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Summary: Guest: Suzy Giordano, author of Twelve Hours’ Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old discusses:
- Suzy tells about her experience of being sleep deprived as a mother of 5 young children and how she used that to develop her method and business.
- How Suzy’s team goes into peoples homes to train babies to sleep through the night.
- The daytime benefits of the baby sleeping better for parent and child.
- Why quiet times are good for the child’s development.
- The myths and stereotypes of sleep training.
- How the baby and family should adapt to each other.
- The four stages of better baby sleep: Daytime feeding, napping, bedtime routines and nighttime sleep.
- How to teach a baby to go back to sleep after they have woken up.
- What Suzy would put in a 30 second YouTube video.
- Her recommendation for something you can do today, so the baby sleeps better tonight so you can both feel and function better tomorrow.
Note: We encourage you to listen to the podcast with a portable device (via a podcast app is best) rather than sitting in front of the computer.
Links mentioned in the show:
Suzy Giordano’s website: https://thebabycoach.com/
Book: Twelve Hours’ Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old: A Step-by-Step Plan for Baby Sleep Success https://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Hours-Sleep-Weeks-Step/dp/0525949593/
Facebook: Suzy Giordano the Babycoach, https://www.facebook.com/thebabycoach/
Instagram: thebabycoachofficial https://www.instagram.com/thebabycoachofficial/
Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode:
(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes. For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)
Introduction (the host, from the audio):
When you get married, start a business or become a parent, despite your planning and analyzing, the fact is, you don’t have a clue of what you’re getting yourself into. Out of these life-changing endeavors, the one that likely has the most impact on sleep is having a baby.
I’m writing this introduction in Toronto where I am visiting my daughter who is our first born. It’s been almost 40 year since bringing her home from the hospital, and I still vividly remember the experience.
She was quickly followed with siblings, and I trace my first experience of chronic insomnia back to the days when multiple young children meant multiple nighttime awakenings which created a habit of waking during the night. That habit carries through to this day.
Besides the motive of care givers sleeping better, much of a young child’s development is occurring during sleep. If you are guardians or guardians to be of young children, I would like you to avoid developing insomnia while at the same time helping with your child’s healthy development and improving the quality of time you spend together. That is a win-win-win combination.
That is why today we are going to have a helpful talk with Suzy Giordano, author of “12 hours sleep by 12 weeks old, a step by step plan for baby sleep success.”
If you are caring for young children, know anybody else who does, or you or somebody you know are hoping to have your own family someday, you should definitely listen to today’s show.
Suzy Giordano is known as the Babycoach and is author of “12 Hours Sleep by 12 Weeks Old” and “The Baby Sleep Solution”. She is a child sleep consultant based in Washington D.C and New York. Suzy, welcome to our show.
Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode:
(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes. For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)
2:40 – Suzy Giordano tells about her experience in Brazil when she had five children including twins and became very sleep-deprived. She transformed her difficult situation into an opportunity.
8:50 – How Suzy goes into people’s homes to perform sleep training for their babies. Suzy and her team are often people’s last hope. They often think their baby can’t do it, that there’s something wrong with their child. She has been working with children for over 29 years working with autism, cleft palate, Down syndrome, heart problems, digestive problems. The babies have all the reasons not to be able to sleep but they do. So she finds that every child can do it. They started their business it was more like overnight care. Now they are more focused on sleep training for older kids where the bad habits have been in place. Because sleep is primary, even older children can be taught how to sleep properly. Children at any age can be redirected to finding their ability to sleep. They usually stay for five nights. Their goal is to eliminate anything that is getting in the way of their baby sleeping the optimum time. They equip the parents by answering questions and letting them know the benefits of sleep, and how, because it’s a basic need, how easy it is to get them to sleep as is age appropriate. We bring them through the worst of the storm. They get the whole family back into a better rhythm.
13:40 – The daytime benefits of better sleep such as improved child behavior and the parents decision-making ability. Sleep is a primary need and we are just beginning to scratch the surface have the importance of sleep. All the restoration, growth, filing of information etc. is occurring during sleep. If we s lose sleep then something is compromised. She wants to educate people on the importance of sleep. A rested parent is a better parent, is more engaged more willing to play, able to perform better as a parent. A rested baby is a better baby, an easier baby to manage. Sleep affects you emotionally, physically, and intellectually. There is pressure from society that we have to be with the baby, have to sleep with your baby, have to function 24 hours to be a good parent. That is a myth that she educates against. She wants parents to see sleep in their child intellectually rather than emotionally. And Society will be healthier and happier with babies who sleep well.
18:50 – Why quiet time is good for a child even if they’re not sleeping. Your baby is a gift you don’t get to keep. Your job is to give the child the best tools emotionally physically and intellectually for them to live a good life. So you are actually raising adults. Everyday you have an opportunity to teach a little lesson. You have to give them the opportunity of how to entertain themselves, how to be self-sufficient, how they don’t need to be engaged and entertained by somebody else all the time. If you are entertaining and keeping the baby entertained and engaged all the time, then that is the lesson they learned, that they need somebody else to do that for them. They can’t do it on themselves by themselves. You want to teach them that sometimes you play with other people and sometimes you entertain yourself. They can learn that they are enough. When you engage your child, you are deciding for them what they are going to be engaged in. When they are by themselves, they get to choose for themselves what interests them the most. Their imagination will kick in. Parenting is working between the extremes of being attentive to your child all the time, and ignoring them. Then they develop their own abilities to be able to explore, to use their imagination, to be creative, Etc. To become who they are meant to be. You don’t want the parents to become too important. But the parent should be at in a supportive role. You allow them the room to grow and figure things out for themselves.
24:40 – The myths and negative stereotypes about sleep training. One myth is that sleep training is the equivalent of letting your baby cry it out. This doesn’t go well with caregivers as they just want the baby to be happy. Crying is a baby’s only way of communicating from the get-go. It goes against mother’s extinct to listen to their crying baby. She tells parents that we have to make peace with crying and challenges. Because that is growth. Just as physically we have to challenge your body to get stronger and better. They have to cry just enough so they can try. She has a three minute rule where she lets them cry for 3 minutes, if at the three minutes they are so upset that they are sidetracked and not learning anything, then go in and help them get from a very emotional place to a place where they can try again. Because that is life. You have to try and try and try again in order to figure it out. That is the beauty of sleep, if you give them the chance to learn, they will learn how to go to sleep by themselves. Because sleep is a primary need,. She wants parents to learn that sleep training isn’t to cry it out, it is to try it out. Giving them room to grow and develop their own abilities. So like exercise, it’s not easy, but you feel much better afterwards. Parents are pulled in all different and opposite directions with overload of information and misinformation and different people’s opinions. Because it is their child, parents and caregivers are the hardest on themselves. She tells them to welcome every suggestion, but as a suggestion, then decide what is it that works for you with the information you have. Getting sleep under control will benefit the whole family. Parenting is one of the most difficult things anybody will do, and you’ll get lots of things right and lots of things wrong. It is a learning experience for both the baby and the caregivers. Having a good sleeper will not happen overnight, it is a conscious decision that you make and that you have to do every night. The results are very empowering. Good sleeping habits need to be practiced every day throughout your whole life.
31:50 – How should the baby and the family adapt to each other? Unfortunately, it specially in the US, the baby becomes the center of attention. In reality the baby is the most malleable, and she thinks every member of the family should count equally. Parents are in charge because they are most experienced and have access to information to make the best call. It doesn’t mean they have all the answers, all you can do is to have is a good intention and make the best decision you can. You just have to decide what is best for your family, not what is best for anybody else’s family. Just as the couple has to adapt to the different backgrounds and families they came from, the baby needs to adapt to the existing family. So you going to continue to compromise the same as you did before. You always get another chance to do it right tomorrow.
38:00 – There are four stages covered in the book, daytime feeding, nap times, preparing for sleep, and sleeping at night. The most important thing when the baby first comes home is that the baby gains weight so it can survive and thrive in the new environment. The goal at the beginning is to get the baby to feed and then they give them time to process the food. That is why you have intervals between feeding. As they gain weight they will eat more at a feeding and have longer times between feedings naturally. You want to avoid snacking where they eat small amounts of food throughout the day. Because that is unsustainable. The priority is to give the baby the nutrition that they need, but as you’re able to, to make a distinction between wake time and sleep time. In the daytime you want to wake them when it’s time to eat, but not at night, because that will create the optimum pattern for your baby.
42:10 – The next is the nap time. You want to put the understanding of the difference between daytime or awake time and sleep time. In the awake time the parent is in charge and creating structure.
43:00 – The night time is when you want to put rituals in place to prepare the baby for sleep. It is to create cues and predictability for the baby. So you want to transition from an active environment to one that is calm and spa like. The rituals will change depending on the child and their age.
45:10 – How do you get a baby to sleep through the night? All Humans naturally sleep at night, but we have to learn how to do it for ourselves, nobody can do it for us. Nobody can find the happy place that allows us to drift off to sleep. We have to learn that ourselves and be given the opportunity to learn that. The more we try to do it for the baby, the more we interfere with the baby learning that important life lesson. You need to keep your eye on the goal which is that the more you interfere with the baby, the more you stop them from learning important life skills.
48:30 – How do you teach a baby to go back to sleep when they have woken up? She has the three-minute rule, and the 15-minute rule. The three-minute rule is about teaching them how to sleep. This is the minimum amount possible for the average mother to hear their baby cry. It is a long 3 minutes. You put the baby in the crib and then you walk away. You walking away is you giving your baby the opportunity to try. The baby will cry. Crying is their means of communication so you want to monitor for the emotional cry, the type of crying that makes you feel uncomfortable. She calls that red-lining, and you stay in that place for 3 minutes which will seem like a long time. If after three minutes the baby does not manage the calm down, then you step in. The baby can get too upset to learn anything, and that’s what you don’t want to allow to go on and on. Your job is to bring the baby from the very emotional place where they’re not learning to of state of being more calm. And able to try again. You can pick them up and pat them. Your job in going in is twofold. One is to bring a baby from a place where they’re not learning anything to where they can learn. You want to reset the baby. Make sure there’s nothing seriously wrong such as a poopy diaper. The second is to calm the baby. Once the baby is calm, then you walk away again. Then you repeat repeat repeat until the next scheduled feeding. The resistance occurs when the child has bad habits in place and they are resisting changing the bad habits to good ones. The baby thinks things should be done differently. The sooner you put good habits into place, the better. The longer you wait, the more bad habits you have to overcome which makes it a lot more difficult.
55:00 – Suzy answer what she would put in a YouTube video. She would put in the actual facts of the benefits of sleep, and that sleep training is giving the baby the opportunity to learn something that they are equipped to learn.
57:20 – What you could do today to help your baby sleep better tonight so you can both feel and function better tomorrow. Think of bedtime like setting an environment like a spa, with cool, and dark, fed, soothing. When the baby is calm, put them to bed and walk away. Have a plan that you can follow through on. You will experience an improvement which will empower you to go to the next level. Take baby steps that challenge yourself a little and your baby a little and the results will wow you.
58:40 – Suzy reviews the resources that they have available, their website, their Facebook page, and Instagram.
Episode Summary:
Let’s summarize some of the key points Suzy made today.
The first is: The myths of sleep training. Your resistance to sleep training will depend a lot on your parenting style. If you take a more hands-off approach when parenting and are uncomfortable with forcing expectations onto your child, then you might struggle with implementation. It can seem unnatural to struggle against the child’s resistance to training. But if you can overcome this tendency of yours, then sleep training can benefit everyone.
The second is that sleep training is a round-the-clock event. In includes daytime feeding and naps and bedtime rituals as well as middle of the night-time responses. It is not just what you do after you put the child to sleep.
The third is the 3 minute rule. One of the most distressing aspects of sleep training is when the baby is alone, in the dark, and crying. Nobody likes that. Maybe you settle on 2 minutes or 4 minutes, but regardless, setting up pre-determined and age appropriate boundaries can reduce much of the stress.
And the fourth, which is both hopeful and important, is that sleep training isn’t just for babies. Even if your child is older, they can still learn to sleep through the night. You must expect more resistance and be more persistent and adapt the techniques to the age of the child, but it is doable.
As always, you can find detailed interview notes with Suzy Giordano along with all the links at sleeptohealthy.com.
This concludes our episode for today.
Another episode related to todays topic is:
– Episode 9 with Michael Schwartz titled Sleep on Demand where he talks about sleep training for adults. Listening to it might make sleep training for babies seem a little more reasonable.
Thank you for keeping me company today. I look forward to you joining me on the next episode of The Sleep to Healthy Podcast.
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