My philosophy is that your baby or child’s sleep doesn’t exist in a vacuum - often, it is the least interesting thing about them! Sleep is a complex interplay of a whole lot of other factors - it is influenced by temperament, by family dynamics, by health, feeding, relationships and connection - and so much more. I want to get to know your family to help make things more sustainable for you, in your unique context.

I’m a big believer in understanding normal sleep, and using that understanding to shape our expectations of our little people. We can’t fix something that is normal! There are a whole lot of weird and wonderful myths and stories out there about sleep (and sleep training) and falling into a lot of these can make us miserable, and make our child’s sleep feel much more problematic than it truly is.

I believe that a baby falling asleep alone, or going back to sleep on their own if they wake (“self-settling”) is as much developmental as it is temperamental - some babies do it more easily than others, some need a lot of support with sleep for a lot longer. We can’t hurry normal development, and we can’t change temperament. But we can support our babies to sleep as long as they need us to, and trust that they will grow their independence in time, as we support that development.

• I’ll work with you to understand your challenges in your unique context.

• I’ll teach you about what is biologically and developmentally normal for your child, and compare that to what’s happening for them.

• We’ll cover health and wellness, and I’ll use my IBCLC and doctor background to see if I can identify any underlying health conditions that may be impacting sleep - and help you manage what I can, or refer onwards for support in your area.

• We’ll look at other factors that might be impacting your child’s sleep, to really try to get to the core of the issue.

• We’ll go over physiology, how sleep works and how we can optimise some of our sleep biology.

• We’ll also cover lifestyle, emotional needs, and psychology, including relationships, attachment, temperament and more.

• Sleep comes from a place of calm, so we’ll look at ways to help both you and your child get to that place.

• We’ll look at ways to improve your own sleep and wellbeing, to make the challenges with your child’s sleep more manageable for you.

• We’ll often make some easy changes first, and sometimes use sleep strategies next if we need more tools.

You’re probably here because you’re exhausted and you have hit a place where you need some help. Because you’re having a really hard time with your little one’s sleep challenges, whatever they are in whatever your context is. I’m here to listen and support you, and to help you meet your own needs as well as support your child.

We were never meant to do this alone, and we were never meant to be “on” 24 hours a day.

I cannot and will not make guarantees that you will see a specific improvement in a particular time period - if a child isn’t ready for change we can’t force that. Truly gentle approaches often take time, and involve laying foundations for change to happen when your child is developmentally ready.

We’ll work together on some realistic goals - and often, if things are challenging right now, sleeping “through the night” is a long term outcome, rather than a quick win.

I don’t use particular age-based routines or schedules, or teach the same settling strategies to everyone, or tell you when you should put your baby down for a nap and for how long, or when their bedtime should be based on how old they are. I do talk about the rhythms to your day, and look at ways to make your days flow more easily and be more enjoyable.

I want you to love spending time with your little one, not feeling like you need to spend your days focussed on their sleep.

I’m not going to use any strategies that involve leaving your baby to cry for any length of time, or not responding to their cues, or that encourage separation of you from them before both of you are ready.

I’m not going to tell you to stop feeding at night, or feeding to sleep, or safely sharing a bed with your baby if these are things that are working for you - I’m totally here for them.

If what you’ve been doing has stopped being sustainable or enjoyable for you, we can work together to gently shift things into a more manageable space.

Realistic expectations are so important - sometimes we can’t “fix” sleep, but I will always give you the time and space to talk things through and make suggestions of things we can change if there are possibilities there!