I recently received a testimonial from a lovely family whose life has been transformed for the better by a good night's sleep. Hearing that a child is more happy is one of the most common - and rewarding - things I hear after sleep training. It's so great that child and parents are now more rested and more happy! Here is what Oksana had to say about sleep training her daughter, Veronika:

"After almost a whole year of being without sleep at night and proper rest in the day time I felt physically worn out. I can’t thank Dawnn enough, she created a new daily routine and sleeping program for our baby and changed this situation completely. Our beautiful daughter now sleeps through the night and she became a much happier child.

Thank you so much Dawnn! We will highly recommend you to any parents who need a sleeping consultant."

Learn more about how I can help you - with sleep, potty training or more - from my services page.

Today I wanted to pass on some information from one of my clientsabout her business selling the Arbonne skincare line. As a mom, she fell in love with the products and decided to take her passion into a business. Here's what she had to say about the clean-rinsing Arbonne baby line that solved skin issues with her sons:

"The baby lotion worked on my youngest when nothing seemed to soothe his dry skin.  The diaper cream is great for diaper rash as well as eczema.  All three of my boys suffer from eczema and I was using a steroid cream to combat it, which I didn’t like, now all I need is Arbonne’s Diaper cream and it disappears fast!"

Check out Kim's website or Facebook page for more about the ABC Baby Care set as well as products for the whole family. Arbonne products are healthy, botanically based and inspired by nature. 

I will be taking part in Modern Mama's Essential Series on Sleep on December 7th at 10am in Vancouver. The breakfast event will join together moms to meet and learn about sleep in infants and toddlers. For many parents, sleep is a dream - but it doesn't have to be! I will share some information on infant sleep and will be answering questions on-site.

You can bring your kids along to the event - on-site nannies will be available so that you can listen to the talk.

Wednesday December 7
10am – 12pm
$35
$30 Membership card holder
Nanny Service $10

Rocky Mountain Flatbread
1876 West 1st Ave

Register for the event here.

Criteria is as follows:

• Age group 1 - 6-12 months.
• Age group 2 - 12-18 months.
• Must live between these boundaries: Main - UBC grounds, 72nd - downtown core.
• Must be willing to meet at your home on the 16th of December 2011.
• Please include your name, email address and contant number in your email submission.

If you have a child or know someone with an on going sleep issue that is affecting the family, and would be interested in taking part and getting a solution for free, please grab your camera and submit your sleep story by Dec 2nd 2011, via youtube link to bellytobabyhood@gmail.com

Please demonstrate on camera the issues are facing and someone will contact you.

I recently received an update from one of my clients who wanted to share how great her son Jack continues to sleep, more than a year past when we worked together. Here is what she had to say:

"You helped our family out when my son, Jack, was 8 1/2 months old. He wouldn't sleep more than 30 minutes at a time. Your sleep plan worked so amazingly and he just turned 2 and STILL naps twice a day, goes to bed by 7:30pm AND sleeps through the night for 11-12 hours!! Highly unusual, I know, but he seems to still need it.  Thanks again for making our son a better sleeper, a happier child and for letting us get sleep. We greatly appreciate it and I tell everyone about our sleep consultant!."

Such wonderful news! The skills you learn to help your child sleep help you have the confidence to continue to help your child sleep well as they grow and their sleep needs change. Teething, illnesses and growth may cause temporary sleep regressions, but the same skills should help you get back on track. If you find yourself in a sleep regression you don't know how to get out of, whether a new or past client, consider one of my Quick Fix packages to give you some quick tips to get back on track.

I just got an update from Marie about life after sleep training her youngest boy, Julien. Julien is the third child in the family, but the first to love being in bed thanks to his early sleep coaching. Many children who learn sleep skills early are ones who find their beds a welcome experience as they grow up. Here's what Marie had to say:

"I really want to thank you for your help with Julien's sleep training! Julien is 6 months now and he is a very good sleeper....a lot because of the sleep training. He sleeps until 6:30-7:00 every morning and takes very good naps. I am so happy to have been able, because of your advice, to extend his naps. He still often wake up after 40 minutes but falls back asleep within 5 minutes. Unlike my 2 other sons, he likes to be in his bed awake... maintly, because I teach him to fall asleep by himself without any props. Often, I don't realized in the morning that he is awake... I just see him on the baby monitor looking around!!!  I also know when I put him in his bed around 12h00 that I have a good 2h00... which is fantastic!!!!

Your advice was so precious. You also gave me confidence that I was doing the right thing... and this was very important for me. I have now a confortable routine with Julien but I am also very flexible with this routine. He was sick at the beginning of October and I had to give him milk during the night (he was so congested...) but as soon as he got better... I did some sleep training and he was again sleeping through the night within 2 nights!!!! I am a happy, rested and confident mother... a big thanks to you!!!!"

This is what I hear the most often from my clients, and what makes me so happy as a sleep consultant and parenting coach: the ability to give parents confidence.

The kids are sharing one bedroom while my office is also doubling up as playroom and living area. With no roof on the top floor, we can't put the heat on, so it's been an interesting experience. A bit like camping!

Here's how my crazy day looks right now: I get up with Gabe and Kenya, put together their lunch kits and drop them off at school, go and see Hendrix at Fort Langley, come home and work, pick the kids up, go back to Fort Langley, make dinner, bathe Hendrix and then leave, come home and sort out the other two and then put them to bed. It's lots of running around, but hoepfully it will be worth it when its done.

Have you survived the chaos of home renovations with a family?

Our family reached another milestone this year, with my daughter Kenya starting school. We now have two kids in full-time school. Here she is with a friend on her first day of school:

We've had a very busy summer, going on camping trips with the family and also starting up some renovations - more on that to come!

You can view my services here or contact me here. You can also learn more about sleep and FAQ on my sleep services here.

If you have more questions after this video, or our written FAQ, please contact me and I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have before deciding to use my services.

The post gives you some answers on...

• knowing when your child is ready for a 'big bed'
• knowing when not to make the change
• how to make the transition
• what kinds of problems to expect

If you have more questions, let me know!

As the article states, there is a new generation afoot about living life with baby - not stopping life entirely because of baby. We take our children on trips, we take them camping, and we take them outdoors. But taking baby requires a few extra steps, and a few concessions to comfort, as the article details.

As I detail in page 2 of the article, our 'camping' is with an RV, with allows us to mimic Hendrix's home environment where there is little light at night and a white noise machine. If you opt for a tent, you should do whatever you can to mimic your home environment, whether that be bringing along home sheets for the playpen, using the sleep sac, or having a battery-operated white noise machine.

Life Before Sleep...

"My son was a lot fussier in the day and none of us were getting any sleep. My husband and I took turns on the weekend running in to give Nolan his soother."

On Getting to Sleep...

"Letting Nolan cry at night wasn't bad at all because he went through the cycle of crying, flopping around, babbling just as you explained he would. We saw immedieate results and that assured us we were doing the right thing for him. Letting him cry during the day to extend his naps has been more difficult because he gets that initial 40 minutes of sleep to take the edge off. He cries a lot harder during the day and I find it very emotional."

Life With Sleep is Now...

"I feel like a new person. We have our evenings back. It's so nice to put Nolan to bed awake and know that he will happily fall asleep within a few minutes for the night."

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Though naps are still a bit troublesome for Nolan, I'm confident that his parents are taking the right steps to give Nolan the skills he needs to master his new sleep skills. Most babies, and parents too!, find nap training a little more difficult, but sleep does beget sleep and one day Nolan will just 'get it' and life will greatly improve.

This first story is from a client who had twins, which is always quite a bit harder on the parents (as you can expect)! As you know from my earlier post, newborns can be taught sleep skills right away. "Sleep training" is more about breaking sleep crutches and re-instating a routine and sleep schedules, though you can start a routine and sleep schedule at any age. In this case, I was able to help the mom help her 8-week old twins learn to sleep for longer periods of time.

On Life Before Sleep

"Life before sleep training was exhausting. My twins were 8 weeks old and rarely slept for more than 3 hours at a time. We had officially gone through all the family we could recruit for help. We bought a couple books, but they just seemed to leave me with more questions than answers. One of them had some stats that scared me....

Time frames that twins started to rest for 5 consecutive hours:

7% less than 10 weeks
22% 10 to 12 weeks
41% 3 to 6 months
19% 6 months to 1 year
7% more than 1 year

At that point, I decided I wasn't going to magically beat the odds. I needed help."

On Sleep Training and Life With Sleep

"A friend reccomended Dawnn to me. The first week involved quite a bit of crying. My husband questioned my efforts a couple times wondering if this was really a good idea. Although there was very little peace in the house before, it seemed even less at the start of the sleep training process. But Dawn had said it would get worse before it got better, so I was prepared for some resistance.

I'm happy to report that it didn't take long for my husband to change his tune. After 1 week, the girls were noticably easier to manage (day and night!). After 2 weeks my house was running like a well oiled machine. It wasn't long before they were both sleeping through the night. At 3 months of age, my twins go to bed at 7pm, have a quick dream feed at 10:30pm, and sleep right through to 7am. Not only have we beaten the odds, we stomped on that 5 hour barrier.

With a full nights sleep, I'm a happier, better mother!"

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It was great to be able to help this family get to sleep at this age - the babies were growing and developing well and just transitioning into a different developmental stage of sleep. It's a great time to set up those routines and schedules - to respond to your tired crying baby by teaching them how to sleep!

Life Before Sleep Was...

"Unpredictable, as Tayo would sleep for 20 min to 1 hr at most (day), and 2 - 3 hrs (at night), it was difficult to get him to sleep in his crib. He would need to be swaddled tight, and nursed completely asleep before we could lay him down, which meant that only mom could lay him in his crib."

On Getting to Sleep...

"I started the process feeling VERY anxious and tentative about how the process would work. I was skeptical and felt like the bad habits that we had formed as a family would take a very long time to break. I then started to see progress (very small increments) and began to feel hopeful and more in control. I had a couple anxious moments again as we started to work on daytime naps, then began to feel confident as Tayo started to lay down awake and not fight so hard to go to sleep."

Life With Sleep is Now...

"Enjoyable. We like to get up now, and feel happy about play, meal and bedtime. We even feel confident to make little changes throughout the day, like having a "sleep in" together once and a while, and moving the nap/bedtime schedule. We are still new as confident sleepers, but feel excited about the changes that we have made, and feel like we are helping our son learn that sleep is a healing process, not one that he needs to be fearful about."

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A wonderful view on the sleep process! Tayo is now sleeping well at night and for naps and both Mom and Dad have the confidence they need to deal with any wake-ups that do happen. Great work!

Telephone consultation hours:

Eastern Timezone: Early Am (6.30am / 7.30am)
Local Western Timezone: Evening (6.30pm, 7.30pm and 8.30pm)

I will post revised hours in October.

The cotton fabric outer can be filled with silk floss to make the sleep sack warmer in colder times. This converts the sack from 1.0 tog to 2.5 tog. The sack comes in 2 sizes for NB - 6m and 6 - 36 months, which is quite flexible. The silk filling is hypoallergenic, which is great for sensitive babies. 

Silkberry Baby also sells a great lovey, a cuddly bunny pillow also with removable silk filling. The pillow is great to snuggle with and is chemical-free and hypoallergenic. I've been using the little pillow with Hendrix as part of his sleep routine.

If you want to buy the sleep sack or the pillow, you can use the following coupon code (in capitals) for 15% off!

Coupon code: CHEEKY

Here's an old clients of mine:

"I tried to breastfeed my husband's arm one night, thinking that it was the baby!"

I'm looking for funny sleep deprivation stories as inspiration, so please do share your stories!

The segment takes us into a real-life and common scenario where a typically good sleeper hits a regression where bedtime becomes difficult and there can be difficult wake-ups during the night as well. There's a recording of the child begging to sleep with Mommy during the night, which is never a fun situation to be facing.

In this situation, the child is 2.5years old and has just suffered some ear infections, possibly leading to this regression. As you hear when I come on at about the 5 minute mark, share that you can't change the fact that they're waking in the night, you never want to change something, but what you can do is change their expectations of what you'll do through the night.

Listen to the interview here.