Sleep Support

“BABY’S SLEEP IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT FOR THE PARENT’S SANITY, IT IS FUNDAMENTAL TO THE BABY’S DEVELOPMENT”

-ANDRE FENTON

There is so much to know when it comes to sleep.

Feeling overwhelmed?

Need help navigating any of the following areas?

-Longer stretches of sleep at night

-Wake windows

-Predictable schedules

-Reliance on feeding to sleep

-Nap problems

-Reducing/removing nighttime feedings

-Early morning wakings

-Ongoing pacifier replacement

-Nap & Bedtime routines

-Sleep crutches

 -Bedtime battles

-Sleep regressions

-Teething

-Negative sleep associations

-Co-sleeping/Bed-sharing transitions

-Transitioning from crib to bed

-Nighttime fears/nightmares

-Power struggles

-Navigating changes, like travel & daylight savings

I AM HERE TO HELP

As a mother of three, I get it- sleep is essential to a functioning, happy, and healthy family! I have helped over 100 families achieve the goal of improved sleep, working with babies as young as a few weeks old to children as old as 6 years old. Teaching a baby or child independent sleep skills is an art, not a science. There is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach to sleep training, as every child and family is unique with their own habits, styles, preferences, and needs. As such, my philosophy as a sleep consultant is to offer my expertise and work collaboratively with families to develop a customized approach so that they can follow through and get the results they are so eager to achieve.

As your sleep consultant, I will work closely with you to select and refine an approach that you feel comfortable with, possibly pulling from several methods to strike the right balance for you & your child. With consistency, commitment, and a bit of tenacity, we will work to give you & your child the gift of improved sleep!

SLEEP SUPPORT PACKAGES

ASK ME ANYTHING CALL (ALL AGES)

$125 (45 Minute Call)

Not ready or interested in a fully devised sleep plan but need some help with your child’s sleep? Book a call to pick my brain and ask me anything. I will share my expertise with you and help you find a way to troubleshoot your current sleep issue.

You will be given a verbal action plan to follow.

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NEWBORN CONSULTATION (0-12 weeks)

$125 (45 minute call)

It’s never too early to implement a healthy foundation of sleep for your child. While formal sleep training is not possible during the newborn phase, we can set your baby up for optimal sleep by focusing on wake windows, creating the ideal sleeping environment, establishing bedtime routines, and gradually encouraging baby to sleep with less parental involvement.

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BASIC SLEEP SUPPORT (4 months-6 years old)

$300

Comprehensive Sleep Assessment: This includes an initial questionnaire that will help me get a holistic picture of your child’s current sleep habits and your parenting style and preferences. We will look at a typical 24-hour day, your current routines, areas of concern, and your sleep goals.

60-min Consultation: During this 60-min consultation, we will review your child’s current situation, discuss the approach that will work best for you, and address any questions or concerns about the plan moving forward.

Personalized Sleep Plan: Customized sleep plan catered to address your child’s current sleep struggles & puts you on the track to maximizing long-term sleep. Your plan will include an optimal daily schedule, step-by-step instructions for the sleep training method, and age-appropriate tips and tricks to set you & your child up for sleep success.

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PREFERRED SLEEP SUPPORT (4 months-4 years old)

$500

Comprehensive Sleep Assessment: This includes an initial questionnaire that will help me get a holistic picture of your child’s current sleep habits and your parenting style and preferences. We will look at a typical 24-hour day, your current routines, areas of concern, and your sleep goals.

60-min Consultation: We will review your child’s current situation, discuss the approach that will work best for you, and address any questions or concerns about the plan moving forward.

Personalized Sleep Plan: Customized sleep plan catered to address your child’s current sleep struggles & puts you on the track to maximizing long-term sleep. Your plan will include an optimal daily schedule, step-by-step instructions for the sleep training method, and age-appropriate tips and tricks to set you & your child up for sleep success.

Unlimited Follow-up Support (2 weeks):

Throughout this two-week period, you will have unlimited access to me for questions, support, and reassurance as you implement the plan and troubleshoot any issues.

This 2 week support period includes:

*Unlimited text support between 9 AM-9 PM EST

*Unlimited email support

*One 30-minute phone call at any time, if necessary

*Access to a variety of resources, including age-appropriate sleep schedules for any age, how to troubleshoot common problems like teething, daylight savings time, travel, and transitions (like moving from a crib to a bed), and more!

BOOK NOW

WHAT MY CLIENTS SAY

Cordelia Mueller

We cannot express enough how helpful Ellie was to us after the birth of our child. She is experienced, supportive and detail-oriented, just what we needed to sleep train our 3-month-old son. From our first call with her, we knew we had made the right choice in hiring her. Ellie is knowledgeable and provided a sense of stability and calm from the outset. She is attentive, comforting, and makes herself available at almost any time of day or night. She was so helpful in providing us with a tailored sleep plan that took into account all the goals we hoped to reach by the end of our two weeks with her. She does not try to steer you in any particular direction, instead she gives you the resources and information necessary to establish your own goals and the support both you and your baby need to reach them. Ellie answered all our questions promptly and provided in depth answers whenever we needed them. The calls we had were incredibly helpful. Our son did incredibly well with the sleep training and we saw results within days of starting. Ellie was reassuring and made us feel so much more confident about starting the process. Now at 5 months our son has an incredible foundation of healthy sleep habits and a sleep plan that we still reference if we are uncertain of anything. We could not recommend Ellie enough!

Jessie S.

I am writing this as my baby sleeps happily in his crib! Ellie was enormously helpful when my partner and I were absolutely DESPERATE for sleep — she gave us practical suggestions to move our baby into healthy sleeping patterns — both at night and for naps. Her advice led us to much improved sleep for our baby — and sanity for his parents! We appreciated her kind, empathetic manner, sense of humor, and straightforward guidance!

Christina Kennedy

Ellie helped us implement a great sleep plan for our toddler. With a new sibling on the way, we knew we needed to help our toddler overcome early morning wake-ups. Ellie gave us amazing age-appropriate tools to incorporate into our routine. She is knowledgeable about all aspects of baby and toddler sleep with the research to back her suggestions. Can’t recommend Ellie and Joyful Birthing & Beyond enough!

Priscilla Weildein

Ellie is a warm, compassionate person and a phenomenal sleep coach. We recently hired Ellie to help us sleep train our four month old (choosing her “preferred sleep support” package with the 2 weeks of follow up support). Prior to finding Ellie, the sea of information on sleep training had overwhelmed us, and it was a big relief to have a plan custom tailored to our family’s needs. By the end of our two weeks together, our baby was sleeping independently in her nursery, both at night and for naps, and my husband and I had developed the skills needed to continue to support her sleep. I credit Ellie with instilling this confidence in me through her vast knowledge and our practice troubleshooting together over the course of the two weeks. It feels great to think that our daughter is set up for a lifetime of good sleep with this foundation. I would recommend Ellie to any new parent in a heartbeat.

Sarah Meier-Zimbler

“My husband and I were referred to Ellie by a dear friend for help with sleep for our 11-month old. While we had tried some sleep training in the past, we weren’t on the same page about it and it was a major source of tension between us and a struggle every night with our son. Ellie was immensely helpful in getting our son to sleep through the night. She listened to both my husband and I, addressed our concerns with honesty and compassion and provided us a plan that we agreed to try for two weeks. All along the way she was there for any questions or concerns and responded quickly and effectively. We were shocked with how quickly our son was able to sleep for 12 hour stretches and Ellie’s guidance and support made it possible. For anyone who feels they’re at their wits end on sleep, I definitely recommend contacting Ellie for support. I am SO much more rested and happier now that my child sleeps through the night, it’s a total game changer.”

Alice Woodman-Russell

“Ellie is an absolute gem. My husband and I first worked with her as a sleep consultant during a brutal 18 month sleep regression for our daughter. Both empathetic and whip-smart, Ellie helped identify specific actions we could take to get sleep back on track. It was so reassuring to make a plan with her and to have real time follow up so that we could course correct and adjust as needed. When we encountered some challenges with the 2 to 1 nap transition, Ellie was the only person we wanted help from and once again she was exactly the resource we needed. We also felt SO supported by Ellie as a birth and postpartum doula for our second child. Using zoom, email, text, and phone, Ellie was like an expert big sister in the weeks leading up to the birth, as well as in the beginnings of labor, and most especially in the early postpartum period. The birth escalated so quickly that there wasn’t time for zoom support, but honestly the postpartum support alone was invaluable (and thank goodness for Ellie’s nudge via phone for us to hightail it to the hospital— our son was almost born in the car). Her expertise in sleep and lactation along with being a thoughtful and experienced mom of three… I truly can’t speak highly enough. We will forever be grateful to Ellie for helping us grow into happier, stronger parents, and she will forever be our go-to for all questions parenting / birth / sleep!”

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

WHY IS MY BABY/CHILD STRUGGLING TO SLEEP? There are a number of factors that can cause either short-term or long-term sleep troubles: being overtired, overstimulated, or an inability to self-soothe; having an inappropriate sleep schedule, suboptimal sleeping environment, or lacking an effective bedtime routine; or development milestones, illness, or physical discomfort.

 

WHEN CAN I SLEEP TRAIN MY BABY? While we can work to instill healthy sleep habits from day 1, babies are not developmentally ready for sleep coaching until they are at least 3 months old. Newborn sleep is unpredictable and not yet organized in any way. At 12-16 weeks, baby’s sleep shifts & develops significantly where their circadian rhythm/biological sleep clock matures, which means they will begin to follow a more clock-based schedule. At this age, with some sleep coaching and modification of old habits, babies are able to link their sleep cycles to length naps and consolidate nighttime sleep.

 

WHAT EXACTLY IS “SLEEP TRAINING”? Sleep training is the process that parents go through to help their babies fall asleep independently and optimize the benefits of restorative, consistent sleep. Sleep training involves changing the parent’s behavior, as the parent is likely reinforcing the behavior that is needed to be fixed (thus, we are changing the child’s behavior by revising the parent’s behavior!). There are a variety of methods for teaching babies and children the gift of independent sleep- some include much parental involvement while others include providing children with gradually increasing intervals of time on their own until they fall asleep. Sleep training includes setting up age-appropriate sleep schedules, bedtime routines, and sleep environments, and essentially establishing the optimal conditions for children to sleep.

 

I AM HESITANT TO LET MY BABY CRY. I get it. No parent likes to hear their baby cry. It feels counter-intuitive to willingly allow your baby to cry and many parents worry that the crying involved in many sleep training methods will harm their baby. However, many parents find themselves in an unsustainable sleep situation due to lack of sleep from nighttime parenting, which can have a deleterious effect on maternal mental health. With buzzing social media feeds, endless google searches, and conflicting research studies, it can be overwhelming and difficult to know how to best navigate sleep training while keeping your baby’s well-being and safety a top priority. As such, I wrote a comprehensive article addressing this common concern which includes a meta-analysis of the current research on sleep training. You can read the full article here: Will Sleep Training Harm My Baby? 

Cancellation policy: Services can be canceled for a credit for any Joyful Birthing & Beyond service if cancellation is received with at least a 24-hour notice. Services canceled with less than 24-hour notice will not be credited or refunded.