know, I think we were lucky in a way because we have two mums. And I know – don’t get me wrong – I know a lot of dads can be really involved, but I think having those blurred lines of roles was helpful because, you know, he had two mums. So, he… she was able to step in a lot of the time and be that, you know, nurturing person when I couldn’t. There were times obviously where I was just so exhausted that… And so, what we did was I would, you know, obviously do all the night wakes, but at say 7am or 6am when he was sort of awake for the day, I would then go back to bed. So, she would, you know, take him in the morning until about, you know… even if she went to work that would be around 8, so I’d get a couple of hours sleep in. Or, you know, on weekends, you know, I would sleep until whenever I wanted, which would be like maybe 9.30, something along those lines. And I was really able to survive the night knowing that sleep was coming, if that makes sense.

Carly:
Yep.

Mel:
So, I could do the wakes because I’d be like, ‘Yes, I’m going to get this block of sleep in a few hours’ time and it’s going to be great.’ And it would just help motivate me through. So, I think that’s how, you know, she was able to help, and we were able to get through it as a family. And, you know, even though I think I was the one that, you know, was doing all of the wakes and I was exhausted, it affects you all. It definitely affects you as a family I think, an experience like that. But, you know, you definitely have to just band… you know, band together and… and get through it in whatever way you can. So…

Carly:
Making it through… I don’t know, like it takes great [30:00] strength and courage to actually make it through. And… and when, you know, make it through together is something you should be really proud of.

Mel:
And do you know what? I am now one of those mums that has a two year old that I can say to people, your time is coming and you will do it and you will get through it and you’ll never regret not sleep training. I feel so proud that we did it, and I see… and I do see what everyone was saying this whole time. When I look at my son, he’s so happy, he so confident, he has the  most amazing, secure attachment. He, you know, we go in the… you know, through the supermarket and he says hello to every person he meets. He runs off at the park. He doesn’t even look back to see where I am because he knows I’ll always be there for him. And I’m so proud of that, and I know that that is because of how we’ve parented him and, you know, I think everybody in that family unit is important, but I think, you know, they’re so small and they’re so helpless and they can’t, you know, speak up for their own needs. So, you just, you know, you get through it, and you be there for them, and you do see that positive outcome at the end, if that makes sense.

Carly:
It does. That’s beautiful. Now, we’re actually right at our 30 minutes. So, I’m going to ask you what I always ask towards the end of the episode, and that is for your tip of the week for our listeners. Is there something you’d like to share?

Mel:
I think my biggest parenting advice is to trust your instinct and to block out all of the outside noise. And, you know, you know your baby best. And, you know, we do have this natural instinct to respond to our baby. There’s a reason why it doesn’t feel right to leave them crying, it doesn’t feel right to, you know, not be responsive to them, and I think that’s because, you know, that’s natural and that’s… that’s biology and… and that’s how they thrive. So… so, yeah. Even though it’s hard I think that… I think that, you know, when you do get to the other side - and you will get to the other side even though it feels like you might not – when you do get to the other side you will only look back and be proud of yourself, and I think seeing all those positive outcomes for your little one, for sure.

Carly:
Well, that’s just perfect. Thank you so much, Mel. And I hope everybody listening along has really enjoyed hearing from Mel’s story, and if you can recognise any of those sorts of behaviours maybe in your little one, from allergies to just something not quite feeling right in your gut, take Mel’s advice and trust your gut and go and seek out a professional who can actually take you seriously, and investigate, investigate, investigate until you get to the bottom of these things. So, thank you so much for your wise words, Mel. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you today.

Mel:
Thank you so much for having me.

Carly:
No worries. And thanks again for being one of our wonderful volunteers. If people aren’t already a part of our group, the Beyond Sleep Training Project, it’s a free, peer support group, so come on over and join us. And with the show, I’m just going to give one little plea. If you haven’t already given us a five star rating, please do so. It’s actually the main way that podcasts get distributed, is through reviews. So, anyone who could drop us a review and a five star rating, we would love you forever. Alright, thanks again, Mel. Bye.

Mel:
Thank you. Bye.

Carly:

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.

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