Need some reasons to hire a baby sleep consultant so you can get your partner on board, or dispel doubt with friends at playgroup? You’ve come to the right place. With over a decade of experience helping babies sleep around the world, I know firsthand that a solid plan, and follow-up support is key to the most successful sleep training. Sure you can cobble together fantastic pieces of information on Instagram or in sleep books, but inevitably a situation will arise that will leave you second guessing. Read on for more reasons to hire a (good) baby sleep consultant so you get it right, right off the bat.

reasons to hire a baby sleep consultant

Photo Credit: Nappy

Why Hiring a Sleep Consultant is Better than Using a Sleep Training Book or Piecemealing a Plan from Social Media

1. Books and Social Media give conflicting information

Not only do all books and various social media accounts contradict one another, they all do so adamantly! Reading more than one sleep training book, or following more than one sleep consultant, can give parents the sense that they have to pick one single method, and stick with it. This makes parents feel as if there is only one right way to sleep train, and that it’s up to them to try each method one-by-one before figuring out which is the “right” one. Working personally with the right sleep consultant will give you the cheatsheet on all methods – including the advantages and disadvantages that each offers. This saves you, the parents, the mental and emotional fortitude required to read various books, and study accounts while trying to decide which one might be the most effective.

2. Books and Social Media have an agenda

Many sleep training books and Insta-experts base their advice on inaccurate assumptions, or assumptions based on the author’s personal life experience. Whereas a good baby sleep consultant will have firsthand, hands-on experience with 100’s or 1000’s of babies! Just because a particular author’s life view lines up with a parent’s perspective, does not mean that their sleep training advice will be sound.

Also, an author’s agenda can come through the writing and make parents feel guilty for favoring a certain sleep training approach that does not align with the practices in the book. A good sleep consultant’s agenda is to help families pick whatever method will produce the best results, with the least amount of tears, and drama to the family. Parents cannot get that from a book which includes only one single method.

3. Books can’t answer questions

There is not a single parent in the world who has read a sleep training book, tried to implement the book’s method with their baby, and not found themselves with a question that was not answered in the book. What then? The beauty of working with a good sleep consultant means that a person who has worked with hundreds of children, some just like yours, has already personally experienced what your baby is doing, and knows the exact answers to your questions.

4. Books and Social Media “Experts” don’t know your baby

Many parents read popular sleep training books, and realize that the approach in that book seems tailored to a baby with a different personality from their own baby. When working with an infant sleep consultant, that consultant can tell parents right off the bat which types of methods tend to produce which types of results. And with which types of babies! Instead of repetitive trial and error, and weeks or months of crying, a parent can get a tailored plan in just a few hours. They can them feel confident that the method they’re using is going to be the most effective for their individual child.

5. Books don’t know you

Regardless of how effective a method is on an individual child, sleep consultants know that in the end, they’re really training the parents, not the baby. Sleep consultants are usually hands on, working closely with parents throughout the training process. And most importantly, they motivate parents to be consistent over however long sleep training takes.

Studies show that virtually all sleep training methods work on all babies, provided that parents implement said methods consistently over as long as is needed to get results. This means that parents have to stick with a plan even when they may not be getting results right away. (Which may also mean they didn’t pick the best method for their baby.) Getting through the 1-2 week process of sleep training can be tedious. A loving, ever-present consultant is what parents really need to make it through the process, and end up with a happy, well-rested baby.

[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]