Sleep like a baby?

Have you been warned against making a rod for your own back by carrying your child? Has someone told you that slings and carriers are just a new trend or something used only by a certain 'type' of parent? What about the idea that they won't ever learn to walk if they are always carried? Zoe Woodman from The Sling Consultancy joins me for this week's episode to dispel these ideas and share her know...

Sam Meachin is a hypnobirthing coach with a difference and in this week's episode she shares her two very different birth stories that lead her to creating The Wonderhood's online courses. We talk about how birth can lead to feeling like we have lost control over ourselves and how this can then impact how we feel about sleep, feeding and other areas of parenthood. When we cling onto control, and t...

What kinds of sleep challenges do people with training in infant sleep face? The same ones as anyone else, of course! In the last year Lucy and I have navigated dummy drops, cot to bed transitions, separation anxiety, parental preference, dropping naps and bedtime battles. So we wanted to get together and talk about how we have personally figured these issues out as mums. Lucy Bagwell is a holisti...

Kerry Secker has one of the most successful holistic infant sleep companies in the UK and ever since this podcast started I have been itching to sit her down and find out more about why she went down the care-it-out route when all her peers were putting their kids on naughty steps and leaving babies to settle themselves. We talk about what crying means and why it's not necessarily a bad thing - bu...

It might be common for a baby to spit up, but if you're the parent of a little one who is super unsettled with reflux or colic, being told it will pass isn't good enough. I spoke to holistic reflux specialist Faye of Rockabye Reflux all about the emotional cost of reflux and what we need to understand about digestive discomfort in babies. Reflux is common, but not normal - and help is out there! I...

Becoming a parent for the first time brings up a lot emotions and memories for us all... and yet this doesn't get talked about a lot. In this episode I speak to Stephanie Beucher who is a lactation consultant, midwife, maternity nurse and currently studying for her Masters in Psychology. Her company Holistic Babies London supports and empowers families to find what works for them. We cover permiss...

Neuroscientist, infant sleep specialist and mother of two Rocio talks to me all about the enormous changes in our brains that take place when we become parents. We learn a lot about how our babies' brains develop but know very little about our own enormous neurological shifts. Rocio is on a mission to correct that! As she says: "when a baby is born, there is also a rebirth of the new parents throu...

Is she a good baby? Is he sleeping through the night yet? These questions can unintentionally fill a new parent with dread and anxiety. My guest today, Suzanna aka @RealKindParent, and I talk about all things motherhood: the quest for control over sleep, the illusion of the perfect baby, the freedom of surrendering and accepting you are where you are. If you had a baby you couldn't put down for na...

Feeding and sleep are completely intertwined for babies and toddlers. And regardless of how you get milk to your baby, whether that's boob, bottle or a bit of both, tongue ties can and do impact little ones. Carmelle is an independent midwife and IBCLC infant feeding specialist as well as a tongue tie now expert on a mission to raise awareness of how tongue ties impact babies. For more information...

Lyndsey Hookway is one of the UK's leading infant sleep experts and is a passionate advocate for gentle and responsive parenting. Lyndsey's third book, Still Awake: responsive sleep tools for toddlers to tweens is out this month so I decided to pick her brains all about bedtime boundaries, wants versus needs and how to tackle early rising with verbal little ones. For more information about Lyndsey...

What exactly IS separation anxiety and how does it impact sleep and bedtime for little ones? I speak to clinical psychologist Dr MDC about what it means throughout infancy and childhood, how we can handle it and why separation is actually a good thing for parent and child. If bedtime has become a battle, or you are anxious about how childcare may impact your family, this episode covers some strate...

Emily was kind enough to share her story of pre and postnatal mental health struggles and how this led her to become a holistic sleep coach and help families who have been through tough times. A word of warning though, some of the subjects are a little heavy and may be triggering for some people, so best to avoid if the following things are difficult to hear about right now: PTSD, suicide, sick ch...

This week I'm speaking to midwife and lactation consultant Olivia Hinge (aka @olivia_lactaction_consultatant on IG) about the adjustment we all go through into motherhood, whether that's with your first baby or your fourth. We discuss the process of matrescence and how unrecognised it is in society, even though it is as significant a change for a woman as adolescence! However you feed your baby, t...

"Just put your baby down drowsy but awake" "Never feed to sleep" "Infants don't develop properly unless they get 12hrs of unbroken sleep every night" Are you overwhelmed by the number of people telling you that you're creating a rod for your own back by responding to your baby or by supporting them to fall asleep? Why do well-meaning family members still insist we are spoiling babies by cuddling t...

When did it become mainstream for parents to go down the Cry It Out route? Why do all the parenting 'experts' insist on telling mothers and fathers to ignore their instincts and focus on self-settling instead? And why do so many of us feel like failures if our babies don't yet sleep through the night? To find out how we got here, I spoke to anthropologist Alice-Amber Keegan from the The Durham Inf...

The Sleep Like a Baby? podcast is coming soon. This preview episode lays out what the series will be all about. Find out more on Instagram @LittleNestSleep or via www.littlenest.uk