• Develop a personalized sleep plan
The primary role of a baby sleep coach is to develop a plan for your baby’s naptime and bedtime. Firstly, the consultant collects info regarding your baby’s current sleep practices and patterns through a questionnaire. This could be done via a phone call or email. As the next step, the coach meets you and your baby in person, in a clinic, or at your home. He/she then prepares a routine bedtime and naptime plan that is tailor made for your baby.
• Give extended support
Developing a sleep plan is one part of the task, the other being implementation. When executing the plan, you may be faced with a lot of hurdles. There may be instances where a suggested technique doesn’t work or your baby becomes crankier than usual. In such instances, the sleep coach offers you support via phone calls, emails, or text messages. Such real-time support becomes important for effective implementation of any sleep plan developed for your baby.
• Help, when everything else fails
As the parent of a newborn or toddler, you have read an infinite number of articles, blogs, self-help books, and almost any kind of literature that is available on how to put your baby to sleep. However, on certain days, none of these works. A sleep coach is someone who helps you in such a situation. He/she is there to help you when everything else has failed. The professional visits you at home for a couple of hours, or is available overnight, or even for a complete day, till your worries ease out. Such services are charged variably, and are dependent on the extent of help that you avail.
• Instill confidence in parents
Parents often get overworked about a sleepless baby. The crankiness or sleepless that newborns and little ones face could subside within a few hours, or days, but parents often worry too much and blow the concern out of proportion. A sleep consultant ( TinyTransitions.com/about ) is a person who helps not just the baby, but also the parents who lose hope after everything has been tried and tested. The coach instils confidence in you, and gives you the required emotional support required to wade through those troubled times. These professionals deal with hundreds to thousands of babies every year and hence are experienced in understanding needs and offering a supporting hand when needed.
• Offer parenting tips
A proper and sound sleep is often the result of many other well-planned routines and habits. Sleep coaches train and offer tips in parenting beyond just bedtime or naptime routines and plans. These could be on feeding, tending to a fussy baby, best baby products, sleep time practices during travel and illnesses, and so on. Many consultants also post this advice for free on their blogs on parenting website for the benefit of parents of newborn and babies.
Hiring a sleep coach for your baby ( TinyTransitions.com/sleep-coach-for-babies ) is the best solution when you are unable to handle all the stress that comes with sleepless night and groggy mornings. These trained professionals plan and implement best practices that help your baby get to bed faster, and sleep uninterrupted for longer.