My Story
How my journey began, my reason and my mission.
Certified Baby and Child Sleep Consultant
I’m Sam, a pint-sized mama with a super-sized dream. To help parents, just like you, break the cycles that are breaking them. Why? Because I was where you are now, and it was one of the hardest, darkest points in my parenting journey.
I live by the sea in Essex (UK), with my bearded husband, our beautiful, bubbly daughter and our French Bulldog. My background has been pretty varied. Organising huge music festivals throughout the UK for years, then moving into marketing. I then discovering forensic psychology and sleep science. This is where I found my home, helping to raise awareness and change lives.
Why a child sleep consultant?
I became a baby and child sleep consultant, offering gentle and responsive sleep training, after difficulties with my own daughter’s sleep. As a first-time mum, I made all the common sleep ‘blunders’. I’d spend nights googling and re-googling to find differing advice and being left in a world of confusion. When various attempts failed, and my sleepless nights resulted in me napping on the nursery floor, arm wedged through the cot bars in a desperate attempt to soothe my daughter. I realised something had to change, because this couldn’t be ‘normal’ parenting, could it?
It was at this ‘I’ve tried everything‘ point that I chose to completely change my career. I trained with one of the world’s leading child sleep experts, Lucy Shrimpton at the Sleep Nanny, to become certified as a sleep consultant.
My experience with sleep training
While studying, I applied all I had learnt to my own situation. I successfully had my gorgeous girlie ‘sleeping through’ the night within 16 days. Peaceful 7pm bedtimes, smiling 7am wakeups, and a whole lot of sleep with no disturbances in-between. I now understood, this really could be normal parenting for me. I was so excited to help others who were needlessly suffering.
My reason
I know all too well that sleep deprivation is a killer, literally. Did you know that vehicle accidents caused by drowsy driving exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs driving combined? None of us would strap our little one in and get behind the wheel after a few drinks. Yet we readily drive when only running on a few hours of sleep, but this is something that has to change.
Sleep deprivation drives relationships apart and damages our physical and mental health. It also results in poor performance at work and puts our child’s health, wellbeing and development at risk. It’s because of these distressing facts that I want to offer my knowledge, skills and experience to parents in need, and bring an end to unnecessary sleep deprivation.
My mission to help
I want to help you find a healthy, happy and loving environment to raise your little one in and to live in yourself, because everyone deserves this. I truly believe there are enough awful things to test us in life which are out of our control, child sleep difficulties don’t have to be one of them.
When I think back to where we were when we first met with Sam from Karma’s Lullaby, I genuinely have no idea what we would have done without her.