Does Your Baby Need a Sleep Coach?

Last fall, the sleep situation in Rebecca David’s household seemed hopeless. Two-year-old Solomon, co-sleeping with his parents, babbled loudly and flung his arms around most of the night. Meanwhile, four-month-old Noah was sometimes in his bassinet but mostly also in the family bed, nursing or snuggling. Both woke up constantly and weren’t in any hurry to close their eyes again.

“Sleep was a mess,” recalls Rebecca, who lives in Langley, B.C. “I was desperate.”

She had resigned herself to zombie status when she met a mom who’d hired a sleep coach and reported that her baby now slept like a champ. Rebecca investigated, and that night, she told her husband, Blesson, that she was interested—but that it was pricey.

“How much—like $5,000?” he asked.

A year-long contract covering both boys was $850. His reply: “What are you waiting for?”

What is a sleep coach?

There was a time when, if your baby refused to sleep, you asked your mom for advice or read a book. If that failed, you rocked and shushed all night, dreaming of a future of uninterrupted sleep.

But today, many families are taking a more proactive approach, turning to sleep coaches to help their kids fall and stay asleep. Maybe your once-great sleeper is now up all night, or a vacation in a new time zone has messed up bedtime. Or maybe your kid simply never learned to sleep independently.

In-person or by phone, text, email or video chat, sleep coaches—also called sleep consultants, trainers or doulas—help solve these issues.

How much do sleep coaches cost?

With fees ranging from $100 to $1,000, there’s a camp that considers sleep coaches a ridiculous expense—a service aimed at privileged, lazy parents. But they’re popular because they work.

“If the books and your mom aren’t enough,” says Alanna McGinn of Good Night Sleep Site in Burlington, Ont., “that’s when you come to us.”

What to know before hiring a sleep coach

A sleep coach comes with a few catches. For one thing, this is an unregulated industry, so you should be careful about who you hire. When you do find the right expert, you should be prepared to follow the plan—and lots of parents just can’t. That means you could hire someone who transforms your nights… or not.

The Davids were willing to take the risk.

How sleep coaching works

Nanny-turned-sleep-coach Dawn Whittaker had the couple fill out a questionnaire, visited their apartment and created a 20-page plan for baby Noah. For two weeks, the family adjusted his feeding schedule and made his room darker. Then, one night, Blesson put the baby down in his crib and walked out.

Every five minutes, he returned to offer soothing words and back pats. After 25 minutes of what Rebecca calls “protest crying,” Noah drifted off and slept for seven hours.

“That was the longest he’d ever slept,” she says. “We were so happy.”

By night four, Noah was closing his eyes without a peep. The family also got Noah’s naps back on track, even syncing up his afternoon snooze with his big brother’s. They’re still working on Solomon’s nighttime sleep, but the Davids are seeing progress.

What to expect from a sleep coach

Contact a sleep coach and you’ll likely get a free mini-consultation. That initial chat lets you see if your philosophies align.

If you sign on, you’ll provide information about your child, usually via a questionnaire, a sleep diary and a long conversation. This rules out health issues (a good coach will send you to a doctor if there are red flags) and determines which approach should work best. The coach may ask you to slowly begin adjusting your baby’s feeding schedule, naps and bedtime routine.

Finally, the actual training begins. Methods vary, but the result should be a baby who can fall asleep on their own and sleep through the night. (Whittaker says most babies can sleep through the night with one feed once they weigh 14 pounds.) Training takes about a week, give or take; toddlers and preschoolers take longer. Ironing out naps might take a few more weeks.

Throughout the training, the coach is available to answer questions and offer encouragement.

“Support is 90 percent of the process,” says McGinn.

Why sleep training sometimes fails

Sleep coaches are no panacea. Training can fail due to inexperienced consultants, parents who don’t follow through or kids who are teething, sick, have extra-challenging temperaments or are too young (most experts recommend waiting until baby is at least four months old).

Sleep training didn’t work well for Megan Lester.

When sleep training doesn’t work

Before training, Lester was sitting on the floor beside her son Griffin’s crib and patting him to sleep for 45 minutes. When Griffin was 18 months old and Lester was pregnant with her third child, she was exhausted and needed a change.

She found a post in a Facebook group from a sleep coach in training who was offering free services. Lester, who lives in Oakville, Ont., filled out a questionnaire, met with the coach and got a plan: She was to sit on a chair in Griffin’s room, comforting him verbally but not touching him, until he fell asleep.

There was screaming, and Lester found she couldn’t handle it. “Your own child screaming is worse than anything else,” she says.

This continued for several nights until Lester caught a cold and emailed the coach to take a break. She never restarted. Today, almost-three-year-old Griffin is still sometimes patted to sleep—albeit only for 15 minutes, max.

Lester believes she couldn’t commit because she didn’t fully trust the coach’s plan. “She asked me questions about routine, but she didn’t ask about him in detail,” she says.

What makes sleep training successful?

Trusting in your coach, sticking with the plan—and being ready.

“When we work with people who aren’t ready, it doesn’t go well,” says Whittaker.

How to choose the right sleep coach Choose a sleep coach the same way you’d pick a plumber or massage therapist: Ask about their training and experience, and request references.

“It took me years of working with babies to be able to do what I do now,” says Debbie Fazio of Precious Moments Babeez in Burlington, Ont. “When I started seeing the term ‘sleep consultant’ seven years ago, there were maybe four in Canada. Now there are hundreds, and I’m not sure they’re all qualified.”

Is sleep coaching worth it?

Some parents feel like hiring sleep help is an admission that they can’t teach their baby this supposedly natural skill. Others feel they should just ride out the sleep deprivation, since parenting is a 24-7 job.

But there’s no shame in getting help, says Eddy Lau, chief of pediatrics at St. Joseph’s Health Centre in Toronto.

“Sometimes parents need a third party to help them through,” he says. After all, “sleep deprivation is a form of torture.”

Does sleep training mean crying it out?

A lot of parents equate sleep training with leaving their baby to cry. While some methods do involve tears, others are more gradual.

“Babies will always cry, because that’s what babies do,” says Whittaker. “Sleep training asks kids to do something new and challenging, and they are likely to protest that change.”

Techniques that include the parent staying in the room or returning frequently trigger less crying, but they take longer.

“Crying it out is the quickest method—I’m not going to lie,” says McGinn.

Toronto pediatrician Eddy Lau says sleep training is proven to work, and there’s no solid evidence that crying harms children psychologically.

Ultimately, it comes down to what parents feel comfortable with. “If you simply can’t stomach it, then don’t do it,” says Lau.