The Sleep Fairy Story
My entire life I have had a deep love for children and have been fascinated by the way that they learn and grow. Their ability to absorb information is incredible and I love watching their confidence grow as they learn a new skill. I’ve been teaching swim lessons for 15 years and again, witnessing first-hand children’s abilities to pick up a new skill never ceases to amaze me. I grew up in a large family and also nannied for two families, each with 5 kids. Truly, any job involving teaching kids a new skill is a dream job in my book.
Graduating College & Prepping for Baby #1
I graduated college with a degree in Family and Human Development and my favorite classes, by far, were the early childhood development classes. This is when my focus really shifted from child development to baby development. I just couldn’t believe all of the things that babies learned in the first year of life! It’s crazy and mind blowing and honestly, a miracle.
Fast forward a few years when I was a young newlywed and I found myself preparing to have my first baby. I had always wanted kids and my husband and I knew we wanted kids early on so this was all part of the plan. I had so much experience being around babies, how hard could it be, right? I was ready. Ha!
Refusing to Believe in Sleep Deprivation
It didn’t take long for people to start making comments about how I should enjoy sleep while I still could because it was the last time I’d sleep through the night for years. YEARS?! What in the world am I signing up for? Do people really go years without sleeping through the night?
The panic set in. I have always, ALWAYS loved my sleep. I was that girl in high school that left a party early to go to bed. Or to turn down a midnight milkshake run so I could go to bed. Seriously, I would way rather sleep than socialize late into the night because I know that when I don’t get sleep, I feel absolutely miserable the next day.
I knew how I felt without one night of good sleep, so how on earth could I live this way for an extended period of time? I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. So, I turned my panic into productivity and started researching baby sleep. I read every sleep training method and book out there. I asked every mom I knew for advice and most of them said “yep, welcome to motherhood!”
I couldn’t believe people just accepted this way of life! I knew it couldn’t be good for them and I definitely knew it would not be sustainable for me. So I took all of the information I had learned and put it into practice when my baby was born.
I tried a few different methods but found there were so many things that wouldn’t work for us. What about flexibility? Do I really have to wait until my baby is 6 months? If I do start at 4 weeks, can my baby really learn that young? And there’s no way I’m letting my tiny baby cry it out. What about naps? Why won’t my baby take long naps?
I dug in deeper, studied harder, and basically interviewed my pediatrician at every well-visit. Bless him. Eventually I gathered the education I had, listened to my mama gut, and found a gentle way that worked for both me and my baby. Within a few weeks, my baby was sleeping 12 hours at night and happier than she’d ever been. I did it! I had figured out what worked and honestly thought that would be the end of that.
Spreading the Sleep Love
My friends all started having babies soon after and began asking me how I got my baby to be such a good sleeper. So, I’d text them these ridiculously long messages and we’d text back and forth for a week or two and suddenly, they’d tell me their baby slept 12 hours and they felt like a new woman! So, they’d tell their friends who told their friends who told their friends. Before I knew it I was texting people I didn’t even know, helping them teach their baby how to sleep the same way I had taught mine. The craziest part? It worked every time for complete strangers.
This continued for 6 ½ years. I had two more babies of my own in the mix and it worked for them as well. At this point, I knew that I had a skill for teaching babies how to sleep as well as pinpointing what parents could change to help their baby get more sleep. However, it never even crossed my mind that this was a big enough need to turn it into a business. I simply thought I’d be texting strangers about sleep for life!
Writing My E-Book
In 2018, my husband went back to school to get his MBA and within a few weeks, word got out that I knew how to sleep train. I was thrilled because there were so many new moms and I was more than happy to help them! But my husband was not-so-thrilled that I spent so much of my time ignoring him and texting people about sleep instead (haha).
Since he is very business-minded and he’s also very good at making things efficient, he said, “Why don’t you just write what you do down in a PDF? That way when these moms text you, you can just send them one file and say ‘Here it is!’ It would save you SO much time”.
I thought that was brilliant and really would save me lots of time. Not only that, but when I was sleep deprived with a newborn it would be nice to go back and refresh my memory with my notes. So, the writing began.
Later that week I was listening to a podcast where a mom was discussing an eBook she had just published. She said “When you have a skill that other people don’t have, they’re willing to pay for your help. So, I wrote down my skill and now people purchase it and it is changing lives. I couldn’t be more grateful to have turned what I love into a business!”
That’s when a lightbulb went off and my mind couldn’t stop turning. “I could write my method down, turn it into an eBook and sell it for anyone who wants it. It could be a little side hustle but nothing too big or too crazy. If someone texted me about sleep training, I’ll direct them to the eBook and it’ll be that simple! But where will I publish it? And how can I share the link? I know, I’ll create a separate Instagram handle simply so people can click the link. I won’t have posts or anything, it’ll just be a place to hold the eBook. It’ll be hands-off but fun to have extra money come in while my husband is in school.”
Those were the thoughts that ran through my head. And I thought those thoughts were crazy. Little did I know what was to come!
Publishing My E-Book and Starting on Instagram
Before I even finished the eBook, my close friends and family started sharing my Instagram page (there was nothing on it) and I slightly panicked. “I’m not supposed to have followers! This is just where I tell people to go find the eBook if they want to know how I sleep trained my babies.” But I felt some pressure so I threw a few posts up and left it alone.
In October 2018, the eBook was officially complete and published. The night before, I hesitantly said to my husband, “I hope I can sell 10 eBooks tomorrow. If I can just sell 10, and help 10 people get more sleep, all this work it took to get here will be worth it.” Then I sat and thought about it and said, “And this is totally crazy to say out loud, but in the next 5 years, I hope to be able to help 1,000 people get more sleep.”
Well, that first day I sold 50 copies of The Sleep Fairy Way. Within one week I had people asking for all kinds of sleep questions — not related to the eBook but definitely related to baby sleep. So I decided to answer these questions via Instagram posts and realized there was actually a need for this information. The questions kept coming in so the posts kept coming out. Within 2 months of publishing I had moms asking for consultations. Remember, I never meant for this to turn into a business so consultations weren’t even on my radar. But I did want to give it a try. I had been consulting strangers for 6 ½ years, after all!
Filling the Need for Sleep Consultations
I thought the best way to test it out would be to do a giveaway and offer one free phone consultation. It went so incredibly well and I loved every minute of talking through her baby’s sleep situation. Within a week, her baby was sleeping all night. That’s when I decided to fully offer consultations and posted about it. Within 24 hours, I had 21 consultations scheduled. I’ll never forget the high I was on after those first few days of virtual consultations. My love for working with moms continued to grow.
Continuing to Spread
At the start of 2021, I felt an overwhelming feeling that brought me to tears. I couldn’t stop crying! I knew in my soul that I needed to continue to grow this into a real business and help as many moms as I possibly can. Not only to get more sleep, but to help them grow in their confidence as a mother. To help women feel empowered and in control of their lives and their motherhood. The Sleep Fairy is so much bigger than me and I just feel so lucky I get to navigate it with God’s help.
Since 2018, I have been able to have consultations with women from all around the world, and The Sleep Fairy Way is being sold in over 45 countries and used in over 3,000 homes, helping parents and babies get the sleep that they deserve. I now offer 20 different products, gift bundles, and consultation packages, and Instagram has become an actual job. I’ll never stop saying that this has turned into more than I could’ve imagined, because it has. But I also know this is just the beginning. I can feel it.
Thank you so much for being here. It means the absolute world to me.