Hi, I’m Katie
As a mum of two little ones, I know exactly how it feels when a full night’s sleep becomes impossible. After a while we become irritable, distracted, impatient and thoroughly exhausted. We tried everything to get our little ones to sleep, with limited success. As a family we just felt overwhelmed, and completely sleep deprived. I then reached out to a sleep consultant. Despite feeling apprehensive, I knew that we needed some help. This decision changed our family’s life.
We went from feeling completely depleted and helpless, to sleeping soundly throughout the night, after we sleep trained our youngest.
My husband and I had our evenings back and the rest of the family finally agreed to babysit for us, so that we got some much needed time together.
It made such a difference to our lives that I decided I wanted to help other sleep deprived families too. Having been a registered Health and Social Care professional for 15 years, supporting families.
I am very comfortable working with people, using an evidence base, and following through with clients to meet goals and make real, lasting positive change.
My role, as a qualified Infant sleep consultant is to produce an individualised sleep program, tailored to your needs and struggles. And of course, I will guide the whole family through the process.
Katie Mellingwood
Qualified Infant Sleep Consultant
“Katie has a very warm and caring nature. She is well experienced and placed to help with supporting parents and families with issues surrounding sleep.
She has lived experience of the impact of poor sleep on parents and siblings, and is proven success of sleep training.
Katie is realistic, adaptable and reliable. She understands what it’s like to have the high demands of family life with her children, work commitments and the need to juggle her families needs. She is the perfect person to contact as a sleep consultant and I would not hesitate to recommend her. ”
My Approach
This made me reluctant to seek support and left me feeling it was best to work on things myself, as a parent, because that way I had control. But after 19 months we were all suffering, I had a constant fuzzy headache that I couldn’t shift, and it was clear that something had to change. I knew if I was to achieve a full night’s sleep we needed expert help, and the whole family would feel so much better for it.
Choosing to sleep train has been the best decision for our family. We finally had good quality, undisturbed sleep and could enjoy our time together as a family, feeling refreshed and being a good deal more patient with one another.
I realised that sleep training didn’t need to be a ‘one size fits all’ experience. That is, I knew that following a proscribed sleep plan was effective, alongside expert coaching to help keep me accountable and on track throughout the process. But one thing I did find was that, in our experience the ‘sleep goals’ were defined by the sleep coach and not by me as a parent.
This is why I specialise in parent - directed sleep planning.
I understand that not all parents have the same sleep goals, not all parents are at the same starting point, we all have our own family life to work around and that each parent will have their own ideas about what success means to them. As a sleep consultant, I specialise in listening to your sleep goals and utilising a variety of approaches to help you achieve them.
I offer gentle 1:1 sleep coaching to meet your sleep goals aligned with structured guidance and effective strategies for making real improvements.
I opt for gentle approaches to meet your needs. I support you to help teach your little one the techniques to self soothe and utilise my background and training to tailor this to you and your family’s needs.
Like most parents, I understand the tension between wanting to care and nurture our little ones, but also needing sleep and some privacy and down time for ourselves. That’s why it was 19 months of trying to manage my little girl’s sleep before reaching out for help.
From what I had heard, sleep training was harsh and the traditional ‘cry it out’ method did not seem to match our family’s approach to parenting.
I’d looked online at different methods and followed different tips, but nothing seemed to work.