Our Experience With A Sleep Consultant

Our experience with sleep since having children has been .. rough .. to say the least. I’d find myself day-dreaming about what it would be like to sleep more than 4 or 5 hours consecutively without waking up – was that even possible? I mean, once upon a time, I do remember falling asleep at night and not waking back up again until morning – but was that just a fairytale, maybe a fuzzy made-up memory?

In a nutshell (because, it’s actually a long story), Braelynn ended up co-sleeping with us from the day we brought her home from the hospital until she was about 3 1/2 years old. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t know how to sleep in her own bed – she was a fabulous napper & always napped in her own bed. We also always put her in her own bed every single night & she’d fall asleep on her own. She’d just always end up in our bed half way thru the night. Braelynn is a snuggler – she simply loves to snuggle up & be close to us.

Breaking that habit was (and continues to be) a huge struggle though. With Leander on the way, we knew she could no longer climb into bed with us in the middle of the night, so we started into the process of teaching her to stay asleep in her own bed, in her own room, all night long. Needless to say, a year later, it’s still something we’re working on – it’s better – but still a work-in-progress (for example: sometimes she’s so stealthy that she sneaks into our bed & we don’t even realize it until we wake up in the morning).

We knew we wanted to establish a different pattern with Leander. It’s funny – you’d think that with “baby number two”, we’d be a little more confident as parents. But the exact opposite seemed to be the case – how did we train Braelynn to sleep in her own bed for naps? How did we get her to sleep in her own bed for at least the first half of the night? We simply couldn’t remember! And so we’d try different things, but with no real plan in place, Leander ended up co-sleeping with us.

There was just one problem: Braelynn was a snuggler & thrived sleeping all curled up next to us – but Leander was not. At the age when Braelynn’s sleep patterns naturally lengthened and she’d only wake 1-2 times a night to nurse – Leander’s sleep patterns got worse & he started waking every 1-2 hours a night to nurse.

Let’s just say, this Mama very quickly realized that there’s a reason they use sleep deprivation as a means of torture.

Enter: our experience with a sleep consultant.

I had been introduced to the concept of a sleep consultant a few years ago, but after a little research, learned that their services were incredibly expensive & simply way out of reach for us. A few months before Leander was born, I discovered another sleep consultant on Instagram & started following her. Her name is Becca & she lives in Virginia – her business is called Little Z’s Sleep Consulting. She was so sweet to follow on Instagram – I quickly fell in love with her & her family & her claim that sleep is not a luxury.

As much as I loved following her & believed in what she said, I still thought that we would be able to figure out the sleeping thing on our own. We had done it with Brealynn after all, we should be able to figure it out with Leander, right?

When Leander was about 10 weeks old, I hit my first sleep-deprivation wall of not being able to function during the day. I simply could not think, I felt like I was in such a fog. And I was scared: wedding season was looming & I worried that I wouldn’t be able to function at the level I needed to serve my brides & grooms on their wedding day as their photographer. Not even to mention the fact that Leander was not napping more than 20-30 minutes at a time, and as much as I tried, I could not put him down at night – which meant that I had zero time to sit down at my computer & run my business (let alone edit an entire wedding). Things were getting real very quickly & I knew we needed a change.

The “straw that broke the camels back” was the day that it took me 45 minutes to lay Leander down for a nap (one that he only slept 30 minutes for). During those 45 minutes of me working to put Leander down, Braelynn was off occupying her 4-year-old self in whatever way she wanted. On this particular day, I came out of Leander’s bedroom & found Braelynn in the bathroom, with the scissors, giving our dog a haircut.

Something needed to change & fast. We went ahead and bought Becca’s 4-5 month sleep e-coaching. Whereas traditional, one-on-one sleep coaching is still just as expensive as when I was first introduced to the concept, Becca had put together a “DIY” approach – a recorded session and workbook that laid out all the fundamentals of teaching a baby to sleep both thru the night & for naps. I’m a “DIY” person anyways, so this was perfect for me. Derrick & I both watched the recordings & following the haircut incident, we dove in head-first.

We followed Becca’s plan exactly & instantly saw results. I cried. I simply could not believe it. Leander went from waking up every 1-2 hours every night and sleeping in our bed, to sleeping 11-12 hours every night in his own bed (waking up once to nurse). He went from only napping 20-30 minutes at a time, to taking glorious 1 1/2 -2 hour naps.

Not only did we get our lives back – suddenly I had time to run my business, edit photos, blog, and answer emails, but I started to sleep at night again too. After going 4 months of only sleeping 1-2 hour stretches, sleeping for several hours in a row was glorious. The fog lifted & I was able to not just survive, but face each day with renewed energy & excitement.

Leander turned into a different baby too. He has always been a happy boy, but once he started really sleeping, his level of happy/contentedness rose to a whole new level. And suddenly, we’re all a much happier family.

There are so many benefits to our new reality, but one of the highlights was that we were able to go on vacation & have literally the best time, because we all slept so good every night! Yes! Even in hotel rooms where we were all sleeping in the same room!

So, what made our experience so successful? Was it magic? Coincidence?

• Derrick & I were both on the same page with the whole process. Since the “e-coaching” we bought was a pre-recording, we both could watch it on our own time, and then go back & re-watch certain segments when we weren’t sure what we were supposed to do. The fact that Derrick was 100% on-board & all-hands-on-deck-helping made the whole experience so much better! It wasn’t something that only I knew how to do & he wasn’t involved or something he really didn’t know much about – we were all-in together & I think that was absolutely key.
• We had a plan! Every new parent longs for an “instruction manual” – and suddenly we had one – for sleep! We had not only step-by-step instructions for what to do every night as a bedtime routine, but we had answers for what to do when things went “wrong” – what to do when he would wake up in the middle of the night & the steps for how to set ourselves up for success. It was invaluable.

It’s now been 2 months of sleep & I literally can’t even imagine what would have happened if we had continued in our exhausting habits.

I cannot recommend Becca & Little Z’s Sleep Consulting enough! I’ll be honest, I was scared to “sleep train” Leander. As much as I really wanted something different than our experience with Braelynn, in my head, I was simply terrified & overwhelmed by the amount of work that “sleep training” would be. I knew that the first few nights would be rough – but I also knew that I literally couldn’t get less sleep than I was getting at the moment. I knew that the end result (assuming that it worked) would be incredible & that I’d wish that I’d done it sooner. But I was so scared to jump in & start.

I was worried that it wouldn’t work. I was worried that Derrick wouldn’t be 100% on board. I was worried to dive in and then backslide back into co-sleeping. Additionally, the timing of everything was tricky to maneuver – I knew we needed a solid 2 weeks at home in order to lay the proper foundation, and looking at the calendar, we simply did not have 2 full weeks at home (it’s summer after all & that means weekends at the Lake House). So, I had every excuse in the book.

I’ll never forget calling Derrick that Tuesday morning in tears though – telling him that it just took me 45 minutes to lay Leander down for a nap & that Braelynn cut the dog’s hair while I was tied up with the baby. He put his foot down: “We have to start tonight.” And we did. And it was the best decision we’ve ever made.

Every week, Becca posts success stories on her social media accounts, and every time I would read another successful account, I would fall into wishful thinking: Could we be the next success story? Or is it too good to be true? In fact, over the first few days, when Leander took to sleeping like a champ & almost instantly learned how to self-soothe & sleep on his own, I honestly did not believe it. I braced for the regression – it couldn’t really stick, could it?

Well, it’s been almost 2 months now of wonderful, blissful sleep. I used to simply believe that my children were horrible sleepers & that I was destined not to sleep again until they were at least teenagers. I’m happy to report that those statements were lies & I no longer believe them. I am forever grateful to Becca & the principals she has taught us (as parents) and Leander in laying the foundation for sleep.