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Parenting in the early years can feel overwhelming, especially when it comes to sleep, routines, and feeding. But what if it didn’t have to?

In this episode, I’m joined by Tizzie Hall, world-renowned baby whisperer and author of Save Our Sleep (aka THE book on baby sleep). With decades of experience and a global following of parents who swear by her methods, Tizzie is here to share her tried-and-true strategies to help you feel confident, supported, and empowered in your parenting journey.

Press play to discover: why routines are the secret to a calmer household (and how to introduce them without stress), the surprising truth about pumping and why it matters, Tizzie’s expert take on swaddling and when to stop, the ideal timeline for introducing solids, when (and how) to transition your child to their own room, and the age your baby can finally start sleeping longer stretches. Plus, we dive into the concept of “lazy parenting”… and why it might not mean what you think.

So if you want to know how to make parenting your little angel feel simpler, calmer, and SO much easier, then press play now… this episode is for you!

About Tizzie Hall

Elizabeth Maher, widely known as Tizzie Hall, is a mother to 18 (3 on earth and 15 in heaven), an internationally renowned baby safe sleep expert, and the bestselling author of the Save Our Sleep® series. 

Tizzie’s life’s work has been shaped by a deep commitment to helping families. She founded Save Our Sleep, an internationally recognised program that offers guidance to parents on keeping their sleeping baby safe, implementing routines, and getting their nights back. Her work aims to provide parents with peace of mind through routines that prioritise safe and secure sleeping practices.

In this episode we chat about:

• The surprising story of how she became the world’s go-to baby sleep expert (6:15)
• The moment that inspired her to create the internationally acclaimed Save Our Sleep method (11:21)
• Why routines are the secret sauce for calmer, happier babies (and how to start today)  (27:44)
• The fascinating reason cave women didn’t need to pump (and what it means for us now) (37:54)
• Why pumping could be a game-changer for your baby’s health and your sanity (41:49)
• Her genius tips for pumping that most mamas have never heard of (53:12)
• The truth about where your baby should really sleep for the best rest (59:56)
• How long your baby should share your bedroom (and when to make the transition) (71:11)
• The ideal age to move your little one into their own room (82:35)
• When babies can start sleeping longer stretches (and how to help it happen smoothly) (83:54)
• What every parent needs to know about swaddling (85:40)
• Is swaddling damaging our children’s development? (89:02)
• When is the best time to introduce solids? (93:44)
• The truth about “lazy parenting” (and why it might be smarter than you think) (101:56)
• The one book she believes should be required reading in every school (109:02)

Episode resources:

• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• Save Our Sleep (website)
• Save Our Sleep (Instagram)
• Save Our Sleep® – The Happy Baby – Sleep & Settling Clinic (Join here)
• What breast pumps are other moms using (Check it here)
• A Gift from Sebastian: The Baby Who Sparked a Life-saving Campaign by Anne Diamond (book) 
• Backtrack: The Voice Behind Music’s Greatest Stars by Tessa Niles (book)
• The Safe Bedding Guide (download it here)
• Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict by Elizabeth Day (book)
• Teen Brain by David Gillespie (book)
• Yay! You’re Gay! Now What?: A Gay Boy’s Guide to Life by Riyadh Khalaf (book)

Prefer To Read?

The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

Melissa: [00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open, wide, comparisonitis and Time Magic. And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible.

Are you ready? Beautiful. Hey, beautiful. Welcome back to the show. I’m so excited about this episode because. This lady and her book have literally changed my life. I’m gonna dive into how very soon, but I wanna also let you know that this episode was recorded before I gave Birth to Prince [00:01:00] about the month before.

So I just wanted to let you know that. Now, for those of you that have never heard of Tizzy Hall, now, her birth name is Elizabeth Mayer, but she’s widely known as Tizzy Hall. Now she has three babies on Earth and 15 in heaven, 18 in total. She’s an internationally renowned baby, safe sleep expert, and the bestselling author of the Save Our Sleep Series, which you probably have heard of it, has been translated into seven languages.

And she is originally from Ireland and now based in Australia. Her life’s work has been shaped by a deep commitment to helping families. As you’ll hear in the conversation, her journey began with a profound loss. Her baby brother Richard, passed away from sudden infant death syndrome, also known as Sids at just nine weeks old.

Now, this tragedy, it ignited a [00:02:00] lifelong dedication for her to prevent similar heartbreak for other families, which is just so beautiful. Now. She is the founder of Save Our Sleep and internationally recognized program that offers guidance to parents on keeping their sleeping baby safe, baby sleep, and feeding routines.

Her work deeply inspired by Safe Sleep Advocate and Diamond and the Back to Sleep campaign aims to provide parents with peace of mind through routines that prioritize safe and secure sleeping practices. Now over the years, her brand has evolved to include bedding products crafted from her world famous safe bedding guide developed to ensure babies stay warm, feel secure, and sleep soundly all night in the safe sleeping position, which is on their back.

Now from her home in Australia, she connects with families around the world through her online platform, supporting parents navigating the challenges of early childhood through Save Our Sleep. She has [00:03:00] helped countless families feel confident and calm during their parenting journey. Now, for everything we mention in today’s episode, you can check out in the show notes and that’s over@melissaambrosini.com slash 6 6 5.

Now, I wanna also let you know that the audio on tizzy end is not a hundred percent, so I apologize for that, but the content was so good I had to share this with you. So without further ado, let’s dive in. Let’s bring on the incredible Tizzy Hall

Tizzy, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you here. But before we dive in, can you tell us what you had for breakfast this morning? 

Tizzie: I could talk for hours about this subject and other subjects, you’re not gonna be able to get me to be quiet breakfast. Very, very interesting. Nothing. So I had, which I didn’t realize, I was in an accident at the [00:04:00] age of two and I was in pain for 29 years and I had major surgery just before COVID, right?

And after the major surgery, the doctor who saved my life, who basically took my bowel and put a new one in, it’s amazing. It’s unbelievable. Yes. He told me to rest my bowel for 16 hours outta every 24. Fascinating. So I have not eaten yet today or drank apart from water. I stop eating at 10 o’clock at night and I start eating at two o’clock in the afternoon.

I feel amazing. And you know what else is really strange? Just after that, my period stopped and I never went through men. Of course, I feel amazing and I lost 18 kg in weight. And then I started looking into it and there’s this whole thing called intermittent fasting, which I didn’t know about [00:05:00] and I’m doing it.

Okay, and then let’s answer the breakfast question. If I had to eat breakfast, it would be something which had cargo butter. Do you know about cargo butter? It’s just butter, isn’t it? It’s what keeps Ireland alive. It’s the biggest export from Ireland, and it’s the only butter that I have found in Australia, which is like 400% grass fed cows only.

And in America, they put it in their coffee anyway. So if I had breakfast, it would be something with Kerry goat butter. I don’t have breakfast. But the other really interesting thing is. About six weeks ago, I went, oh, I’ve been doing this fasting for a long, I don’t care anymore. I’m happy. Everything’s great.

My mental health’s great, everything’s fantastic. And I stopped and I felt like crap. So I’m fasting again. 

Melissa: Good on you. Good on you for listening to your body. It’s not for [00:06:00] everyone. It’s definitely not for me. I am pregnant. You know, it’s not for everyone, but if it’s working for you and for the bowel surgery you had, like great, you tune into your body and you do what feels right for you.

But like I said, I’m so excited to have you here. Now, before I share how I discovered you, can you share with us how you got into this work? You have had 18 pregnancies. 18 everybody? Yes. One, eight. And you lost your brother to sids. Can you share your story and tell us how you got into this work? 

Tizzie: When we talk about the 18 pregnancies, like I was saying to a lot of people, my husband Nathan’s very sensitive and the whole subject of pregnancies is very, very sensitive.

And it’s sensitive in. Some people just have not had lots of pregnancies and are very emotional about it. Other people like me are very happy to talk about it, but, but one of the things which is [00:07:00] difficult is when you say to somebody, I’ve had 18 pregnancies, people think, oh yeah, she must have done IVF and she must have had 18.

And for anyone who’s had to do IVF, my heart goes like to you. What got me through my 18 pregnancies was the fact that I didn’t have to do IVF and all Nathan and I did was look at each other and we were pregnant. And I think that’s, I know it’s really funny. I think that’s kind of what got me through.

And the other thing about the 18, the pregnancies is every time we sort of, every time we lost a baby. We’d be pregnant again. And I always found count myself very lucky being able to get pregnant. But when people say 18 pregnancies, they immediately imagine that you’ve done IVF. Now I’m still classed as infertile because if you have 18 pregnancies, even if you lose them at 23, 22, 21 ectopics, whenever you lose them, you’re still classed as [00:08:00] infertile because you cannot carry a baby to full term.

Okay? But when someone’s at 18 pregnancies, people picture you losing the babies or the pregnancies at like six, seven weeks. Fortunately, or unfortunately for us, whichever way you wanna look at it, we go a lot further along, you know, and it, but it’s, it is interesting that we call ’em, people just say pregnancies.

I, one point in my life where I realized I was a mother, even though I’d never brought a baby home from hospital, was when my amazing obstetrician, mark Umstead said to Nathan, he actually kicked Nathan outta the room. So he didn’t say to Nathan, he kicked Nathan outta the room so that he could ask me if Nathan was a father to all of my pregnancies.

And that’s the point when I realized, even though I’d never brought a baby home from hospital, I was actually a mother, you [00:09:00] know, because if he was a father, I was a mother. But we didn’t get to bring our first view home. And we had all sorts of different issues. Like we had one ECT topic and we’ve had all sorts of, we weren’t going to all of them ’cause that’s a whole other podcast.

But yes, it was a very interesting time for me. And then I carried Dara, who was my eldest, but then, what do I call him? Do I call him my first? No. Do I call him my third? It’s, and it’s, it’s very hard for women because it’s all on our shoulders. Like Nathan’s the one who gets sensitive. But if you said to me now something like, about your children, and the answer was, oh, my eldest is Dar.

Well, he’s not my eldest. My eldest is George. But, but then it’s, it’s, do you understand what I mean? It’s difficult. And then, but anyhow, Darrow was number 13. I have been pregnant for seven years and two months, and I have brought [00:10:00] three babies home from hospital. So for seven years and two months of pregnancy, I brought three babies home.

Then I’m looking at your timeline that you keep telling people. I’ve got 28 years left. I just turned 51. I’ve got 28 years left of Wego you. 79 years. And outta that 28 years, se, or out of my seven years, passed my 51 7 years and two months I was pregnant. Can you believe that? So then Dara came at 28 weeks.

Killian came, I think Killian came at 35 weeks, but the obstetricians say he came at 34 weeks and then Kiron came. And does this make me a really bad mother? And I’m deliberately gonna say this because we’re always second guessing ourselves and we’re always looking at her mothering. I dunno. I was told that I could not carry Kiron, who is my youngest home, my third that I’ve [00:11:00] brought home past 30 weeks.

If you asked Nathan. When I delivered him, he would tell you, X, X, XI actually, unless I go and pull up files, I do not know if he came at 31 or 32 weeks. I can’t remember. Does that make me a bad mother? 

Melissa: No, definitely not. Definitely not. So how did all of this lead you to doing the work that you do now with the books and everything and you know your brother, you lost your baby brother to Sid.

So how did it all unfold from there? Like when you finished high school, were you like, this is what I’m gonna do, this is how I’m gonna help people? How did it all unfold? Did you have a different career? 

Tizzie: Girl? And again, it’s a whole other subject and I would love to go to schools and talk to children about this.

Teenagers, people leaving school. So I was in Ireland and I was seven and all I wanted was a baby brother or sister. And my mom had a little baby and he was called [00:12:00] Richard. And unfortunately at nine weeks old, Richard died of six. Now looking back, all of us in Ireland were exposed to cigarette smoke. We were all slept in our tummies.

It, you know, looking back, you wonder how any of us, any people in Ireland, any children survived. And even still, when you go to Ireland, a lot of people smoke. It’s very different in Australia. So he died of cop death of Sids. And like I can remember, it was very, very sad. I remember very, very clearly that our dog had been put down a few days earlier.

And I remember my mom screaming, and I remember it was nighttime, we were in bed and I remember my mom screaming and I remember my dad talking or whatever, and then my sisters made me go to the top of the stairs. I was the spy, I was the youngest, you know. So they made [00:13:00] me go to the top of the stairs to find out what was going on.

I heard the doctor say to my dad, it’s okay, I’ve given her something to make her sleep. This might really upset you. Like you might, this might be too much and it might upset you. But said, we’ve given her something to make her sleep. So I came back and told all of my sisters that my mom had died because I thought the doctor had put my mom down, right?

Because they told us that they’d given the dog something to make him sleep. I was seven. Okay? So I came in and I told them that my mom had died. Okay? So then, and like I look back and we laugh, like you’ve got to look back and laugh, but this is such important stuff to talk about because this is a child, this is a 7-year-old, right?

So what happens next is I tell them that my dad comes in in the morning with the Bible. And he sits down on our bed and he says to us, [00:14:00] I’ve got something to tell you. You know about Jesus and Heaven. And we’re like, it’s okay. We already know. And dad’s like, how do you know? And then we go, well, because Elizabeth, which was, is my name Elizabeth?

You gotta say, how does it become tizzy? So Elizabeth became tith and then Tith became tizzy or tease or tizzy. Okay. So it’s okay ’cause Tith told us. Yeah, we know. So then dad was like, okay. And this was about six o’clock in the morning. So that was kind of it. We know we’re all upset, we’re all crying and says, do you have any questions?

Do you understand about heaven? Do you understand about God? You know all this, you know, you know, yeah, we know we’re good. We’re children. I’m seven. I wanna go and tell my friends. I wanna get outta here. I wanna go. So I went and we knocked on Anne Barry’s door. Anne Barry has since left us. She’s born Heaven, knocked on her door and she had been at the house and she didn’t want us there.

So we opened the door, she’d been at our house. She was Richard’s godmother. So we knocked on the door, she opened the door, hi auntie. And she goes, whatcha doing here? [00:15:00] And we were like, oh, we want play. And she was like, no, go away. Go. And she didn’t want us to come in because she wanted to tell her children.

So she shut the door in our face. Right? So then we went to Susanna Connell’s house and we knocked on the door and Susanna O’Connell now spot works in an orphanage in Romania, where I used to work with her many years ago. And she’s amazing. And I do lots of fundraising for her. And I knocked on her door.

Her mom answered the door, and we said, our mom died. Can we come in? She said, your mom died. And we’re like, your mom died last night. The doctor gave her something to make her sleep, and she went, pancakes, would you like pancakes? Do you want maple syrup? What to your pancakes? And you know, we went in and, and it wasn’t until maybe lunchtime that we found out it was our brother.

Like, how’s that? 

Melissa: Not your dog. Hang on, I’m confused. I thought they were putting the dog down, 

Tizzie: but the doctor said he’d given my mother something to make her sleep. So, [00:16:00] okay, so two days earlier, the doctor had given our dog something to make him sleep and had put the dog down. Yes. As a 7-year-old, I went to the top of the stairs and I heard the doctor say to my dad, I’ve, it’s okay.

I’ve given her something to help her sleep. She’ll sleep now. We realized as, as a 7-year-old child, something big was happening. The whole neighborhood was in our house. The priest was there, the police were there, the everybody was there. So we thought it was our mother. I thought my mom had died in the morning when my dad came in with the Bible and said, do you understand?

We were like, yes, we understand. But he never said, it’s your brother. He said, do you understand about heaven? Do you understand? You know, he came in, he tried to sit down. He tried to tell us, our brother died before he could get the words out. We [00:17:00] said, we already know. And he’s like, ah, good job done. I don’t need to tell them.

They know my brother had died of cop death. My parents had been taken to the police station. ’cause in those days you were arrested and had to be proven. Yeah. Then she got brought back from the police station to the house. She was upset. There was all this commotion going on. The GP came, the local doctor came, and he gave her an injection to sleep because what was she gonna do?

Like that’s what they did in those days. Now your friends would come and you know, so they gave her an injection to sleep. They put her to sleep like they a sedative to get through the night, you know? So we thought our mother had died, not our brother. Okay. So then it wasn’t until lunchtime the next day discovered it, my brother.

Okay, so do you understand now my brother had died of [00:18:00] sids, so that was in my childhood. Then I thought it was a few months later, but now when I’ve looked back at the timeline, you know, in Australia you have Carl Stefano could, did the morning shows, right? Ireland, depending on your religion, you either watch the Irish TV station, which is called or TE, or if you were president, which I was, you had to watch UTV, which was Ulster television.

Right. We watched a morning show and on the morning show there was a lady called Anne Diamond. Now Diamond was like your cast of everybody watched Ann Diamond. Okay. Ann Diamond’s son, Sebastian died of cop death, died of sins when Ann Diamond’s baby died of sins. That was when I realized it’s not just us.

This is a big thing. This is happening [00:19:00] to lots of babies. Okay, we have all benefited from Anne Diamond’s little boy Sebastian passing away from seeds. As awful as that sounds. There’s a book called The Gift from Sebastian. People need to read this book. I don’t know if you know of amazing organization in Australia called Heartfelt, but Gavin Blue set up heartfelt when his little girl died in in during her birth, and he now goes around, he set up this amazing organization and they take photographs and that’s a whole other story, but they take photographs of babies who have either passed away, who are born sleeping.

Gavin says this book, the Story of Sebastian, is the quickest book he’s ever read. He started reading it and he could not put it down. It is amazing. In this book, Anne talks about the fact [00:20:00] that in New Zealand, if she had been living in New Zealand, Sebastian would be alive because in New Zealand. Every night at 6:30 PM an ad came on the television to everybody living in New Zealand, and it said, if you are about to put your baby to bed, put your baby on his back.

Back sleeping, saves lives. That’s all the ad said. And in New Zealand, the number of cop deaths, which they were called at the time, had decreased from the second that ad went on the television. And Diamond discovered that the United Kingdom knew this. They knew that if babies were put on their back, the chance of them dying of SIDS was very, very low.

But they wanted to keep the [00:21:00] United Kingdom as a test country to see if the ad in New Zealand worked. And Diamond very quickly realized that she needed a celebrity. She was gonna save lives and she was the best celebrity because everybody knew that she was the lady from the television in the morning.

She realized that if adults were dying, it would be a big thing. Everybody would care. But everyone’s attitude to babies die was like, oh, don’t worry, you could just have another one. She launched the Back to Sleep campaign, which you know of and Which Red Nose? Red Nose, yes. That’s what it’s called now in Australia.

Seeds and Kids talk about she launched it. She was the founder the night her ad came on the television. If you are putting your baby to bed tonight, put him or her on their back. The number of cocktails, I won’t quote the numbers, but you, you may be able to find ’em and share them with your audience.

[00:22:00] Decreased is unbelievable. Unbelievable. So when I heard this, I decided I was going to. Help parents avoid caught death and sex. And I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how. You asked if I always wanted to do this. Let’s go back to that question. I wanted to be a vet. I believe that there is a greater power.

It might be my brother. There’s a greater power out there. There’s gotta be a heaven of some sort. I’m guided and I listen to my guides and all my life. I say this was accidental. That was accidental. Meeting Nathan was accidental. Having my children when I had them was accidental. I had a lot of loss before I got there.

Living in Australia is an accident. Writing my book is an accident, and one of these accidents is where I ended up in life. So I wanted to be a vet. All I wanted to do was be a vet. I changed [00:23:00] school because I was really good at maths and I have dyslexia and I have a DHD. And lots of people say, oh, you shouldn’t admit that.

Dah, dah, dah. I admit it. It brought me to where I am in my life. It’s not the easiest things to live with, but they’re manageable. I wanted to be a vet, so I moved school to a school where I could do maths, applied maths, biology, physics, and I could get amazing marks to become a vet. I did so well, and I was gonna be able to be a vet, but then I didn’t get into a university in Ireland and for religious reasons and so on.

I ended up going to college somewhere else. I moved to the United Kingdom, which has much more president schools and colleges and so on. I realized very quickly that I. Couldn’t be a vet because I had to work in animal teeth and I didn’t want to be a [00:24:00] dentist. I’ve never been to the dentist in my life. In fact, I lie.

I’ve now been once, but I had never been to the dentist in my life until recently. I couldn’t do teeth. What could I do? Well, if I couldn’t do teeth and I couldn’t be a vet in the war, the easiest thing to do was to move to psychology. So I moved to psychology, an accident. Then I ended up on the sideline while I was studying, doing nannying, going to people’s houses, minding their children, babysitting, and so on.

And I used, every time I went to somebody’s house, the baby would sleep on its back and it would sleep all night. And these people would say, this is amazing. How are you getting? Like my baby’s never slept. And then one day I got a phone call from this doctor and he said, I’m a gp. I’ve got 18 month old boys.

They’ve never slept. We want you to babysit. ’cause [00:25:00] if you babysit, our kids will sleep. So I babysat and his kid slept and he was like, it’s amazing. And because what happened was I went to his house, I put the kids down and I said, where’s the bedding? And he goes, oh, I don’t have any bedding. And I said, what do you mean you don’t have any bedding?

And he goes, oh, my babies sleep in these sleep bags. And I’m like, oh no, you bedding. And I’ve got towels. And I put towels on these babies. And they slept all night. And they slept every night since. And then he sent me a thank you card in the mail, old fashioned mail with a check. My children don’t even know what a check is, you know?

And it was like, it was probably only 20 pounds or something. But I looked at it and I went, oh my goodness. I could make a living outta this. I could like teach babies how to sleep because I’ve got loads of money here. I can buy lots of Guinness. I could get drunk on this check back in the day, you know?

And that was it. I set up save sleep and that was 28 

Melissa: years ago. And how old were you when you got that check? What age was that? 

Tizzie: I would be 19, [00:26:00] but let’s go back. When I was seven, I used to go around the neighborhood and mind everybody’s babies. And I used to like take this baby, John, John for a walk. And one day his mom said to me, oh, he is crying.

No, I used to go around, knock on the door and say, Hey, can I take your baby for a walk? And then. They would say yes. And I think because they would go, oh, that’s a little girl whose brother died. Oh yeah. We let her to, you know, and I think they let me, because I was a little girl whose brother died, you know?

So I used to take him for a walk and one day the mom said, I’m coming with you. And I was like, okay. Now when I say taking him for a walk in Ireland, everybody knew each other. Kids were right in the street. It’s, everyone had lots of children. So this is gonna sound terrible, but it didn’t kind of matter if something happened to a child.

’cause there were millions of them, you know? I know that sounds awful, but looking back in our childhood, like people didn’t use contraception. There was just kids everywhere, you know? So they weren’t allowed to use [00:27:00] contraception. So any, that’s a whole other story. But anyway, I was taking him for a walk and the mum came with me and she said, stop.

He’s crying. And I said, that’s his going to sleep cry. And she said, what do you mean that’s his going to sleep cry? I said, by the time we get to the green, he’ll be asleep. And then when we got to the green. He was asleep. I dunno whether it was that night or a few nights later, but the phone, the old fashioned phone, bring, bring, bring.

Ah. My dad came and got me and said, Brenda’s on the phone. She wants to know if John’s crying is going to sleep, cry. And that was it. So right from a really young age, I knew baby’s Christ. 

Melissa: Wow. I just love this story so much. It’s so beautiful. So thank you for sharing how you got into this work. Now, early on, after having my daughter, Bambi, who is three and a half, and I’m currently pregnant now.

Now I remember one day, it was probably around a couple of weeks postpartum. I [00:28:00] remember turning to my mother-in-law who had come over like she was just helping out in the house and she was holding Bambi while I had a shower. And Bambi was crying. And I remember turning to my mother-in-law and saying.

Why is she crying? Do I feed her again? And then my mother-in-law said, but didn’t you just feed her? And I was like, yeah, I just fed her. But like, I don’t know, like, do I just feed her again? And I just put her back on the boob. And then I learned about you and your work from a friend who had her second child when I was having my first.

And her second was six months older than Bambi. And she was sleeping through the night and she told me about your book. So I called her probably maybe three months in just having Bambi. I called her and I was like, tell me everything that, you know, how have you done it? And so she actually filmed a video of her putting her little girl to sleep, walking in, putting her [00:29:00] down, doing the bedding and walking outta the room.

And I was like, she just walked out of the room. I was like, what do you mean? This was like for her day nap. I was like. What do you mean you just walked outta the room? She was fine. The The baby just went to sleep, didn’t make a noise, didn’t make a peep. And I was just in awe. I was like, what? So she told me about you and your book.

She gave me a copy of your book. She told me about how we need to understand the baby’s different cries because there are different cries. There’s the hungry cry, there’s the emotional cry, there’s the tired cry. And she told me, you know, about the bedding and everything. And so I devoured your book straight away.

And I really started to tune in and listened to Bambi’s Cries. And I implemented the feeding and the sleep routines because I was like, how much do they sleep? I don’t know. Like I was a full newbie. I was like, what do I do? Do I just feed all day? Do I sleep all like, I don’t know. And then I implemented the age [00:30:00] appropriate routine and feeding and sleeping routine.

And Bambi slept through the night and she has slept through the night since. And I, you know, have had so many friends. My sister is like, I sent her a message actually today and I said, guess who I’m interviewing today? And I said, tizzy Hall. And she goes, tell her she saved my sleep. We’ve definitely saved a lot of sleep for lots of my friends and lots of my family members.

So I wanna talk to you about routines because you’ve been a passionate advocate for routines from birth, especially when it comes to safe sleep. Now, what is it about routines that you believe is so crucial for babies and parents, and how can parents start introducing routines without feeling overwhelmed or like they can’t have a life and, yeah, let’s just go there first.

It’s interesting because 

Tizzie: you were talking about the sleep and so on and, and something which I’d really like to get out there is babies sleep and babies are born [00:31:00] able to sleep and. Yes. My book is all about routines, but there’s far more than just routines. You were talking about the bedding as well, because the routines are so important.

But also what people need to realize is a baby is born with the ability to sleep and all of this culture that we are now living in where everybody thinks we need to sleep, train, it’s normal to sleep, train, and if you have a baby at some point you’re gonna have to sleep train. It’s not true. You only have to sleep train if you let it go wrong.

If you are able to give your baby all of its environmental and emotional needs from day one, they just sleep, which includes a routine. They do not need to learn how to sleep. But we’ve broken, society is broken. And I’ve heard you talking about this before, where society is broken. We didn’t used to [00:32:00] do this by ourselves.

We’re not made to do this by ourselves. We used to do this with our mothers and our aunts and our grandmothers. Society is broken, and if you were doing it the way we used to do it, you would’ve known your baby’s cries before you had a baby. And the reason why my routines are so important is because we don’t have the society we used to have.

We don’t have the mothering we used to have. We don’t have the learning we used to have. It may not necessarily be a bad thing, but we need to get back to having ch, we need to change it. We need to get back to understanding our babies, which isn’t happening at the moment. Now, the reason the routines are really important is.

You do not know what your baby’s hungry C cry is. If you’ve never been around a baby, you don’t know what your baby’s tired cries is. You dunno what your baby’s cold cries is. All these different cries, if [00:33:00] you are following a routine and your baby cries, and you look at the routine, you go, my baby’s crying.

The next thing on the routine is asleep. That must be my baby’s tired cry. Or a couple of hours later when your baby’s waking up and your baby has woken up and your baby’s now crying and the baby’s screaming, and you go, well, the next thing on the routine is a feed. So that must be my baby’s hungry cry.

So the routines play a really, really important part. In helping a mom interpret her baby’s cries, but routines are dangerous. If you follow a routine from day one and you are breastfeeding, you could, and you most likely will cause your breast milk to dry up. When my mom had babies, they did four early feeding routines.

They did not have a different routine for a breastfed baby or a [00:34:00] bottle fed baby. They did a routine around what babies needed, and if you do a routine around what a baby needs, purely what a baby needs, your breast milk will dry up because when a baby is born, pretty much not the day they’re born, but a few days after they’re born, they need to feed every four hours.

If you did that with your breasts, if it’s your first baby. Your breast milk would not get established because your breasts, I call it milked. So I say your breasts need to be milked. Milked is when your baby takes milk outta your breasts or a pump takes milk out of your breasts. Your breasts need to be milked every three hours.

If you put your baby on a normal routine, your breast milk would dry up because a normal infant feeding routine is four Rs and that’s not good. So that’s why I’m saying it’s dangerous. So [00:35:00] the SRE sleep routines, there’s a different routine for a bottle fed baby and a different routine or a, there’s a different routine for a yes.

A bottle fed baby, which includes formula wheeler and includes express breast milk. That’s a different routine to the routine for a breast on breast routine. Okay, but could I just say, ’cause I know that you’re having a baby in a few weeks. Can I beg you? To, I’ll send you the bit if you don’t have it. I don’t know if you have SRE sleep feeding, but there’s a book called SRE Sleep, which I know you’ve heard and you’ve read.

But there’s also a book called SRE Sleep Feeding. And that book is mainly about breastfeeding. Most of it’s about breastfeeding, and people don’t realize that. And in that book, this is something I was never able to do and I would love to put the clock back and be able to do it. It’s something you might be able to do.

And another thing I wanted to do, which I was never able to do, was have a water birth. Oh, I would’ve loved that. I found my birth CLA the other day [00:36:00] from Dara, and I wanted all, and I was like, I wasn’t getting a water birth at 28 weeks when I went into organ failure, but I would’ve loved to have had a water birth.

But one of the things which I would love you to do, and I’d love you to come back and tell your listeners if you tried it, is the breast crawl. And that is in my feeding book where when your baby is born, now you can actually do it even if you’ve had a C-section. But if you have had an uncomplicated birth.

And everything’s good for you and everything’s good for your baby. And you can tell people to leave you alone, including the baby’s mother, other mother or father. Or father or however we wanna say. But in your case, father, them leave you alone. I know people think that dad needs to bond with the baby, but just let baby be with mom for the first two hours.

Dad can watch. Get him to sit in a chair and watch, or in your case, mind your toddler, but put the baby on your tummy and watch them and let [00:37:00] them do the breast crawl and they get themselves to the breast and they get themselves on the nickel perfectly. And it’s from the mothers who told me that they have done this with my book.

They reckon it was the nicest breastfeed they’ve ever done. And then as soon as people start interfering and pulling at your boobs and trying to put the baby’s head on, it all becomes complicated. Yes, you do have to learn how to feed, but the first feed, please try the breast crawl ’cause it’s really cool.

Melissa: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. It’s so beautiful. So I exclusively breastfed Bambi for two years straight. I hadn’t read about the pumping that you talk about, which I wanna talk about and I haven’t read your pumping book. I’ve read Save Our Sleep and Save Our Sleep Toddler, which are amazing. So I will read the feeding book, but let’s talk about that because many parents feel [00:38:00] torn about pumping, especially because like maybe they think, like what I’ve heard is, but they wouldn’t have done that when we were a cave.

Women. Like we didn’t have breast pumps and things like that. So can you talk about why pumping is so important? And you know, for me, because I didn’t do it last time and I’m considering doing it this time, I’m like, is it another thing I gotta do? Like I’ve gotta have a toddler. I have to pump. Like I’m feeling a little bit like it’s another thing I have to do.

I’ve gotta wash the bottles, I’ve gotta sterilize, I gotta do all this. How long do you think we have to pump for? Can you talk about pumping? Can you talk about why it’s important? 

Tizzie: Can we talk about cave women for a minute? That’s a fantastic question. 

Melissa: Yes. 

Tizzie: Why did cave women not have to pump? 

Melissa: I think my, I mean was it because they all breastfed each other’s babies?

I dunno. What if 

Tizzie: I gotta spend a lot of [00:39:00] time with women in other cultures? I have been very lucky. As I said to you earlier, I have been guided and I was guided. Okay, so one of my claims to fame is I don’t even have books. Can we do bookshelf podcasts? There’s a book, A book. You’re gonna love this. I’m going off subject, but this is great.

There’s a book called Backtrack, written by Tessa Niles. The forward in that book was written by Robbie Williams. You know Robbie Williams? 

Melissa: Yes. 

Tizzie: Robbie Williams wrote The Forward. Guess who is talked about in that book? Tessa Niles had twin babies and Robbie wanted her to come on tour, and I went afterwards.

If people Google Tessa Niles, or if you do, if you look into it, you, if you have listened to any music from the eighties today, you will have heard Tessa. She was the backing singer for everybody. Eric Clapton, Duran Duran, prince Robbie Williams, everyone. Okay. So I got to [00:40:00] go with Tessa and her babies and travel, and I got to travel the world, and I got to go on tour with her and one of the PLA with Robbie Williams as well.

So that’s one of my claims to fame. One of the. And I gotta watch these women with their babies, and this is fascinating, okay. We couldn’t do it in our society, but it’s fascinating, right? So when they, and I would picture cave women, vin. So when a baby is born, the baby doesn’t know how to breastfeed and the mother doesn’t know how to breastfeed.

You would say, when I tell you this, but what about the colostrum? Well, I don’t know, maybe they just get it at different points. Because what happens in some of the cases is the baby is given to the mother who has an eight month old baby. So the brand new baby is given to the mother with an eight month old to be taught how to breastfeed, and the mother is [00:41:00] given the eight month old to condition her breasts.

So she gets given a baby that can breastfeed. So that would’ve been what Cave women did. They wouldn’t have expressed because they would’ve just fed each other’s babies. And I reckon they probably, this is not the women in Mozambique, this is cave women. I reckon they probably even had a baby sucking on their boobs before they’d even given birth, because they all just helped each other and they would’ve had babies who were failure to thrive.

They would’ve had babies whose mother was no longer with them. And if you were a pregnant woman who could lactate, wouldn’t you put someone’s baby on your breast to save their life? So maybe that’s why they didn’t express. 

Melissa: Mm. Okay. So you, in your book, in Save Our Sleep, and I’m sure it’s in Save Our Sleep feeding as well, you have like a very specific routine, like do 30 [00:42:00] meals at this time, then you do 60 meals at this time, this day on, you know, it’s very specific.

This is from what you say in your book is to establish a great flow of milk. Now I had an abundance of milk. I had so much milk. I filled a freezer of just let down from the other side. When I was feeding, I had my boobs. Were engorged and you say that pumping can actually prevent engorgement, which was very nice for me to hear for this time round.

So you’ve got a schedule. It’s very specific. It’s to establish a good flow. For me, it’s just still in my mind, like it’s another thing that I have to do. Do I really have to do it tizzy? Like tell me do I really need to do it? 

Tizzie: So if you were a first time mom and this was your first baby, I would say yes.

You really, 500% have to do it. Okay. [00:43:00] The reason we do it is. As I said before, the routines are based on what the mother needs. Now with, with some women, and it sounds like you’ve done this, when you first put the baby on the breast, there isn’t when the baby’s very first born, there’s no milk there. There’s only droplets.

There’s only tiny bits. If we let the baby suck, suck, suck, suck. All you’re going to do is banja your nipples. That means tear your nipples. Banja means break. Okay? All you’re gonna do is banja your nipples and it’s gonna be so uncomfortable. So unfortunately, we put the baby on and we let ’em suck, suck, suck, suck.

That teaches our body that you’ve got a really hungry baby, but there’s no milk there. The baby’s sucking ’cause it. So I have found that, and I cannot take credit for this, this came from a woman called Claire Byron Cook, another book that I’ve read she found, and then I tried and tested it and did it with lots of clients and found it to be true.

That if you [00:44:00] limit how long your baby sucks on the nipples, you’re less likely to cause nipple damage because there’s no milk there. Once there’s milk there, they can suck and not do damage. So at first, I get you to put the baby on for a few minutes on each breast for the first 24 hours for two more minutes, the next 24 hours from so on.

Once the milk comes in. The reason why we’re expressing is if you milk your breasts or if you take the milk from your breasts by baby sucking or whatever other way, at the same time every day, your breasts learn to make that much milk. But then if your baby has a growth spurt, there’s not enough milk in the breast to feed the baby during a growth spurt.

So if you don’t want to express, you would then have to give your baby donor milk during a growth spurt, or you would have to give your baby. Formula if you wanted to give the baby formula, which some people don’t, [00:45:00] and if you didn’t do that with Bambi, I don’t think you’re going to want to do that, but you might have to do that because you may have a baby who’s born that just cannot breastfeed, or you could have a baby, something could happen and you might not produce milk.

All babies and all pregnancies and all births are not the same. So, but because it’s your second baby, you might get away with not doing the expressing, but then you might not. And then it depends how important sleep is to you, because you were saying you were engorged and stuff. I think that’s because you didn’t know your baby’s cries and she was probably feeding too often.

And when you feed too often, you get watery milk when you milk your breasts or feed your baby on your breasts at a set time. This is difficult to explain, and I hope I explain this properly. Some people think milking your breasts on a routine or feeding your baby on a breastfeeding routine means you feed your baby every three hours or every three and a [00:46:00] half hours or every four hours.

That’s not what it means. If your baby wakes at 6:00 AM and you feed them and then you feed them three hours later, that’s six 9:00 AM and then you feed them three hours later, you might think that that’s putting your breasts on a routine, but then the next day, if they wake at seven, you’re feeding them at seven and 10, and then the next day, if they woke at five, you’re feeding them at five and eight.

That is com. That is mixing your breasts up. They don’t understand this. You wanna get your baby up every day at 7:00 AM Start the routine every day at 7:00 AM so that every single day your breasts are milked at 7:00 AM and 10:00 AM Your breasts get on a routine. Then your breasts create what some people call hind milk.

The only thing in your breast then is nice, thick, creamy hind milk. That seems to stop a lot of babies getting reflux. [00:47:00] It seems to stop a lot of babies getting, you know, a lot of wind being very unsettling with wind. This seems to work, but you’ll then say. But what if my baby wakes at 5:00 AM? Well, if your baby wakes at 5:00 AM you feed them.

If your baby wakes at 6:00 AM you feed them, but then you feed them again at 7:00 AM. Now let me explain, ’cause another question I get is, oh, my baby won’t take a big feed at 7:00 AM That’s okay because let’s pretend your baby is fed from a bottle. If your baby is fed from a bottle and they sleep from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM which most sleep babies sleep, if the bedding is correct, if the bedding is not correct, baby won’t sleep.

If your baby sleeps from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM and you feed them a bottle of 5:00 AM and they take 120 M at 5:00 AM you want to feed them again at 7:00 AM they will only [00:48:00] take what has been digested and left the stomach. So that might be 60 mils. So then at 7:00 AM if you offer them a bottle of 120 mils, they will only take 60 mils because that is what they need to take to the point of full.

Then people get confused because then when their baby is crying at like just before 10 o’clock in the morning or something, they think, or their baby might be crying at 9:00 AM they think, oh, my baby’s starving ’cause my baby only had 60 meals at 7:00 AM No, your baby fed till full at 7:00 AM so they’re not crying ’cause they’re hungry, they’re crying for another reason.

Does that make sense? They only drink what’s been digested. So with a breastfed baby, they might feed for 20 minutes at 5:00 AM then they’re only gonna feed for 10 or four minutes at 7:00 AM 

Melissa: Okay. Okay. 

Tizzie: No, the question was, do you need to express, and the answer is, well, it depends how important [00:49:00] sleep is to you because.

I really think following the routine and doing the expressing only for the first six weeks will really help you establish good sleep. And then good sleep promotes good breast milk. And then you asked about being engorged. I think you are engorged ’cause you were feeding for too long and too often. And a good feed breastfeeding routine will stop you from being engorged as well.

Melissa: Mm-hmm. So are you saying that I would only have to pump for the first six weeks and then I can stop pumping? 

Tizzie: Yes. 

Melissa: Okay. I can do this tizzy. That’s good. I can do that. 

Tizzie: Unless, unless you want to give your baby a bottle a day. So if, but you are lucky in the same way. I’ve been lucky I was able to breastfeed my first baby.

I only, my first baby I brought home from hospital. I only breastfed for five months. I think the day I stopped trying to breastfeed and I went to all [00:50:00] formula, even though I had a fridge freezer full of liquid gold. That day I believe is the day I started enjoying being a mum. And I bonded with him the day I stopped trying to feed him from the breast or express breast milk from bottle.

But my other two children, I breastfed until they chose to wean. And it’s actually quite interesting because somebody said the other day it’s extended, somebody posted on in socials and social media is a very scary place, but somebody posted a photo of them, ex them breastfeeding their 14 month old little girl and everybody was having a go at her and talking about extended breastfeeding.

And I’m thinking. She’s a baby. She’s 14 months. And I think, oh my goodness. I breastfed one of my boys till two and four months till he chose not to feed anymore. And I breastfed one of my other boys till two and two [00:51:00] months. But then he went into hospital and was very sick, and it was about three or four months later and my breast milk came back and I breastfed him.

So that would be called extended breastfeeding. I don’t think that’s extended breastfeeding. I think maybe you could call feeding a four or 5-year-old. Extended breastfeeding, but not a 2-year-old. 

Melissa: No, I fed her exclusively till she was two. And by that time it was only out of one breast. The other one had none left.

There wasn’t a lot in there, and I chose to wrap it up around there because I wanted to have another baby. So I wanted to do some prep. I wanted to go and get some tests. I wanted to do a full cleanse on my body again. I wanted to do a detox, which I did before. I had Bambi and I wanted to get my body ready.

I wanted to do some infrared saunas and things like that. So that’s why I chose to kind of [00:52:00] wrap things up around too, and this is how I weaned, and I’ve spoken about this on the podcast. People are like, how did you wean so successfully? I literally spoke to her about it. I said, when you turn two, there’s no more milk.

I told her that for two months leading up to it. And then the night before her second birthday, we had our last feed and I said, you are two tomorrow and there’s no more milk and we gotta save it for the next baby. And she was like, okay, mama. Literally that was it. I walked out of the room, I burst into tears, I cried in my husband’s arms ’cause I was like, that chapter is over.

And I loved that chapter so much and I wrote her a beautiful letter. I have stuck it in her birth book and also like leading up to that as well. I was saying like anytime she’d finish feeding, I was like, it’s all gone. Like, ’cause you know, she would know that there’s none left and she would just pull off and I just communicated with her.

I would just talk to her and tell her like it’s almost all [00:53:00] going and she just got it. So. Okay. I love this. I’m so excited to breastfeed again. I love it. You’ve put my mind at ease knowing that it’s for six weeks. Like I can do that. I can definitely do that. So is there anything else about pumping that we need to know other than It’s really important.

Tizzie: So if you want your partner to give the baby the dream feed, by the way, can I just make a claim to fame? I am the person who invented the term dream feed. I’m also one of the oldest baby whisperers or baby sleep consultants or whatever you wanna call me out there. And everyone is copying me all over social media.

There is a, even in Ireland and in Australia and in Canada, there is a few pediatricians that I know follow me and I know that they use my advice and I know that they are using my advice on their social media feeds, which I just see as such a compliment. And one of them in particular is so fantastic because.

I’ve [00:54:00] been saying stuff for years and now these pediatricians are coming out and saying the same thing and it’s fantastic because like for example, I say a baby should start solids between 16 weeks and 18 weeks. And now these pediatricians are coming out and saying the same thing and it’s so good because it’s reassuring, it’s backup of my advice and I love it.

But it’s also such a compliment. And one of them recently has been sharing the term dream feed, dream feed, dream feed. And they’re even spelling it. I spelled it, dream feed one word. As it, some people would call it dream feed. Two words. I made it one word. This person even spells it the same way. It is such a compliment that they’re taking my advice and running with it.

And it’s all over social media. It’s, it’s strange, but it’s also a compliment. But it’s also, social media is quite a scary place and a depressing place because. I look at some of these social media people and [00:55:00] they’re using my knowledge, my work, my book, they’re then taking their own knowledge and their own work as well.

They’re then creating these social media channels, but then they’ve got more followers in me. And that’s, and I call it look and despair, like sharing despair. Like I go and I look and I get really sad, and then I think you’ve gotta snap out of this because this isn’t good for anyone’s mental health. And I’m a very intelligent, grown adult, and I worry about my teenage children because it’s social media and people taking my term and then putting it on their social media and then them looking like they’re doing better for me.

Follower wise. It’s, it’s quite scary, isn’t it, that our children might be thinking the same. 

Melissa: A hundred percent. That’s why I wrote Comparisonitis, how to stop comparing yourself to others and be genuinely happy. And there’s a whole section on social media, [00:56:00] but I did not know tizzy, that you invented the word dream feeded.

I did not know that. So that’s pretty cool. 

Tizzie: I invented the word dream feed. I went to a lawyer and I wanted to get it trademarked. No, and I think if I had been able to trademark the term dream feed right, would I have then, so let’s say there’s a doctor called Doctor Tamara. Yeah. If Doctor Tamara was then sharing dream feed on their newsfeed, yeah.

Would I be able to go and take the energy or the effort to soothe them and get them to stop you? No, I’m not gonna do that. So there was no point ever. Instead I look at it and I am so honored and proud. And what on this earth, as you have said a few times, maybe on average, I’m hoping I’ve got more than 28 years.

But you’ve told me so many times, 79 years is the average. So you’ve gotta leave something behind and maybe I’m going to leave behind extended back sleeping, which I really [00:57:00] wanna talk about in a minute. And the dream feed, and maybe that’s my thing, but I couldn’t trademark it because the lawyer said that would be like trying to trademark the term Roasty roasting a chicken you can’t trademark.

You were the very first person to call it roasting a chicken. It’s an action. You can’t trademark an action. So that’s why I couldn’t trademark Dream feeded. Now let’s go back to, you asked about expressing, and I said if you want your partner to do, okay. And I said, you and I are very lucky because you and I have been able to work our work schedules round breastfeeding.

But not everybody can do that. So if you are a person who is going to have to go back to work and leave their baby in the care of someone else. But you want them to have breast milk, then you’re going to need to express, or you’re going if, if you give your baby a bottle a day [00:58:00] from day one, now you are different.

So we can’t talk about you or me because we are in this amazing group of women who we are able to set our own work in ours, which is good and bad, but we’re also, we’ve been able to breastfeed our children during our working day. Not everybody has that luxury. So if you are somebody who’s going to exclusively breastfeed from zero to one, and then at 1-year-old, you have to go back to work and leave your baby, your breastfeeding ends because they still need milk.

One isn’t a good example. Let’s say nine months. At nine months old, they still need milk. So if they’re gonna go and be cared for by somebody else at nine months or six months and they don’t take a bottle. If you want ’em to take a bottle, the chances are you’re gonna have to stop breastfeeding and only bottle feed.

And, but if you had given one bottle a day, from day one, you would be able to give your baby bottles and breast, [00:59:00] so only one bottle a day. So in some cases, you need to express to do the bottle for a bottle a day or for a dream feed or so that you can breastfeed for longer. 

Melissa: Mm-hmm. I like the idea of doing one and Nick doing the dream feed because I have Bambi, you know, like I have another daughter.

I wanna make sure that I’m getting good sleep. I want to make sure that I wanna make sure baby’s sleeping. I wanna make sure I’m sleeping, because when I’m sleeping, I’m happier when baby’s sleeping, babies have, when everyone’s sleeping, we’re all happier. So I like the idea of Nick doing the dream feed and he actually did that with his son.

So I have an 18-year-old stepson and they followed your work. 18 years ago. And so Nick did the dream feed at 10 o’clock, and Leo has always been such an amazing sleeper. So, okay. I love that dream feed. Something to think about. So now let’s talk about sleep. Like one of the big [01:00:00] questions for new parents is like, where should my baby sleep?

Should they sleep in my bedroom? Should they sleep in their own bedroom? Should they be in the bed? Should they be in a side cot? Like where on earth do they sleep? Okay. Can you talk to us about where is the best place, the safest place for a baby to sleep? And until what age? Because Bambi slept in our room until she was probably, maybe it was like four or five months, I can’t remember.

And then she went into her room, which was right next to our bedroom, and I could hear everything. I could hear her breathing. She was that close. So talk to me about where they should sleep. 

Tizzie: Before we talk about exactly where they should sleep, you mentioned a minute ago about how I said every baby is born with the ability to sleep.

So when a baby is born, if they’re, if they’re fed and wrong, they will sleep. What happens is when a baby is first born, it depends on where they’re born and where we’re living. But the average house count in [01:01:00] Australia, the average birth in Australia, as in the most common birth in Australia, is a hospital birth.

When a baby is born in hospital, they are put in a crib beside the mother’s bed, but the crib has got a plastic mattress. Now in hospital that is needed for disinfectant reasons. It also is either going to be a plastic seafood crib, which is very hot, or in some parts of WA, and I’m not sure about everywhere else.

In Australia, they have metal barred cribs, which is better Airflow. Airflow is really important. When the baby is in hospital, they often sleep really well because the hospitals cocoon them, so they, they wrap them and then they cocoon them in blankets. They push the blankets into the side of them and cocoon them, and they sleep really, really well in hospital.

I wanted to talk about wrapping for a second because I talk about the environment, and I’m a very, very firm believer that when a baby is born, we shouldn’t introduce [01:02:00] anything to them that we are then going to have to take away at a later date. For example, if you have twins, people often sleep them together in the same co, in the, some nurseries, nickers do it, but then they have to separate them.

I don’t like that if we give a baby a dummy to suck on, but then you’ve gotta take the dummy away at some point. I don’t like that. White noise is a big one that I don’t like because I believe that we are going to find. We are going to find that white noise is causing mental health problems in infants and hearing problems because they are never in silence and our brain needs silence.

A brain that is constantly exposed to noise is not getting silent sleep. I believe we are going to do a total back flip and realize that white noise isn’t, or any noise, white noise, red noise, whatever isn’t [01:03:00] good. Household noise is good, but I understand that people use this as a crutch because their baby isn’t sleeping properly.

The only exception to the rule of giving them something that you then take away is a wrap, and my reason for that is the benefit of wrapping a baby outweighs taking the wrap away. For example, most children. With a wrap. Never use aup. Unfortunately, in Australia, the health advice comes. It’s not unfortunately, but part of it’s unfortunate that the health advice comes from Red Nose.

Unfortunately, I think about Red Nose is they can’t say, okay, we find this information we can set, share it with everybody. Now they have to get their information, do research, get it approved, go to the board. I’m presuming this, I’m presuming. Go [01:04:00] to the board, then make changes. Then slowly the changes come out.

They can’t like me go, oh my goodness. So how many babies have died in bags with the hands up swaddle? Bags? Bags with zi? So like a sleeping bag with no arms that you put your baby in. You see them everywhere, with the exception of Sno, because the Sno babies are strapped down. So that’s an exception to this, but most of them, these drawbacks.

I go, okay, how many babies have had accidents in these? Okay, these are a no-no, don’t use them. Red nose can’t be so bold with their statement. So I’m saying it’s unfortunate that they can’t get the advice out there to new moms, but what we can do is we can point you in the right direction because Red Nose are currently getting the advice out to influencers.

Now, what is an influencer? That’s a whole other subject. Influencers have been sent the guidelines by Red Notes, [01:05:00] but they’re ignoring them. If you go to Google and or if you come to my Instagram or Facebook feeds or channels or whatever, or maybe you can share this on your notes, if you Google Red Nose Influencer Guide, go to page six, you’ll see.

They share the information that you should not put your baby in a bag. They’re trying to stop influencers from showing babies in dangerous swaddle bags. So never ever use a swaddle bag and you can find the information on Red Nose. For influencers, it’s sad that it’s not there for mothers. It will be eventually one step at a time.

Let’s celebrate the fact that influencers have been told this so that they stop showing these dangerous bags. So when I say wrap, I’m talking about a jersey. Bit of material wraps, arms down over the tongue. Okay, now why I say the benefits outweigh when a baby is in your womb. [01:06:00] Often they will suck their fingers or they will suck their thumb when they’re born.

If you wrap them, you can stop them at this early age from using, sucking their thumb or their fingers as a going to sleep aid. Everyone has to get from awake to asleep with a trigger, a pathway. You want your baby’s pathway from awake to asleep, not to be sucking on their thumb or sucking on their fingers because you will be fine with that at first.

But then when your child is 10, 11, or 12 and they wanna go away in year three or four school camp, and they’re being teased because when they get tired on the second night, they’re putting their thumb or their fingers in their mouth, you will realize maybe you should have not wrapped, or maybe you should have wrapped your baby ’cause you could’ve changed the pathways.

You won’t always change the pathways, but you might. So that’s one reason for wrapping. 

Melissa: Can I just say one thing there? [01:07:00] Not only that. I sucked my thumb, my sister sucked her thumb. And the dental work that you have to get, you know that’s another whole thing. Like it changes the palette. You literally change the shape of your mouth and you push your teeth out and you change the palette in your mouth.

So, and braces cost a lot of money. I’ve had them twice. Twice. So that’s another whole thing. But 

Tizzie: then on that subject, what did cave people do? No, actually I know they wrap their babies. No, no, they wrap their babies. So that’s what they did. Okay. So let’s go back to this wrap in for a minute. So yes, so you, you might be able to avoid all of those issues also.

Then you’d say, well, why is sucking on a thumb different? Sucking on a dummy and well, sucking on a dummy causes a digestive system to work faster. But then that’s a whole other subject. So let’s go back. Wrapping also, if you wrap a baby, you delay them being able to [01:08:00] roll in bed. And tummy sleeping is dangerous.

I believe in extended back sleeping. I believe that a baby should sleep on its back with its face and head uncovered until at least two and a half years old. Wrapping babies keeps them on their back for longer. If you are using a safe wrap, okay, now you would say, but then we’re gonna take this aid away.

Well, we don’t really, because what happens is when you’re following the save or sleep approach, you put a sleeping bag under the wrap from about six weeks, but definitely by eight weeks. Then as the baby gets older and older, you slowly. They start getting a little hand outta the wrap and so on, and eventually the wrap goes, but they’ve got the security of the sleeping bag, so you’re not really taking the sleep crutch away.

So that is my only exception to the [01:09:00] rule of don’t give them something that you are then going to have to take away. My only exception is wrapping. Okay. Now where should they sleep? Well, it’s more if they’re born in hospital and they sleep in a little crib. We see two types of parents. We see the parents who think they’re going to bring their baby home from hospital and they’re gonna sleep their baby in a cot.

They should always sleep in a cot. They should sleep in a cot or a small cot, which is known as a mini crib, which slats the whole way round. This is because you can get a good, safe spring mattress for knees and because of airflow. Airflow is really, really important. And if they’ve got slats. In fact, there is a brand out there, Bo do a mini crib, but it has enclosed ends.

You really shouldn’t have a cot with enclosed ends, but it is okay to use a mini crib with enclosed ends because [01:10:00] a mini crib or a mini cradle, you’re gonna put next to your bed rather than against a wall. So there will still be airflow. So that’s the only exception to getting a cot or crib with slats the whole way round.

The only exception to that rule is a small cradle could have enclosed ends because it won’t be against a wall. You were gonna ask something? 

Melissa: Yes. So what I’m thinking with this baby is, so we have the cot, which will be in their bedroom. It’s too big to fit in our bedroom. So I’m thinking of getting one of your mini cribs to put beside my bed for a couple of months, however long we decide so that I can still be in my bed and the babe can be.

Next to me. The alternative is they go straight into the cot and I sleep in the other bedroom right next door to that room. But I feel like I want them to be right next to me for the first couple of months. [01:11:00] 

Tizzie: It is safer if baby sleeps in the room with the parent or parents. Unless you smoke cigarettes.

Okay. Unless you smoke cigarettes. They’re safer in your room 

Melissa: until like how long it, it’s, 

Tizzie: there’s some vaping as well. That’s dangerous. That has nicotine I think. But so as long as there nicotine free, there’s other smoking which isn’t nicotine, which would be different. But so long as nicotine free parents, they are safer in your room.

But going back to sleeping, if a parent leaves hospital thinking that they want their baby to sleep in a cot or a mini crib next to their bed, but then they come home and they don’t get the bedding right. These parents will often end up with a sleep deprived crying baby. They will be sleep deprived and it gets to the point where baby is crying all the time and everyone’s sleep deprived.

And then mom or dad accidentally take the baby into bed with them or dad accidentally [01:12:00] walks around the house with the baby and then the baby falls asleep and then dad lays down on the sofa. And then when dad lays down on the sofa, he thinks, well, if I put the baby on my chest, the baby might fall on the floor.

If I put the baby there, the baby might feel he puts the baby between him and the back of the sofa and they have an accident. And then that is called a co-sleeping or co bed sharing accident, which it is not. That is a sleep deprivation accident that is different to planned co-sleeping. I say that there is planned co-sleeping and accidental co-sleeping.

I would never do planned co-sleeping and I would never recommend planned co-sleeping. I’m just saying that there is people who will say to you, I co-slept with X number of children. They never had a problem. The chances are that was planned co-sleeping, which is very different. Two accidental co-sleeping.

So then if a baby, the next question about where a baby should sleep is what a baby should sleep on. [01:13:00] We know that exposure to cigarette smoke during pregnancy or after birth while you’re breastfeeding or in the environment is dangerous. I knew that my children were gonna be born prematurely, and I knew that my brother had died of sins co death.

I wanted to make sure that my babies were in a smoke free environment, and I also wanted to make sure that they slept in a crib. You said my mini cribs. They were actually made by another company, not me, and we can’t get them anymore, but there is recommended cribs on my website, but I do mattresses, not cribs, but I wanted my little one to sleep in a mini crib and I got a mini crib and then I couldn’t find a mattress for the mini crib.

I searched and searched and searched, and I ended up getting AC company in Melbourne to make me mattresses. And the save our sleep mattress range was born. However, remember [01:14:00] I had got these mattresses because I knew my babies were gonna be premature. I knew my third, it was when I had my third. I knew my third was gonna be premature.

I knew and I knew I wanted him to be safe. A lady from America came to see me because I was very interested in something called the chemicals in us and the chemicals in you. And this lady tests products and sees how many bad chemicals there. Now I try so hard to have the least, least, least amount of chemicals in my children’s lives.

And my children are very special. I had a long time to try and get them. And do you know how stupid I felt when she took her little gadget and she checked all the chemicals and my sleeping bags? She’s like, why aren’t these called organic? And she saw all my testing, everything. Why are they organic? She saw my wraps.

Why aren’t they organic? And I’m like, because I make most, I make some of my product in Australia. I do make [01:15:00] some of my product in Australia. I, I make my mattresses in Australia, my spin. But we won’t go into it all. But I do make what I can in Australia, but my sleeping bags and my wraps are made in China.

As soon as they leave China, they have to be put in plastic. We couldn’t get them from China. Australia in anything other than plastic if we wanted to keep them clean, right? As soon as you put them in plastic, the plastic is gonna pass off on the sleeping bag. It’s transparent. Now it’s, it’s not that big a deal because we make them in such small batches and they’re in plastic for such a small amount of time.

But how can you call that item organic? There’s a clothing company in Melbourne, which is an organic baby clothing company. I used to stock the product, but it came to me in plastic and it certified organic, and it’s like, that’s not organic because it is once it’s left the factory and it’s wrapped in uk, so you get what I’m saying?

[01:16:00] So then this woman checked all my stuff and she’s going, oh wow. Oh, there’s no plastics on this. Oh, there’s no this. Oh, there’s no, oh, you should be calling it. And I’m like, no. ’cause A, I don’t believe it’s organic because it’s traveled to us and it’s no longer organic. B. If I paid the fees to have all the organic testing and certs, my product would go to nobody because it would be so expensive, right?

But then what happened was she checked the mattress that my beautiful little baby boy was sleeping on, and it was like, you know when you watch a crime show and they have the lights off and they look for blood and it all just shows up? Well, she was testing for nicotine, and his cop mattress was like, Bing.

And it was all nicotine. And a, it was nicotine, and B, it had latex. And the passing off and the chemicals from the latex was really scary, and [01:17:00] the nicotine traces on the mattress was so frightening. And I realized what had happened. I was making my mattresses and I was so focused on not making the mattresses in China and not bringing them into Australia in a shipping container, or not fumigating them, or not spraying them, not having chemicals on them.

I didn’t focus on who was making them. And all mattresses are made by craftsmen or women. And when you think about the type of person who makes these things, they were being made in sunshine in Melbourne. And when you went to the factory, like, I feel so stupid now. Like looking back in it, I feel so stupid.

’cause when went to the mattress, when you went to the factory, these men were standing outside the factory having a cigar. And then they’d go inside and continue making these mattresses that I was. Sleeping [01:18:00] my baby on. Okay? So we immediately pulled the mattresses off the market, recalled them. Luckily, it was at the very beginning of our mattress journey, recalled them all, and now we make nons smoke mattresses.

So that is my first question, what is your baby sleeping on? And then lots of people make the mistake of getting product that they think is organic, but as I said, look who’s making it. So these are the things. And then other people make the mistake of sleeping their baby on phone, and that’s also not safe.

So we need to look at what your baby is sleeping on. I believe a baby should sleep on a mattress, which is like an adult mattress, which is just cut down in size. So all of our mattresses can be slept on by adults. They’re the same as adult mattresses. In fact, we have so many people contact us locally and we make our mattress in adult size for them.

And I’m not saying you have to buy my mattress. I’m saying buy a mattress. That is made by non-smokers. That is an adult mattress. [01:19:00] Cut down, avoid latex and foams and glues. Don’t have glue in your mattress. Make sure there is no glue in your baby’s mattress. Glue isn’t good either, so that’s what is your baby sleeping on.

And then the other thing which we need to talk about is the bedding. I believe that if a baby is given the correct bedding, they just sleep and you never need to sleep. Train them. I didn’t used to believe this. My book was written many years ago and I thought you had to sleep train babies. My book is more for people who have a baby that isn’t sleeping that then need to teach the baby how to sleep.

But if you can prevent sleep problems by having the correct bedding, that is much, much better. And I believe in extended back sleeping. You know the way you hear of extended rear face car seats. Save Our sleep is about extended back sleeping, so babies sleeping on their backs until they’re two, two and a half.

And if they have the right [01:20:00] bedding, they just do it. And if a baby has the right bedding from day one, they just sleep with the exception. You need to know this ’cause you’re gonna be asking about this, right? If you’re following the routines from day one. The exception is 7:00 PM babies cannot settle themselves in the first few weeks of life at 7:00 PM and save our sleep focuses on how important the 7:00 PM buses and then mothers get really depressed because they think their baby isn’t settling at 7:00 PM and it’s going to break their baby.

That’s not the case. You at the moment, you have a toddler, you’re about to have a baby. I can guarantee you that you are walking round after your toddler walking round with work during the day and your baby is falling asleep in your tummy. ’cause you’re walking in your movie and you’re lulling your baby to sleep.

Come 7:00 PM when you put Bambi to bed and then you go, I’m just gonna sit down and have a rest. That is when your baby wakes up [01:21:00] and is the most active. Do you find that? 

Melissa: Yeah. Well, it’s usually when I lay down, yes. I usually lay down straight away after, and yes, the kicking starts 

Tizzie: when your baby is born.

You then go at 7:00 PM I want you to put yourself to sleep because you’re following Tizzy Hall and tizzy Hall’s got a routine and you put them to bed at 7:00 PM but then the baby doesn’t. At 7:00 PM the baby cries. So it is okay to pick baby up. So I would say with you, new baby, put your baby down at 7:00 PM Hopefully you’ll wrap your baby wrapped.

Hopefully you’ll be on a safe mattress and you’ll use the bedding. And baby might just lay there awake or baby might have a little bit of a cry for a minute or 30 seconds and might go to sleep. But if baby starts crying, really crying, pick your baby up, keep them wrapped or whatever. I would say to keep them wrapped, put them on your chest or your partner’s.

Is it Nick, on Nick chest? Or get Leo to sit and hold the baby on their chest and [01:22:00] tap their back to the rhythm of their heartbeat. I’m not saying Bambi. ’cause Bambi should be in bed hopefully at 7:00 PM So hold baby. And baby can sleep in their arms until either they’re in such a deep sleep that you put them into bed or until a dream late feed.

It’s not a dream feed yet. Time you will not break baby by settling baby at 7:00 PM in your arms. You will break your mental health by listening to your baby cry. So that is the exceptions, the rule. 7:00 PM It is okay in the first six weeks for baby to settle in your arms. 

Melissa: So what age do you think you should transition them to their own bedroom?

This would depend 

Tizzie: on how well they’re sleeping in your room. If they’re sleeping in your room and everybody’s sleeping and everyone’s sleeping well, you can keep them in your room till about six months is ideal. Over six months is fine too. In my book, I say that you should have moved them to their own room [01:23:00] by six months when nighttime sleep cycles kick in.

But I have realized that the bedding is the most important part. And if they’re in the same bed in your room, so the same bed in your room. So it’s okay if they’re in a mini crib in your room and you keep them in the mini crib in your room for a year. So long as you then move the mini crib into their room, this is okay, and then they learn to sleep in their room in the mini crib.

Then you move them into the big cop when they’re used to. You can do it at any age. Preferably six months in your room. Then after six months, seven months, eight months, nine months. I used to say you needed to move them before night. I say in my book, you need to move them before nighttime. Sleep cycles start.

I have realized that if all of their environmental needs are met, so the bedding is the same, you do not necessarily need to move them this soon. 

Melissa: Okay, I’ve got it highlighted in my book, but what age can they start doing these longer [01:24:00] stretches and how can parents help their little ones reach that milestone without feeling the pressure or the stress?

Tizzie: Okay, so if a baby is born and you follow the SRE sleep feeding advice, a bedding advice from day one, most babies, so let’s say eight outta 10, no, let’s say five outta 10 babies would be sleeping. From seven o’clock at night with the dream feed at about 10, 10 30 until seven o’clock in the morning. Five outta 10 would be doing this at six weeks old.

Right? That’s if they’re born at 40 weeks, that’s if they’re born at 40 weeks. And if you’re doing the bedding and if you’re wrapping your baby and you’re following the bedding guide. Exactly. Okay. Five would be doing it by six weeks, I reckon by eight weeks, nine of them would be doing it. Okay. If [01:25:00] they are not, it could be that they’re not getting enough nutrients from your breast milk, but that is okay.

If you are happy breastfeeding and you are happy feeding them still at one or two o’clock in the night and then at seven o’clock in the morning, you can do that until they’re six months old. So that would be the, the exception would be still waking, but that is if their needs are met. Okay. If they’re on the routine and if they have the bedding, if they don’t have the bedding and the routine alone, I don’t think you’ll have them sleeping through that early.

Melissa: Okay. This is such great information. So you talk about the safe bedding guide, and this has become a staple for parents all over the world. So you put this safe sleeping bag and then you put the swaddle over it. We eventually take the swaddle away. What age do we take the swaddle away and we just keep them in the bag?

Tizzie: Well, if you were following [01:26:00] Save Our Sleep and you’re using the Save Our Sleep Bedding Advice and the Save Our Sleep bedding, so the Save our Sleep wrapping, a wrap you would take and you’re following the routine, you would take the swaddle away when your baby shows signs of trying to roll in bed, swaddled, which is nine or 10 months.

Right. If you are not following my routines or you are not using the Save our Sleep swaddle, so if you are using a swaddle bag, take the swaddle away on day one or by three or four weeks so there’s no risk of them flipping to their tummy and having an accident. If you are using an old fashioned swaddle like a jersey swaddle where you wrap it around and you wrap the baby’s arms down, you are and you are not using the Sabre sleep routines and you are not using the Sabre sleep bedding, you need to remove that swaddle when your baby rolls in your uptime, which is normally about four months, but perform, if you [01:27:00] are using the Savor Sleep bedding Guide and the bedding in it, you can swaddle until they show signs of trying to, well swaddled.

Now, it’s fascinating because people come to me with an eight month old who is waking four or five times a night, right. They say, oh, we’re gonna sleep school, or, we don’t wanna do control crime, but we’re gonna have to do control crime, or we’re gonna have to do cry out. I say, before we do any of that, can we look at your baby’s diet?

And I might change their baby from a particular type of milk. They’re all to a two milk if the formula fed, or I might just change their bedding. That’s all I do. And the baby goes from waking three or four times a night to sleeping all night. We have people who come into our Happy Baby sleep clinic and say they’ve tried the bedding and it doesn’t work.

We realize it’s not the S Sleep bedding, it looks the same. There’s a blanket which is made in the same factory and it used by the [01:28:00] same manufacturer, and it looks the same as my blanket, but they put less thread in it. People who use that blanket think it’s the same as mine. They come to the Happy Baby Sleep Clinic.

I say, humor me. I’m going to send you my bedding as a gift. To try on land. I send them my bedding. They say it’s exactly the same. They swap this bedding to my bedding and their baby sleeps 12 hours. I don’t know what it is about my magic bedding, but it works. And so we’re not doing control crying or crying it out or sleep training.

All we’re doing is good bedding. 

Melissa: And you know what I think I love about you? Tizzy is like you are always thinking about how can I meet their needs before they get to the Christ? So it’s like, are they fed, are they warm? All of these things you think like if a baby’s needs are met, they’re gonna be happy, they’re gonna sleep, they’re going to be content.

So [01:29:00] I love that that’s what you’re about. Now we’ve spoken about. The bedding, we’ve spoken about the sleep bag, the swaddle over it, the mattress, the mini cot with all of the bars and no closed ends. So there’s beautiful airflow. Something I didn’t know as well, like I had a cot bumper for Bambi because she kept on knocking her head and I didn’t know like how much that was, you know, blocking the airflow.

And sometimes I’d go in and she’d be dripping with sweat and I was like, oh, the poor thing. And then I removed the co bumper and it was an organic one. It was, you know, really clean, but I didn’t know that that was blocking all of the airflow to her and she would be dripping with sweat. So I’m love that we’ve got all of this information.

So tizzy recently I saw on Instagram someone speaking about how swaddling is actually stunting their development and their brain development because [01:30:00] they need to move their arms. Can you please talk to me about that? ’cause I know lots of people would be thinking that like, oh, is that gonna do damage to them?

Like, ’cause we don’t wanna do that. We wanna provide the best for them. So can you talk about that? 

Tizzie: Brain development happens when we sleep. So when you go to bed and you sleep as a baby, it’s like your filing cabinet is working. It’s like, and you’re putting all the files in the right place and your filing cabinet is working.

Okay? Everything has to be filed for your brain to work properly. Okay? We need sleep. They do that in deep sleep. If you take two babies, you take a baby who’s not s swd and you take a baby who is swaddled, right? The not swaddled baby is less likely to sleep well. So they’re less likely to sleep more than one sleep cycle.

So with those beautiful little hands, they’re gonna whack themself in the face. They’re going to wake themself up. They’re not going to sleep [01:31:00] as deeply. The other thing that the Say where Sleep Swaddle does is it’s wrapped around the baby’s tummy. In the old days, we used to sleep babies on their tummy ’cause it gave them a full sense.

They felt full and content and they slept longer. We now know that sleeping babies on their tummies is a death trap, right? We can achieve the same by s swaddling them with a wrap and a wrap or a double wrap, or you don’t have to use my brand. You can use other brands, but where you pull it in tight around the tummy, first of all, the tightness helps ’em burp.

It helps the burps come up. It helps win them. Second of all, it makes ’em feel safe and secure, makes ’em feel full. So they’ll sleep longer. So you take the on Swaddled baby and it does not bring its burps up. While it sleeps, it does not sleep deeply. It doesn’t reach the second and third sleep cycle and eat.

Doesn’t feel as safe and secure when it sleeps. [01:32:00] When it gets up from sleep, it’s tired, right? So when it’s tired, it doesn’t like tummy time. It doesn’t like learning to roll. It doesn’t like learning to stretch. You take Thes sleep, baby, who? Some people Cadel Evans cyclist, who’s Dara’s godfather. And note that Dara, my eldest son, is older than Cardell, won the True De France.

There’s another book you should read, the Cardell Evans book. I love books. Anyhow, he always says, and what I’m saying is he’s not Dara’s godfather ’cause he’s famous because Dara’s older than Cardell’s Famousness, if that makes sense. So he always calls it the straight jacket. Oh, you can’t put him in that straight jacket.

That straight jacket, right? So you take the baby in the straight jacket, the baby in the straight jacket sleeps for longer. They have two two hour sleeps in the day and they probably sleep seven or eight hours overnight from six weeks. They sleep longer, they sleep more deeply. Their filing cabinet works.

So then their brain develops better. So then in [01:33:00] their uptime they can actually use their brain. They’re not tired, they roll sooner, they stretch their arms and so on. So I believe it’s the opposite. I believe restricting ’em at sleep time so that they can concentrate on sleep, creates better brain development and will mean that they develop and they can do things faster than a baby who is not restricted at sleep time because they don’t sleep as well.

And also they’ll roll to their tummy, which is dangerous, which we always come back to. 

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s just fascinating. So fascinating. So talk to me about solids. You mentioned starting solids at four months. What is your theory around that? Because I’ve heard that you don’t start until they can sit up or until they’ve got head control.

Neck control. I’ve heard started around six months. [01:34:00] Start later. The later the better. What is your theory around starting at around four months? 

Tizzie: So let’s talk about starting solids, but something else that we need to talk about as well is lazy parenting. So we, whether we do it on another day or whether we do it today, we need to remember to come back to lazy parenting.

But let’s talk about solids. So talking about solids, right? I believe that there’s no such thing as sleep regressions, which save our sleep babies. So yes, there is sleep regressions, and yes, there is leaps and we see it all all the time, but save our sleep. Babies do not go through sleep regressions, and this is because all of their needs are met.

But go back to when my book first came out in 2005. And by the way, my book has been in Big Double longer than any other book they’ve ever carried. My book has been at Big Double since 2005. Isn’t that amazing? And all other books come and go, [01:35:00] but when my book first came out 2005, I said To start Solids at six months.

Those babies went through terrible sleep regressions. And this is because babies need iron in their diet from about 16, 17 weeks. Baby’s main source of food is milk For the first 12 months. Milk is really, really important. But babies, regardless of whether they have or haven’t started, solids drop their milk feeds right back at about 18 weeks.

I introduced solids at 16 weeks probably for three reasons. The first is. Babies need iron in their diet. And if they don’t have iron in their diet, they get headaches and they don’t sleep well, and they get irritable and people think they’re sick and they blame it on teething, and then they start giving them Cal, or you call it Panadol, and I call it Cal because that baby Panadol, or [01:36:00] they give them teething remedies or they give ’em all these artificial things.

Let’s get all this artificial rubbish outta our children’s bodies. We don’t need to give them that. We need to give them iron. They, they need iron in their diet now. We can’t give them iron the way they, we can. We can’t give them enough food to get iron into them. So yes, I do get people to give their babies infant rice cereal, and yes, people do say it’s bad, et cetera, et cetera, but the goodness of the milk outweighs the badness of what people say about rasu.

Okay? If we start solid at 16 weeks or 18 weeks, in some cases. We can add rice burial to the solids, which makes it really thick. And then we can add express breast milk or infant formula to those solids to get the milk intake up. And we can add lots and lots of milk and infant formula, and it gets the milk or infant formula, express breast milk or infant formula, and it gets a milk intake up and they do not go through the four month [01:37:00] sleep regression.

Babies who don’t start solids at 16 weeks seem to go through the four month sleep regression. Now, you asked about head support. If we waited till the baby could hold their head up, they would be sort of 10, 11 months. It’s way too old to start solids. I get my parents to start solids with their baby in a bouncy chair.

Never a bumbo seat or an IKEA high chair. You put them in a rocket to start solids. So my first reason for starting solids is the iron. My next reason for starting solids. Is to get the milk intake up. My next reason for starting solids is allergies. We are seeing way, way, way too many allergies in Australia.

Why? Well go back to when my book, I told people to start solids at six months back in 2005. The allergies went up In all of my clients, when I look at their children now, [01:38:00] maybe Leo was one of them. They have allergies and I think it’s because they started solids later. I was very lucky. Again, I was guided.

When I first came to Australia, my path crossed with a lady called Professor Katie Allen or Dr. Katie Allen, or I’m not sure now. She’s an mp. Katie Allen. And she works at the Royal Children’s Hospital and she’s an allergy specialist. And I was very lucky ’cause my path comes with her and I learned a, I learned how to parent from her because she was able to have a career as a doctor and as a professor and now in parliament, but still be a really good mother.

So I was really lucky ’cause I was able to learn how to juggle that by watching her. And I also learned a lot about allergies from a lady. I think she was Gillian Harris, but I may have that name wrong in the uk. And she talked about the fact that in developed countries we have allergies and other countries where they’re not so [01:39:00] develop, they don’t.

And she wondered if it was as simple as this. If you start solids at 16 weeks or 18 weeks, between 16 and 18 weeks, if you are feeding your baby’s solids from a spoon. The spoon drops on the floor. You are going to pick it up, put it in the sterilizer, sterilize it, and get a new one outta the sterilizer and feed your baby.

So your baby is getting fed from a clean spoon. When that baby is about six months old and you drop the spoon on the floor, you’re gonna pick it up, give it a wipe, and feed the baby. So the baby is now at six months being exposed to germs from that spoon, or the spoons gonna fall on the floor and you’re gonna look for a clean one in your nappy bag.

Put your hand in your nappy bag, dah, dah. Here’s a spoon. Get it out, give it a wipe, use it. Your baby’s exposed to germs. If you start solids at six months, your baby doesn’t get exposed to those germs till eight months. Is that the reason we are seeing so many more allergies is the question, [01:40:00] you know? So that’s another reason starting solids and also.

There’s lots of reasons to start solids later. I do a mixture of puree and baby led weaning. So you give them puree and then you give them baby led weaning. So you might give them a piece of pizza or a steak or a lamb cutler to chew on at four months old. I do a mixture, but again, it comes down to society has changed.

Everything has changed. We don’t have the help we used to have, so we need our babies to sleep. If a mother has a sleeping baby, her mental health is so much better than a mother without a sleeping baby, right? So if we don’t give our babies solids, the chances are our baby is not gonna sleep. If our baby doesn’t sleep, our baby is going to get depressed, and our mother is going to get depressed and then weigh it up.

What’s better? No sleep regressions and a happy contented sleeping mother and [01:41:00] baby, or sleep regressions. Mental health problems, and are these mental health problems caused by sleep deprivation or an actual physical chemical imbalance that might be causing a mental health problem? And then we can’t give the moms who have postnatal depression because something’s not quite right.

I’m not that type. I can’t diagnose what post anti depression is, but in my book, I think there’s postnatal depression that is caused by a mother having the old fashioned true postnatal depression. And then there’s post native depression, which is just sleep deprivation. And because we’re trying to help all these mothers, the mothers who really need the help aren’t getting the help because we’re giving the help to the mothers who just needed good bedding and a good routine and their depression would’ve disappeared.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. Tizzy, we’ve covered so much, but before we kind of [01:42:00] land this plane, what is lazy parenting? 

Tizzie: Oh, okay. Very quickly. Lazy parenting I think is kind of what I did. Lazy parenting is okay. We’ve changed how we parent. Children used to lie on the ground, so they used to lie and then the mother would lie ’em on the ground and then she would go and hand wash the dishes, hand wash the nappies, hand clean the house.

Then she would get her kids and she would package them up, bu in prams or whatever, walk to the shops. Go to the bank, take the cash out, go to the post office, pay the bills, go to the supermarket, pay for the groceries. She then would come home, lie the kids on the ground or whatever. Yeah, go do more jobs.

Moms, it’s weird because they were busier than us, but we seem to think we’re busier than them. You know, when it came to parenting, they would do what I call lazy parenting. They’d put the car child on the ground and then. They would have four or five children and the baby be in the middle of the floor in the ground.

If it wanted a toy, it had to roll, it had to [01:43:00] reach, it had to get to the toy. And the satisfaction that baby got when they reached that toy was so good for them. Okay. But the toddler would come along and take the toy just as they got it, and then they’d have to go again. And they learned and they learned how to roll.

And they used to lie, roll, crawl. And then from crawling, if you picture crawling and then pushing on your hands, and they’d suddenly find themselves sitting up and be like, oh wow. I’m sitting up. And they, so they used to lie, roll, crawl, sit, cruise the furniture, and then walk. Lazy parenting I call, which isn’t really lazy parenting, where we do everything and we sit them up and we are not helping them develop those skills by leaving them to it.

We’re sitting them up, we’re sitting them. Chairs. It’s not really lazy parenting, but it’s just kind of my nickname for it where we’re lazy because we’re not letting them [01:44:00] learn these skills. Instead we’re doing it all for them. So we’re kind of causing them to be lazy. So we’re sitting them in pod chairs, we’re sitting them up, we’re sitting them in car seats, we’re sitting them in pads, we’re sitting them up cushions around them.

We’re putting toys in front of them. If Bambi’s with the baby in the future and the baby rolls and gets a toy, and Bambi runs over and takes a toy from the baby, you’re gonna say to Bambi, you might not. Some parents might say to Bambi, oh, give the toy back to such and such. They had it first, but we’re kind of interfering, which is causing our baby to be sort of lazy because they don’t get to actually fight for the toy, or they don’t get to roll further or crawl.

Is that making sense? So we’re stopping the development. So now our children lie. And the age of crawling has changed because they don’t have to crawl. In fact, some of them never crawl and then we start walking them around holding their hands, and then we start standing them up next to the furniture and they’re [01:45:00] actually losing the crawling.

Some never crawl. It’s a very interesting way that we’re now parenting our children. And we could do a whole other podcast. Like one example is I cannot stand when I see parents at a playground lifting their children up to the top of the slide and letting them slide down, lifting their children up onto the play equipment.

I never did that. I was lazy. I sat back as a lazy parent and sat back and watched and let my child work it out. So only when my child could climb up the stairs to the slide did they slide down the slide. So they never fell to this date. My children have never broken a bone because they never did stuff that they weren’t capable of doing.

If they get themselves up to that height, then they realize they’re not gonna, they don’t fall because they realize that they’re up high. And one really funny example is. When Kiron was about 16 months before he was walking, he was at school and the head teacher, Mr. De, came over to me and he said, excuse [01:46:00] me, haven’t you lost something?

And he pointed up to the school oval and there was kiron crawling up to the oval. And I said, no, I think you’ll find he’s lost me. And Mr. Dee goes, oh, that’s interesting. And you can say his name, it’s fine. He’s, he’s happy for me to share the story. But he went, that’s interesting. I, what are we gonna do?

Watch him? And I said, yeah. And so he stood there and what happened was Kiran crawled off and off and off and off and he crawled and he was miles away and he was safe. He was in school, schools gated. I knew everybody around. He was pretty safe. Okay. But then I saw a man approach with a dog and my heart dropped.

’cause I was kind of like, and then I thought, no, no, it’s okay. He wouldn’t have a dog in the school if the dog wasn’t safe. Okay? Then Kiran saw the dog. And he dropped all fours. He dropped the ground and he would’ve burst into tears. And I looked at Mr. D and I said, now it’s time for me to go and rescue him.

And I went up over the oval and I got him and I lifted him up and I said, you went a bit far away from mommy, didn’t you? You were way too far away from me. And he never did it [01:47:00] again because he learned, and I’ve never run after my children. They, we were in a supermarket once, and Nathan, a couple of Nathan’s friends were there and we, they were taking in tag teams to run after their child.

And they looked at us and they said, why is Killian at the time just standing here? And we said, ’cause he doesn’t wanna lose us because he knows if he runs off, he’ll lose us. Because we weren’t parents who ran after our kids. It’s like, for example, a dog on the beach. If you watch someone on the beach running after their dog, the more they run, the more the dog runs.

And I will often say to these people, because my husband works as a lifesaver on the beach, I’ll go up to ’em and I’ll say to them. Run the opposite direction, see what happens. And I’ll help you get your dog. If they turn around and run the opposite direction, the dog runs after them. It’s the same with children.

It’s their job to know who we are, not our job to always watch them ’cause we can’t always watch them. 

Melissa: Uh, dizzy. This has been so good. So how old are your children now? You’ve got three [01:48:00] boys. How old are they? 

Tizzie: Oh, do you wanna not ask me a trick question? Have you listened to my podcast where I get all their ages wrong and I have to apologize the next week?

So I have got a few children. I have got Dara, who, I’ve got three boys who I brought home from hospital, but I also have some extra children. So I have Dara, who is 16, Killian, who is 15, Kiron, who is 10. I also have Ruby who fits between Killian and Dara, who’s an extra Friday child who hangs out with me a lot of the time, extra children in my care a lot of the time, and her little sister Ivy.

And then since we’ve moved the house recently, we have lots of other children who are in with us a lot of the time. Some of them are like our children, some of them are extra friends, children, and some of them may or may not be like foster children. So we have lots of children in our life, but my biological three boys who I brought home from hospital are Dara 16, [01:49:00] Killian 15, and Kiron.

Melissa: Mm. Beautiful. Now let’s pretend you have a magic wand and you could put one book in the school curriculum of every high school around the world. This could be on any topic, tizzy. What is the book you would choose? And it’s gonna be for boys and girls. So like that 16-year-old age. 

Tizzie: Okay, that’s really difficult.

Can I do two books? 

Melissa: Yes. Go for it. 

Tizzie: Or can I do three books? Go. Okay. So Boys and Girls. So the reason I say that is because I have two, they’re very different books, but I think one would be aimed more at Girls and one would be aimed more at boys. And I think it will surprise you. I don’t think you’ll have read them, but I think you should.

So I kind of need to do two books. So if I could choose a book for girls to read in high school, it would be a book called Friend I Love books. It would be a book called Friend Aholic by [01:50:00] Great name. Elizabeth Day. ’cause I’m Elizabeth Hall or Elizabeth Moore. Elizabeth Day. Okay. Friend Aholic. This is because she explains, and I think it’s so important for girls.

Girls like to collect friends and she explains, especially now with social media and she doesn’t explain that, but I’m saying with social media. We think we have to collect girlfriend. And she explains why. Just because you sit beside somebody at school, that does not mean that you have to be friends with her for the rest of your life.

And throughout your life every seven years it is normal to cull your friends and have different friends. Okay. And she also explains there’s a big difference between being a friend and being a good friend. Like there’s, there’s a difference sort of between having lots of friends and being a good friend.

Like it’s just really important for girls to know this. It’s just amazing. It’s all about friendship and how some of us have way too many friends and she [01:51:00] explains how five good friends is better than 50 lots of friends. Okay. And something I learned from this book, and I think it’s really important for all teenage girls to know and learn is I have realized I am the type of friend who is an emergency friend.

I am there in the background, and as soon as somebody has an emergency. I’m, I’m the three o’clock in the morning. We’ve just had a car accident or I’m the, okay, so that’s really good. And then my boy book would be Teen Brain by David Gillespie. That would be my boy book and my pregnant mum book. Every pregnant mother you would think, I would say the need to read, save our Sleep.

No. Every pregnant mother and father parent and every teenage boy needs to read Teen Brain. My favorite thing in Teen Brain is where he says, on the [01:52:00] same day or round, about the same time the iPhone came on the market was the day when children started to parent themselves. What time will I go to bed? How much will I eat?

When will I eat? What will I eat? No, I don’t want to go to bed. I want sleep in your bed. Or, you know. The same time the, the babysitter of the iPhone came out. It’s amazing. And so did that parenting style and that’s really interesting. So they’re my two books. However, there is another book that I would like every 18-year-old leaving school to read.

Okay. And it’s too old for younger children and it’s called, yay You Are Gay. And it’s a book that’s written by an Irish boy who grew up in Ireland and I think he may have had Muslim parents. He grew up in Ireland and he was gay. And I did not [01:53:00] understand all the different types, forms of our sexuality and all this until I read this book and it is taught me an awful lot.

I thought I knew everything. It also taught me, which I think is really important for our children leaving school if they are, what’s the correct terminology? I don’t want to say gay, but if they may not be. Most people are attracted girl to boy, boy to girl if they don’t fall into that category. What’s really important with this book is it explains how out of a hundred children you, there might only be two children who might be a boy who likes a boy, but then if you have a boy who likes a boy, they might not necessarily be the type of boy that likes you are a type of, there’s different types of boys who like boys, and it just explains this whole thing in a different way and it makes you realize just how hard it might be for some people in society.

So I think it’s a [01:54:00] really good book, but for older children, because it also goes into how to have these relationships and it talks about intercourse and stuff, and it’s. Much older than 16, I think. 

Melissa: Oh, I’ll link to all of those in the show notes, as well as all of your amazing books and all of your amazing products, your website, your social, everything.

Zy, this has been amazing. Is there anything else that you wanna share? Any last parting words of wisdom? 

Tizzie: My kids so have come home and they’re in the background and they’re been really quiet, so I’m gonna have to go. But yes, there’s so much more I want to share. I wanna to talk to you about infertility. I want to talk to you about so many things.

I wanna talk to you about the chemicals and extended back sleeping and how important beding is, but there’s not enough time. I want to talk to you about how dangerous wool products are. Wool sleep bags. I wanna talk to you about tog and how I regret bringing the word tog into Australia. We need to do another show.

There’s not enough time. I wanna talk to you as [01:55:00] a person, but I think your, your, your audience, whoever we call ’em, would get a lot from it too. So much. 

Melissa: Well tizzy, we’ll just have to get you back on my love. We’ll get you back on. But the last question I have for you before we wrap up is, you are helping so many people.

You are serving so many people you are. You know, I think about all the mothers that I know who you’ve helped them get sleep and their babies get sleep, which affects them mental health for the better. That is. So how can I and the listeners give back and serve you? What can we do to serve you today? 

Tizzie: Stop telling people you’re having a baby.

You’re never gonna sleep again. Start telling people you’re having a baby and it’s really, really important to do extended back sleeping. And if you have the environment and the feeding correct, you will enjoy your newborn and enjoy your baby. They are small for such a small amount of time. People need to tell people they need to tell the people in [01:56:00] their lives that having a new baby does not mean no sleep.

Having a new baby means that you have to do your research and you have to get the feeding and the bed correct, and then you will sleep. Your baby will sleep and enjoy your baby. They’re so small for such a short amount of time, but it’s your job as their parent to keep them safe mentally and physically.

And sleep creates good mental health, and bedding creates a safe sleep space, which in return creates good feeding. 

Melissa: Exactly. Tizzy, we all know, we all know what a good night’s sleep does for our physical and mental health for us, so imagine that for your children as well. Like that’s what really, you know, got me so inspired to follow what you share because I was like, well, hang on.

If I function better when I’ve got better sleep, then of course a baby’s gonna function better when they’ve got sleep. [01:57:00] So thank you so much for coming on, for giving us your time for all of your advice and wisdom. You are such a beautiful human being. I’ve loved this. I definitely wanna have you back on, ’cause I feel like we could chat for another five hours.

But thank you tizzy for being here, and we will chat soon. 

Tizzie: Okay? Take care. Thank you so much.

Melissa: I hope you got a lot out of this episode. I hope you took notes. I hope you feel inspired and confident because when I read her book, that is how I felt. I felt confident. I had a plan. Okay, these are the wake windows. This is how much sleep a baby of this age should be getting. It just gave me such peace of mind.

No one taught me this. So this book and her routines, they became. A guide for me that really helped me with Bambi and also now with Prince. So if you love this conversation, please subscribe and leave me a review if you haven’t already on Apple Podcasts, because that means that we can inspire [01:58:00] and educate even more people together.

And then send me a screenshot of your review to Hello at Melissa Ambrosini, and I will gift you my wildly wealthy meditation totally free. Just to say thank you for taking the time to leave a review. Now come and connect with me on Instagram at Melissa Ambrosini, and tell me your biggest key takeaway from this episode.

I love connecting with you and I love hearing your key takeaways. Now, before I go, I wanted to say thank you so much for being here. I do not take it lightly, that you have taken the time to be here and that you wanna be the best, the healthiest, and the happiest version of yourself. And I honor you today for showing up.

You rock. Now, if there is someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode, A Pregnant mama, A Mama with a Newborn, or little kids, share this with them right now. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them, do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears.

And until next time, don’t forget that love is [01:59:00] sexy. Healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

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