It's 2am, roughly 11 years ago, in a small apartment in Park Slope. I am on a therapy ball, bouncing hard, because vigorous is the only setting that works. My son will only sleep on my body, and the second the bouncing stops, he wakes up...
Sound familiar?
In this episode, Kaili takes you back to that ball and teaches you what she wishes someone had taught her then... how to actually look at an unsettled baby instead of just surviving the night with them.
You're not imagining it if your baby feels harder to settle than the babies in the group chat. Kaili walks through why settling is a nervous system shift, not a discipline problem, why true self-regulation doesn't come online until age 3 or 4, and what it means to co-regulate instead of waiting for a baby to "self-soothe." She introduces the idea of the "55 baby," the baby who starts the day already partway up the arousal curve, and traces her own son's story, the C-section, the tummy time refusal, the reflux, the constant need for movement, back to one under-supported nervous system.
Then she gets practical: body tension, digestive discomfort, sensory overload, and retained primitive reflexes (including the Moro) as the most common physical reasons a baby won't settle, why the usual advice (add more rocking, more white noise, more motion) often just masks the signal instead of resolving it, and what to actually look at across the whole day, not just the hard evening stretch.
In this episode you'll learn:
- Why settling is a shift from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system, and why a baby's brain isn't built to do that alone
- The real difference between self-soothing and self-settling, and why co-regulation comes first
- What a "55 baby" is, and how to recognize one
- The 4 physical patterns behind most settling struggles: body tension, digestive discomfort, sensory overload, and retained reflexes
- Why adding more input (more bouncing, more noise, more motion) sometimes works just enough to keep you trying, and never enough to fix it
- Practical ways to reduce sensory load and look at the whole day's patterns, not just the moment your baby won't settle
Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome to Mothering From Within
01:12 – The therapy ball at 2am
03:08 – What settling actually asks of a baby's nervous system
05:13 – Co-regulation: how babies borrow calm from you
05:47 – Self-soothing vs. self-settling (they're not the same thing)
07:20 – The "55 baby": her son's story 1
0:15 – The 4 most common physical causes behind settling struggles
12:33 – Why the usual settling advice often falls short
13:53 – Practical, body-based steps to try tonight
15:05 – Baby Bodywork at Home
15:39 – Her son, 10 years later 17:43 – If this is you tonight
18:20 – Wrap up
Resources mentioned:
- Baby Bodywork at Home – $47 – the hands-on routine Kaili teaches her 1:1 families, now for your living room floor. If this episode resonated, this is your next step.
- Mothering From Within (the book) – for the fuller journey through baby sleep, reflux, feeding, and your own mental health as a mama.
