As if having a tiny new baby isn’t enough to worry about, many new parents find themselves the recipients of a barrage of unsolicited advice that can be mildly annoying at best and damaging at worst. The Baby Sleep Company wants to BUST some of the myths that new parents often question themselves over. 

We get contacted by many desperately tired parents every day who are at their wits ends and are looking for a miracle to solve their child’s sleep problem. When we ask them on their intake questionnaire what they have already tried to fix the problem at least 90% say that they have attempted some form of sleep training with no results. Often they are at a loss as to where they went wrong and honestly can’t see how their situation can be improved. In this special series, The Baby Sleep Company is revealing the common pitfalls of DIY sleep training. 

When Rosie first contacted our team of baby sleep consultants she was anxious to say the least. She was almost certain that we would tell her that we can’t help her 7 month old girl Elke sleep at night if she wasn’t willing to leave her to cry alone and wanted to keep an overnight feed in – but that’s just not how The Baby Sleep Company rolls…

An article on a The New York Times’ blog was published this week and with a title like “Sleep Training at 8 Weeks: Do You Have the Guts?’ it was always destined to go viral. Having received comments and emails about it, seeing many comments across social media claiming that the article is about child abuse and finally a very popular gentle parenting expert baying for the blood of ‘sleep trainers’ I thought it was time to make our position on this article crystal clear.

Most families that come to us with child sleep problems have tried some form of sleep training on their own and it hasn’t worked. They often feel like they have tried everything and think that it will take a miracle from us to get their little one sleeping soundly when really they’ve just had their own attempts derailed by one of the common mistakes that we see every day. The Baby Sleep Company is doing a special blog series on the common pitfalls of DIY sleep training. 

by Dr Caroline Hendry (PhD Developmental Biology)

The thought of babies dreaming is irresistibly cute. Where might their little brains take them at night? Perhaps flying over gushing waterfalls of sweet milk, or clambering over soft, warm skin that smells like Mummy. All that activity – the twitching, the eye movement, the sighs and exclamations – suggests something is going on. But can babies really dream the same way we do? And if they do dream, what are they seeing?

For a lot of sleep deprived parents, this is the $64M question! For every mum who has been blessed with a baby sleeping through without milk at 4 weeks there seems to be another who is feeding their 18 month old overnight and says that she still needs to. So when CAN a baby sleep through without being fed? When is it safe?

Many parents put off reaching out to a baby sleep consultant because they worry that they will be bullied into cutting their baby’s feeds entirely overnight or simply think that it’s impossible to improve their baby’s sleep without doing so. This is flat out NOT the case. 

From the moment a baby is born we are told about safe sleeping practices and rightly so. SIDS is possibly one of the scariest things a parent of a young baby faces, probably because it is silent, has no warning and happens when we are relaxing with our baby asleep. Sleeping a baby on her back is the first recommendation on the SIDS and Kids website and is the policy at most Australian maternity hospitals. 

This week I received an email that made me cry. As you can probably imagine I receive a LOT of emails about child sleep issues and there are certainly a fair few who talk about previous experiences with other sleep consultants that hadn’t gone as they’d hoped. This was different though. This mama was broken. 

A new baby can’t do anything for herself and relies totally on you to provide her with food, comfort, and warmth. Crying is the way she communicates that she needs those things, and how she ensures a response from you. You are hardwired for the sound of her crying to upset you – our species would have died out already if it didn’t bother us!

I received exciting news today! There is a baby due in September and the parents say it's all thanks to me. I know right?! What the? I don't help people conceive! Aaaaaaaah, but then again; I kinda do. Hear me out...