A Letter to New Parents
Dear New Parents,
So you just brought a sweet little baby into the world, and you’re experiencing all kinds of emotions. You waited a long 9 months wondering who he’s going to look like, what color her hair and eyes will be, what his personality will be like, if she’ll be healthy. And maybe you’ve already started thinking about the future too. Will he be into sports like his mom? Will she be a math whiz like her dad? Will he like to read like grandpa? Will she be outgoing like grandma? But in those moments when you meet your baby for the first time, your heart swells with pride and love for a tiny human you just met, and you are just blown away with how much love is in your heart.
Let me offer a little bit of advice that is going to seem cliché: take things slow and give yourself some grace. This time goes by so quickly. Enjoy that new little person and get to know them. You’ll learn this cry means hungry, that one means diaper change, the other one means I’m tired. Forget about a clean house; order takeout as much as you like; it’s ok to let the laundry pile up; it’s ok to say no to visitors if you’re not feeling up to it; sleep when the baby sleeps. You need time to recover and so does your baby. And speaking of sleep…
Who doesn’t love sleep? I know I do! So when you love sleep so much, those first few weeks are quite a shock to your mind and body. One of the things that can plague a parent’s mind, whether they’re expecting their first or their fifth child, is if their baby is going to be a good sleeper. Now yes, some of that can depend on your baby’s personality, if they have reflux, etc. But a lot of sleep challenges with infants are behavioral – we teach them to need to be rocked, breast/bottle fed, to need a pacifier, to need motion like a swing, etc. to fall asleep. But the truth of the matter is, if you start building good sleep habits from the start, you’ll be well on your way to a good sleeper for life! Imagine spending months, or even years, without good sleep once you have a child. I know I couldn’t do it!
It’s my mission to help as many newborn parents as I can to ensure they don’t need to come to me when their baby is 9 months, 18 months, 24 months, 2, 3, or 4 years old. Imagine making it all the way to 4 years old and still having a child who does not sleep well! Those are some exhausted parents, and it DOES HAPPEN. Talk about a life-changing experience for those parents to finally teach their 4-year-old to sleep well – and I’ve helped those families too! But as much as possible, I love to catch parents early on so they can be well-rested during all of their child’s life stages and truly just enjoy being a parent.
Being a working mom myself, I know how hard it is to go back to work after maternity leave if you’re exhausted because my first baby just would not sleep on his own – and do you know why? Because we always made sure he was asleep BEFORE we laid him down. I mean, that’s what I observed my entire life: parents rocking and feeding their children to sleep. Who knew there was another way?
Enter the Sleep Sense program, a literally life-changing program for me and thousands of other parents out there! The approach made so much “sense,” and I felt confident bringing home my next two babies because I knew what to do to set us up for good sleep throughout their childhoods. Each was sleeping 11-12 hours straight through the night by 10-12 weeks, taking good naps, and doing great on the growth charts! I saw all these other working moms around me struggling with sleepless nights and trying to do a good job at work, and the SAHMs struggling to enjoy their baby and keep the household running, and IT WAS HARD! And I thought, I need to somehow teach these parents what I know!
Does that sound like you? If so, I want you to know that there is another way! There is a solution to your problem – let’s work together. I specialize in sleep packages that give you a personalized plan and one-on-one follow-up support. It allows you to not only feel confident moving forward with a plan to implement, but also gives you someone to talk to and help you through it all!
Take the Hoyer family, for example. A dual income home – dad, an engineer; Mom, a market research project manager. I met with the Hoyers BEFORE their baby was born. I prepared them with what they needed to know and the things to do to help their little girl learn good sleep skills. And over the course of Jeannie’s 12 weeks of maternity leave, her daughter picked up on those sleep skills. She was sleeping through the night when Jeannie went back to work! I interviewed Mark and Jeannie a few days before Jeannie went back to work and asked them some questions about how they felt before their baby was born and after. And now that Jeannie has been back to work for about 5 months, I asked her some additional questions about how things are going for her now so that you can truly see the POWER behind good newborn sleep skills. It's a long read below, but I think you’ll find it interesting and beautiful to see the back-and-forth conversation between them. I’ve also included a couple audio clips so you can hear it straight from their mouths.
As a closing thought, I want this for your family too! If you’re expecting or have a newborn (or honestly a child of any age), and they’re not sleeping through the night or taking good naps, let’s work together. Let me help you get the sleep you need and deserve! Shoot me an email at nichole@nicholesmithsleep.com and follow me on Facebook or Instagram (@nicholesmithsleep) for content to help your children sleep well.
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE HOYERS
question: How prepared did you feel before we met initially?
Jeannie: My biggest thing was I’d done a lot of reading and I was never on the side of people who would never let a kid cry it out, no routine, attachment parenting, etc. There was a lot of conflicting advice. There were some general themes: be consistent, patient…but I don’t really know how this is going to work in reality once I get into it. I got to the point where I stopped reading because I felt like I couldn’t know until I got into it. I didn’t have anything written down, like in this scenario, I do this. I was just like, these are my 5 general rules if I don’t want a fussy kid who never sleeps and they were kind of plucked from a variety of sources, so I wasn’t confident.
Question: So we had our meeting before Reagan was born, and you had a plan put together for you. How did you feel after that meeting?
Mark: It put some guidelines to what we were supposed to do. It was nice having some sort of direction. Jeannie was going to take care of it all, so I wasn’t worried. But rather than asking her every night after we brought the baby home, “What are we supposed to do?” I kind of knew myself. I knew my role.
Jeannie: And we had the 8-10 page document which is far easier to reference than, “Oh I read an entire book.” It’s like, why do you need a 250-page book when you’re tired and recovering? That’s not a fantastic solution.
Question: So Mark, hearing Jeannie talk about how prepared she felt, how did you feel knowing she felt good about being alone with the baby all day? How did that make you feel as a husband and a father?
Question: Mark, what would you say to another dad who’s considering hiring a sleep consultant and spending the money to do something like this?
Mark: The cost is definitely worth it, rather than having however many weeks or months of hell already coping with a new addition.
Jeannie: People usually hit a breaking point, and maybe they hit 6 months of not even enjoying being parents practically before they spend on it.
Mark: Yeah, I think it’s well worth the money you put into it for your own sanity and the ease of the transition.
Question: Jeannie, what would you say to a mom?
Jeannie: A few things. I think that they do say that levels of PPD are higher among women who are getting less sleep, and I can totally see how it would happen, not even having dealt with it. Just going through the short phase where any newborn is getting up often just to get fed. But imagine if it’s every hour and it goes on for months and months, and now it’s not just a hunger thing, but they just aren’t sleeping. That’s maddening. So that alone is a huge reason as a mom to do it. In your mind before you have a baby, you want to fully love them, but you have no idea how hard it’s going to be. And so, it’s a lot easier to enjoy motherhood and maternity leave (which isn’t always enjoyable to be fully transparent), if you’re at least well-rested, it’s manageable. And going back to work now, I don’t feel like a pile of brain mush. I haven’t had intellectual discussions on a daily basis, but I’m sharp. I’m not exhausted. I feel like I can do my job well. I can drive to work safely in the morning. I remember thinking, man if I’m exhausted, I don’t know if that’ll be safe to drive to work early. And that’s one huge, less thing to think about.
Question: Mark, how do you feel about her going back to work?
Mark: She’s ready. She talks about it more now than when she was at work.
Jeannie: He’s like, you need the mental stimulation and to talk to adults and solve problems. You’ve solved enough baby problems.
Question: Do you think you would feel differently if Reagan was not sleeping well, if you guys were not sleeping, and Jeannie had to go back to work and everybody was exhausted? What do you think it would be like if that was the case?
Mark: I think I’d feel a whole lot less optimistic about having more kids, I’ll tell you that much. I, more so than Jeannie, need my sleep. When I don’t get my 8-9 hours, I’m not really human.
AFTER 5 MONTHS BACK AT WORK:
Question: Now that you’ve been back to work for a few months as a working mom, how well would you say you’ve adjusted? What amount of that do you think you owe to having a baby who sleeps well?
Jeannie: I feel like my transition has been seamless. Obviously, it takes a little bit of time to get back in the swing of things after being home with a newborn for a few months. But sleep isn’t even something we think or worry about, which is incredible! Honestly, finding work-life-balance is way more top of mind than, “Will I sleep well tonight?”
Question: What do you think life would be like/how would life be different if you were getting up with your baby a few times a night? Think about both personally and professionally?
Jeannie: It would be so trying on my husband and I on both a professional and personal level (our relationship and our ability to be happy, engaged parents). Sleep is truly what establishes our happy equilibrium as a family and as professionals.
Question: What does it mean for you that you can just lay your baby in bed at night and she goes right to sleep on her own?
Jeannie: It makes our evenings a lot more relaxed. You’re not worrying about whether or not it will be a 20-minute bedtime routine or a one-to-two-hour ongoing event. It’s enabled my husband and I to finish up work in the evenings, talk with one another, fit in a mini-workout, and get to bed at a reasonable hour. It’s also incredible to not have that sinking feeling when you go to bed yourself of, “Oh I wonder how long I’ll get to sleep before the baby wakes up...”
Question: If you could say anything to the working moms out there who are expecting a baby (either their first or fifth), what would it be?
Jeannie: We all know how it feels when you have a night or two of bad sleep, maybe a rough week, or even a month due to work/other responsibilities. It’s exhausting, it drains you mentally and physically, makes you less productive, and really tries your patience and ability to be present, which both your job and family need from you. Establishing good sleep habits is a little thing that makes a big difference. Sleep is that elusive thing that every parent I talked to before having a baby made me feel was unattainable, about to be a thing of the past. They would say things like:
“Enjoy the sleep while you can.”
“I didn’t sleep for 10 years.”
“What even is 8 hours of sleep?”
“The first year is brutal.”
As an expecting mom, it was terrifying. Honestly, now we have an 8 month old, and I slept worse during my pregnancy than I did with a newborn! And that is all thanks to following Nichole’s program and sticking to it.
Question: If you could say anything to the working moms out there who have a child who doesn’t sleep well, what would it be?
Jeannie: Think of it as an investment in your family, your health, and your career. It’s a lot easier to rationalize that initial investment when you think about the challenges that come and persist with having a baby/child that is not sleeping well. Trust me, having a child that sleeps 10-12 hours straight every night and naps consistently is worth way more than a monthly manicure/pedicure. Good sleep is priceless.
Question: Why should a family hire me to help get their baby’s sleep on track from the start?
Jeannie: It sets you up for success from the beginning (when you are most tired, should just be focused on letting your body recover, are adjusting to life with a new person, and discovering what that means for your family). You don’t have to break bad habits later on, which is a LOT harder than setting good sleep habits from the beginning. It builds your confidence as a parent to have a baby that sleeps well. Sleep is also SO important for newborns and young babies. They are growing and developing so quickly, and having strong sleep habits is so important to supporting what their little growing bodies and minds need.
Nichole Smith is a certified Sleep SenseTM Consultant, wife, and mom of 3 from Southeast Michigan. It is her mission to provide parents with the tools and techniques they need to help their children develop healthy sleep habits, giving the gift of sleep back to families.