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Show Notes:

Today’s episode is going to be a really fun Q&A episode where I get to answer your questions about motherhood.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.

Today is gonna be a fun episode where I just answer some questions that were sent to me and I wanted to simplify it. So I took one question from SpeakPipe and one question that I got on Instagram that I feel like both of them, you'll see how they have longer answers to them. So I feel like this was the best way to keep my episode concise and also answer the most questions.

Both of these questions are from dear friends. That's today's episode. It's going to be fun. I feel like I was looking forward to an episode where I just get to share my heart and motherhood and get really practical with it.

First of all, let me just respond by saying, Ashley, you're amazing. You're doing such a great job as a mom. I love watching you be a mom. I loved watching God answer your prayers to become a mom. And you're doing great. And everything that you're asking me about in just a few short years will be so different. Like your motherhood questions are going to change so much. But you are totally in the thick of it with a toddler and a baby. And I hope that this just encourages you.

First question you asked was how much are you sleeping? Good news. Just recently, Winnie started sleeping through the night. It's not perfect, it's not always, but for the most part, she will wake up and maybe cry once or twice in the night very briefly and then put herself back to sleep. So I of course like wake up, but I don't have to wake up and feed her in the middle of the night anymore. Maybe I will like once a week.

It is a new chapter. I'm feeling very renewed in my energy because she has been my longest baby to learn the skill of sleeping through the night. And I was totally okay with that. I wasn't rushing it, but yeah. So I'm sleeping like a good seven to eight hours a night and it feels amazing. You asked, how did you stop co-sleeping?

I love co-sleeping. I'm not actually the mom who has co-slept with all of my babies. It's just been Winnie that I have slept with in my bed. Practically speaking, it was when she was very little all the way up until when she was about eight months old or so. And even then it wasn't every single night. We have a mini crib in our room and when she was first born, it was a combo of sleeping in the bed with me and in the crib. I think it was around eight months old that she got really sick and she stayed in the bed with me for most of that sickness. And then once she started getting better, I just moved her to the crib most of the time in the bedroom overnight. So she's still in the room with us. And then after a while, I would say from months eight to when she turned a year, she did all of her naps in her own room and her big crib during the day. And then at night she would just be in the room with me in her mini crib.

A couple months, maybe a month or two ago, I looked at Will one night and I started crying and I was like, I think that she's too big for the crib in our room. And he was like, what do you mean? I was like, I can just hear her bumping up against the sides of it. And I think that means it's time to move her to her big crib in her room. Now in our house, we live on the master or our master bedroom is on the floor on the main. Okay. This is confusing. Why am I saying it like this?

Our master bedroom is on the main level. All the kids' bedrooms are upstairs. So it's a little bit of a trek for me to like go feed her in the middle of the night if she's not sleeping through the night. But I thought maybe she's not sleeping through the night because she's so big in this little crib in our room. So I cried. And then we just said, Will was like, when you're ready, just try it. Just put her down upstairs. And then, and I told him, I was like, listen, I'll probably feed her.

I'll probably take her back down into our room in the middle of the night and like feed her and put her back down here. And that's what we did for a while. So I'd put her to sleep in her room. And then if she cried around 3 a.m., I would scoop her up and bring her back downstairs to our bedroom and feed her. I know that sounds like so much work, but I just, it was a good transition for me. And then one night after a week or two of doing that, I just fed her up there and put her right back down on her crib upstairs. And from then on, she's been sleeping in her own room.

That was giving you a little bit more of an answer than you asked for. You just asked, how did I stop co-sleeping? But I saw it in like phases of like, OK, first she was in the crib, in the bed with me. Then she was in the crib in her room. Then she was napping in her big girl crib. And then we transitioned her to her big girl crib overnight, like a month or two ago. And so that's what it looked like this time. And let me just say, it's looked different with every single baby. And that's OK.

How are you getting your other kids to sleep independently or how did you? Yeah, all my big kids, my big four are all sleeping independently. Praise the Lord. And then your follow-up question after that is, you sleep train? Also a great question. So each child was different. I approached it differently. And without going into too much detail with every single child, I'll just say this to start.

These decisions are up to you as mama and you are a good mom and you have intuition that God has given you. And you're going to hear a lot of voices that say you should sleep train, you shouldn't sleep train, you should co-sleep, you should never co-sleep. There are a lot of different opinions out there as we all know. And my first piece of advice is look at your circumstances with the child that you have and with the children that you have. And choose what's best for the child and what's best for the family and what's best for you. Choose something that causes you to delight in your child.

Whatever the path is that helps you to delight in your child in the stage or phase that he or she is in, in my opinion, is the best course of action. So I'll give you some examples from me and my kiddos.

Kid number one, I loved reading Baby Wise and learning about how to set up your child for successful sleep. And she ended up sleeping through the night at like eight to 10 weeks without ever crying it out. It would just happen. She just started sleeping through the night. I thought I was an awesome parent. Child number two, didn't. I did all the same things and she did not sleep through the night.

She would keep waking up and I would go in there and nurse her all through the night. And then it was around when she was eight months old and I got very sick and I had a lot of congestion and a fever and my body was just like desperate for sleep. And I remember asking Will, please go in there and rock her and see if you can go back to sleep. I feel terrible. And it was two nights of me feeling terrible and him being the primary one to go in there and just hold her.

And then baby number three, I hit rock bottom. This was when it got really, really hard for me. This was my hardest phase of motherhood. I was incredibly sleep deprived. I had three babies, three and under, and my first born was coming into my room three to four times a night and usually waking me up when I was sleeping in between feeding my newborn baby who was up every two and a half hours. And so,

When I say I was sleep deprived, I was literally waking up just every hour of the night. It was miserable. I got to a very low place. I felt depressed. I felt anxious. I felt exhausted. And we did sleep training for the first time with my third baby. And it was.

I never let him cry without me. Like I never just left him left him in the room to cry. I was always there as like rubbing his back. I would go in and check on him every five minutes. I slept on the floor in his room and after two nights of it was fussy. He was fussy. He was crying some, but I don't think it ever lasted longer than like 30 minutes and I never left him there alone.

He learned to sleep through the night. And I also got this thing called the door monkey where I turned my oldest three year old at the time, I turned her room into a crib so she couldn't keep coming into my bedroom at night. And there were monitors in both rooms. We could hear the kids. We could monitor them. We never left them alone, but there was some boundaries that I desperately needed to put into place. I was crying all the time. I felt like I could hardly function as a mom. And I was alone with my three young kids all day, all the time. Not to mention I was still running my business. It was so hard. And in that situation, what I needed to delight in my children again was I just needed the basic need of sleep. And so I did sleep train.

Beaufort at that point, my third and then my fourth. I don't even remember. How hilarious is that? I really don't even remember. I just remember it was easy. I don't think I, I know I didn't ever like sleep train him. I just nursed him. I nursed him the longest, nursed him for like two and a half years. And I

I just don't even like I don't even remember what happened. I'm saying that so many times. I think I'm like surprising myself at that, but he just learned to sleep through the night at some point. And then with Winnie hers, you know, she's number five and I delighted in waking up and feeding her at night. Was I exhausted? Yes. Did I know that it was a short season that will sleep again one day? Yeah, I think just the experience of being a mom for so long.

If she needed me, I liked doing that this time, which was a stark difference than when I was mentally not okay with my third. I have friends that are amazing mothers that would not want to sleep train their child and they co-sleep until their child is like two or older. And I don't think that there's a right or wrong. I think you need to follow your intuition. And I think that you need to follow the path that helps you to delight in that season of motherhood and delight in your child. And to me, it was a great sign.that it's time to move the baby out of the room or move the baby out of the bed or make a transition. When I started to get frustrated or not sleeping well, that was a good sign that we're both ready to grow into the next phase. Because we wanted to grow so that I could delight in that next phase with the child again. And yes, there's tears. And yes, it's hard. But that transition is necessary. We want our babies to grow up.

I mean, we don't really, you we want them to say babies forever, but you know what I mean? It's like, that's part of it. It's part of it with me talking to Will and grieving. Like I am so sad that she's leaving our room. I'm not ready. I don't want her to. And also I think she's ready and I think I need to maybe try it and then we'll see how it goes. So just be like so compassionate with yourself and with your precious baby, you know, and do what you think is best for them and for you. That was a long answer.

Next question, how are you weaning from breastfeeding? I'm not. For Winnie, I'm going to let her just choose when. My first three, I decided when I stopped breastfeeding and I kind of cut them off and there were a lot of tears involved every time that happened. Lots of tears from me, not from the baby. They were okay, but it was like I was devastated and that happened around 18 months old. What that looked like was I was nursing them two times a day, morning and night. And then I just dropped the feeding until just nighttime feeds. And then eventually I just would like read them a book and sing them a song and put them down without feeding them.

But with my fourth, I decided I'm just gonna nurse as long as he wants and as long as I want. And I nursed him for two and a half years. And I cried at different points in the process thinking about not nursing him anymore. And then when it got to that time that he was ready to stop, it was a very gradual thing. It went from like three feedings a day. And then for a few months, it was two feedings a day.

And then was just nighttime feedings for like several months. And then he just kind of stopped. He might nurse a little and then pop up and want to like read a book. And I just let it and I didn't cry. Like I didn't sob. It felt like a very natural transition, which was easier on my heart. I'm hoping that something similar happens this time.

How do you wean from a pacifier? Two of my babies were pacifier babies. The other three have not been. The other three, one didn't want anything. The other one sucked on his fingers, his two middle fingers. And then Winnie is a little thumb sucker. So with the pacifier babies, I around three and a half, actually it was Will's encouragement. I'm such a softie. I'm like, give him the Passy forever. But Will's like, oh, three and a half. Let's go ahead and say goodbye to pacifier. And basically it just looked like us telling the pacifier goodbye.

It doesn't really last long. The tears are not super long lived. And after about two nights, they just go to sleep without it. And it's okay. Benji's story is actually quite sad. It like breaks my heart because I didn't, he was three and a half when this happened, but he fell and knocked out his front tooth. It was not loose at all. Still has baby teeth. Three years old and knocked it out right before Christmas time and he couldn't suck on his pacifier because it hurt so bad. And so that he, feel like he just grew up all in a day and it was devastating to my heart, but that was, I just didn't give them the Passy's back after that. I wasn't ready. He wasn't ready, but that's just how it happened. So, life with kids.

How are you disciplining right now? Our mode of discipline is marbles and laps. Now we're implementing this new bar, marble system. haven't totally implemented it yet, but we heard about it on a podcast episode. I will leave a link to that in the show notes, all about training your kids.

And there's this family who does it really well. And I like their system and we're kind of implementing that as like our disciplinary strategy. But basically each kid gets a jar of marbles and when they do something right that we're training them on, they get a marble in their jar. And when they don't do it, they get the marble out. Okay, so that's one piece of it. The other disciplinary measure is if you do something, if you hit your brother or kick him or whatever, you get laps, like just go right now. Run four laps around the house and you have to run them. You cannot walk them unless they're like hurt. But yeah, that's kind of our go-to right now. Now our kids are a little bit older, but that's just what's working right now. It's just like physical, like get out there and run, even if it's like at night, like at bed. And sometimes if it's raining and we need to do it, we'll have them do cycles in the house. Like we have a front staircase and a back staircase. And so they have to run up one and down the hall and then run down the other. And they do like cycles is what we call it inside.

How do you find childcare that you trust? God's provision, recommendations from friends. I've gone through seasons without childcare. But I'll just always mention, if I'm in need of childcare, if I know another mom, like, hey, if you have any recommendations, you let me know. I would love to hear. And at the right time, people have recommended some amazing babysitters to me. So I feel like we're in a really sweet spot right now where we have incredible babysitters that we love and we trust. But there have been seasons, especially when my kids were like littler, where I was like, it's just the grandparents, you know, it's just family and that's all we've got. So just pray that God would provide. know that's hard

How do you potty train? There's this book called Crap Potty Training, and I actually never read the book, but I have listened to a webinar by her and I also just Googled what are her potty training blocks and I just follow that system. I don't recommend potty training younger than two and a half. I do recommend using her system and having like a crash course in potty training your child for three days. I personally love that. I love the intention. I love how I feel close to my kid and helping them learn a new skill. I love the throwing away of the diapers a lot of moms that I love and know, and I know they're awesome moms, are way more relaxed in their approach to potty training and they're like, they'll get it when they get it. I love that for them. I personally just love following the blocks and establishing like three days to potty train. So, you know, go ask ChatGBT to like lay out the Crap Potty Training block system for you and print it out and just move through the blocks.

How do you decide on school? Prayer and visiting the schools in person and asking a lot of other moms that are at the schools, what do you think of it? What is it like? We for sure thought we were going to go one direction. We ended up going a different direction. We have been at a university model school that we love. And I homeschool three days a week. They go on campus two days a week. And the reason why we chose that is because I wanted more time with my kids and I had peace. had so much peace when I toured their campus and met the staff and saw how the kids were learning. All their values just spoke so much to me and I loved it so much. And so we had to kind of switch our expectations of what education for our children would look like, but it's been great. And really it came down to the peace of the Lord. Like he just gave us a peace when we toured that school.

I also, we talk about this a lot, we believe in deciding on school like every year. We take it a year at a time. We are okay switching if we feel like that is what God wants us to do or if that is what is best for the kid. I used to say a year at a time and a kid at a time, now that we have five kids, I am not going to be sending my five kids to five different schools. I'm not going to be taking them out and we will be choosing something that works for the family. And we'll be at one school, whether that's like all at this university model, all at home school or all in a private school. I don't know that I could handle two different types of school. I think two would be max, but right now it's working. Thankfully, it's working for the big three kids. So we'll see how it goes for the next two as they come up to school age.

OK, this next question is from a friend and it's great. I'm going to answer this one and then we'll wrap up this episode. I hope that you guys are enjoying this like very practical side of. A motherhood podcast episode. She asks when you started thinking about getting pregnant again, what was that season like?

How do you work through the feelings and prep for that? I want another baby, but I get sad thinking about no longer nursing my current baby. Like I'm gonna miss it being her. I'm gonna miss those new baby stages of like it being her. So does this get easier the more children that you have? Am I crazy? First of all, no, you're not crazy at all. Every mom who has gone through that transition of wanting another child, but not knowing when to add another child to the family. Let me first just say it is such a step of faith and just saying, God, I trust you with my family and my heart. And I trust you with my current child. I trust you with what you have for me. it's totally normal to almost grieve the loss of what you have right now, because your family's never going to look the same. But I do want to say it does get easier. Your love isn't divided between your current child and your next child.

And then your next child also gets the love of an older sibling, which is a magic in and of itself that you cannot describe until you experience it. So if you are like kind of grieving that, it is totally okay to grieve the loss of like what your family looks like right now. But I also just from my experience want to encourage you, children are such a blessing.

One of the greatest gifts I think that you can give your baby right now is a sibling. My kids, I don't know what they'd do without each other. They are each other's best friends. It is so sweet. And even though you feel like you're gonna miss it being your first kid in your belly or like those new baby stages being her, it's gonna be a totally new experience for you. Totally different pregnancy, totally different experience with this new baby. And you get to experience it all over again in its own magical way. So don't be afraid. Get excited. It is such a gift to experience it. And yes, you're going to grow. But I think it's easy to think, my capacity is going to like stretch so thin and I'm not going to be enough for both kids. And how am I going to do this? And it's not going to be the same. You don't have grace for that second kid yet because you're not pregnant with your second kid yet. When you get pregnant and start adding to your family, you will have grace for that. God will equip you and He will increase your capacity. This goes for whether you're adding a second child, a third child, a fourth child, a fifth child, a sixth child, a seventh child. He helps you expand your capacity to give what you what you can and what that child needs in your family. And that's the beauty of large families, too. Just to kind of go down a rabbit trail for a second.

I always thought Will and I went into having a family saying we want three kids. We feel like three is great. You know, we're a little outnumbered, but things still feel manageable. And we just knew there was another kid after number three. Obviously we have five kids now. And what I didn't realize when I was planning to have three kids and I thought that I was like, okay, that's good. It's a good number. It feels good. It's good capacity for us. What I didn't realize is how God built it into big families for the older siblings to help with the younger siblings. And I kid you not when I say five kids, it feels easier than three because of the way God has expanded my capacity, because of the way that the kids have grown up and now help with the little kids. It's really incredible. It really is. So God gives grace for every child and He will expand your capacity and get so excited, get so excited to experience it again because it truly is such a miracle.

That is it for today's episode. Thanks for sending in your questions, guys, and thanks for listening to all of May is for Mamas. I can't believe it, but this Friday, we're gonna wrap up with our last minisode. It is a episode of prayers for littles. I may or may not cry, but I hope to catch you then, and then we'll move into more summer-focused episodes in June. I'm excited.

Thanks so much for listening to episode 321 of Work and Play with Nancy Ray. Everything I've mentioned today can be found in the show notes at nancyray.com slash podcast slash 321. And you can find me at nancyray.com or follow me @NancyRay on Instagram. I'm gonna close with three quotes today. Yes, three, because I couldn't choose and these all made me laugh.

Lisa Alther said, any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease. Emily Watts said, burnt toast is actually fairly symbolic of motherhood. And Lynn Williams said, a mother needs only step into the shower to be instantly reassured she is indispensable to every member of her family.

Hope you enjoyed those as much as I did. Thanks so much for being here for Mays for Mamas and we'll catch you next week.

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