Sleepy Bubby - Sydney Baby Sleep Consultants

Sleepy Bubby is a Sydney-based infant and child sleep consultancy. We partner with families to provide expert science and research-based sleep advice, knowledge, training and support.

When our first daughter Matilda was born, I experienced real sleep deprivation for the first time in my life.

By the end of Tilly’s first week of life, I was so sleep deprived I could hardly lift my head off the pillow – the room would spin, my head felt like it was in a vice, and I was sick (like, sick sick). I knew parenting was going to be hard and that our lives would change (for the better), but I felt like I had been hit by a bus and I had no choice but to let it drag me around for a while.

Worse, I had no idea what to do and it took me a long time to work it out.

For the first couple of months, we assumed that Tilly “just wasn’t much of a sleeper”. She would cry non-stop and we had no idea why. She would wake up multiple times a night – and we would try to soothe her with no idea of what was happening to her, us, or our family.

And about four months in, it all hit a breaking point.

With a background in nursing, science, research and analysis, my personality errs on the side of obsessively over-analysing things. And with that, I decided to take things into my own hands and I got busy. I read anything I could get my hands on and talked to everyone I knew. And seeking any solution possible, I experimented. Some things would help – and some made things worse… way worse. The information I found online was inconsistent, and well meaning friends and family gave me advice that worked for them, but it didn’t work for us.

By the time Tilly was 5 months old, and with our family just hanging on by a thread, I knew I needed more help.

Someone in my mother’s group mentioned that they’d been working with a sleep consultant who had changed their lives. I emailed the sleep consultant straight away and poured my heart out. With one email response from her, I got to work and followed her advice to the letter.

Within 24 hours, my little girl was sleeping much better. It turns out she wasn’t just a “bad sleeper who would grow out of it” – she was overtired! That’s it!

I couldn’t believe it! I was so excited! But then, also kind of angry. The instructions she gave us were so simple, and so painfully obvious. Why hadn’t anyone told us this before? Where was this information in my prenatal classes or pregnancy books? Everyone spent so much time talking about the birth and delivery, that no one even mentioned how important sleep was!

Judging by all the well-intentioned, but unhelpful (and in some cases, terrible or dangerous) advice I’d received from others, I wasn’t the only one who was bumbling around in the dark (figuratively and literally) with my newborn baby.

After this experience, I became obsessed with sleep – and with helping others as much as I could. I was probably annoying about it (I think I probably still am…). People got to know this about me and started reaching out. I was helping friends with their baby’s sleep and recommending books and products and finding out that my advice had really improved their lives.

Fast forward a couple of years and we’ve been blessed with the addition of Theodore, our second child. He’s an incredibly happy and goofy baby who also happens to be the inspiriation for the Sleepy Bubby logo!

Shortly after we had Theo, I made the decision to pursue baby sleep consulting with every ounce of energy that I have. I am currently studying to become a Certified Infant and Child Sleep Consultant and I am enthralled with the course.

Based on these last couple of years, I fully embrace that this is my life’s passion, and I am now excited to make it my life’s work to empower as many families as I can get a healthier and happier starts to sleep for their little loved ones.

So where does Sleepy Bubby come from? When we were setting our sleep routines with Tilly, we wrote a song that we now sing to both children right before we put them to sleep:

Sleepy Bubby, go to sleep
Mama loves you, time for sleep
We’ll be here when you wake up
So go to sleep, our little love