Tiina Ward on her first little sparkler, and her second premie little one who came home a day before the first COVID shut down
SUMMARY
Tiina shares her experience with her first little sparkler, how her experience lead her to listen to her instincts, and the truly tough times. She then shares her experience when her second little one came early, and how she managed with bringing her home the day before the first UK COVID shut down started.
Listen Now:
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 I have Tiina Ward. Tiina, you’re coming to us all the way from the UK. Is that right?
Tiina:
Yes. I ended up here.
Carly:
Excellent. And, and Tiina is a part of the Beyond Sleep Training Project Peer Support Group and she was kindly volunteered to come on a show with me after I put a bit of a call out to people who would be keen to share their experiences with us. So welcome today, Tiina.
Tiina:
Thank you.
Carly:
And can you tell us a little bit about who’s in your family and how you ended up in the UK, ‘cause it sounds like that wasn’t where you were originally from?
Tiina:
No, I’m Estonian and I never really planned to stay, but you know how those things go. You go for a little late gap year and then you get married and have children and they didn’t quite have, they have to stay. Yeah, I’m the accidental immigrant. I’m sorry. But I’m quite happy here now, so I don’t plan on uprooting ourselves again and going anywhere. So, it’s me, my husband who’s Irish, and our 5-year-old son and 22-month-old daughter. The second one, you don’t exactly know how old they are.
Carly:
Yeah, she’s getting close to 2. She’s about there.
Tiina:
She’s about there.
Carly:
Lovely. Lovely. Fantastic. And so for our listeners can you tell us, before you had your first babe how did you think you were going to approach sleep with your family?
Tiina:
I think I had the usual illusions of that they sleep. I don’t think I ever considered that they have to be trained to sleep. That wasn’t a concept I was familiar with at all. And it was talked about a lot with my first, because he did not sleep.
Carly:
Hence the…
Tiina:
We were the hourly, 45 minutes, that family.
Carly:
The little sparkler baby. And so…
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
…do you think it was the - you hadn’t got any of that background sleep training noise in your head.
Tiina:
No.
Carly:
Was that because Estonian culture would approach sleep differently? Or was it you hadn’t been around babies and sleep to know any of it?
Tiina:
I hadn’t really been around babies, and… and I had mine quite late. At the first one I was 33 just. And somehow all my friends had children back home separately, so when I went to visit no one really talked about that much. I knew a couple of friends who did some training in that sense, but I didn’t pay attention to it because they weren’t my babies and my brain hadn’t quite switched over yet. Because it’s surprising what having children does to your head. And your heart.
Carly:
Definitely, and it’s what comes into you. It comes into your importance levels too.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
So your brain starts to register the information. So you had… so you, before he was born did you have yourself… how did you set up before he arrived?
Tiina:
I knew that I wanted him next to me. It was never a question of separating him into a separate room or anything like that. So we had the whole, like the next to me sleeping arrangement. We had a little crib. And that was my thought. We took the side down, so it was side-carred on, and so we were in, in essence, co-sleeping I guess, but not bedsharing.
And I think we, we managed that way for quite some time, and then… then sort of the health visitors and everything come into play and they say, ‘Oh, yes. You can move them into their own room when they’re six months.’ And I think we tried. Stupidly. I don’t know why. Because he was up all the time. I have no idea what I was thinking. And, and my dad did look at me and say, ‘Is it a little bit early? What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘No, that’s what you’re supposed to do.’ So, it was very much what Google said at the time, and I don’t think I was digging deep enough to find. We never let him cry. I responded every second. He lived on top of me, kind of still does. He’s 5 now. So, we never trained, even though it was spoken about quite a few times as an option, but we couldn’t stomach it.
Carly:
No. So when you… No. So, [5:00] when you first had him was he, like did you have a bit of a honeymoon period with him as a newborn?
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
Or was he super wakeful from the very beginning?
Tiina:
Yeah, we had the honeymoon period and then we had teeth at about 4 months, which was fun. Also the fun part was that I thought that I would obviously stop breastfeeding a baby who has teeth. No. Over two years. Also something that completely changed. But yeah, the sleep regression hit just with the teeth, and from then on we went to 45 minutes, an hour and a half, the sleep cycle.
Carly:
It’s absolutely brutal. I’ve been there.
Tiina:
Ugh. And I was not prepared. And we had no help. My parents are abroad. My husband’s are far away. My neighbours had a small child, so that kind of helped. At least I had someone to make me coffee in the morning.
Carly:
It helps, doesn’t it?
Tiina:
Yes.
Carly:
Like, just little things, but it probably doesn’t sound like it was enough, because that is an extremely intense time. So how long did that intensity last for your babe?
Tiina:
Honestly, we bought a house when he was about a year, 18 months, and it was still going. And by that time I had to go back to work full time, we had a renovation on our hands and we had a kid who woke up five times a night.
Carly:
Oh, brutal. And what…
Tiina:
It wasn’t great.
Carly:
No, I can imagine. And so what were your… what were you… how would you handle his wakes at this stage? What were, what was working or not working for you?
Tiina:
Feed to sleep. Feed to sleep every time, and I – it pains me to say at some point we night weaned because I was… I wasn’t functioning at all. And the night weaning, it wasn’t great. My husband helped, so he would console him. He would hold him. Because as soon as he was on me the only thing he wanted was boob. Nothing else would even come into consideration. And because I was away so much, I was working five days a week full time, so I fully understand why he was doing it, but I understand that now looking back and it frustrated me hugely at the time, and I feel so guilty about it still. Like, it’s just I had so much on my plate that I didn’t… I didn’t do any of the simple things. I didn’t have nights to myself. I was painting doors or… or doing something else completely irrelevant at the time, but we had a house that needed to be lived in. And I didn’t take any vitamins. I didn’t rest. I didn’t sleep. All of the things kind of came in together, and yeah, I should have probably read a bit more and rested a lot more.
Carly:
Isn’t it in…
Tiina:
But it wasn’t the option at the time.
Carly:
Yeah. I can look back on my night weaning of my first baby, and I night weaned him similar. Very supremely wakeful person. I was actually pregnant at the time with our second baby and the aversions were properly like really getting me good. And I know that what I did at the time certainly felt like the right thing for me and him, but it’s that benefit of hindsight where I actually can see that it was actually still pretty rough on him.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And if I knew… if I knew a bit more about things that I know now I probably would have approached it differently. But I really was just doing the best I could at the time.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And in the circumstances I found myself in. It sounds similar to you, where it’s like you can look back on something and think, yeah, I’d probably do that different now.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
But… but that wasn’t then, so I think you can give you… like we can both give ourselves some grace for that, because I’m sure we were both doing just the best we could at the time. And it’s messy, isn’t it? It’s really messy.
Tiina:
It is. It is, and no one really prepares you for it. I think it would have been hugely different if we had a bigger community that does tell you what’s normal and does remind you that you need to take care of yourself in order to take care of other little beings and things like that. And I just, it wasn’t happening. And it kind of all come in…
Carly:
And sometimes life doesn’t always let you do that too, does it?
Tiina:
No.
Carly:
Like apart from having a community that facilitates that. Sometimes there’s just this cluster of things that come into your life, and they’re not always avoidable.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And they can make it very challenging to be able to make any other sense of it. So, you can see lots of families make decisions that aren’t necessarily their ideal.
Tiina:
Mm. Yeah.
Carly:
But… but it was just the best that they could do at that time, and I think that’s just reality. So, thank you for sharing that part of your story. And so, after you night weaned him was he still very wakeful at that stage? What would you do instead to settle him?
Tiina:
He was better.
Carly:
He was better? And…
Tiina:
He was better. He would sleep longer stretches at that point. And I think we just kind of muddled through. So, by the time he was 2 we just… just under 2 I think, we were down to the evening feed and that was it. And he would take a bottle, so that wasn’t [10:00] really the main reason why I was still feeding. He was always… I could always pump and feed him a bottle or give him just basic milk by that age anyway. And I think I just, we kept going out of habit and it was nice. I didn’t really find an issue with it. He was so happy.
Carly:
And especially if you’re apart from each other all day…
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
… it’s a beautiful way to reconnect, I think.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
Like especially around that age group, ‘cause they’re still so very little really, aren’t they?
Tiina:
They’re tiny.
Carly:
Yep.
Tiina:
And I don’t think I really understood how fast the time would go.
Carly:
I think that first baby too, like everything seems to happen around you and you don’t really have that full grasp.
Tiina:
No.
Carly:
But I know with my second, my third baby, you… you look back and think of your first baby at that age and go wow, he was really tiny when I was expecting, you know, X, Y, Z.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And yet you don’t have that same context, do you?
Tiina:
No, and funnily enough the second one grows up significantly faster.
Carly:
Oh, I know.
Tiina:
I don’t know how that’s possible, but it’s…
Carly:
It’s not fair.
Tiina:
It just goes poof. And I know what I’m doing now. Take your time. You’re fine. You can take ages.
Carly:
It’s like that with any of their things that they do, isn’t it? I remember when my second, my third baby actually, she just decided to do everything super fast. And I remember when she’d just started – she was rolling both ways at 6 weeks. I’m like, stop it. Stop. You’re meant to be my little, newborn slug for a bit longer.
Tiina:
They’re so cute when they’re that age.
Carly:
I know. They’re beautiful. But yeah, you’re right. It absolutely seems to go into warp speed and it’s very not fair when you’re actually really enjoying it as well. And so things, he was still having his night feed when he was 2.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
Sleeping bit of longer stretches. Was he still napping by day? Like, how are days looking with him?
Tiina:
Yeah. He would still nap in the day. He will still fall asleep if we’re in the car in the day. He… he sleeps now. I still snuggle him to sleep. He’s 5. Was 5 in July, and he just, it’s nice now. It has changed from that, ‘Oh my god, it’s going to take me two hours to put him down’, or something random like that. It’s our reconnection time. We have the books from school and just general catch up or Lego or something. And I snuggle him to sleep and it takes me ten minutes, and then he sleeps. And then he wanders in anywhere between midnight and 5 am.
Carly:
Lovely, does he climb…?
Tiina:
And we all squeeze into bed together.
Carly:
Very nice. And it… but there’s no stress around that kind of…
Tiina:
No.
Carly:
… like he’s still waking, but it’s no longer anything that impacts on… on your sleep or wellbeing.
Tiina:
Oh, he’ll kick me in the night-time and wake me up, but it doesn’t bother me anymore.
Carly:
Yeah.
Tiina:
Absolutely not.
Carly:
I think it’s really… it’s so important for people who are right… listening along and they’re right in the trenches to know that this is how it progresses, because I think sometimes people are… are scared hearing that these older children still need some support to sleep, or that they’re still waking and coming in. Yeah, they’re doing those things, but it’s not like a negative impact on…
Tiina:
No, it’s a hugely different thing.
Carly:
It really is, and it’s… and the needing a cuddle to sleep is actually something precious.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
Rather than anything that’s like a, something you’d regret.
Tiina:
No.
Carly:
Because you’ve done that all his life.
Tiina:
I’ve got a couple of tiny regrets, but they… I never left him to scream. I went and slept at the neighbour's house at some point when he was eight months old because I was losing the will to live. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And my husband had him. So he took a bottle and all that kind of stuff, but there was a lot of screaming that night. It was obviously hell the entire time, but I wasn’t there. And now my 2-year-old – nearly 2-year-old – I have never left her. We have never been apart, and it’s such a different thing.
Carly:
I can just so imagine though the… the feelings and the, what went into your decision to need that night away though when he was 8 months, and it sounds like as much as you might regret it or whatever feelings you have now, it probably – once again, similar to the night weaning – at the time it was probably exactly still what you needed to do with where you were at in your journey.
Tiina:
To function.
Carly:
Exactly.
Tiina:
I was at the stage where I was afraid to get up off the floor with him because I was dizzy.
Carly:
Yeah.
Tiina:
I was afraid I’d fall over.
Carly:
I think few people actually…
Tiina:
It was that bad.
Carly:
…few people can relate to that level of sleep deprivation. I’ve been there as well and it’s… it’s an extraordinarily brutal experience for you in that moment, but I think even reflecting back on it it’s hard to actually fathom what you’d been through.
Tiina:
How tired you were.
Carly:
Yeah. It’s… it’s like the next level of fatigue. But it’s, you know, at that point, you know, there’s different ways different people need to handle that, and if your way of being okay was to go and take that night I’m glad that you were able to do that, and your husband was able to buffer your baby while you needed to do that.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
So, [15:00] always like go easy on yourself there, because once again, you did what you needed to do at the time.
Tiina:
Yeah. I had that luxury that I could.
Carly:
Thank goodness for that.
Tiina:
We had no sort of daytime help or anything like that and… and that was the saviour. My neighbour in general honestly was I think a huge help, because she had a second one and she was so calm throughout. Just her movements of how she handled the second child were just almost in slow-motion. And she’s not a slow-motion kind of person, but it was hugely different when she was with her daughter. And I feel the same now with the second one. You are so much calmer. So, I’m not sure whether the second one sleeps because I’m calmer or they’re just different. I don’t think I’ll ever know.
Carly:
I don’t think you’ll ever know either but I do, you hear people who’ve got their little sparklers as their second or their third baby.
Tiina:
Right.
Carly:
And it feels like at whatever point they come into the crew they just shake up the whole world, because they’re not… they’re really not your average style of baby.
Tiina:
No.
Carly:
And I think only people who’ve experienced that level of intensity can really understand what we’re talking about for that kind of thing.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
But tell me more. I want to hear about your second baby now. So, she came along – how old was your first guy when she was coming?
Tiina:
So the first one was 3-and-a-half, and we planned it that way. But the second one came early. So she was two months premature, so we were in the hospital for two months. Things went horribly wrong with the pregnancy and it was just such a shock. Because with the first one, he went over. He was happy in there. He was not coming out. And he was always this strong, really ahead, really just on it little child. And then we had this second, tiny, three pound five bundle and she was really poorly in the beginning and then because she was in the hospital for three months I wasn’t co-sleeping, I wasn’t doing any of it. But she came out of hospital, breastfed, and went straight into the next to me at home.
Carly:
Wow. You did so…
Tiina:
And she’s perfectly fine.
Carly:
You did so well managing to breastfeed through a two month hospital stay. Well done you.
Tiina:
It was pumping. It was pumping for the start, because they don’t obviously feed at that age when they come out at that gestation.
Carly:
Yeah.
Tiina:
And… and it was hard work.
Carly:
You’ve got to…
Tiina:
Some… some women do that fully for the whole year or however. They do it exclusively, and I don’t know how.
Carly:
It’s impressive that…
Tiina:
But we did it.
Carly:
… you did it, and you managed to get her to the breast as well.
Tiina:
She, she did that one.
Carly:
That is impressive.
Tiina:
She did well.
Carly:
Well done to the two of you, ‘cause that is no mean feat. Because you know a lot of people that… that experience is the reason that things don’t necessarily work for their breastfeeding experience.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
So well done you. That’s impressive.
Tiina:
I’d done one before, so I kind of knew what I was doing. But she figured it out, so she did really, really well.
Carly:
Awesome. And so you got your little love home, and how was life with her then, and… or life with two little people really?
Tiina:
Lockdown. Life with two was lockdown. We came home on Sunday and the country shut down on Monday.
Carly:
Oh my gosh.
Tiina:
And I’m probably the only person to say this, but I was grateful for that, because there are so many complications that can come with viruses and things to all the really poorly newborns, and who are early and just in general. So the whole pass the baby even was cancelled, which worked really well. So we just hid and just kind of were in our little bubble. My… my eldest was smitten, so he was absolutely wonderful. I don’t think… we’ve got a picture of him holding that tiny little thing. I think she was about four-pound, five-pound maybe when I brought her home. So, tiny still.
Carly:
Little bundle. Yeah.
Tiina:
Tiny, tiny. And yeah, they’re gorgeous.
Carly:
That is so good.
Tiina:
They’re still really good. And she slept longer stretches. She did three hours. She went through a period of the two-hourly wakings, but she was never like Thomas. And because obviously in hospital she was timely feeds and it was… she was tube-fed and all that because it was… was all very medical. But at home we switched to boob and it was demand feeding as… as kind of usual. And she did do two-hourly at some point, but I don’t think she ever went any more frequent than that. At least I don’t remember it. Because…
Carly:
It’s such a different experience for you. So you…
Tiina:
Hugely different.
Carly:
Did… how did you feel in, within yourself then? Like were you still finding you were getting periods of time where you were still very tired? Or were you feeling pretty well-rested? How did that look?
Tiina:
I was okay. I think because we… we had done Thomas as a family.
Carly:
Yeah, you were broken in.
Tiina:
Yeah. So it wasn’t sort of, it was always easier. It was always such a… such, much, much easier than Tommy was. [20:00] And it wasn’t… it was, it was hard going at some point, because obviously we were all locked in as well and you get annoyed with each other and at some point it’s a small house and it’s four people now. And one of them still needs to be entertained, and my husband would take him for two, three hour walks every single day just to kind of manage him because he’s still really, really active. Yeah.
Carly:
And toddlers in lockdown. Like, that’s, you know. They’re toddlers.
Tiina:
They’re toddlers.
Carly:
Whether they’re in lockdown or not, hey? It’s a really, really intense time, but it’s great that your husband was able to take him out and entertain and wear him out a little bit. But I was…
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
That actually brings me to relationships. How did things look for you guys having – I know it was a real strain on my husband and my relationship, that first sparkler baby.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
We struggled to find our feet. We struggled to find a way to work together. How was that for you guys?
Tiina:
Yeah. It was… it was a really huge learning curve. And I must admit at some point I was so tired I… I shouted at him with a voice I didn’t think I could make. I wasn’t sure that sound would come out of my lungs, but it was… it was horrific at some points. And it also came because of the fact that I thought, well, since I’m at home with the baby, so I obviously do everything. Which is insane.
Carly:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Tiina:
And he also thought because he goes to work he needs to obviously rest at night-time and all the rest of it. So… so Tommy was born in July and at Christmas time, my husband had two weeks off. So that was his holiday.
Carly:
Mm hm.
Tiina:
And so during the holiday we figured we’re both home, we’ll try and do 50/50. And he told me at the end of the holiday that he is now more tired than when he started, and that was us doing 50/50. And that kind of clicked.
Carly:
And you went, yes. Yes, sir. That is correct.
Tiina:
And he, he is… he is such a good husband and father in the sense that he really does want to try. He wants to help. He wants to be useful. And even he found it so unfathomable as to how hard this is going to be. But once you have a baby both of your lives are going to get harder. Not just the mum. The mum isn’t supposed to be some half-dead, grey figure that just functions. Like obviously yes, if your husband is doing brain surgery, he probably he needs to have a little bit more rest than you do. But most modern occupations isn’t, there isn’t a safety issue there. You can be tired. That’s fine.
Carly:
Well, it’s the same thing. It’s like you’re… you’re mothering a small human.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
Like, your occupation is also dependent on you being able to function safely as well.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
So, it’s that really weighing up of the value of functioning, isn’t it?
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And it’s… it’s not a competition, and I think that can be very hard for couples to understand. And I know for me and my husband, it very much was the case though, we came to the agreement that there was no use us both being ridiculously sleep-deprived for the sake of us both sharing that experience. What we found was that for our baby, he was very much all about me during the night. But that meant that dad was responsible for buffering that in the hours that he could outside of that time because, you know, he wasn’t the supremely sleep-deprived one and therefore he… he could step up in those ways. But it wasn’t, it didn’t mean that all of his responsibilities disappeared.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
He still had, he still played a part in making sure that our family was okay. It’s a tricky…
Tiina:
Yeah, well, David… David did nappies and things like that and, and still, if you have somebody who wakes all the time – so we would try and have dinner at 6 o’clock, something like that, 7. And I wouldn’t be able to finish a meal for months and months and months and months. He would be awake already as soon as we would put him down. He was that kind of a baby. With the second one we didn’t bother putting him any… putting her anywhere. She was just on top of me.
Carly:
Yeah.
Tiina:
And it was fine, and it worked, and no bother. And if I did put her down she’d stay there.
Carly:
Yeah.
Tiina:
And it’s such a novelty.
Carly:
It… it can be so different depending on their personalities, hey? Like I know from… for our family, the times that dad really owned were like while I was trying to eat my dinner, or I remember after I’d first get him down for the night – because he’d do the same thing, like he’d last no time at all – but I’d go have a nice, long, hot shower to myself. I’d finish a meal.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And any waking that occurred in that time was dad’s problem.
Tiina:
Mm hm.
Carly:
And he would, you know, cuddle and rock and do whatever he needed to do, but I needed that bit of protected time for me to be able to do my things and basic care. Like, being able to shower and, you know, brush my teeth with, you know, that kind of…
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
It wasn’t doing anything outlandish, but it was protected time and it meant a lot to me because I knew I had it.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
[25:00] And so that was one of our times we had. And then early morning waking, that was dad’s job.
Tiina:
Yes.
Carly:
Before he went to work, any… any early morning wake for play, that was dad and I would sleep for a little bit longer. Was that a similar…?
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
Did you guys have those kind of agreements as well?
Tiina:
Yeah. We still do, to be honest. He takes them downstairs for breakfast and I kind of have my shower, wander down. We all go school, work, everywhere else. And it still works that way. Because they still kind of want – even though the second one self-weaned at 18 months.
Carly:
Oh.
Tiina:
Devastated. Absolutely devastated.
Carly:
How dare she. How dare she.
Tiina:
So, I’m not… I’m not a necessity anymore. She doesn’t feed in the night-time. She just wants to cuddle. And she doesn’t really care who cuddles her. Either of us will do. She will prefer me if she’s got me in the bed, but either of us will do, so we both kind of wake up anyways. Yep.
Carly:
It’s just nice to be able to have that bit of balance. And I do think too, with the second baby, the toddler, like being able to share the responsibilities too, like we really needed to work as a team for bedtime once that second baby had arrived and, and once again with the third. So I think sometimes with the first baby it can be a bit tricky trying to find your feet, but you do eventually get your groove.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
That’s for sure.
Tiina:
It was difficult to find what is it that we can and cannot do. I think we had the illusion of that we can, oh, we can still have dinner together. That’s our… our time of day. And now, now it’s not. We should have split it in hindsight. But that’s hindsight for you.
Carly:
Yeah, well that’s… we just started eating, like I know with like by the time we did second and third babies we just ate earlier. We just as soon as our husband would be home form work we’d eat early together as a family to make sure that everybody got a meal in.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And then we’d start the, you know, the after. And so often there’d be a baby being jiggled on someone’s knee or on the boob while you’re doing the one-handed dinner thing, but you kind of just figure out… And I guess that was something with my first, it’s almost like you have to and… you have to figure out how those things practically look.
Tiina:
Mm hm.
Carly:
And they don’t always involve having the baby off and settled on their own.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
Sometimes it is actually just working around it. Baby in carrier. Baby on knees. Like, they’re not always tidily away and asleep.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
That’s… it’s really not what I thought.
Tiina:
That was the illusion we had. Mm. Exactly. I had the idea of they are obviously on their own somewhere by that time.
Carly:
Yeah.
Tiina:
And that’s our time. And it seemed like such an intrusion and stress and… and everything. And it’s… it’s not really. It’s a preparation. It’s the… it’s how unprepared we are for… for the extra family member. We don’t know what that brings.
Carly:
No. Or how it can look.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And still be okay.
Tiina:
Exactly.
Carly:
Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? You can have this version of how it should be, or how you want it to be, and then it’s nothing like that. But you can still be okay. You’ve just got to figure out how to make it work for you and your family.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And it’s okay to grieve what you thought it would be as well.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
‘Cause I think that’s part of the process, isn’t it? Getting… you’re allowed to go, wow, this is a little bit not what I thought. I don’t really like it.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
But… then get on with the next part of life.
Tiina:
Yeah. I think that… that letting go took me, particularly a really, really long time. I… I loved my first one. I obviously still, the obsession I had, have with my children, I don’t think even that outweighed the fact that I was slowly disappearing and I was nowhere on the food chain anymore. I was very much the last one.
Carly:
I think that’s your… it’s part of matrescence though. You hear this from a lot of people. It’s like you get completely stripped away, lose all your sense of self.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
But then you find yourself again, you rebuild, but it’s a new version of you.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
And it’s all letting… letting the things go that are never going to come back, but that’s okay.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
‘Cause what’s coming forward is also going to be a beautiful thing. And I don’t know about you, but once you get through that really awkward and messy stage of your matrescence…
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
You really come into your own again, don’t you?
Tiina:
It is, yeah. You… you find that calmness and… and strength in some sense. There was something really nice I read a while ago somewhere that giving birth is only part of the process. It’s in the… it’s the year after the birth where you give birth to the mum; give birth to the mother inside you. Because that I’m pretty sure was a whole lot more painful than… than Tommy ever was.
Carly:
Yes. It’s… well, you think about adolescence and all the growing pains and the angst and the awkwardness of adolescence. It’s the same thing again. It’s an enormous change…
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
…in your body and your functions and your systems and your… all your social structures.
Tiina:
Yeah.
Carly:
It’s awkward and messy. [30:00] But wow, when you come out the other side it really is quite a beautiful thing. So, for anyone in the thick of it right now, it will get easier. It’s not always going to feel this messy.
Tiina:
It does. It really does.
Carly:
Now, I’m just looking at our time. We’ve already filling up our 30 minutes, but I wouldn’t want to finish without asking you, do you have a tip you’d like to share with our listeners today?
Tiina:
Go with the flow. The usual thing that everyone says, but it works. Because they will not fit into your plan more likely than not.
Carly:
And there’s only disappointment to be had if you really insist on it, is there?
Tiina:
There is.
Carly:
I love that.
Tiina:
It’s all about the expectation. Set those really, really low and you’ll be golden.
Carly:
That’s exactly how I ended up feeling as well. It’s like if I don’t hold the high expectations I can’t be disappointed.
Tiina:
Mm hm.
Carly:
It makes the world of difference. Thank you so much for coming on today, Tiina. And thank you for being so honest with our listeners, because this is why we wanted to have these stories on the podcast, so people don’t feel alone. They can see how the process has been for other people and they can see, feel the sense of hope…
Tiina:
There is.
Carly:
…that there is going to be light at the end of the tunnel, especially when you’re really in the thick of it.
Tiina:
Absolutely.
Carly:
So thank you so much Tiina. That was fantastic.
Tiina:
Thank you for having me.
Carly:
It was beautiful. Thanks for everybody listening along, and if you haven’t already been able to review the show for us, if you don’t mind dropping into your favourite listening platform and give us a five star review. This is actually how podcast distribution works. The more five star reviews and comments and things we get, the further they spread the show onto other people’s platforms as well. So, we’d really appreciate your time today if you could do that for us. Thank you so much.
Tiina:
Thank you.
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.
“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:
information only and do not constitute professional advice from us or our Guests;
personal to us and our Guests and do not necessarily reflect any other agency, organisation, employer or company and may not be verified for accuracy; and
general in nature and do not refer to any unique situation. If you take action on the basis of any Podcast episode, you should obtain professional advice – whether legal, financial, accounting, medical or otherwise – before proceeding.
This Podcast is available for private, non-commercial use only. Advertising which is incorporated into, placed in association with or targeted toward the content of this Podcast without our express approval is forbidden. You may not edit, modify, or redistribute this Podcast.
We assume no liability for any activities in connection with this Podcast or for use of this Podcast in connection with any other website, third party streaming service, computer or playing device.
