Hi, I'm Steph

I'm the Founder and Director of Sleep Parenting. As a mom, I know the realities of postpartum life. 

My eldest daughter struggled with sleep, and we quickly became overwhelmed. After months of suffering from postpartum anxiety and chronic sleep deprivation, I reached out for help. Our world changed, and a new passion was sparked when I realized that sleep affects everything. 

I founded Sleep Parenting in 2018 to educate and support parents looking for an alternative to cry-it-out and stricter sleep training methods when addressing sleep.

Poor sleep is a symptom, not a behavioural issue.  No child ever set out to be a difficult sleeper and in fact, every child has the ability to be a great sleeper. As parents, it's up to us to help them reach their full potential.

I know how hard it is because I was there too.

After a less-than-ideal birthing experience with my first child, I returned home with my sweet newborn and a hearty dose of trauma. The challenges started immediately. She would feed for 45 minutes, then sleep for 45 minutes around the clock. For eight days, I could not sleep longer than 20 minutes at a time. 

At six weeks, she stopped sleeping at all during the day, so I'd spend my entire day, every day, trying to get her to sleep. She couldn't be settled by my partner or anyone else. Only I would do. And she was still constantly waking throughout the night. I felt trapped. 

Her constant crying had us all on edge. At five months, I felt broken and unable to survive any longer. On the brink of checking myself into a hospital just to get some sleep, someone recommended hiring a sleep coach.

The sleep coach told me to let my baby cry it out, and out of desperation, we did. It didn't feel right, but we pushed through. Our daughter started sleeping through the night and about another month later, my fog  from severe sleep deprivation lifted, and that's when I began to recognize that there was more going on with my daughter and me. Our challenges continued for two more years.

Finally, the isolation from a lack of support system and mixed messages from the sleep and parenting books I read motivated me to begin my own education and training in infant sleep.

Fifteen months into our parenting journey, I attended an infant airway seminar to better understand how breathing affects sleep. My eyes were opened as I heard my baby being described (to a T) by the speaker. It inspired me to take her to a pediatric ENT, where we discovered she couldn't breathe well through her nose, eventually undergoing corrective medical procedures at age 2.5.

It wasn't until age 6 that we discovered she had a severe tongue tie that nobody had diagnosed.

I was putting together pieces of the puzzle and realizing that at no point did anyone bother to look at our situation holistically. Now I know that she had feeding and breathing issues that impeded her ability to sleep. I also now know that the trauma I experienced during her birth and the sleep deprivation triggered Postpartum Anxiety in me. I had been in survival mode (drowning) and couldn't see a way out. 

My experience came full circle; my mission is that nobody else ever needs to experience something similar. 

The Sleep Parenting Approach assesses the whole child (and whole family!). As a physiotherapist, I am accustomed to working in a multidisciplinary team. I bring this with me as I assess not only your child's sleep, and the family dynamic, but also screen for mental health, feeding and airway. I do not diagnose medical issues but provide checklists and resources (created with the help of specialists in their field) to help you decide if you need additional assistance from qualified specialists with expertise on issues that are outside my scope of practice.

You should never feel helpless as a parent. And you are not alone in these challenges. So let's create sustainable changes to ensure your family's sleep remains healthy.