I live in the sunny Bay Area in California, US, with my husband and our wonderful toddler. I have been a certified sleep consultant since 2021 and I am able to work with English and Russian-speaking families. 

Ever since our child came into our lives, he’s been fighting sleep and we were fighting to get some. Night to night, for weeks, he’d wake up every couple of hours and cry for me to breastfeed and rock him back to sleep. I was reading all available resources on baby sleep and a lot of them suggested that motherhood and sleep don’t really go hand in hand. One of them blatantly said “Your responsibility as a mother doesn’t end when the sun goes down”. Meanwhile, my sleep deprivation was getting worse, I was going deeper and deeper into depression and was having a very hard time understanding why I signed up for this in the first place.

By the time my son was 5 months old, my husband was sleeping on the couch. We’d fight every single day because I was constantly anxious and angry. I was dreading bedtime, when I’d have to rock and breastfeed my son to sleep for hours just so he’d wake up two hours later. One day I realised I was afraid to take a full breath because it might be too loud and wake up the baby in the bassinet next to me – and that’s when I decided to sleep train.

It took two nights. Two nights. It can take longer. But in our case, it took two nights. 

My son became the happiest camper. He was crying so much less than before. He was eating better during the day. He was active and playful and giggly when he’d see me in the morning. And so was I.

Sleep training your child may be difficult, but parenting in general will often require you to make unpopular decisions. Our responsibility as parents does not, indeed, end when the sun goes down. And our main responsibility is to teach our children healthy habits, independence and self sufficiency. And I will hold your hand when you start with their sleep.