Sometimes it’s not easy to know where to start. Particularly when you’re not quite sure how you got where you are or where it is, quite exactly, that you are. What started as the most natural and appropriate thing in the world (nursing, rocking, swaying, or soothing your baby to sleep) has now become completely ineffective. What used to work so beautifully is now working against the goal of a restful night’s sleep (for both of you). Or you are so incredibly tired, bone-numbingly so, that the thought of spending one more night of increasingly long soothing-to-sleep sessions is beyond what you are capable of doing. Even pushing all of that aside, as we often do as parents, you just know that at the end of the day your little one desperately needs more sleep.
Hiring A Sleep Consultant – Deciding Its Time To Ask For Help
If I put my sleep consultant hat on I would say to you “It doesn’t have to be this way”. If I put my parent hat on I would say “I’ve been in your tired shoes and only you will know when you are ready”.
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For most families there is a tipping point which could include one or more of the following:
- A single very sleepless night
- Three weeks of “this has got to get better”
- An overtired child who is having a hard time making it through the day
- Long days filled with no naps
- A sleep regression that just won’t resolve itself
- A sleep crutch that is becoming an issue (pacifer, bottle, etc)
- A sibling on the way
- A return to work
There is typically one moment that drives a family to reach out to the Good Night Sleep Site team. Despite your wealth of parenting knowledge, intuition and instinct your little one’s sleep is getting worse and not better. Whatever that moment was or is, however old or young your little one is, whatever props or measures you have been using up until this point, only you will know when you are ready.
A Big Step Towards Better Sleep
“It doesn’t have to be this way”. As someone who is trained and educated in baby and child sleep, it’s pretty easy for me to say, right? Well, let’s step back in time to when I had time on my hands to read and scour the internet in preparation for my not yet born but soon to be first-born and when I was pretty convinced that “I’ve got this”. (Insert eye-rolling, sigh). At this point in time, there were two things I felt convinced of.
- I was going to rock two areas of parenting, sleep and setting boundaries (I’ve now got a 4.5 year old and let me tell you that setting boundaries is a daily struggle that I was INCREDIBLY disillusioned about).
- I was going to figure out what friends and parents before me hadn’t quite managed to do. I know, I know, I was that girl you wanted to pour your coffee on (at best).
The thing is, once I was actually in the trenches, struggling with establishing breastfeeding and tired out of my mind, I came to the realization that all the websites in the world were not helping me to figure out how to help my little one to get the sleep that I knew she needed. I was struggling as a new mom and I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to figure this one out on my own. And so I looked into hiring a sleep consultant.
Now that I have extensively trained, studied and been certified in pediatric sleep and have worked with a multitude of babies/children and families, I can say with certainty that same statement – “it doesn’t have to be this way”. It’s not as obnoxious as it sounds. But it does, absolutely, pair with the “only you will know when you are ready”.
That doesn’t mean that some sort of impending doom has to occur to push you to decide to work with a sleep consultant. But order for change to be made in your little one’s sleep patterns and readiness for sleep, you as the parent, have got to be a ready and willing facilitator. In order for there to be change in your little one’s sleep, you have got to be open to change, open to course correction and open to doing what you might not have been doing thus far. Working with a sleep consultant is not equivalent to admitting parenting failure, but it is a step towards handing over the sleep reigns to a professional who has the experience, training and objectivity to steer you down a smoother path.
Good Night Sleep Site Is Here To Help
The client stories page on the Good Night Sleep Site website are a point of pride for us. Those stories highlight a journey for each of those families that our team was very privileged to be a part of. If you read through them you will hear the resounding sentiments of “we were at our wits end”, “the end of our rope”, “on our last straw” and “desperate for help”. We do typically come into each family’s lives when things are not going so well. And perhaps that is where you are at now, reading this article and contemplating if it’s time. Only you will know.
But what I want to assure you is that where you are now, if it doesn’t involve restful nights and age-appropriate sleep, is not where you have to stay. Healthy sleep for your little one does not have to be something that you need to feel guilty about craving or confused about achieving. That’s why we’re here. Honestly. It’s our pleasure, mandate, objective and focus to get you and your little one on the road to stronger sleep and if where you’re at is not where you want to be, then you may just have reached your tipping point. Let us know if we can help.
Written by Good Night Sleep Site Consultant.
Good Night Sleep Site provides free child and family sleep support through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to join our sleep community as we work towards Good Night Sleep Site’s mission of a healthier rested family unit. For more sleep tips, subscribe to our newsletter and visit Good Night Sleep Site.
