I would like to take this space to write a bit about my approach to Infant and Toddler sleep, so that you come to understand what it is that we will be working on and with and know for sure that this  is for you and your family. 

Sleep is the most natural thing. When we were in our mother's womb, we were drifting in and out of sleep all the time. Naturally.

But when it comes to infant sleep, we have moved far away from this naturalness. As a culture, we seem to have forgotten how infants/toddlers and children actually sleep and are meant to sleep. This information is not any longer being passed down through the ancestoral line and finding it hard to trust ourselves and our intuition, we turn to social media and experts for advice. 

Due to our cultural conditioning of the past century we now seem to believe that babies need to be trained to sleep (through the night), or that we need to let them cry untill they fall asleep, alone and by themselves, so that they learn how to self soothe. We have come to believe that some sleep associations are bad and babies should not be too dependent on them.

I'm so happy to see that research is coming in where it is made absolutely clear that is best for babies to be rocked and soothed in someone's arms when they cry. And on the other hand, I wish a research wouldn't be necesarry and we would all know that, because we do. Deep down, we know. 

I believe there is a way to honour a baby's biological need for connection and attachment while taking care of our own rest and wellbeing at the same time. It truly doesn't have to be either/or. 

 

Before I became a mother, my trajectory of life looked very different. Having grown up with younger siblings I thought that it was normal and good to let a baby cry itself to sleep. When I got older, I adviced my friends who had babies to not always respond so fast to their crying baby. I'm so happy they didn't listen!
I thought it would make the baby too dependent and they should learn how to be independent, right? I didn't know where those ideas came from, let alone was I interested in investigating them. I can see now that it was my unconscious conditioning that was making me so righteous. 

All this changed when I became a mother. Having the experience of having a child myself, put things in a different light. The love for my child made me want to be there for her. No matter what. When my daughter was born, nothing short of a miracle had happened and now this precious being was in my arms. I knew that this little human was to be respected and that this was my main job. I knew that I would feel good as a parent if I would listen to my own inuition, more than the countless voices of others. And it was hard, and overwhelming, and I found it especially difficult to seem to go against the grain with this, feeling the need to explain myself over and over. 

 

I felt empowered by messages of other mothers who shared similar experiences. Although I was tired, I was never going to leave my baby alone to 'cry it out', or sleep train her. My bond with her is the most important thing in my life. 
 

This is the basis of my work: To empower parents to get more sleep while looking at their individual situation as a whole and put the biologically normal and necessary attachment needs of your child at the forefront.