Sleep Like A Mother: Circadian Postpartum Planning
“This is my 4th baby and I feel better rested than with my first. I’m getting a good 4-5 hour stretch early in the night. Sleep is lighter from 2–6am, but I don’t feel like a zombie.” — Kate
Most mothers are told that postpartum exhaustion is just what this season is. This class is about why that’s not the whole story, and the joy annd rest that’s actually available to you as a new mother.
You’ll leave knowing three things you can do differently this week:
how to set up your light and dark environment to support your body’s natural shift into polyphasic sleep
how to read your baby’s developing rhythm (it has predictable stages you can track)
how your milk is already doing circadian work that you can protect based on the light environment around your night feeds
The truth is your baby doesn’t yet have a fully functioning circadian rhythm at birth. The central clock forms physically around 40% of gestation, but it takes 2-3 years to fully stabilize.
Until then, YOUR body entrains your baby’s rhythm: your rhythm, your milk’s timing signals, the temperature and light of the environment you create.
The first thing to emerge is a temperature rhythm, then a wake pattern and nocturnal melatonin, and finally, consolidated sleep.
This is a sequence you can actively support, and knowing where your baby is in it helps keep your mind at ease for their development.
The key to all of this is that under the right biological conditions, your body can shift from monophasic to what I call circadian polyphasic sleep: fragmented sleep that restores well because it matches your body’s circadian expectation.
That state includes something called dorveille, a largely forgotten mode of consciousness between sleep and waking where most historical nighttime caregiving would have taken place. By implementing what I teach in this class, YOUR FAMILY can access it using these techniques even though most modern families can’t (because the light and dark conditions required don’t exist in most homes by default).
This class draws from my circadian babyhood workshop, quantum breastfeeding class, and circadian polyphasic sleep training, which are all available in the membership here. In this new class, I’m also adding a section to about winter vs summer postpartum, because they are genuinely different circadian rhythm-wise and may help explain some of the observed differences among babies born in different seasons and health outcomes at different latitudes.
Class format:
I’ll teach for the first hour, then open for community discussion.
Free for paid subscribers of Brighter Days, Darker Nights. Guest passes available for one-time purchase. Replay and resource list included.
When you register, you’ll get event emails from Luma ([email protected]). I write those messages myself and Luma handles delivery. Please don’t mark them as spam. Questions? [email protected].
DISCLAIMER
Nikko J. Kennedy is not a medical professional, nutritionist, dietician, therapist or any other kind of licensed professional, though she is a certified labor and postpartum doula and quantum biology practitioner. Certification is not the same as licensure. All material contained in this program is for informational purposes only, and is not guaranteed to be free of errors or omissions in reporting. It has not been evaluated by any medically accredited organization, and is not intended to replace medical advice offered by physicians or other qualified health care providers, or to be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any type of disease or medical condition. You are encouraged the confirm the information with other sources. Before beginning any significant change in lifestyle, or for questions about the diagnosis and treatment of any health-related conditions, it is advisable to seek the advice of a licensed healthcare professional. Any application of the material provided is at the your discretion and is your sole responsibility.