My Story: Why I Became A Sleep Consultant

Hi there!

I am always fascinated by reading what other parents’ journeys have been when it comes to sleep and thought I’d share mine here (settle in – it’s a long one!)

I’ll be honest, during pregnancy I hadn’t considered the full reality of what sleep would look like when our baby was born. I was more focused on birth and just thought babies “slept” with little encouragement or parental input. Yes, they woke up all through the night and most parents complained of not getting enough sleep but I’d thought this would be easily tackled and had never considered the challenges to come.

The professionals around me were preparing me for labour, birth and making sure I had my hospital bag packed. There was some talk around safe sleep environments and breastfeeding….but very little on sleep routines and habits and behaviours.

Sleep is considered an important pillar of health and wellbeing. However, when a new baby is involved, as parents a lot of regular sleep patterns and habits go out the window.

Within the first week of Roman being born, I struggled. Still reeling from a complicated birth and trying to get breastfeeding established, I was terrified this was only the beginning. It had only been a few days, how on earth was this to go on for? How did other mums do it – the waking throughout the night, the varying nap lengths suddenly leading to zero freedom and control. I was struggling with breastfeeding but was slowly getting there but was full of anxiety about what happened when he was awake – that meant real life parenting! I was terrified.

I was someone whose life was full of routines and being organised was something I enjoyed. How to get a baby to sleep was a foreign concept to me, I thought they just did it themselves? I had no idea of the irregularity, how much you had to do has a parent to get them to sleep and it all seemed to be luck that determined how long they stayed asleep!

Everyone told me things like “welcome to parenthood!” Or “it’s just a moment in time, enjoy it while it lasts”. But I wasn’t coping. And worse, I felt guilty and embarrassed I wasn’t coping.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry on like this for long, but I was so ashamed of my lack of coping, I found it hard to say so. Yes, I was tired but it was not knowing what to do all the time that was throwing me off. Do I feed him again, did he have a sore stomach, was he cold, did he have enough milk earlier in the day? I spent so much time agonising over the small details and feeling lost.

“Sleep when the baby sleeps” was also a classic piece of advice that gets thrown around. But when do you eat, shower, unload the dishwasher, get washing done, see visitors, etc? Even with great support networks, I felt like there was no time or ability to get some normalcy back into place.

I am also a person who thrives on getting sh*t done. I hate not being productive or seeing what needed to be done around the house. People say that you have to let these things go when you have a newborn, and I agree to an extent. But I derived a lot being normal from these things! I love the mental feeling of crossing something off your list once it’s done. And because things were so all over the place, I would be stressing over how much time I’d have before he would wake up again and panic if something went “wrong”.

I began researching all things baby sleep and settling online whenever I had a chance. I literally spent hours on google, taking my own notes and collating all the information I could find. I read all the things about sleep environments, bedtime routines, self-settling and daily schedules. I love following instructions and having set of steps to go through so once I came up with a bit of a framework for myself and partner to follow, I felt a sense of confidence start to emerge. I had a loose plan for each day and focused on the things I could control. These were things like creating a good sleep environment (white noise, dark room, swaddling), implementing a consistent bedtime routine (which we did from the time he was one week old), waking him at the same time each day (making the day’s nap timings pretty similar), and making sure he took full feeds at the start of each wake window (I followed an feed-play-sleep structure).

Breastfeeding was challenging but as he improved, so did I. It meant he was well fed and since I only let him nap for 2-2.5 hours at a maximum, he was able to do longer stretches of sleep at night. I started supporting him to self-settle in his bassinet and he learned. Eventually, this lead to us being able to put him down in his bed awake and walk out of the room and know he would drift off to sleep. This was a big one – I wasn’t stressing over how long I would be there, or if I needed to feed him again, would he transfer from the boob to bed okay?...It meant he was able to go to sleep on his own without dependence on me or my partner.

Roman turned into a great sleeper (well, what I thought was good at least!). He learned to self settle early on, napped well during the day, his feeding was going great, and he did long stretches overnight. Within a month, I felt like a had a bit of a handle on “what to do” with his sleep. The days of floundering through were slowly fading away.

People were shocked that he was going to sleep on his own. That I was putting him into bed fully awake at one month old and he didn’t need to be transferred from feeding or rocking to the bassinet. They’d say “you must have got a good sleeper!”. True, I think Roman was a good sleeper. But this was achieved by me and my partner working it out, being consistent (this one is absolutely crucial!) and making sure we parented that fit alongside our values. By the time Roman was 5 months old, I could implement the same routine each day as he became capable of being awake for longer stretches of time. It took a few weeks to get the hang of it but I loved knowing how each day would go. Obviously, there were times things weren’t to plan but we had a firm baseline to return to.

He would do a short nap in the morning, a longer 2 hour nap over lunch and then a super short nap late in the afternoon and then in bed by 7pm. He would usually wake once overnight for a feed but it was so easy to do the feed, check his nappy and then pop him back down into bed. I loved the consistency and I could plan so much more for our days together! Appointments, getting to the supermarket, having a break for myself over his lunch nap….I’m a big fan of routine and this is exactly why!

Whilst I was rapt with the way things were going, I still felt that embarrassment and guilt for wanting him to sleep well, because I had wanted control and to have a break! I knew a lot of people fed or rocked their babies to sleep, bed-shared or hated the idea of structure. I know this works for a lot of families but I knew I didn’t want that. I wanted mine and my partner’s bed to remain ours, I wanted to have dinner in peace each evening, I wanted to go out for a few hours and not worry my baby wouldn’t sleep without me there.

Then I found @littledreamers and I immediately felt a sense of reassurance and encouragement (even though I hadn’t used her services directly). Amy regularly posted about her work helping families and what that meant. It was celebrating the wins like mums going to the gym, having a date night with your partner, or even being able to plan your appointments around your babies nap times.

I felt invigorated and relieved – I wasn’t a bad parent for wanting a break for myself, I wasn’t a bad parent for wanting a routine to go by each day, I wasn’t a bad parent for wanting to teach my child self-settling. Amy’s Little Dreamer’s Instagram page was full of content that I wished I’d come across earlier. I became a big fan of hers and consumed a lot of her knowledge and resources. Later, when I was considering a carer pivot and Amy (along with another sleep consultant Jazz) created Beyond Sleep School, I knew this was where I wanted to study to become a Sleep Consultant!

This is the philosophy I want Sleep Now to go by – that you’re not a bad parent for wanting your baby to sleep well! I hate the concept of any parent battling away because they’re embarrassed to ask for help. I’m wanting to shift away from the concept of being a lazy parent because you’re sick of “putting your baby to sleep”.

Time to ditch the guilt and get sleep now!

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