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How I decided to become a Child Sleep Consultant

how did you decide to become a sleep consultant
Christine Brown

Christine Brown

I am constantly asked “how did you decide to become a child sleep consultant?!” Perhaps I should step back a minute and first introduce myself…

Hi there! I am Christine Brown, founder of Bella Luna Family and a certified child sleep consultant. My twin boys, Ryan and Nicholas, call me “Mommy”.  My husband, Jeff, is also passionate about healthy sleep – we call him Sleep Daddy!

Most of my career was in high tech marketing and sales, but it never felt like the right fit.  I always wanted to help others and to work for myself.

The early days as a twin Mom…

I had my twins in August 2014 and found myself madly in love, yet overwhelmed and exhausted, like all first time Moms. During the early days, it was a whirlwind of feeding, diapers and sleeping. (them, not me!) As they started growing, I watched their sleep habits change and I was constantly trying to keep up with the changes. To learn more, we devoured books on sleep and we were fascinated about all of the changes our little guys were experiencing developmentally.

Miracles do exist and then sometimes they don’t…

At around 4 months, Ryan slept through the night! Ryan is a champion sleeper and taught himself how to sleep and self-soothe early on. He is what I call a “unicorn baby”.  Nick on the other hand, struggled with sleep.

Why we decided to sleep train…

Right around the time the boys turned 5 ½ months old, we found ourselves EXHAUSTED. Nick was still not sleeping, he was up at least 2-3 times each night on a good night.  As a result of the sleep deprivation, his disposition was increasingly CRANKY. My husband and I were fighting A LOT. I was struggling at work.  Driving to work was becoming increasingly dangerous. (Does any of this sound familiar?)

Our sleep training process…

We decided it was time to do some sleep training and started one night in the middle of the night out of desperation.  Needless to say, we didn’t stay consistent because:

#1: it’s was hard to hear our son upset

#2 we went into the process unprepared and did not have a plan

#3 we were not truly committed

#4 we didn’t know what we were doing

We began discussing the situation with our pediatrician; talking it over as a couple; and committed to making a change.  From our research, we formulated a plan and successfully sleep trained Nick. It happened a lot quicker than we expected.  He slept through the night on the fourth night!

Why I decided to become a child sleep consultant…

The changes we saw in our son were remarkable.  As Nick became well rested, he went from being cranky to giggling, engaged and generally a happy baby. On top of that, as my husband and I caught up on sleep, we became better parents, spouses and employees. I cannot emphasize enough how much sleep has really positively impacted our family.  It is now one of our family values and we talk frequently about the importance of sleep because we know first hand how important it is for our children and for us.

I wanted to share the positive benefits that we experienced as a family with as many families as I could.  To make that dream a reality, I received my certified child sleep consultant certificate from the Family Sleep Institute in early 2016.  Now I work with families in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and all across the United States.  My mission is to help children and parents to create healthy sleep habits so everyone can be happy, healthy and well rested!

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