What I like about Layal as a sleep consultant is her flexibility, objectivity and empathy. I came to Layal with my family’s sleep challenges assuming she would tell me the plan won’t work unless I move my children to their own separate room first, which as a co-sleeping and breastfeeding on demand advocate I wasn’t ready yet to do nor was it logistically possible back then. So I challenged her.
At that time, my children were 5.5 and 2.10 and were sleeping in their own beds in our bedroom. My son slept through the night before he completely weaned, but it wasn’t the same with my girl who kept waking up at night for months after weaning and the frequency of the wakings increased until we found ourselves face to face with night terror episodes that would last up to an hour. This started to affect my son’s sleep, not to mention my own intermittent sleep for the preceding 5 years, which I was not ok with anymore.
I just wanted them to fall asleep on their own in the room we already share without staying by their side anymore and for my daughter to sleep through the night without waking up and sometimes staying awake in the middle of the night. Layal rose up to the challenge!
Empathizing with me, Layal went far and beyond to come up with a customized plan that would work specifically for my situation respecting my attachment parenting beliefs without judgment. She promised that after 16 nights I would kiss my children goodnight, leave the room and they would sleep on their own. I was shocked to see the plan working before the end of the 16 nights and I saw drastic changes after just the third night!
The real test was 2 months later when my husband got Covid-19 and had to isolate. They suddenly had to move out. Realizing how hard the situation was on them, I co-slept again until I felt we were ready to do that transition of sleeping alone in their own room and we did. I thought I had to start from scratch again but in fact it was so much easier because they already acquired that independent sleep skill.
From our family to yours Layal, a big thank you!
