Boot Camp for Babies...You Bet!
Written BY MATTIE FISCH FOR ami MAGAZINE
“Will I ever sleep again?”
“Will Baby ever sleep?”
“Will I ever go out again?”
“Am I crazy? Is this normal? Or am I the only one?”
Do those questions sound like you?
The fact is, they sound like most new mothers—even experienced ones.
So there you are, home from the hospital with your precious pumpkin, and everything is sweetness and light and joy and happiness and bliss. You’re sur- rounded by brachos, well-wishers, gifts and beloved family members.
At least by day. Or at least when Baby is sleeping.
By night—or four in the morning when you’ve finally fallen asleep after hours cod- dling your little malach’l—it’s, eh, a different story.Is this really the way things have to be? Is this just what every mother goes through? The answer, surprisingly to so many, is actually: Nope! Meet Sarah Nagar. Newborn care specialist and certified pe- diatric sleep consultant Sarah was—and is—an ordinary and average frum mother just like you. Same experiences. Same questions. “I had a very difficult time with our first baby,” Sarah recalls. Living in Israel in 2012 as a young wife with husband Menachem, then a medical student (he’s now a neu- rologist), the new mother didn’t know anything about newborn sleep cycles—never mind that there was a wealth of proven safeand healthy methods on actually teaching new babies when and how to sleep.
“I didn’t know what babies needed,” she says. “I didn’t know there was such a thing!” (I know, right?) “I just winged it. I was rocking the baby every hour. Nights weren’t nights, days weren’t days. I needed to dig.”
And dig Sarah did. “I read every book I could. I spent hours reading and research- ing: is it possible to get them on a routine?” And so Sarah Nagar, Frazzled Mom, magically transformed into Sarah Nagar, Empowered Authority.
By the time her next bundles of joy arrived, they were no longer a threat.
Sarah Nagar, Formerly Frazzled Mom Now Certified Pediatric Sleep Coach, Trained Her Newborn Bundle to Sleep. Now She’ll Train You to Train Yours—Painlessly.
Making It Official
Wowed by the success born of critical information, Sarah wanted to take infant sleep training to the next level and do it professionally. (Why, she thought, must moms, especially brand-new moms, have to struggle?)
Taking extensive training online, she eventually secured certification from the Association of Pediatric Sleep Consultants and the Institute of Pediatric Sleep and Parenting, with additional training under the Sleeping Newborn’s Newborn Care Specialist and Mentorship Program.
As it is with so many woman business owners,herfirst“client”wasasister-in-law. That new mother, herself a bundle of inde- scribable relief upon being empowered with a handle on newborn care, told a friend about Sarah’s effectiveness. Sarah had her second customer. And word of mouth spread.
Seven years and dozens of clients later, Sarah is still introducing mothers of all ages and stages (that’s moms and children, too!) to the magic of routine and healthy sleep habits: the critical pillars around which all healthy sleep—particularly for infants and toddlers but even for older kids and, yes, adults—is built.
Via her website, ALittleSleep.com, the veteran professional provides sleep plans and routines custom-designed for each individual mother and child.
“Babies don’t come home knowing what night or day is,” she explains, peeling back one of many curtains of parenting mystery. “We have to teach them!”
“But,” I ask, “if infant sleep coaching is customized to each client, would that mean that the only rule is that there are no rules?”
“So the foundation and the goal remains the same: teaching the child to fall asleep independently,” Sarah elaborates. “You customize based on each client: Some families want a more gentle process, and some want something more dynamic.”
“I think that moms have to have confidence in themselves that they are able to actually do this—to make real changes,” she continues. “They question everything they do, and they really shouldn’t. Also, infants are super-adaptable: Whatever you intro- duce them to, that’s what they get used to! That’s what they know! It’s okay for things not to be perfect. But it doesn’t have to be an unpredictable, stressful experience.”
The Vitality of Sleep
So, what’s the one thing she wishes everyone knew about sleep?
“Sleep is a pillar of health, optimizing how we function,”she says. “It’s our foundation. We sleep for one-third of our life.
Everything is affected if kids don’t sleep. I’m all about information. It’s important for moms to understand, What is sleep? Why do I need it?”
In fact, in her experience, Sarah has found that some children in our communities today may be misdiagnosed with ADHD, LD or other conditions, or even propelled towards medications, simply because they have poor sleep habits going back to early childhood. Diminished concentration and focus in class, resulting from inadequate sleep and/or poor diet, can easily be mistaken for ADHD.
“You can have the best of both worlds!” smiles and says Sarah, addressing the respect she has for time-honored infant-care traditions handed down to us by our mothers and grandmothers. “I’m not here to tell you what to do—I’m just here to work with you, your life and your preferences, and help make them work best for you, and for your baby.”
“You can have a routine and tradition— not either extreme,” she concludes. “Motherhood does not have to be a dreadful experience because of lack of sleep; it’s not par for the course. There is a solution to every sleep problem, and new mothers should never feel stuck, like too many do when it comes to their child’s sleep.”
“My goal is to teach moms how to implement good sleep hygiene and create positive fundamentals for sleep from the very beginning. By a relatively young age, even just a few weeks old, most healthy young babies are able to be sleeping on a solid, predictable and really nice routine. If you do this right from the beginning, you can eliminate 90-plus percent of sleep issues down the line.”
