How to deal with a baby sleep regression, gently
I was doing an amazing job following my motherly instincts around my baby’s sleep until he started to wake up every 40 to 60 minutes. I was about to drop thousands of dollars on “sleep school” when a chance encounter brought me back to my senses and my own gut. Here’s one way to deal with a sleep regression gently.
Resting with my two week-old and Charlie the dog
Breastfeeding, bed-sharing, belly-sleeping rule-breaker
We’ve broken all of the rules since day one. He didn’t like sleeping on his back so we let him sleep on his belly (whilst I watched him like a hawk) and I was so naïve about the issue of co-sleeping that I told our pediatrician that we were bed-sharing, only to be told that I was doing something “dangerous”. I didn’t engage in either of these practices to make a point or even because I’d done any research; I was simply following my gut and what my newborn seemed to want.
For the first eight months he woke up every two hours or so and I would roll over, breastfeed and that was that. It worked because I had a totally flexible daytime schedule and we were both able to go back to sleep as soon as the feedings were done (he didn’t even really seem to need burping). Then he started to refuse daytime naps and wake up every 40 to 60 minutes at night. The first couple of days were almost humorous, but by day four or five I was losing my mind. Despite being a birth doula, I hadn’t even heard of the nine month sleep regression at this point.
Trusting my instincts or the experts?
My life for the last ten years has been about sinking into my own wisdom, trusting my body, my instincts and the Universe. It has been about turning away from the need to consult so-called “experts” and to allow my own inner wisdom and the experience of ordinary people around me to be my guides. It’s what drove my birth doula practice and it’s the entire premise of how I use tarot. Sink into what you already know has been my mantra.
They say that when you’re under stress you turn to the opposite strategy you would employ whilst fully-resourced, and that’s exactly what I did. Sleep deprived and desperate, I began to google experts and look to professionals to solve my dilemma. I must have googled every possible derivation of “gentle sleep training”. It seemed perfectly natural at the time and yet, with hindsight, I now remember the sinking feeling in my body as I typed and searched; a feeling that was less about my child’s wakefulness and more about the fact that I had immediately dumped my own sovereignty and handed my power over to people I saw as smarter than me.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that I shouldn’t have reached out for help. Drawing on community wisdom feels crucial. I’m also not denying the power of certain programs to help us with our babies. I even found some that brought in the power of networking with other mums and that claim they are helping parents to connect to their own instincts. I love that those programs now exist; they are clearly a godsend in a world where so many new parents feel isolated, confused and in need of a paid professional to hold space for them. If that feels like your path as a parent, I love that for you. What I’m marveling at is my instinct to bypass the way I generally operate and go straight to paying money that I don’t have for a service that I wasn’t sure I even wanted.
I’m also questioning the idea that there is any answer to my kids sleeping habits other than for me to find some support. A few months back I remember speaking with a fellow doula who said that her main question when dealing with the problems of her mom-clients was: “Are you okay with this situation or do you need more support?” That sort of approach looks something like this:
Your kid is teething. That’s what kids do. But do YOU need more support to feel okay with it?
Your kid isn’t sleeping as much as the book says it should. That’s what kids do. But are YOU sleep deprived and looking for ways to help with that?
Notice that when I could cope with what was happening it didn’t occur to me to change it. Other people were horrified that my nine month -old was still waking up every two hours to breastfeed but I was sleeping enough, so I wasn’t worried. But throw in a little more sleep deprivation and a bit less help during the day and I turned to research to help me understand “my kids problem”.
What’s the difference between turning to the parental network and to the experts? For me, it’s a feeling. The first is a feeling of “We’re in it together and I know you’ve also been through this”. In that situation, I’m looking for experience, strength and hope. The second is more of a feeling of “Please save me” and I’m looking for someone to give me THE ANSWER. NOW. AND I WILL PAY YOU MONEY TO SOLVE IT AND MAKE IT GO AWAY.
Sleep programs for babies. is there an alternative?
After hours of surfing the web all I had was a million different opinions and multiple ways I could spend my money. I was confused, lonely and looking at going into debt to solve my problem.
Then I ran into Erica in my local coffee shop.
Erica is an angel. A mother of three and a nurse at a local hospital where I often support my birth doula clients, she and I have attended many a birth together. She is warm, efficient and helps the moms to feel empowered both during and after birth. Her wise words on my sleep deprivation were simply: “Oh, the nine-month sleep regression. That’s the worst. Ride it out honey. It won’t last more than a few weeks.” I nearly wept when she said it.
Trust your gut: tarot spread for parenting guidance
Her words made me rush home and - instead of getting on Google again - pull some tarot cards on how to cope with a baby sleep regression gently. Here’s what the Universe had to say:
THE MOON - This is about surfing the unknown aspect of the feminine. Sleep, just like the Moon, comes in cycles. Think about your own sleep. Is it always the same, or does it shift with your mood, your stress-levels and what is going on in your life? Just as the moon affects the tides, so it affects sleep. You can try to tame those waves but it might be a lot easier if you learn how to surf them instead.
THREE OF SWORDS - The reason you’re struggling to surf those waves - aside from your total exhaustion - is because this touches into a huge wound. This societal wound involves a lot of talk and a total lack of genuine support for mothers and babies as well as pressure to not give young children what they need and instead shape them to conform to the needs of adults who work. On that note, it also involves expecting moms to continue to be productive during the day, even in these tender early months, as well as shaming them for turning to the power of love instead of the power of force. It’s a wound that each parent is struggling with individually but that needs collective recognition so that we don’t all think that we need to control, fix or manipulate ourselves and our kids.
KING OF WANDS / FIVE OF WANDS - The Five speaks to the way in which this is triggering you personally. It’s touching into past experiences that need to come up to be healed and are going to hurt as they do. So when you’re awake at 3am, filled with fear, anger, desperation and hopelessness, let the feelings come up and really feel them. Don’t push them down, don’t tell yourself that a good parent wouldn’t have them, don’t rush to “fix” the problem or blame your baby. JUST FREAKING FEEL YOUR FEELINGS. The King is here to remind you that once these feelings have been felt, you will have cleared out your energetic channel, allowing you to move, live and love your child from more of a place of authenticity. Your energy will be free to flow through you because it won’t be obstructed by so many of your own personal blocks. The point is, this isn’t about fixing your kid’s sleeping problem, it’s about allowing the frustration you feel to heal you and transform everything.
Tarot for Transformation
Again, I know that if I was currently working, this strategy for how to deal with a baby sleep regression gently might be considered a joke. I get it. I’m not prescribing this as a panacea and if it doesn’t work for you, my dearest wish is that you find something that does. My point here is less about what to do during a sleep regression and more about:
a) how we connect to our own wisdom and what is best for US, both as parents and as humans, and
b) how we can view all of our parenting “problems” not as things that are “wrong” with our children but as gifts, designed to heal us by forcing us to confront our personal and societal blocks
Like all things in life, parenting can be the thing that breaks me or the thing that makes me. In my experience, the difference between the two is whether or not I have tools + tribe. Tarot has been just one of the tools I use and - as this blog shows so well - when my tools aren’t enough, tribe swoops in to fill in the gaps. Without those two I’m a basket case and I’m about to blow my wad on a program that will definitely cost me a pretty penny and may or may not make a difference to my nights sleep.
The nine month sleep regression: a solution?
I found this bunch of articles from the Beyond Sleep Training Project super helpful when I was at my lowest point. They didn’t give me the answers per se but, like Erica, they redirected me to my gut and reminded me that what was happening was normal and not pathological. They also suggested that our obsession with “normal” sleep might itself be the problem. As Tracy Cassels from Evolutionary Parenting says, the “wait it out method”, whilst not much of a method, is still a thing you can do if you want a more gentle approach to sleep. And that’s basically what I did. At 2am, 3am, 4am and 5am I would feel the fatigue, rage and despair and then I would text a friend who would understand, so that I didn’t feel alone. I also used my tools from Internal Family Systems therapy like it was my job. Tools that give me support for my own emotional and mental well-being are more important now I’m a mumma than ever before.
The sleep regression lasted about three weeks and honestly, once I knew it wasn’t going to be forever, it got a lot easier. So much of my anxiety was due to my obsessing about how this was going to go on forever and how I was going to cope in some hypothetical future moment. If I stayed with the current moment I was tired - sometimes pretty exhausted - but surviving and not trampling all over my own sovereignty. Little one seemed, well, pretty damn happy with himself and the day after it ended he started crawling. A whole new thing for me to get neurotic about…