Im a sleep coach… But my baby wont sleep.

I’m a Sleep Coach… But My Baby Won’t Sleep

When I worked as a nanny and sleep trainer, before I had my son, I truly believed I had children’s sleep figured out. I felt confident that I knew how to help babies and children sleep better, and I had a high success rate with the families I worked with.

Parents would often ask how I managed to get their children to bed so easily when they themselves were spending hours trying. At the time, my answer felt simple: boundaries. It seemed like the obvious solution.

But I wasn’t a parent then. I was an outsider. I had no children of my own, and I slept at least eight hours a night.

Looking back now, I can see how much that mattered.

When I was pregnant with my son, I was still convinced I would have him in a routine and sleeping through the night by four months, and out of our room and into his own by six. After all, this was my work - I was a sleep coach.

What I hadn’t fully considered were two things. Firstly, many of the children I had worked with previously were either combination fed or exclusively formula fed. Secondly - and far more significantly - I hadn’t considered how birth, especially a traumatic birth, can affect both mother and baby, and how that can shape sleep in the months that follow.

I experienced a very traumatic birth, which left me with PTSD, postpartum anxiety, and severe sleep deprivation. I barely slept for nearly three days during labour and the period immediately after birth. In the months that followed, I felt like I was just existing.

Most days, I could barely string a sentence together. I felt as though I was floating through each day, wrapped in a bubble of pure love for my baby boy, while simultaneously feeling completely disoriented from exhaustion - almost like being constantly high from lack of sleep.

In the early weeks, his sleep wasn’t too difficult. But as so many parents know, the three-month regression arrived. Then the five-month regression. And then what felt like the six-to-ten-month regression - which, in reality, meant I was getting a maximum of two hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time.

I exclusively breastfed until six months. Once we introduced solids, we also introduced one bottle of formula before bed, in the hope that it might help him feel fuller for longer and sleep for slightly longer stretches. My son has always been off the charts for height, so hunger has never been far away. What I didn’t fully understand before becoming a mother was just how often breastfed babies naturally wake during the night.

By the time he turned one, I was completely at my wits’ end with sleep.

How could I, a sleep trainer, have a baby who wouldn’t sleep through the night? Not only that, but a baby who woke frequently and was sometimes awake for hours. I felt like an imposter.

I questioned how I could possibly continue working with clients if I couldn’t get my own baby to sleep. I hadn’t even tried sleep training him, and I wasn’t sure I believed in sleep training anymore. As I prepared to return to work, I genuinely wondered whether it was time to give up this part of my work altogether.

Around that time, I met up with a close friend whose child I had previously supported with sleep. I told her how I was feeling - how stuck I felt, how afraid I was to even try to improve my son’s sleep in case I failed, and how deeply that fear was affecting my confidence as a coach.

Her response changed everything.

She said, “The reason your clients work with you is because you help them believe they can do it. You guide them, support them, and cheer them on. You have your partner for support, but you don’t have a professional supporting you. If only you could look in the mirror and coach yourself the same way you coach others.”

That conversation was the lightbulb moment I needed.

I realised then that sleep training was never really the key - support was.

After that, I decided to change my entire ethos around my sleep work. I reframed what I had always called “sleep training” into something that felt far more aligned: sleep coaching.

I no longer wanted to offer promises of perfect sleepers or rigid timelines. Improved sleep - yes - but without harsh boundaries, strict rules, or one-size-fits-all approaches. My own experience had shown me that all children have completely different needs, and that a single approach simply isn’t right or fair for every family.

Today, I work with clients again with a deeper understanding and genuine empathy - with trust in my clients, and trust in myself. Not just as a sleep coach, but as a mother too.

And what I now know for sure is this:
support matters far more than perfection.