Welcome to The Nap Nook. I’m Hayley, a certified Level 6 OCN Holistic Sleep Coach for children ages 1-12.

I am also a mum two two busy little people, a 4 year old and a 2 year old, so I am currently l living and breathing the experiences of sleep and parenting right alongside you. My journey with sleep and parenting has been a bit of a rollercoaster. I’ve learnt a lot, questioned a lot and desperately wanted to find answers to things.

I’m a responsive and gentle parent through and through and a millennial trying to unpick the past and do it differently for my own kids. I’m learning about children all the time and how to respond to them, talk to them, manage their needs and hold firm and loving boundaries. It’s not always easy, in fact it’s flipping hard most of the time, but that is parenting isn’t it. We deeply love and care for our kids and want to make it right.

We were lured into a path of ‘gentle’ sleep training with my first child, but quickly knew it was not for us in any shape or form and that being responsive to our baby was what we really needed and wanted to do. Admittedly, sleep got better for a while, but it soon changed when we got to 18 months and everything went out the window. For both of my children, their need for us at bedtime and overnight grew stronger as they got older, making us feel, at times, like sleep was going backwards.

This has really got me thinking since becoming a sleep coach about how a lot of the messaging in the sleep industry suggests that support is just for babies and that by the time children get to a certain age they don’t need us anymore, or sleep should have figured itself out, or that we have ‘left it too late’ to make any changes. None of this is true.

If your toddler or bigger kid still wakes in the night, needs you to support them to fall asleep, comes into your bed, you are not alone. This isn’t a reflection of anything you have done wrong, it is just your child being a human with changing and complex human needs. This doesn’t just stop after they finish being a baby. Whilst it is common and so very normal, it also doesn’t mean that if this is no longer feeling sustainable for you that you just have to keep going. Because that is hard when it is no longer serving you as parents or your entire family.

You can still be a responsive and gentle parent and make changes.

This is where I come in as a holistic sleep coach and mum of two. I’m here to share experiences, tell you what is normal and reassure of things that you are doing, but I am also here to help you make change that is responsive and respectful to your toddler or child if things aren’t feeling very sustainable right now.

Here are some of the ways I would love you to feel from working with me:

• Feel more confident with managing sleep

• Make changes that work better for your family

• Help you to feel more confident as parents

• Reduce dread around bedtime

• Understand your child better and their unique needs

• Help you to feel more like yourself again and make space for yourself

• Reduce worry and anxiety around sleep and parenting