My Story
Let me tell you a story of two sleep deprived parents, desperate for a miracle that would mean their beautiful and very loved baby girl would sleep for longer than 40 minutes at a time day or night.
This is our story.
Our daughter, Beatrix, struggled with really bad reflux for the first 6 months of her life,
medication barely taking the edge off the discomfort she was evidently in. Once the reflux
started to ease off, we felt completely powerless and helpless to know how to improve her (and our) sleep. After 11 months of barely any sleep we were broken and in need of someone to hold our hand and empower us to help Beatrix sleep.
I was initially sceptical that anyone would be able to help us get more sleep, but working with a trusted sleep coach, we were equipped to understand Beatrix’s sleep needs better, within days she started sleeping for hours at a time. Within a week she was sleeping for 13 hours. A miracle.
I became fascinated with sleep and how important it was. The overnight benefits to the whole family were astonishing – we were all calmer, we ventured out more, we ate better, exercised more, made more rational decisions and the anxiety of long broken nights no longer loomed over us. Most joyfully, Beatrix was much more content. In fact, once she started sleeping, it’s like we unlocked her love of sleep. Even now 4 years later we regularly have to wake her up in the morning to get ready for school and she still asks to go to bed when she’s tired.
As Maria sings in The Sound of Music – ‘Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers.’
Whilst taking a short career break to look after Beatrix (and by this stage Ralph), I seized the opportunity to train as a sleep coach with highly-regarded Heidi Skudder of Positively Parenthood (previously The Parent and Baby Coach). Supported by countless medical and scientific studies combined with Heidi’s extensive experience, the training was comprehensive and holistic. We covered everything from mental wellbeing, developmental milestones, hormones and of course good sleep practice and sleep coaching approaches. I have subsequently gone on to help families here in the UK and much further afield and I am confident that I will be able to help you and your child’s sleep improve.