My Parenting Journey

My journey started off in survival mode, hazed in a fog of sleep deprivation, confusion, anxiety and a general struggle to enjoy motherhood. I was constantly being asked

"Is she sleeping through yet?" 

"You know you need to teach her to self soothe on her own?"

"Don't feed her to sleep this is just a bad habit that makes it more difficult for you"

"Why are you picking her up so often? Let her cry for a bit, she will go to sleep when she knows your not coming."

I remember thinking …. “This can’t be it? This is Motherhood?”

 

I struggled with breastfeeding big time, my baby was a reluctant napper, who woke multiple times in the night and difficult to settle.

Any support and knowledge around me was so conflicting and often just didn't work for my baby. I just felt exhausted and a failure all the time.

 

I also struggled with my own personal traumatic birth experience, which impacted the way I connected with my babies and also how I viewed myself as a mother. 

 

I had a limited village of support around me and often felt isolated in my mothering journey, especially because I didn't want to sleep train.

I remember very clearly how that time in my life felt. I wished for a clearer understanding of what my baby’s sleep needs were and how I could enjoy my precious baby.

 

 

Your Parenting Journey

You are here today possibly searching for that same understanding about your baby’s sleep .... let me tell you, you are not alone in this. 

I can guide and support you to step out of the exhaustion fog and the constant confusion, to a place where you feel empowered when it comes to knowing the sleep needs of your unique baby.

 

 

Why Work With Me?

• A proud Mama of two teenagers

• Registered Nurse of 30 years

• Child Health & Development Nurse

• Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant

• Certified Holistic Sleep Coach (Graduate of Lyndsey Hookway)

• My personal & clinical experience 

• Passionate about gentle sleep

• Bespoke sleep support is my jam

• Evidenced based practitioner

• No “cry it out” methods – only responsive & connection based approaches offered

• Ensuring your wellbeing and family lifestyle values are met

• I offer sleep solutions that are tailored to your baby/child's individual developmental and biological needs

 

I created Nurturing Touch out of a need to support fellow Mothers, lost in an overwhelming sea of conflicting baby care and baby sleep information and to support them to understand what messages they could trust. As a Registered Nurse, specialising in Child Health & Development, it was clear to me working with thousands of parents, that the information that was available was out dated, opinion based and moving further and further away of instinctual parenting. At the same time, these messages in parenting were pushing babies to be both independent physically and cognitively before they were biologically ready. This was causing high levels of stress within families, low joy in parenting and babies were spending more time in a heightened nervous state, due to their biological inability to regulate themselves.

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I am passionate about gentle and responsive sleep approaches that are family centered attachment focused. I updated my professional development and gained a deeper understanding in infant and child sleep science, cognitive development, behaviour and communication cues and general feeding knowledge.

 

Infant and baby sleep is developmental, biologically driven and is different for each baby.

 

In early parenting, we do the best we can with the information/guidance we have at the time. We are often overwhelmed with advice from all directions about how our baby SHOULD be sleeping. The foundations of this advice are often not based on facts, it tends to be more opinion based and not in the best interests of us or our babies. What is more disappointing, is that much of the misinformation given to families about infant sleep and expectations around infant sleep, comes from health professionals.

 

My focus is empowering families to better understand their unique baby’s sleep needs. Guide families to be experimental when it comes to sleep issues and support families with up-to-date education along the way.

 

My goal is to offer families tools and strategies to continually meet the ever changing sleep needs of their children.

 

My approach is holistic, gentle and responsive, grounded in infant sleep science and most importantly, sustainable as your child’s sleep needs evolve.

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No one size fits all situations here, sleep is never linear. As parents we need to be flexible and responsive in our approach, as our baby’s sleep demands evolve with their natural development.

Nurturing Touch offers this to all families.

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