The Possums Programs
for parents

Sleep is under the control of the two sleep regulators, which are the  body clock and the sleep homeostat. The body clock is set by a consistent wake-up time, and sleep pressure is best supported by living days full of activity and rich sensory motor nourishment – which is generally found outside the home.

Your hormones have prepared your breasts. The most important thing for your milk supply after the birth is frequent and flexible breastfeeds, even though only small volumes of colostrum are transferred at first. Your baby’s frequent suckling at the breast (which they often do for comfort or sensory motor nourishment as much as for feeds) determines the settings of your supply. However, it’s possible to repair milk production even when it’s hasn’t worked to have baby at the breast as much as you might have wished in the first days or weeks. Breastfeeding usually works much more easily long-term if your newborn is feeding frequently and flexibly (or milk is being removed frequently and flexibly) right from the start.

Most commonly, babies don’t sleep because of disruptions to their circadian clock or lack of sleep pressure, not because of things like gut pain, or overtiredness or overstimulation, though you might often hear these said. For example, the circadian clock is commonly disrupted by long blocks of sleep during the day, which are promoted by sleep training approaches. We suggest working through The Possums Sleep Program to learn more.

There are two main ways of knowing that your baby is getting enough milk: 1. That their body is filling out, becoming plumper, feeling heavier, outgrowing garments, with good wees and poos, and 2. Your health professional weighs your baby on specially designed scales for infants.

Toddler sleep needs are highly variable. Some toddlers need a lot more sleep in a 24-hour period than other toddlers! High sleep need toddlers might even need up to 15 hours in a 24-hour period, and low sleep need toddlers might only need 8 or 9 hours. Both are normal, and both high and low sleep need toddlers will have normal developmental outcomes. The problem parents often run into is expecting a toddler to sleep for longer than they need, as this can result in excessive night waking. The corresponding article might be of interest to you.

Physical or psychological trauma (an experience reported by a concerning number of women in relation to giving birth), serious sleep deprivation, and major life changes can powerfully affect emotional wellbeing and mental health. From an evolutionary perspective, the maternal mind has evolved to focus on the negative as a protective mechanism, be it in the past, present, or worst case possible future scenarios. Your brain will be hypervigilant in the months after birth. There are amazing evolutionary advantages to this but it can come with very real downsides and impacts upon our mental health. Many factors go into causing postnatal anxiety and depression, which requires your local health professional’s support. But an overly busy mind, full with a lot of distressing thoughts, is an important factor. Fortunately, there are strategies proven to help protect our mental health in the perinatal period. We hope you’ll find it very helpful to work through Possums’ Caring For You program .

You’ll find there is a huge amount of advice if you search for this online, which might make you feel under a lot of pressure, but the Possums approach to starting solids is simple and relaxed. Solids in your baby’s tummy doesn’t improve sleep, so there is no need to rush when you start them. You don’t need to start solids before about six months if your baby is breastfed. You can read more in the corresponding article.

You can access The Possums Programs as a parent by signing up by clicking on any of the "get access" or "sign up" buttons. Then, the easiest way is to navigate to "browse all programs" from the header/menu or from your dashboard to get underway.

Signing up to The Possums Programs gives you access to all the main Possums programs for parents, covering breastfeeding, sleep, feeds, cry-fuss problems, before birth, parent mental health + emotional wellbeing, and little people + food.

Possums Premium plans come with the ability to talk directly to Dr Pamela Douglas in group education sessions, audio of select programs, and the Advanced Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation Program.

The Possums approach is a pioneering, science-backed way to support babies, toddlers, and their parents developed by Dr Pamela Douglas, an Australian GP, researcher, Breastfeeding Medicine Physician, IBCLC, published author and academic with nearly four decades of clinical experience.

Possums doesn't try to change what is already working for families. Instead, Possums equips parents with genuinely evidence-based information about baby and toddler sleep, feeding, crying, development, parental wellbeing and more, so parents feel confident to make their own decisions, because parents are the experts on their own families.

Distinguished by rigorous peer-reviewed research (it has an evidence-base of more than 30 published peer-reviewed studies) iterative development, transparent evaluation, and its evolutionarily aligned framework, the Possums approach is widely reported by parents as empowering, natural, flexible, connected, and effective in both addressing and preventing many early life problems.

At Possums, we see our job as to provide you with evidence-based information and to empower you with the knowledge to then make your own decisions. Each child, each parent, and each family is different, and you are the expert on your own unique family. We try to avoid prescriptive, rigid approaches, as not only are different children different biologically, but also because rigid approaches often set parents up to fail or even cause further difficulty down the track. Instead, we encourage you to gather up our information and then experiment to find what works best for you and your family in your own situation. There’s no one correct way through – just your way and what works for you and your little one. Experimenting is your secret strength.