A Client Success Story with Jayne Havens
When I asked the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Facebook community for ideas about what I could share on the podcast, people came out of the woodworks to request that I share more client success stories. This recent story is a good one! client success story
I was hired by a mom who was 37 weeks pregnant and already had a two year old and four year old at home. The two year old slept great but the four year old was really having a hard time. Bedtime was taking an hour or two before she would finally settle, and then she was coming into her parents’ room to sleep at some point overnight. Mom was nervous that with a new baby coming, their four year old’s sleep would be disrupted if she was sleeping on the floor of their room with the baby also sharing that space.
Nothing like a time crunch to solve a sleep struggle! We got to work right away and had almost immediate success. The parents were fully on board with the process and our teamwork went a long way. I hope you enjoy this story! client success story
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Transcript: client success story
Intro: Welcome to Becoming a Sleep Consultant! I’m your host Jayne Havens, a certified sleep consultant and founder of both Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens and Center for Pediatric Sleep Management.
On this podcast, I’ll be discussing the business side of sleep consulting. You’ll have an insider’s view on launching, growing, and even scaling a sleep consulting business. This is not a podcast about sleep training. This is a podcast about business building and entrepreneurship.
When I asked the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Facebook community for ideas about what I could share on the podcast, people came out of the woodworks to request that I share more client success stories. This recent story is a good one!
I was hired by a mom who was 37 weeks pregnant and already had a two year old and four year old at home. The two year old slept great but the four year old was really having a hard time. Bedtime was taking an hour or two before she would finally settle, and then she was coming into her parents’ room to sleep at some point overnight. Mom was nervous that with a new baby coming, their four year old’s sleep would be disrupted if she was sleeping on the floor of their room with the baby also sharing that space.
Nothing like a time crunch to solve a sleep struggle! We got to work right away and had almost immediate success. The parents were fully on board with the process and our teamwork went a long way. I hope you enjoy this story!
Jayne Havens: I’m coming onto the podcast today to share a story of a recent client that I worked with. I asked them if they would be willing to share their story alongside me on the show, but they were feeling a little bit bashful and uncomfortable being on the air. So I wanted to respect that. But it’s such a good story that I figured I would come on and share the story solo. So here I am.
This family reached out to me in a pinch as families often do. Mom was 37 weeks pregnant. She had a four year old and a two year old at home and was about to bring a new baby into the world. Her four year old was sleeping in a way that she just knew was not going to work once the new baby arrived.
What this looked like was their daughter, her name is Drew. Drew was being put to bed by either mom or dad, and a parent needed to be in the room while she was falling asleep. This would take anywhere from one to two hours. Drew was stalling bedtime. She was being super chatty saying she needed to go to the bathroom, have another sip of water, or she was hungry for a snack.
Mom and Dad were sort of fielding all of these requests and doing anything and everything to just get her to quiet down and go to sleep as quickly as possible, and she would finally fall asleep. A few hours later, she would come into her parents’ room. She would sleep on the floor on this oversized doggie bed that they had purchased for her. This was a recommendation from, I think, a friend of theirs who said it’s not worth it to fight with her in the middle of the night. Just set up a little bed on the floor, and she can sleep there. They had been doing that for a few months.
When they reached out to me, they actually didn’t really mind it. They were super frustrated with bedtime and the fact that bedtime was taking upwards of 90 minutes every single night. But they didn’t really seem to mind that Drew was sleeping on their floor. I think they had gotten used to it, and she wasn’t really bothering them. She would just come in quietly and go to sleep.
But at 37 weeks pregnant, mom had a realization that the new baby was going to be in the room, room sharing for the first couple of months. And with a new baby comes a lot of night wakings, a lot of crying because they’re hungry or can’t get themselves back to sleep in the middle of the night. The parents became sort of nervous that Drew was going to have really interrupted sleep with the baby sharing the room with them. And I think they were right about that.
So with three weeks or less to spare, they decided it was time to get Drew sleeping confidently and independently in her own room. They were actually particularly nervous, because each of their two children who are already here were born several weeks early. So they sort of felt like mom could go any day.
We were on a time crunch. They signed on with me. I wrote them a plan that very night, and then we scheduled a call to start the next day so that we didn’t waste any time. My sleep plans for four year olds always include communication strategies. Because four year olds are old enough to understand everything that’s going on, and they can be a part of the process. So I include communication strategies, a refreshed bedtime routine, and then a strategy to improve and resolve sleep.
In this case, I didn’t follow my typical process. My typical process would be a more gradual wean out of the room, perhaps implementing the chair method, spending five to seven days getting out of the room, and then pivoting to silent return and eventually send back to bed. I just was nervous that we weren’t going to have time for it.
Frankly, actually, Drew, I think, if I remember correctly — I should have checked my notes before recording this podcast. I think, actually, she wasn’t really falling asleep with the parents in the room. It was more that she had so many excuses. “I need one more sip of water. I need a snack. I’m not tired.” She was coming out of her room so many times at bedtime and then eventually I guess she would tire out and go to sleep. So they really weren’t sitting there with her for 90 minutes. It was just lots of back and forth, lots of negotiations and shenanigans before she finally sort of settled in for the night.
What I decided to do with this family was to sort of implement what I’m now calling my ‘accelerated process.’ And instead of implementing the chair method and then phasing into silent return, we actually just decided to shut it down. And so my plan essentially included a family meeting so that we could all make sure everybody was on the same page and let Drew know that, moving forward, bedtime was going to look different. And we just weren’t going to engage in any of that anymore.
And so Drew was notified that if she stayed in bed after she was tucked in, that all was going to go great. She was going to get a kiss goodnight. Her parents were going to leave. Her job was just to close her eyes and let her body rest until it drifted off to sleep. But if she didn’t do that, she was going to be met with a courtesy walk back to bed. And after that, she was going to be sent back to bed.
I have a few mantras that I share with my clients. We had a few mantras to let Drew know that, really, her choices were to make this easy, no problem, or it could be hard. But either way, the boundary was going to be in place. The parents just showed up with a level of confidence that is exactly what was needed, because this child did amazingly well from the very first night.
She did test the boundaries a little bit, but she very quickly saw that bedtime looked exactly like she was told it was going to look at their family meeting. They even implemented some role playing, so she knew exactly what everything was going to look like. And when she saw that her parents were going to hold that boundary, just like they said they were going to, she did great. So bedtime was actually a shorter process that first night than it was before we started working together.
One thing that I know, a lot of my clients express fear and anxiety around sleep getting worse before it gets better. They’re hesitant to work with a sleep consultant because they’re worried they’re just going to be up all night, and it’s going to be so hard. And I usually don’t find that to be the case. I actually find that when you pull the boundary from the very beginning, children see very quickly that things are different. And it just is easier if everybody follows the plan, closes their eyes, lets their body rest, and drift off to sleep.
After a little bit of some pushing on Drew’s side, and her seeing that her parents were going to hold that boundary, she went to sleep. She woke up one time in the middle of the night, and she accepted her courtesy walk back and didn’t come out of bed again. And that was it. They were so proud of her.
I believe it was the second night of sleep training where bedtime, I think, was even easier than the first night and she slept through the entire night no problem. We sent her to school the next day wearing a beautiful crown saying that she was the sleep queen. She was so proud of herself. They skipped around the kitchen island, and everybody was just raving about how proud they were that Drew slept all night in her own bed. She had one night of a little bit of a struggle at bedtime and one night waking. And after that, she literally slept through the night the entire time we work together.
The only little thing that we needed to work on during our two weeks — it was lovely. Every single day, I would text them at seven o’clock in the morning. “Hey guys. How was the night? How did Drew sleep?” And every single morning, they were like, “Another perfect night. She did great. We can’t believe it.” It was so great. I love it when it plays out that way. The only thing that we really needed to work on was Drew waiting for her green light to come on. She had an okay to wake clock that her parents had been using prior to starting their time with me.
But it wasn’t a tool that Drew was respecting. The light would turn on at 6:30 in the morning, but Drew was coming out of the room in the middle of the night. So she never even saw that light in the morning because she was in her parents’ room. So we needed to re-establish the boundary that, actually, she was to stay in bed and either try and find her sleep or just rest her eyes until her green light came on. We implemented a series of both rewards and consequences to incentivize her to respect the boundary that was set by her parents and to respect that green light. And she did by the end of our time together.
We actually just wrapped up. She is sleeping beautifully through the night. She’s waiting in her room until the green light comes on. It was just one of those situations where when they first got on that call with me, they said, “We’ve tried everything. We’ve actually worked with a sleep consultant before. My my sister-in-law has been helping us. But nothing that we’re doing is working.” I think the difference between what they were doing and what I told them to do is probably mostly about the prep that went into it beforehand.
So really, sitting down with her, having a family meeting, explaining to her the expectation and that things were going to be changing. They tossed that doggie bed. They got it out of the house, so it wasn’t even an option for her to sleep on it. They let her know it was going to be removed from the house. We were just changing the rules around sleep and showing up confidently, letting her know that it was entirely okay for her to be upset about the change and that that was completely reasonable for her to have big feelings about it. But as her parents, it was their job to make sure that she slept in a way that was in her best interest.
And so they shifted their mindset, and they were committed to the process. They prepped her in advance with communication and role play. They got her on board, and she did exactly what we expected her to do. This stuff never gets old.
Not every single case is this easy. Not every case is a slam dunk like this one. But I wanted to share this one because it was one that I was particularly proud of. I always get a little anxious. I like to share this because I think people who listen to this podcast think like, oh, Jayne always has an easy time. She never struggles with her clients. I’ll definitely have to share a story sometime soon where it doesn’t go this easy. But even when I have my confidence, sometimes I still — I get a little nervous.
In this case, I was nervous that mom was going to go into labor any day, and she was going to be in the hospital. I wasn’t even sure of what the circumstances were going to be. Like, are grandparents going to come stay with her? I wasn’t even sure. I just was hoping to get it done as quickly as possible so that if this new baby came, that they would be as far along in the process as possible.
I was feeling a time crunch in a way that I don’t typically feel such a time crunch. I work with my clients for two weeks. But really, even though 98 times out of 100, I do get it done in two weeks. If we don’t, that’s okay. They can always sign on for an extra week. Sometimes, especially when parents want to take things more slowly, I’m okay with the process taking a bit longer. But in this situation, they didn’t really have more time, so I was feeling the time crunch. I knew that I needed to show up for them confidently so that they could feel confident for their daughter. And it just went so great.
So, anyway, that’s Drew’s success story. She is sleeping through the night. The baby should be arriving any day now. I am just so proud of this entire family, and it makes me smile to share this story with all of you. I hope you enjoyed.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, it would mean so much to me if you would rate, review, and subscribe. When you rate, review, and subscribe, this helps the podcast reach a greater audience. I am so grateful for your support.
If you would like to learn more about how you can become a certified sleep consultant, head over to my Facebook Group, Becoming a Sleep Consultant or to my website thecpsm.com. Thanks so much, and I hope you will tune in for the next episode.