I knew nothing about baby sleep before I became a mom.
Throughout my pregnancy, I spent countless hours reading about the stuff I thought was most important: pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, nutrition, milestones, education, speech? Pretty much everything except sleep. I naively assumed that, after a few weeks, my baby would naturally start sleeping longer stretches, and those 3 a.m. wake-ups would naturally fade away. (Spoiler: They didn?t.) In fact, it wasn?t until my son was three months old that I learned from another mom about the concept of a ?wake window.? This ignited the beginning of my journey to learn all there was to know about baby and toddler sleep. I became passionate about helping other parents find sleep, completed a sleep-consulting certification and launched my small business, marketing primarily through social media. I really enjoyed building my sleep-focused Instagram account, publishing daily posts and stories about sleep tricks and tips, while also sharing my own personal experiences of the ups and downs of my child?s sleep journey. I revelled in being able to help other parents improve their child?s sleep, and ultimately their own, as finding sleep with a baby can sometimes feel like trying to locate the holy grail. I loved being able to work with parents to find what worked best for their families. Sometimes that meant reassuring them that they weren?t ?ruining their baby? or ?creating crutches? by rocking or nursing them to sleep. Other times...