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Eva Klein is a proud wife and mother of two girls and a boy (who are all great sleepers) and lives with her family in Toronto. She is a Certified Infant and Child Sleep Consultant and is the founder of My Sleeping Baby. Eva provides individual sleep consultations, facilitates group seminars and runs an online sleep program and community called the Sleep Bible. Eva’s main goal is to help her clients establish healthy sleep habits for their children.

In this episode:

• Good sleep is a game changer. Quality sleep for us and our little ones, allows us all to be the best versions of ourselves.
• Success strategies for quality sleep for babies and young children including an optimized sleep environment, a sleep schedule/routine, and teaching your little one to fall asleep independently.
• Be protective of who is in your inner circle. Surround yourself with people who you bring up and who bring you up too.

Connect with Eva:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mysleepingbaby/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MySleepingBaby
• Website: https://mysleepingbaby.com
  • Get Eva’s FREE Sleep Guide that you can download
  • It will take you through Eva’s top 7 sleep tips that you can begin implementing IMMEDIATELY to get your baby, toddler or preschooler sleeping!

On this episode of The Part-Time Jungle Podcast, I had a great conversation with Eva! We talked about how awesome sleep is for both parents and kids, success strategies for quality sleep for babies and young children, and being protective of who is in your inner circle or village. And… a whole lot more! After experiencing the debilitating effects of chronic sleep deprivation from her middle child, Eva was inspired to help families overcome their sleep challenges. Eva truly empathizes with her clients’ sleep troubles and personally invests herself in their sleep journey.  She has helped over 2,000 families to date get themselves a champion sleeper for life. It was wonderful to connect with Eva!

SLEEP IS AWESOME

Good sleep is a game changer. Eva says that when you have the ability to wake up after having a proper night’s sleep, it means that you can wake up as the best version of yourself. When you are starting your day after having a broken night’s sleep, you are waking up feeling like you have been hit by a truck! This doesn’t fly on a good day and especially not in the thick of a global pandemic. It is physically and emotionally impossible to get through the day, day in and day out, on horrible quality sleep without something having to give in the process. That something will likely be your mental and emotional health.

We all owe it to ourselves to prioritize our sleep and our little one’s sleep so that we can all be the best versions of ourselves. This will be crucial in helping us navigate this new normal. We all have a lot on our plates right now!! There is so much outside stress. The extra stress from sleep deprivation makes things almost impossible.

Eva reminds us that good sleep is a game changer for us AND our little ones! All humans, regardless of age, are designed to need good quality sleep in order to thrive. Everybody wins!

SUCCESS STEPS FOR A GOOD SLEEP

• A SLEEP ENVIRONMENT optimized for good quality sleep:

1. • A DARK ROOM: Don’t worry about babies getting their days and nights mixed up. Get some heavy duty black out blinds in their room so that there isn’t sunlight streaming into their room during the daytime impacting their naps.
   • WHITE NOISE: White noise drowns out background noise and creates a calm and soothing sleep environment. For infants, it is easy for them to be woken up from background noise. For toddlers and preschoolers, oftentimes their imaginations start to run wild. They get scared when they hear noises such as creaky floors or gusts of wind. White noise blocks out these noises. With COVID, everyone is home. If you have a baby/toddler and older children, who would normally be at school, running around the house making noise, a white noise machine can be an especially valuable tool for daytime naps.
   • DECOR: Avoid bright colours or things that are distracting or stimulating. Calm and pale tones will make it much easier for little ones to wind down.

• An Age Appropriate SLEEP SCHEDULE OR ROUTINE:
• • PRIORITIZE NAPS/DAYTIME SCHEDULE: This is the type of schedule that your little one needs for his/her age. One of the biggest sleep stealers out there is overtiredness. This means that your little one isn’t getting enough sleep over a 24 hour period. When Eva is working with families or moms in an online coaching program, whenever they ask a question, they also post a 12 or 24 hour sleep log. They note when their baby is waking and napping. If your little one is up for periods of time that are too long, then they will be overtired. This can lead to night wakings. What goes on during the day, directly impacts what is happening at night. A schedule is crucial for any sleep plan.
  • AWAKE WINDOW/AWAKE PERIOD: This is the amount of time a baby can be up for before she needs to go back to sleep. There are ranges. Every baby is going to be a little bit different. Your goal is to find out where your baby fits within that range. What is their sweet spot? For example, a typical 6 month old baby needs to sleep every 2-2.5 hours.

• Teach your little one how to FALL ASLEEP AND STAY ASLEEP INDEPENDENTLY:
• • INDEPENDENT SLEEP SKILLS: This is huge! Assistance to fall asleep includes being fed to sleep, held to sleep, rocked to sleep, or needing to lie in your bed with you. If you aren’t able to just put your baby in his/her crib wide awake and leave, there is a high likelihood that your little one will wake up at night. This is not because they are hungry, hot, cold, lonely, or scared. Your little one is waking up because he needs you to recreate the conditions to be able to help him fall back to sleep. Sleep science dictates that how we fall asleep initially sets the tone for the rest of the night. When your little one has independent sleep skills, you will avoid these night wakings.

EVERY TIRED MOM NEEDS TO KNOW THAT…

You don’t have to be tired!! There is no need to be exhausted while you are raising your babies and young kids. Yes, there might be that one friend with a “unicorn baby” that magically sleeps! All three of Eva’s kids have needed the establishment of proper sleep habits and hygiene to sleep well at night. But… now they do! The idea and reality of a well rested mom is a new and attainable reality! Being an overtired mom is a thing of the past! Eva can definitely help and support you with this. She knows that she can enjoy being a mom so much more when she is well rested than when she is exhausted and crabby! All of us need sleep and none of us are meant to function without it.

PARTNERSHIP

Eva’s husband is key in making her motherhood and work juggle successful. She and her husband play equal roles when it comes to their kids, housework, cooking, grocery shopping, errands, and day to day life. There are certain errands that Eva’s husband does and certain chores that Eva does but for it to work, it is a 50/50 partnership. They are both working full-time with Eva’s husband in a corporate role. The whole notion that you are the wife and you are the mom so you also have to be the designated cook, grocery shopper, bather of the kids etc… just wouldn’t work. Eva would collapse. Having her husband’s help and support, makes what she does doable.

YOUR INNER CIRCLE

For Eva, an important thing that she has learned through her motherhood journey, is that it’s very important to be particular with who you allow in your inner circles. You want to surround yourself with people who are going to bring you up. You want to be with people that you can bring up as well. It is a two way street. When you are around people and the nature of the conversations bring you down, makes you feel guilty, bad, or self conscious about what you are doing and the decisions that you are making as a parent, you just don’t feel great afterwards. Motherhood is hard enough as it is. You don’t need outside pressure from “friends” who really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

RE-EVALUATING

If you are constantly not feeling positive when you are around your so-called friends, it might be a matter of re-evaluating who you are allowing in your inner circles. Make sure that you are protective over your mental health and emotional energy. We love our kids dearly and they bring us up. At the same time, though, a lot of motherhood is draining! We need to make sure that when we are around our friends/peers, that we are around people that will help refuel us and that will allow us to refuel them as well.

WE AREN’T IN HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE

If you are finding a friend of yours from the past is no longer fitting that criteria, you want to be protective of your emotional energy. You don’t want to be draining this energy on someone that might not matter in the grand scheme of things. Maybe they need to be in an outer circle moving forward. Be protective of who is in that little village of yours. We aren’t in high school anymore. We don’t need to be stuck being around the same people day in and day out even if we might not really like them. Remember that we are well past that stage in life.

KEEPING TRACK OF “ALL THE THINGS” IS TOUGH!

Eva has been the mom with multiple calls from the school office because she forgot that it was a half-day or early dismissal and she hasn’t picked up her child. When she remembers that it is early dismissal and she actually picks up her child on time, she is really proud of herself! Some moms are naturally good at reading all the emails and have everything plugged into their calendars. Eva feels that she has a lot to learn from these moms. A number of moms have put together WhatsApp groups for each class at Eva’s children’s school. These moms are on top of things and share information with everyone. Eva appreciates this and finds it so helpful! It takes a village, right?

I love that Eva keeps it real. She shares that her Instagram feed might be pretty, but behind the scenes there are certain aspects where she is kinda just flying by the seat of her pants! And… truly, aren’t we all?

YOUR LITTLE ONE CAN FIGURE THIS SLEEP THING OUT

Motherhood is so much more awesome when you are not sleep deprived! It really can be so much more emotionally and physically exhausting when you aren’t getting a proper night’s sleep. Don’t underestimate what your little one can do. It doesn’t matter if your baby is strong willed, never slept a full night in his entire life and he is 18 months old. This doesn’t mean he can’t learn. It is better late than never. The best time to get your little one to sleep was last week. The second best time is today! He or she can absolutely figure this sleep thing out!

Thanks so much to Eva for this wonderful conversation and thank YOU for tuning in!

~Tiana