My name is Seema from A Gentle Night’s Sleep. I’m a baby and toddler sleep consultant, a reflux specialist, and a therapist.

I offer different types of therapy. Some of you will know, if you’re in my community and world, you’ll know that I do Somatic Therapy and talking therapy as well, and the somatic therapy, I have just launched my social media pages. They’re available to see as well.

I’ve had quite a few people step forward and start opening up about their emotions. Mums, in particular, with young children who suffer from high anxiety levels and burnout, overwhelm, stress, and signs of depression as well. It’s a really important topic to support mums that are bringing up children. I always say that we mums are doing the hardest job in the entire world; I know it certainly pushed me to limits that I never knew existed.

I have a 10, 7 and 4 year old, all three girls, and I often talk about my own journey. I’ve shared about this before, where I’ve kind of felt like I’ve been wrapped in a bubble bringing the kids up, and then probably about six months ago, I felt that the bubble’s lifting and that I’m starting to come back to myself again, and starting to look around and think, oh, there’s a life outside of parenting.

Sometimes I don’t even realise that I was in a bubble until I started to step out of it. So I wanted to express how, for me, it’s almost changing like the seasons.

What triggered some intense emotions recently for me, is my 10-year-old. My daughter Debyani, is in year six, and we’ve had a couple of tours recently for senior schools. It’s really triggered me to the point that I’m kind of thinking, Oh my God, do other mums feel like this? Is this a normal feeling? And even when I think about it, I get butterflies in my tummy, and I think, oh, my goodness, she’s going to go to senior school. Even walking around the actual schools locally, being in the building, speaking to the teacher, seeing the dynamics between the children, the start times, the uniforms, things like that, I was just kind of looking, and I thought I just want to keep her wrapped up in primary school in pyjama day.

I’m m sure my middle daughter mentioned a while ago that this will be her last show and tell, and all of these milestones, like going through your last show and tell.

My four-year-old just finished nursery and is now in reception. My 10-year-olds going from primary school to senior school, and I just feel, I feel a bit emotional talking about it, but the changes that are occurring in their lives make me look back and think about when they were younger, and I was in the midst of the naps, the awake windows, getting the bedtime routine, going down to bed on time, if they’re going to wake up in the night, how to settle them overnight.
I often hear the parents when they approach me for sleep training asking me, is it going to be flexible? Can we go outdoors? And are we going to be stuck indoors? And can we go on holiday? And I often just say, oh my goodness, just go. The only requirement is for you to do a couple of naps at home in the first week, and that’s it, because you don’t want to be clock watching!

One day this will all be a thing of the past, all the awake windows, all those naps, all those things I have just mentioned and your kids are going to grow up so quickly. So go on holiday. Enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about sleep. My sleep training programs include information about how to manage days out, social activities, how to manage a flexible routine, how to manage travel so your life doesn’t need to be put on hold.

As the kids have got older, I just look and think that it’s all behind me.. You know, when they’re unwell, they wake up in the night, and you know, sometimes they don’t want to go to bed. And the eldest, she kind of has trouble sleeping, we’ve done really well to bring in her human design chart. Some of you might know that I’m a quantum Human Design Specialist as well.

So quantum human design is basically when you grab your date of birth, time of birth, and your place of birth, and you pull it all together to produce a chart around it’s a bit like in Hindu in Asian culture, there’s a birth chart, an astrological Birth Chart called a kundali.

You bring it all together, and it’s a bit similar to a kundali, the human design chart is like a client roadmap, and it tells you how things were when you were born, exactly the timing of when you were born. And I found, personally, for me and clients that I’ve worked with around giving them human design readings is so accurate. In human design, she’s a generator, and a generator struggles to sleep. Generators have to really wear themselves out with lots of physical activities right before they go to bed.

Now that she’s ten years old, she can choose when she goes to bed. Obviously, within reason, I don’t let her stay up till 11 or mid-midnight.
But just stepping back, letting go of control, and thinking that she can trust her own body, she can trust when she needs to get to bed, and that’s okay.

I find I’m in between. It’s a strange feeling. I’m in a transition. That’s what I’m trying to say. So obviously, I’ve got the younger kids still requiring me to coach them for stuff and, you know, giving them instructions and things like that.

The 10-year-old getting older is a really big step for our family, just like it is for other people. Looking at senior schools has made me realise that I can’t keep them wrapped up in cotton wool all their lives.
I know it sounds like a cliche, and you hear this from other families all the time: they’ll get big quickly. Don’t wish the time away. And it’s true. I never, ever thought I would say that because I know as a mum myself, having experienced sleep deprivation when my 10-year-old was born for two years of her life, and then deciding to sleep train the second and the third when they were both four months old, but still juggling, running a business, holding the house together, having three young children, all relatively close in age, and the burnout and the stress and the mental health, the anxiety, juggling, all of that.
It’s been challenging. But in the midst of it, I’ve thought, I can’t do this, or this is quite hard, I need to get some support, or how do I navigate X, Y and Z, and when you are in the midst of it, not thinking beyond that, and not thinking to yourself that one day this will all lift. I’ll feel much better, and things still feel chaotic.

And there are still certain hours in the day that I’m unavailable. I can’t attend to my business or my phone, or the time there is specifically for the kids that kind of centres around half past three until about half past five, and then again, picking up at around half seven, all the way through to the evening for bedtime.

I just think to myself that having that feeling around the unmanageable chaos, whereas now they are doing stuff by themselves. They are more independent. They know what they want. Their characters are developing. They’re listening to their bodies more. They’re trusting, and I’m trusting that what they’re saying to me is, no, I don’t feel cold. I don’t need a pair of socks, and, Mum, you don’t need to tell me when to put a jumper on. I don’t feel too cold!
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but it becomes so engrained that you’re constantly saying, do that, do this, do that, do this, you can’t have that, no, we can’t do that, no, put that down and, no, let’s go. I feel like I’ve lost my old identity before having children, and then I’ve got this new identity around bringing up young children, and it must be like a cycle of something. I don’t know, but ten years on, bearing in mind, I’ve still got the four- and seven-year-old having different needs from the 10-year-old.

My 10-year-old is showing me a different identity. She’s showing me to step down from my mummy role, to respond differently, communicate in a more mature way with her.

I just wanted to come on and share my experience of the different cycles of having back-to-back children, some of the things that I’ve experienced as a mum and how I’ve managed and the changes that I’m going through, and the changes that my kids are going through.
I hope that somebody out there has learned something from this. But I want to pass the message that whatever you’re going through, if it feels tough, if it feels like you can’t step beyond that, just take small pockets of moments where you breathe and feel like you’re doing a great job, and it’s going to be okay one day. This will pass, and you will get through it.

I hope that that gives something to somebody in the form of encouragement or hope.

 

Seema x