Our Approach
We are here to help families who are struggling with their child’s sleep and are looking for guidance on how they can support their baby or young child to sleep in their own sleep space.
The amount of information and opinions offered to us when it comes to our children and parenting styles can be overwhelming, but we believe sleep doesn’t need to be complicated or stressful.
Whether you choose one of our online sleep courses or a 1:1 consultation, the fundamentals of our approach to sleep are the same. We want families to feel informed and empowered to make decisions about how they approach sleep that are right for their family.
'Sleep training' can take on different meanings and is often an emotive topic.
What is our approach to sleep?
Our approach is to look at the whole picture, beyond just how you settle your baby or child to sleep. We do of course look at this with families who are struggling to get a settled night, but what else do we take into account?
- Sleep environment. We want to create a safe environment that supports good quality sleep.
- Balance of day and night sleep. How sleep is distributed across the 24 hour day is key to enabling our children to be well rested, happy and content.
- Creating a predictable routine. We aren’t talking about a militant routine that involves clock-watching all day, but creating a consistent approach to how and when sleep takes place.
- Supporting your child to be able to fall asleep and return to sleep independently. Strictly speaking, none of us ‘sleep through the night,’ – we all stir between sleep cycles. However, the key for many families is practicing the skill of falling asleep and returning to sleep independently. We will never guarantee that every baby will sleep all night – it is completely normal for babies to wake and feed or need some reassurance before they return to sleep – but by working on this, we can help them achieve developmentally appropriate periods of sleep.
For some families, small changes to their routine and sleep environment can dramatically improve their current sleep situation. For others, where the current approach to settling their baby or child is no longer working for them, their sleep plan includes changes in how they support their child to sleep.
Our approach is intended to be flexible. There is a broad spectrum of sleep support to choose from – we place ourselves right in the middle of this spectrum. . We often talk about ‘pick and mix’ parenting styles, meaning you can incorporate our suggested routines and settling methods into your approach to sleep and planning your day, adjusting any elements to suit your family best.
Are we the right choice for your family?
We have worked with thousands of families, trained with multiple organisations and are committed to our own continued education to ensure we can support families in improving their sleep situation.
Level 5 OCN London School of Childcare Studies Sleep Practitioner Programme
Level 4 OCN BabyEm Gentle Sleep Training Certification
Institute of Pediatric Sleep Sleep Consultant Certification
BabyEm Colic, Reflux and Infant Allergies Certificate
The Sleep Charity Sleep Champion Accreditation
Lullaby Trust SIDS and Safer Sleep for Babies Training Workshop
Lullaby Trust Having Opportunistic Conversations: Talking with Families about Safer Sleep Training Workshop
BA Primary Education (QTS)
Children’s Nursing Bsc Hons King’s College London
Msc Child Development
Professional Doctorate in Clinical Psychology
Lead Safeguarding Children Officer
L.E.A.D- Leading through Enquiry and Dialogue Coaching and Mentoring training
Optimus Education- Supporting Progress In Early Years: Teaching, Play and Assessment
The Education and Training Foundation- Coaching and Mentoring
Registered Children’s Nurse
Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2
Paediatric Immediate and Basic Life Support
Medical Mediation for Families
Nightingale Leadership in Nursing and the NHS Programme
Nursing Mentorship
Health Visitors – Nurse support
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Nurse
Special Care Baby Unit Nurse
Paediatric Renal Unit Sister
Safeguarding Children and Young People Level 3
Safeguarding Adults Level 1
Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Level 1
We have worked with thousands of families, trained with multiple organisations and are committed to our own continued education to ensure we can support families in improving their sleep situation.
Every family is different and we, as parents, all have different approaches and beliefs in how we want to support our children.
We want the families who choose us to feel confident and positive that we are the right experts for them. We’ve shared some common questions about our methods to help you make that decision:
‘Cry it out’ means different things to different people. Will we tell you to just close the door and leave your child to cry themselves to sleep alone? No.
Can we guarantee that there won’t be any tears at all if you are making changes to how your child falls asleep? The answer to this is also, no.
For some families, sleep can be improved simply by making changes to their routine and sleep environment. Others may need support in learning to fall asleep in a new way. We offer a choice of settling methods where you can support your little one as they fall asleep. We are honest with parents that there can be some crying as you make changes to how your little one falls asleep. Every baby and situation is different so we can never make a guarantee about whether there will be tears or not.
We do not want our children to be very upset or cry for long periods of time. If you are experiencing lots of tears then there is often a need to make some changes to your approach. It may be that the current routine and timings for sleep, sleep environment or settling method you are using needs some adjustment. Our method can always be taken slower for a gentler journey to a settled night.
If you have any concerns that a medical condition, diagnosed or undiagnosed, is impacting sleep then speak with your doctor for professional medical guidance.
Simply put, no! How you choose to feed your baby is exactly that, your choice. We work with families who breastfeed, bottle feed and combination feed. We do offer suggested daily routines which can help shape a rhythm to feeds during the day, but you do not need to feed by the clock, withhold feeds or change your feeding method to achieve improved sleep. A feed to sleep association can sometimes be a contributing factor for disturbed sleep. Our courses and consultations provide guidance on changing that sleep association whilst still being able to offer feeds at bedtime and during the night. It is both normal and possible for babies to stop feeding in the night at just a few months old, it is also normal and possible for toddlers to achieve great quality sleep whilst still feeding.
We are sleep experts and therefore don’t provide specific feeding support. If you have any concerns regarding breast or bottle feeding, allergies, reflux, weaning or any other medical conditions we always recommend you speak with your doctor or a specialised expert in that field.
We follow safer sleep guidelines as provided by The Lullaby Trust which recommends you place your baby to sleep in a separate cot or Moses basket in the same room as you for the first 6 months.
For babies and children over 6 months of age, our courses and personalised plans are primarily designed to support independent sleep in their own room and sleep space. Our guidance can help families who room share and co-sleep make improvements to sleep but we do advise it can take longer to see changes in these cases.
In discussions about baby and toddler sleep the terms ‘self settling’ and ‘self soothing’ are often use interchangeably which can lead to much debate.
Self settling simply means being able to fall asleep without needing help to do so.
Self soothing refers to regulation of emotions, something that babies and young children are not developmentally ready to do.
Supporting our children to be able to regulate their emotions and deal with feelings of anxiety, frustration and anger is something that we, as parents, will do over many years as they grow and develop.
Supporting our babies and children with age appropriate sleep habits and routines is entirely different. Simple strategies can help even young babies to achieve restful sleep.
Our methods look at a range of factors that can impact on sleep, to allow families to make decisions on if and how they want to make sleep changes.
So how do we approach it? If you are ready to make a change to sleep we suggest looking at the following areas:
- Sleep environment – is this set up to optimise sleep? Is there anything potentially disturbing or disrupting sleep?
- Routine. Creating a routine that meets your child’s current day and night time sleep needs.
- Looking at how your baby or toddler currently falls asleep and deciding if this is working well for you as a family, or if there are some changes you want to make.
- Decide on an approach to making changes to how your child falls asleep that suits you and your little one.