How to find the right sleep coach for your baby?

How to find the right baby sleep coach?

To find the right baby sleep coach, consider their experience, training, methods, and compatibility with your parenting style, and seek recommendations and testimonials from other parents. Use an exploratory call to understand and evaluate your sleep coach better. But before you get on an exploratory call, do your own research and figure out your requirement

Step 1: Get your requirement right

No medical issue

Approach a sleep coach only after your pediatrician has ruled out medical issue. If it's a medical issue (sleep walking,Sleep Apnea, snoring night terror etc) the baby needs a Doctor Sleep Specialist .

Your Needs and Goals

What are your baby's specific sleep challenges (e.g., frequent night wakings, difficulty falling asleep, etc)? The baby could have single problem or may present with multiple sleep challenges. You may choose to find solution to all or only select few of the problems

Your Parenting preference

While there are three major ideology - Parent led, Child led and Holistic that forms the middle ground between Parent and Child led approaches. Do you prefer a parent led approach like with cry-it-out or child led approach like shush-and-pat?

Read testimonials and reviews

See what other parents have to say about their experiences with the sleep coach.

Step 2: Exploratory call

During your exploratory call, ask as many questions as your need to understand the capability of sleep coach, solutions offered and process of coaching. The following are few things to consider

Knowledgable

There are three major ideology - Parent led, Child led and Holistic that forms the middle ground between Parent and Child led approaches.
Some sleep coaches may be partial to an ideology while others they are well trained and are familiar with different sleep coaching and training methods. A knowledgeable sleep coach should be willing to discuss the pros and cons and limitations of each ideology and methods within each ideology

Empathetic

Does your sleep consultant show empathy and understands your family situation, parenting values and preferences?
Does your sleep coach consider the baby's temperament? Is the evaluation of baby’s temperament be questionnaire based or live assessment? Live assessment is better than questionnaire based assessment since questionnaire based assessment cannot accurately predict baby’s temperament for 35% or 1/3 population. This is a fairly large percentage.

Flexible

When you work with a good sleep coach, you will get a tailored approached and not a standard solution that is applied to various situations without considering individual differences or needs
Flexibility come from being knowledgeable and empathic to your family situation and your baby's temperament

Supportive

What kind of support do you need?

Duration
Are you looking for a quick consultation or a more comprehensive sleep plan and support over the longer period?
Limited vs unlimited queries
How is the support offered? Some sleep coaches offer responses to limited number of queries while some respond to unlimited number of queries.
Medium of support
What's the medium of support? Are you comfortable with the medium. Some sleep coaches offer support only on emails while some other may communicate with you on WhatsApp and phone calls

At the end, you should have figured out the best sleep coach for your baby