Reclaiming Parenthood: Navigating Infant Sleep without Sleep Training with Holistic Sleep + Parenting Educator Taylor Kulik
In this week's episode of the Balancing Chaos podcast, Kelley welcomes Taylor Kulik, an advocate for families who choose not to sleep train their infants. Taylor is an occupational therapist turned holistic sleep consultant with a passion for non-toxic living, homeschooling, and snuggling babies all night. Years ago, Taylor was struggling with trusting what she knew was best for her children, and was consumed by fear-based parenting. This experience led to her passion for sharing her experiences and education with other parents who are going through the same journey to help lead them from fear to freedom. Today, Kelley and Taylor discuss the concept of self-soothing and how babies are not capable of self-regulation. Instead, babies are meant to co-regulate and borrow calm from a calm caregiver. They discuss how certain types of sleep training can raise cortisol levels in infants, insights on infant sleep and how to bed share safely, how co-sleeping benefits mental health for both parents and children, how to transition children into their own beds, and the most common reasons beyond children that adults aren't sleeping well or deal with insomnia. To learn more about co-sleeping and improving sleep for both baby and parents, tune into this episode!