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Mastering Sleep for New Parents: Sleep Protection Plans · Talking FACS

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  Welcome to Talking FACS, what you need to know about family,
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  food, finance, and fitness.
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  This nationally recognized, award-winning podcast is hosted by the University
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  of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Program.
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  and communities to improve quality of life.
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  Hello, and welcome to Talking FACS. I'm your host, Dr.
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  Courtney Luecking, Extension Specialist for Maternal and Child Nutrition.
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  And I am thrilled to have my guest with us today, Dr. Rachele Yadon.
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  She is an Assistant Professor and Psychiatry Residency Training Program Director
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  at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.
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  Welcome, Dr. Yadon. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
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  When we last chatted, we talked about creating sleep habits for general well-being.
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  Today, we are going to discuss sleep protection plans, which are particularly
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  helpful if you've just brought a little one home or maybe have someone under
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  the age of one in your home.
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  As someone who's not so long ago had children, you hear the sleep recommendations
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  and then you're living this reality where you're like, I can't, I can't sleep all night.
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  Like a little tiny human needs me. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell us about that? And first, can you explain what sleep protection means?
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  Yeah. So sleep protection is kind of the language that we're using to make sure
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  that parents have a protected chunk of sleep, even if it is only four or five hours.
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  But when a newborn comes home, they are needing to sometimes feed every two hours.
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  And the recommendations from pediatricians is for babies to have their own separate
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  sleep area and be fed consistently for the first six months.
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  That can be a very long time of long nights for parents.
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  So rest is important for the parent's well-being.
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  And it's really important for them to be able to keep taking care of their baby, their kids.
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  A lot of parents are working outside the home. So not getting rest at night
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  can really affect how they're functioning at work.
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  So a sleep protection plan can help parents keep their babies fed and safe and
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  cared for while they're still getting a stretch of uninterrupted sleep themselves.
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  Oh, my gosh. This sounds great. I wish I would have known this.
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  Tell us what a sleep protection plan might look like.
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  Okay. So, what this could look like, and this is more of a conversation starter
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  rather than a prescription because every family is different.
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  The home settings are different.
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  Work schedules are different. But the general organization of it is you choose
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  a night person and a morning person, and this can just be based on their preference.
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  Some couples have a night person or morning person, and it doesn't have to be a couple.
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  It can be a single parent who has a family member who can be around to help
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  them or a close friend that they trust.
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  So the partners, I'll refer to them as partners now.
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  So partners can sleep in separate rooms, and one is sharing the room with baby.
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  Baby has their separate sleep space, but they're in the room with baby.
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  And for the first four to five hours of the night, the night person makes their
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  best attempt to sleep in the room with the baby, but they're responsible for
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  listening for baby waking up, comforts the baby, changes the diaper,
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  feeds, burps, swaddles the baby, and kind of navigates whatever they need to navigate.
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  And the morning person is sleeping in a separate room.
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  And then for the second four to five hours, so it's like a second shift,
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  the partners switch rooms and the morning person takes on these responsibilities
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  while also having the goal of trying to sleep, but giving the night person time
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  to sleep without interruption.
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  Well, the first thing people ask me when I tell them about this is,
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  well, what about breastfeeding?
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  So for parents who are choosing to breastfeed, If the breastfeeding parent is
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  off, if they're supposed to be sleeping, the awake parent brings baby,
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  gets baby all ready for a feed, brings baby,
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  wakes the breastfeeding parent up enough for them to latch, and then just monitors
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  that they're all in a safe sleep position.
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  Okay. But that way, breastfeeding parent can doze off. They don't have to be
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  totally alert and awake.
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  And then baby gets taken back, burped, swaddled. So breastfeeding parent is still waking up.
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  They're not ever getting truly five hours of uninterrupted sleep.
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  But waking up a little to latch and then go back to sleep is very different
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  than hearing everything all night.
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  Because we know if you hear the baby, you're not really sleeping.
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  Even if your partner gets up to help, you hear everything. It is the postpartum brain.
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  And they're so loud. Who would have thought those little nuggets could be so loud?
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  Right? And I won't go into this now, but I could nerd out about this all day,
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  is there's all of this evidence. They've done MRIs of the brain postpartum,
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  and caretaking parents' brains change.
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  We are more vigilant, we are more anxious, we're more sensitive to the sounds, it changes our brain.
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  They've seen it with adoptive parents, like any caretaking parent,
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  the brain actually changes.
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  So and then honestly, if a parent is using formula or pumping,
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  they might be able to navigate things so that there's a bottle that's ready beforehand.
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  So there's a lot of different options, but But that's the big tip.
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  That's like the number one recommendation I make to all of my soon-to-be families
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  or just delivered families just to get them feeling like they can navigate this a little bit more.
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  I feel a little bit less overwhelmed those first few months.
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  And then it starts to get easier. I love that.
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  I think as a first-time parent, that didn't even cross my mind.
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  I was breastfeeding, so I felt like it was me on deck all the time.
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  And then I guess the second time around, not intentionally, but kind of I would
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  go to bed a lot earlier and my husband would stay up. And then I guess we were
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  kind of doing that, but it was out of lessons learned.
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  And so I love you can give people this insight kind of going into it,
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  whether it's the first or fifth time about maybe to try something a little bit differently.
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  Because what is it about that four to five hours?
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  Is that some kind of magical threshold or what is it?
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  Because that's obviously a lot shorter than what we hear about eight hours,
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  seven to eight hours of sleep a night. Yeah, it's true.
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  Okay, so I do think one of the biggest disservices that we do to people is tell
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  them, you need to eat, you need to sleep for eight hours because everyone needs
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  different amounts of sleep.
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  And sometimes we will start doing
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  some of those unhealthy things to force ourselves to sleep eight hours.
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  And some of us need nine or ten, and some of us need six. In that post-partum
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  period, it would be great to get more sleep.
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  But in my personal experience, getting four to five hours compared to waking
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  up every one and a half to two hours was the difference between feeling like
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  a zombie and feeling like a human.
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  So there is, I don't think, any science behind this. And I will,
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  to be totally transparent.
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  So I have two daughters, and the first time, I didn't know this,
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  and I was up all the time. and sometimes you're up, you can't really completely
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  go back to sleep before you have to get up again.
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  And then I learned about the sleep protection plan on TikTok.
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  No, you did not. Yeah, I learned about it on TikTok. I wrote it down.
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  I like kind of did more research around it and formalized it and like made a
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  handout and made a PowerPoint slide to teach other providers so that they can help their patients.
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  But it changed things for me the second time around it was so much more it was
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  still hard but it was not the same level of overwhelm like we felt like okay
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  we can do this even on the bad nights you know i'm only doing this for on the
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  teething nights or the bussy night okay i'm only doing this for four or five
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  hours and then my partner is going to come and i can go rest,
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  so yeah thanks thank you tiktok oh my gosh i love that and like a great example
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  of it because it is an evidence-based approach, right? It's not just something random.
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  There is some kind of backing to it.
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  And thinking specifically about this perinatal space, and I guess maybe let's
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  explain what perinatal is.
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  I don't know that that's a word that's maybe commonly used.
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  Yeah, so perinatal health is usually taking care of folks who are family planning,
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  working through fertility, pregnant, postpartum.
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  Sometimes it's taking care of people who've experienced pregnancy losses.
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  But it's kind of, or lactating.
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  So it's kind of anything around that reproductive stage of life.
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  Yeah. So a lot of change, a lot of things happening.
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  And so again, I always love to ask, at what point might people want to reach out for more support?
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  Again, if they're trying some of these tips or it's not working,
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  what is that time point and who can they reach out to? Yeah, I would say any time.
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  Don't hesitate. If you're even wondering, is this normal?
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  Is everybody sleeping like this? Is everybody as worried as I am?
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  Is everyone startling in the middle of the night trying to remember if they
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  put their baby down or not?
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  Go talk to your OB. Go talk to your midwife.
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  Go talk to your primary care doctor. A lot of those folks are really well equipped
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  to help support us kind of in those early stages.
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  But yeah, I would say try the tips and then if at any point you just start to feel like,
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  it's affecting several areas of your life or
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  even just one more than one area or you're not feeling like yourself or it's
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  just starting to feel overwhelming or hopeless go talk to somebody there's so
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  much help out there there's so many resources to help us sleep the support is
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  out there and there's like plenty of people out here that want to help awesome are there special,
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  resources or people that if someone is pregnant or if they're postpartum for
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  example are there special organizations or types of individuals that they should
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  reach out to for help? Yeah.
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  Yeah. So oftentimes, so OBs and midwives are sometimes the first line people,
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  especially for mental health and sleep.
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  There's all psychiatrists can be helpful. Therapists can be helpful.
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  If you are not sure who's in your area, there is a maternal mental health hotline
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  that I can get for you to put in the show notes if you want.
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  That number you can call. They give support they can plug you to people in your
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  area and then a nice online resource is postpartum.net it is the website for
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  postpartum support international they have great resources education helping
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  to find providers and then they also have free virtual support groups.
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  Because I know that parents all stages of loss and pregnancy so yeah that's
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  another great resource I like to point people to.
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  Oh my gosh, this has been so lovely to talk all things sleep.
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  And it's particularly in a space of life where sleep is so precious.
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  And like you're saying, it's happening in short bursts.
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  And so how to make the most of it. Are there any final thoughts you'd want to
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  share for those who are maybe in the early throes of parenthood as it relates to sleep?
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  I would say this to honestly, people who are in the early stages of parenthood,
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  but also for people who are not parents, are not planning to be parents and
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  are just struggling with their sleep is just be patient.
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  If you think about how long it took us when we were little to learn how to sleep,
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  it could take us a long time to relearn how to sleep.
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  Just be kind with yourself. You're going to have some bad nights. We all do.
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  But just taking it one night at a time, adding tips in one at a time,
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  kind of doing things slow and steady, and it will get better.
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  Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Yadon. We appreciate your experience and
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  expertise in all things sleep.
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  Yeah, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this. Thank you for joining us on Talking FACS.
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