Supporting families and empowering parents
I’m Polly VandenBerg and I am an Infant Sleep Educator. My philosophy is based in the principles of attachment parenting, combined with education about normal infant development. My clients want to know what normal baby and toddler sleep looks like, and how to get babies and toddlers to sleep better.
Understanding infant development
Sleeping through the night is a developmental milestone -
like crawling or walking
“Does your baby sleep through the night?” is one of the most common questions that new parents are asked. It’s as though modern society determines your success as a parent based on this one criterion. If your baby doesn’t sleep through the night, this question can be isolating and shaming, but it shouldn’t be!
Sleeping through the night is a developmental milestone - and it can happen at different ages for different babies.
It is possible for a family to get good sleep even if baby wakes during the night. Infant Sleep Educators help everyone in the family get better sleep, even when baby wakes at night. The goal for parents doesn’t need to be that their child sleeps through the night as soon as possible, but that their child is securely attached to their parents, and that the child develops a healthy relationship with sleep.
About Polly
I have a health sciences background and built my career in research communications and research grants management at Canadian health charities. After my third parental leave, I no longer felt like I fit in the 9-to-5 world. I learned about Infant Sleep Education and was inspired to follow a new path. I decided to become an Infant Sleep Educator so that I could help other parents navigate those rough waters of early childhood.
I believe that it is possible to get better sleep as a family, without the need to have your baby cry-it-out. Gentle solutions to ease baby to sleep can help parents and babies be more flexible with bedtime, whether your family is at home or on the road. I can help parents understand normal baby sleep patterns, and uncover ways that their family can work with normal baby sleep to get better family sleep.
I have been where you are now.
My first child was a textbook sleeper, but my second and third children were not. In the late hours of night-time wakings, I felt exhausted and isolated. I wanted to know what was normal, and every person I talked to seemed to have a different opinion about what I was doing right (or wrong). I needed a trusted advisor to tell me what normal infant sleep looked like. I was instinctively practicing Attachment Parenting, but felt pressured by societal norms to detach from my children. Allowing myself to be a present parent to my children at any time of night or day helped my whole family have a better relationship with sleep.
Let’s Talk.
My mission is to help families by offering non-judgemental, fact-based information about normal baby and toddler sleep. If you’re a parent of a baby or toddler and you are struggling with fatigue and confusion, I can help your family get better sleep, connect more, and stress less.