Is it Bullshit?

We talk to a baby sleep expert about whether sleep influencers on social media are BS.

I’m trying a new thing over here at Under the Influence. It’s a weekly audio journal and interview called IS IT BULLSHIT? In it I’ll talk to an influencer about whether their area of expertise is real or total fucking B.S. In coming weeks I’ll be talking to sober influencers, mental health influencers, Ozempic influencers (just asking for a friend on this one), plastic surgery influencers, pelvic floor influencers and many, many more to determine what expertise we can actually glean from them and what needs to be thrown into the proverbial dumpster fire.

This week I called up the one baby sleep expert that I take seriously on the social medias. Rachael Shepard-Ohta, is a delightfully open book when it comes to debunking all the crazy stuff we see online about baby sleep.

What I like about Rachael is that she isn’t judgy about how you get your baby to sleep. I imagine she would judge me if I said something like, “oh I put my six month old in a metal cage for 12 hours and let her scream it out while we play ABBA,” but she didn’t judge me when I admitted I have completely forgotten how I got my older two children to sleep through the night and the fact that I hardly have any sleep routine at all for number three. I’m exhausted and still pretty much winging it.

(This is a 42 year old woman who is not particularly well-rested)

And yet that doesn’t stop me from consuming hours of information on how to put my baby to sleep, and sometimes even attempting to follow some of the advice.

Here’s the thing I have come to believe about baby sleep influencers. They have emerged en masse and commodified baby sleep tips because there is a real need and a VERY REAL desperation out there. The established medical community is complete crap when it comes to helping parents figure out how to help their babies get rest so parents can get the rest they need.

I truly believe this is the case because taking care of babies through the night and helping them to learn to soothe and sleep has long fallen on mothers. Yes, that is changing, but getting babies to sleep is still very much relegated to moms. Because of this baby sleep is seen as something women “just know how to do better,” or “part of the maternal instinct.” None of that is true. I don’t believe mothers actually know any better than any of the fathers out there about how babies should sleep. I am flying just as blind as my husband when it comes to parenting our three children.

If sleep were the domain of dads and men generally there would be entire doctors, psychiatrists and licensed coaches dedicated to helping them through it.

AND, it would be paid for by the government. It would be seen as an important part of the country’s economic engine, maintaining man sleep. There would be very important certifications for sleep experts and in turn sleep experts would make shit tons of money. But because child sleep is often the domain of mostly women we are dealing with the wild west of a hodge podge of pseudo experts, snake oil and mostly crap that doesn’t work.

Shepard-Ohta and I got into ALL of this in our recent chat and I loved the fact that even though she has built a large following based off her advice on baby sleep, she still believes the system deserves to be dismantled and rebuilt in a way that truly helps women and mothers AND is fully regulated with real certifications, courses and oversight.

If you are a baby mom who isn’t getting enough sleep then this is for you. If you are totally over this phase of life and you never want to think about it again then this is not for you and tomorrow I will write about something different (the enduring hotness of King Triton in the Little Mermaid).

You can listen to our chat or read an abridged version of it where I mostly cut out my curses and babble about how much I love this season of Ted Lasso even though all the intellectual TV critics hate it.