Sleepless nights are often the subject of light-hearted jokes aimed at new parents, but for those in the thick of it they are a really serious issue.
If your baby isn’t sleeping that means that you aren’t sleeping, and that can have all sorts of knock-on effects on your entire personal and professional life.
Help, however, is at hand. Dublin woman MaryAnn Mesbur is a sleep consultant with The Daddy Sleep Consultant, a UK-based firm set up by Donegal man Chris McFadden and his wife Dani.
She offers one-to-one consultancy sessions, bespoke plans and ongoing support for each individual child, all conducted remotely from her home in Rathcoole, with home visits available on request.
“The parents that come to us, their babies would be over five months old," MaryAnn explains. “We come up with a sleep plan on an individual basis, so it's very person-centred. Each baby has different sleep needs, and it's helping parents with that and working with them.”
MaryAnn – who also runs the baby products company Bear’s Little Fish – has a background as a child behaviour specialist and a Masters in psychology, and is a qualified sleep consultant too.
“I develop an individual plan for them, and once they start implementing that, they have my indefinite support,” she says. “You can get in touch with us until your baby's sleep issues are resolved.”
So why is sleep consultancy needed? How important is sleep for babies and parents?
“From a developmental perspective, it's hugely important,” MaryAnn says. “If babies are overtired and fighting that throughout the day, that's going to be the sole focus of the day – so it is that little bit harder to explore foods and achieve all those milestones when they're so tired.”
And as a mum of two herself, MaryAnn has first-hand experience of the challenges.
“It's so difficult to parent and work and run a household and have a family when you're getting long-term broken sleep,” she says. “Broken sleep, temporarily, with a newborn and young baby is always expected. But long-term, it's very hard to survive.”
Her own experience as a mother taught MaryAnn that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work – she says that both of her children had entirely different experiences with sleep, and that feeds into her work.
“It's very individual,” she explains. “We look at the whole setup – the sleeping environment, how are their naps going? We work on preventing overtiredness, because that can help an awful lot with night-time sleep.
“Also, we take a very gentle approach. We stay with the child, helping them to learn how to fall asleep independently, but we wouldn't recommend leaving them until they're able to do that.
“There are no scary 'crying it out' approaches used – you're with your baby the entire time.”
MaryAnn says that parents come to her for a variety of reasons. Sometimes a baby may be going through a sleep regression – a common but frustrating stage of development – or parents might be looking for help as they approach the end of maternity leave and find that their baby still isn’t sleeping through the night.
“Another big one for parents is when their child is starting childcare or they're going to be with another caregiver,” she adds, “because if they're very, very dependent on a parent to fall asleep, the thoughts of that transition and their baby finding it very difficult can prompt them to get a little bit of help before they start.”
Whatever the reason, MaryAnn says that sleep consultancy is a growth area, and something she is thoroughly enjoying; helping families move into a more restful stage in their lives.
“Before Bear's Little Fish, all of my work was centred around working with families and that was something that I missed, so I really like having that relationship with families again,” she says.
“When I work with families and they start getting those lengthy stretches of sleep and their child is sleeping through the night, they're just so delighted. It changes the whole household and their whole quality of life."
