Picture this: You and your partner are trying for a baby and then one day you see that “positive” sign on your pregnancy test. So many emotions run through you: excitement, nerves, anxiety. You might start mentally running through a checklist of things you’ll need to do and how you’ll need to prepare over the next several months.
“What books should I read?”
“Will I breastfeed or bottle feed?”
“Do we want to know the baby’s gender? If yes, do we do a gender reveal? If not, how do we prepare the nursery?”
“What will the nursery look like??”
“We need to find items for a baby registry!”
These are only a handful of the dozens of questions you’ll be asking yourself. You’ll be as prepared as you possibly can. For a lot of you, this likely sounds familiar. Being in the hospital those first couple of nights with your new bundle of joy and doctors and nurses at your fingertips is an exciting and overwhelming time. Most of the time those first few days are a blur.
Then, you go home and things get real. Fast. Maybe your baby is crying and you don’t know why or how to help. Maybe your baby won’t breastfeed and you feel like you’re doing something wrong. Maybe your baby sleeps all day, which is nice for you to be able to nap, shower, and do laundry, but she won’t fall asleep at night.
As parents, are you expected to just accept that for the next few years you won’t be sleeping? “But maybe it’s a phase and he will grow out of it!” There are so many resources out there for expecting and new parents. Everyone wants to have a baby who sleeps 10 hours through the night, and if that’s the case for you, that is amazing!
More often than not, there are tons and tons of reasons why a baby wakes up in the night. They might be having a “regression”, or they might be too hot, or too overstimulated. Some rely heavily on sleep props, and others are overtired. Sometimes it’s a combination of all of it!
“Well can’t I just read a book and learn about sleep?” Absolutely!
However, education is only half the battle. A lot of parents implement a new tool for one or two nights and don’t see it through because they don’t see results right away, or they have a hard time hearing their baby cry without intervening. Parents need encouragement along with a plan. It’s discouraging to not see overnight success. If you go to the gym one day, will you go home and expect to see results? Definitely not. How many times have you started a new diet or a new workout regime and haven’t seen the results you’re looking for so you get discouraged? It helps to hire a trainer or a nutritionist to get a professional’s perspective. Your trainer likely creates a plan for your body, lifestyle, and activity level. They are there to encourage you, change things that don’t work, and motivate you until they do work. This is the same concept for a sleep consultant.
A professional sleep consultant can recognize the problems that are there and create a customized plan for your baby’s needs.
That’s where I come in!
Sleep training is the process of helping a baby learn how to sleep well. Sleep training uses different methods to improve the child’s sleep. There are hundreds of variations of sleep training methods, programs, or books, but most come down to the one goal which is to teach babies independent sleep/how to self soothe. A big part of sleep training uses techniques to help a baby sleep independently. However, sleep training has multiple parts. In order for it to be successful, components like age-appropriate schedules, proper environments, and consistent schedules need to play a role.
I truly hope all moms and dads get restful nights and their children are great sleepers from day one. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. If you’re tired of those sleepless nights but just don’t know where to start, I’m here to help you and your family get to sleep again!
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