Hey, I am Amanda. I am so excited you are here.  

What I am about to tell you isn’t a fluffy introduction into how great motherhood is for me, but it is the truth. I would appreciate it if you read my whole story to give yourself some perspective of where I come from and why I do this.  

I would not say my story is typical of how I got here, or maybe it is? HA. But it is unique to me. I never planned to have babies, in fact, I did not want children. As the universe would have it, my path has been filled with twists and turns leading me to right here with you. 

I became a first-time mom in 2019, and boy, was my life turned upside down. I didn’t know how to integrate this new soul into my life; nor did I know how to integrate the new person I had become through this journey into motherhood. My thoughts, my world, my perceptions were unrecognizable to me. I quickly came down from a flood of oxytocin into the depths of my own despair. I was riddled with post-partum anxiety and depression, recovering from an emergency c-section, and on top of that, was learning to breastfeed and taking care of a newborn baby. It seemed day after day, my daughter’s sleep got worse. As I moved to different dark corners of the house to breast feed her to sleep, my world got darker and darker. Even in the moments of her sleeping, and when I say moments- I mean MOMENTS; I would be lost in my internal world of suffering reading every blog post, every Facebook article, doing frantic google searches about baby sleep. Everything was conflicting and everything felt WRONG.  I joined every group I could, to try and get some relief, but came up lost on what to do. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing except me. Weeks went by, my daughter Elle was sleeping maybe 25 minutes day or night and I was crying most of the day as a result. I was running a business at the time and was riddled with stress and anxiety. How could my life continue like this?  

I decided on a google search at 3am to fill out a consultation for a sleep consultant. My anxiety skyrocketed again. What have I done? I can’t even get my own baby to sleep and now I am going to let her cry and take a risk on her getting worse sleep? Can it get worse? 

A week later I had a call with the sleep consultant. I set up a night to begin sleep training as soon as she could, which was not soon enough. I was tired and could not handle waiting or the anticipation of the unknown.  

The night came to do sleep training and I had the pamphlet of information I was handed and a intermittent check on your baby for comfort plan to get through the initial crying to get my daughter to sleep. An hour into the sleep training as I listened to her cry I told myself I could not go back on this. I could not do this to her nor I again. I had to make this work, whether I believed it was going to work or not. It took me 2 hours and 15 minutes to get my 4mo old daughter to sleep that night. It was painful and it was hard. We had a very rough night together. We both awoke in the morning, tired, groggy, grumpy, but steadfast in our attempts to do this thing. I would not say my sleep was any better the first night as I don't think she nor I knew exactly what we were supposed to be doing. But there was some moment on day two when I went out to my porch after I laid Elle down for a nap and cried. I could hear her crying from inside, and then suddenly... IT STOPPED. Three minutes of crying and she fell asleep. I cried again, but this time from RELIEF. “Oh my God, it's working,” I said aloud. It was my first moment of hope. My first moment of relief in 4 months that I could have some space, that I could have some relief from the never-ending demands that motherhood brings. With consistency and observation, we continued through our days, I had a few calls with the sleep consultant and could email one time per day if I had questions. The support was not ideal, but it was something with structure. While sleep training had worked and was working, it was not fast enough, it was too hard, and too nuanced. Filled with uncertainty, I continued. I eventually got my daughter dialed in, sleeping consistently and predictably. I felt so lucky, so rested, so certain in my days. Just that small amount of relief of certainty in my day changed my world. I vowed to myself that if I ever met a parent struggling even a fraction of what I was, that I would help them- without hesitation.  

I did. I helped my friends, strangers, coworkers, and random text messages from friends of friends. I helped over 20 babies get to sleep over the next 3 years just through sharing my story with others. While sleep training worked for me, my experience was less than ideal. This type of endeavor takes a lot of 1 on 1 support for it to work, and I didn’t have that.  I knew I had to do things differently than what I had experienced if people were going to have success.  I intuitively changed the sleep plan I had received to fit each family I worked with. I learned that the more attention I gave each family, the more we could learn from these little souls. I was never taught in my experience with a sleep consultant that this process is fluid and very individualized. Just as babies are humans and so different from one another, so is their sleep.  So I began teaching others, I began trying to understand baby behavior to interpret what they need to customize every approach for each baby, and it worked! Faster and faster, each baby got to sleep. Faster and faster each mom or dad I worked with felt lucky to have some relief. 

Sleep truly has been such a gift to me and to so many others.  Babies have just kept coming to me, referral after referral. Finally, I decided to surrender to the messages, giving this GIFT to others is what I am meant to do in this moment in time. I feel it every time I talk to a new family, or every time I receive a text message from a random number.  

I am HONORED to work with so many families that decided bravely and in deep trust, to take this step with me to give their families THE GIFT OF SLEEP.   

If your story is similar, different, or you have questions. I want to talk to you. This journey of being a parent can be a lonely one, filled with confusion and not enough solid support. If you are struggling with your child’s sleep, let me help you, let me guide you, let me hold space for something that is so challenging but worth it.