What is Sleep Education?
Have you arrived in the right place? You have if:
- You KNOW sleep training is not for you but you also do not want to just suffer through it either
- You want to follow your child’s cues and be respectful and answer to their needs
- You want to find balance between respecting your child’s needs and making sure you are also valued and cared for in the process
- You may have been wary of considering working with a sleep support person in the first place as you do not want anything imposed on you
- You aren’t looking for a quick fix and want to help nurture a true love for sleep, and help your child know that sleep is a safe place to go and a safe place to remain
- You are open to the idea that at such a young age, we shouldn’t consider training a human to do an act such as sleeping without our support when they rely on us for every single other act (feeding, diapering, hygiene, movement, language acquisition etc.)
- Though difficult at times, you are open to the idea that parenting doesn’t end at sundown, that nighttime parenting is equally as important as daytime parenting
- You want to cope and make it all easier in the realm of all of the above!
If this is you, welcome!!
I hope this list does not overwhelm you, but I suppose if you have continued on, you have found the right place!
The Gentle Sleep Support Intuition Parenting offers is TRULY gentle, the opposite of sleep training, does not promote any quick-fixes/training/crying-it-out of any sort, and is completely respectful of you and baby. The only guarantee I will make you (as opposed to a fix in a certain number of days for example) is that what I support as a Sleep Educator is completely gentle and guided by your family’s values.
Why do we need sleep education?
I find that sleep is one of the biggest topics everyone seems to ask and care about. You will be asked, waiting in line at the grocery store, “oh how sweet, is he sleeping through the night for you??” as soon as the baby is a few months old!
A “good baby” has somehow become synonymous with a baby who sleeps well, for long periods of time, falls asleep easily and/or without needing support. We also tend to see many TV shows and movies that portray very young babies being plopped into cribs, needing no support whatsoever to fall asleep, and sleeping for lengthy periods of time. Everything around us perpetuates a misled expectation for infant sleep, and then in our difficult early weeks and months, constantly being asked about it in a very leading manner and never really having the answer the person seems to be seeking, leaves parents wondering what they are doing wrong and why their baby isn’t fitting this apparent norm. Let that snowball by then being too shy to even admit your true family sleep status to anyone, even to your MD perhaps, and that leaves us all having no clue what normal infant sleep behaviour looks like.
It is incredible that resetting false expectations often seems to be half the battle, and when true infant sleep norms are understood, we breathe a sigh of relief that nothing is wrong and that we aren’t breaking our babies! Then what is left are many ways to help everyone cope better with the current state of sleep and to gently nudge things in the direction we hope to move towards for the entire family.
As a Certified Infant Sleep Educator, I do not use the word sleep training, the belief is not held that these tiny humans need to be trained to sleep properly. The manner in which infants sleep is the way it is for very specific evolutionary and biological safety reasons. We learn to trust the infant rather than try to train them to meet skewed expectations. It is truly a spectacular, honest, and relieving way of looking at sleep that releases us from attempting to meet unreasonable expectations and rather really enjoy our infants and follow their cues. We can be there for them and help sleep, and all of its associations can be positive experiences, as we parent our kids to sleep just as we parent them through every other function in their early life. There are various age-appropriate tactics that can be applied in a loving, supportive, and respectful manner, to help our children fall asleep.
What will we cover together?
A developmental approach is taken to support optimal bonding and growth which is very different from the behaviourist approach that many sleep trainers take. We will cover:
- The science behind infant/maternal sleep and with this information, you will be offered the tools needed to create balance around those facts
- The biological sleep needs of infants through toddlers, and the developmental milestones that wreak havoc on their sleep patterns
- Healthy and safe sleep habits for the entire family
- Personalized sleep suggestions for you to achieve your family sleep goals
Like in all aspects of Intuition Parenting Support Services, what this offers is the space for you as parents to follow your instincts and intuition when it comes to your new baby.
If you aren’t sure whether my style of Gentle Sleep Support benefit fits your personal values, please make use of our free 10 minute sleep consult.
Gentle Sleep Consulting
Intuition Parenting’s Sleep Support is tailored to your family. We do not push or suggest anything that clashes with your values. None of our suggestions include sleep training or crying it out, at all, and that is a guarantee!
Rather, we work on managing expectations, creating goals, creating a menu of tools to help your child sleep, understanding upcoming common developmental milestones and “Sleep Regressions” and how to cope with them, identifying the sweet spots to look forward to, and planning how to find balance in your family.
During our one hour call we can go over any questions about the current state of sleep in your home, whether it be touching base on what is normal for your child’s current developmental stage, or tips and tricks to gently and respectfully nudge sleep in a direction you are hoping.
You will submit your current questions, worries, and inquiries in an intake email so that I may make the best use of our time.
As a Certified Infant Sleep Educator, part of our time together includes pertinent sleep education, tailored to the stage you are in, and may include:
- Infant Sleep: Expectations vs. Reality
- Normal sleep patterns, and why waking is GOOD!
- Gentle tools and strategies to Parent to Sleep, let’s broaden the menu of choices and the people who can help
- Ensuring safe sleep
- Tricky times & sweet spots to be expected and how to cope
- How to set up daytime support systems to handle nighttime parenting
- How to support healthy family balance
- Creating a nursery that will actually work for you
The process is as follows:
- We conduct an assessment of your child/family’s sleep with use of the Sleep and Wellness Pre-Assessment Form, with an in-depth review of the Pre-Assessment Form carried out by the Certified Infant Sleep Educator prior to the consultation session
- One hour session together:
- Review the Sleep and Wellness Pre-Assessment Form
- Ask for a verbal overview of how things are going, and what your goals are
- Provide sleep education for your baby/toddler’s developmental stage
- Discuss your sleep concerns
- Devise a strategy to move forward with
- A summary of the actionable items is emailed to you after our consult time, which also includes any pertinent handouts (such as Eating for Sleep) and a copy of the 100 slide powerpoint deck packed with great information for future reference such as upcoming tricky times and sweet spots.
Value: $119 virtual or $139 in-home
Testimonials for Gentle Sleep Consulting
A beautiful thank you message arrived from a Gentle Sleep Consulting client and she ever so kindly offered permission for me to share it.
This is a wonderful testimonial to the aspects of this work that ease your mind about your child’s sleep and take the weight of worry off your shoulders.
With this style of sleep support you feel validated, affirmed, and seen.
Often there are many sleep improvements with all of the small gentle tweaks we can make, but this testimonial in particular helps us know that we sometimes can feel so much better just going through the process and learning the norms, the science, and that you are not alone.
Thank you so much to this client for sharing her words with all of us.
Listen with sound on to hear her beautiful testimonial, but if you can’t I will transcribe it here as well.
“I just really want to say thank you for everything you do.
You helped us SO much, and the support you gave us is so valuable to me and makes all the difference. And for me it’s money well spent.
I think you are really awesome at what you do, and I hope you get the chance to help lots of other parents to realize what realistic sleep expectations are because I feel like if we could learn to accept things like sleep with babies and toddlers and all those other really hard things, if we could learn to accept it, and not try to change it so much, people might be happier.
I know it took a big weight off my shoulders to find out what is normal with babies’ sleep, and knowing that that stuff is backed up by science, knowing that you are not alone, knowing that it’s normal, makes really a lot of difference especially in a world where we are bombarded by information from other people but also from the internet, especially regarding sleep. It makes things super confusing and super scary when you have a new baby. And it is already scary enough.
So I feel like people like you need to keep doing what you are doing and I hope people really start turning towards things like that instead of sleep training.”
“Oh my gosh, we can’t thank you enough.
Your visit left us in such a great mood.
Every home needs you, I swear.
My husband turned to me and said, “Julia is such a good listener”.
You sure are. You are so supportive & reassuring.”
“I can’t say enough good things about Julia.
Some of the most honest and best parenting & life advice from one of the most sweetest person I know.
Julia’s message is absolutely for everyone, whatever your circumstances, and it’s easy to see she puts her whole heart into this. ❤️”
NEW OFFERING!! A new service offering that pairs so wonderfully with in-home Gentle Sleep Support is Reiki Energy Healing that can be practiced on yourselves and your little one(s) during my visit if you wish. Please take a look at the link to read about the many benefits this can offer you that would support you so well during this time of difficult sleep which can take a toll on everyone in the home.