Becoming a parent is by far the most amazing thing you will ever do but it is also truely the biggest change you will ever experience in your life.
No matter how many books you read, how many kids you have or have babysat, nothing and no-one can prepare you for having your own child, it is something you need to adapt to in your own way.
I remember bringing my first born home from the hospital and thinking this isn’t too bad, I can handle this. I also remember thinking I must have a really good baby because she just ate then slept and then slept a bit more.
The sleep deprivation was a shock. Even though I was still getting a good 8 hours overnight, it was the broken sleep that got me. Once the back to back nights of broken sleep caught up to me and my baby started to become more wakeful of a day and night! I became utterly exhausted. As a new Mum, I assumed this was all normal and my baby was just doing what a newborn did, so I persevered through, teaching my baby a few sleep habits along the way in a bid to get as much sleep as I could.
After 9 months of constant feeding and rocking to sleep, I felt depleted! I couldn’t go on doing this anymore, so my Husband and I agreed to sleep train her. We prepared ourselves mentally for what we thought was going to be night after night of screaming and crying (by both baby and I) this wasn’t the case. After the second or third night and minimal tears (there were some but it was no where near what I had imagined and I was still able to be there to offer her reassurance when she needed me) our baby was sleeping through.
I no longer had to rush in and quickly rock or feed her back to sleep every single time she woke overnight, she was sleeping longer periods of a day and she was also so much happier!
When I look back and think about how grumpy she was prior to sleep training, I feel so awful, I remember how grumpy I was and I think, no wonder she was grumpy, she was sleep deprived. Just like my Husband and I.
Once she was sleep trained, our lives changed and I swore from that moment any future children we were lucky enough to be blessed with would be sleep trained from day one, and that’s where The Sleep Teacher came in. I knew my babies constant wakings and fussiness was because of her need to have me feed or rock her back to sleep, this wasn’t her fault, it was because this was the only way she knew how to get to sleep as this was what I had taught her out of desperation.
I knew that if these habits weren’t ever taught then my baby wouldn’t need to resort to waking me 5-10 times a night just to get back to sleep, so I established healthy sleep habits from day 1 with my next 2 babies. They were both and still are excellent sleepers.
I really want to help other Mums and Dads and I want them to know that you don’t have to be sleep deprived. Y don’t need to put up with months or even years on end of sleep deprivation. Yes, there is always going to be that initial shock that I spoke about earlier, but an ongoing sleep deprivation can be avoided by ensuring you establish healthy sleep habits early on.
The Sleep Teacher can help you to do this. The sleep programs are all tailored to suit your family and your baby, we offer gentle hands-on approaches so you can be there to help coach your baby whilst you teach them the important skill of sleep. You can change the way your baby sleeps but first you must be equipped with the knowledge, then have the right strategies to implement which you can find in our sleep programs here.
If whatever you’re doing is working for you and your child, I’m so happy for you. But if like me, you are finding you can no longer sustain the habits you are running with hoping it will get better eventually, maybe it’s time to accept you need to make change and accept the help we have on offer too.
I know as a mum the pressures that are put on us in terms of juggling a million and one tasks EVERY.SINGLE.DAY but you can’t pour from an empty glass, so if you’re feeling depleted please let me help you. I’m here for you. I’m the reason I started the Sleep Teacher from one first time tired mama I promise you we can change that.
Kristy x
