My Approach
Sleep is a skill. Skills are taught, not extracted.
A baby who learns to sleep by being left alone hasn’t learned to sleep. She’s learned that calling doesn’t work. That’s a different lesson, and it works — which is why it’s so popular. I don’t teach that lesson.
What I believe
Every baby is already trying to sleep. Something is in the way. My job is to find it, not to override it.
Temperament is not a personality quiz. An intense, alert baby needs a different plan than a mellow one. Same age, same weight, different plan. Anyone selling you one schedule hasn’t met your baby.
Crying is information, not the method. Change is hard and there will be protest. There’s a difference between a baby protesting a change with you right there, and a baby alone in the dark learning no one comes.
How you want to parent is part of the plan. Not a preference I work around — an input. If you bedshare, we build a bedsharing plan. If you nurse to sleep and want to keep some of it, we keep some of it.
Sleep problems are usually schedule problems. Before I touch how your baby falls asleep, I fix when. Most families are half fixed by the second night just from timing.
Consistency beats intensity. Two weeks of the same boring response outperforms one dramatic night, every time.
What I never do
- I never leave a baby to cry alone as a technique.
- I never give you a schedule I’d give anyone else.
- I never tell you to stop night feeds before you’re ready.
- I never promise 12 hours by Friday.
- I never make you choose between rest and your instincts.
What “responsive, not cry-it-out” means in practice
You are in the room. You answer. Every time.
We change the before, not the after: bedtime moves, wake windows change, the last feed shifts, the room goes darker, the routine gets shorter and more predictable. By the time we touch how your baby falls asleep, most of the work is already done.
When there is protest, you respond — with your voice, your hand, your presence. We shrink the help gradually instead of removing it overnight. It’s slower on paper. It’s faster in real life, because you don’t quit on night three.
Why I’m allowed an opinion about this
I taught Pre-K through third grade for seven years. Then I spent seven years inside families’ homes as a nanny — newborns through eleven-year-olds, four sets of multiples, five years with a single family. I’ve watched the same child in a classroom at 9 a.m. and in a kitchen at 6 p.m.
Most sleep advice comes from a clinic or from a blog. Mine comes from the floor of the room.
I’m CPSM/CPSC certified, 100% virtual, and I take 4 new families a month.