While parents with big kids are stressing about the first days of school, parents with little ones are stressing about not getting enough sleep! In that first year of life parents lose about 42 days of sleep! How we survive that – I will never know, but we do!

One of the most common things I hear from parents – mom’s, in particular, is “I just can’t stand to hear my baby cry.” Maybe you can relate. For some moms, their baby’s cry creates so much anxiety, it is too much to handle. When you feel that way, you do everything you can to not let your child cry. I get it, as a mom we want to do all that we can to keep our children happy. It is hard to come to the realization, that we will never be able to protect them from everything and that they are going to be unhappy sometimes.

If you experience anxiety when your child cries, I encourage you to seek professional help through Postpartum support, a therapist or your doctor. They can help you work through the feelings that get triggered by your child’s cries.

When it comes to sleep, that typically means that mom feeds or rocks the baby to sleep because that is the easiest path to sleep because the child does not fuss. Unfortunately, what that does is creates a child who does not know how to self-soothe and fall asleep on their own.

In the first few months when the baby sleeps all the time, it is likely that your baby falls asleep eating. As your baby gets to be closer to four months it is a good time to start altering feeding time so he doesn’t associate eating with sleeping. That means you feed him when he wakes from nap. It works really well because the baby is hungry, awake, happy and has the energy to nurse or drink from the bottle.

You can move to that change gradually by feeding less and less before nap time and taking the breast or bottle out of their mouth before they are completely asleep. For bedtime that means feeding them before they are ready to sleep, burping them and then placing them in their sleep space to drift off to sleep on their own. When you start this process early, many families never have to go through the tough sleep training that comes in the later months if the child never learned how to self-soothe to sleep.

For parents that struggle with hearing their baby cry and are struggling with putting their child to bed or are dealing with frequent wake-ups, a sleep coach can help work through those challenges. When working with parents, we come up with a plan for the whole day that allows for the child to be ready for bed and sleep all night.

Here is what one parent shared after working with Kathy:

“I was so sleep deprived as a mother of a one-year old that woke every 2 hours, I was at my breaking point. Lucky for me, I met Kathy. She told me that my son could be sleeping for 11-12 hours each night. At first, I thought that was absolutely impossible as I had tried white noise, sleeping on the floor by his crib, rocking or nursing him to sleep every time he woke up, co-sleeping, as well as weighted sleep sacks, and nothing worked.

Kathy devised a sleep plan that catered to my son’s age, temperament, and personality. Within three nights and minimal crying my son started sleeping through the night for 11 hours straight! He is a happier baby and has developed a life-long skill that will set him up for success. We would have never been able to do this without Kathy’s coaching, support, and knowledge. Our whole family thanks her!” ~Sarah and Chris

You too can have success like Sarah and Chris. Sleep problems don’t just usually go away unless you do something different. With coaching, you can make changes that will provide the results you are looking for!

Reach out for a free 20-minute conversation to see how we can help!