For the mothers who know, deep down,
that there has to be a better way.
You've probably got a folder of screenshots.
Advice you saved because it sounded right at the time, from people who seemed to know what they were talking about. And you've tried a fair bit of it, and some of it even helped, but none of it has made you feel like you actually know what you're doing.
I don't think that's your fault, and I don't think more advice is the answer.
Hey, I’m Fiona.
Social Worker.
Motherhood Studies Practitioner.
Parenting & Sleep Educator.
I've spent my whole career with mothers and babies - first in maternity, antenatal and paediatric wards, then as an early intervention parenting clinician in community child health. Alongside that I've been running Circle of Security groups for about ten years now, in person and online, for hundreds of mothers.
I live on the NSW mid north coast with my husband and our three kids - a recent seachange that's been exactly what our nervous systems needed. Most mornings start with a coffee (cheeky dash of maple syrup - try it, thank me later) and three small humans already needing three different kinds of breakfasts (which I make for them, even though I know I shouldn’t).
And I came to this work the way most of us come to anything that matters, which is that I needed it first.
When my first baby arrived - sensitive, intense, not following any of the rules - I was drowning. Every piece of advice I got was about getting him to sleep independently, settle on his own, fit into someone else's schedule. Nobody talked about who he actually was, what his nervous system needed, or what was happening to me in the process.
I felt unheard. Unseen. Confused. And a little bit certain we'd got it all wrong as a society.
So I dug in. I studied biologically normal infant sleep, attachment theory, brain development, matrescence - the whole map of how babies actually work, and how mothers actually become.
What started as personal survival became academic conviction. And what I found was that the problem was almost never the baby.
There is no perfect way to do motherhood.
There is the ongoing work of understanding, responding and adapting.
Motherhood got complicated. Not because babies changed, but because mothers now have more information, more advice, more experts, more products and more opinion than ever.
A better way to feed. To sleep. To respond. To regulate. To play. To set boundaries. And underneath all of it, one message: if you can just find the right way, you can get motherhood right.
I don't think that's true. Motherhood is too human, too relational, too individual and too contextual to be reduced to rules - and there is no perfect mother, baby, family, parenting style or way to do this.
What there is: the confidence and flexibility to understand your child, understand yourself, consider your context, make decisions you can stand behind, and change your mind when life changes.
Here’s what I believe.
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It's what's actually going on here. Sometimes there is a real problem — sometimes a baby needs checking over, or a mother needs proper support, or something genuinely does have to change. But you can't know that until you understand what you're looking at.
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Your baby can be waking completely normally and you can still be on your knees. You never have to prove something is wrong before you're allowed to want it to be different.
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When something's hard, the first question isn't how do we stop this? It's what's actually happening here? Sometimes there genuinely is a problem - sometimes a child needs assessment, or a mother needs care, or something really does have to change. Understanding the context is how you respond to the actual problem instead of the behaviour you can see.
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We live by "flexy is sexy." We reject the pressure to be perfect and embrace the beauty of figuring it out as you go. Good-Enough Parenting isn't settling — it's the gold standard.
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Mama Matters is more than a business — it's a home. No parent should feel alone in this. You're not a client here, you're part of the family, and we've got your back.
Sleep is never just sleep.
A baby who won't settle isn't a problem to be solved with a routine. They're a whole human in a web - a nervous system, a temperament, a developmental stage, an attachment bond. So is the mother holding them.
You can't work with one without seeing the whole. So I don't.
I qualified as a social worker at QUT in 2012 and spent my career in the public system, in maternity and paediatrics and then community child health. My training since has been motherhood studies, child development, attachment theory and the science of biologically normal infant sleep.
But the real teacher has been a decade of sitting with women whose "sleep problem" turned out to be postnatal depression, sensory differences, an unprocessed birth, or a temperament–mother mismatch nobody had ever named for them.
This work takes wisdom - the kind built over time, in real rooms, with real mothers. Not techniques, not scripts. Just the patience to see what's actually happening, and the training to know what to do with it.
Where I stand on sleep training
I don't teach or use separation-based sleep training - controlled crying, graduated extinction, timed checks, camping out, anything where crying is deliberately not responded to.
And I don't demonise it either. I understand the mechanisms and why parents choose them, and what's manageable for one baby can be genuinely distressing for another, so I'm not going to collapse it into good or bad.
I understand it. I don't practise it. And I work with families who want something else.
If you already know you want a behavioural programme, this isn't your place, and that's worth knowing early.
Where would you like to go?
I’m a mother
You're somewhere in it — the newborn fog, the toddler years, or the strange quiet after.
Guides you can read one-handed at 2am, one-to-one support when you need a person, a membership full of women in the same week you're having, and a six-month group for mothers ready to think about something other than their children.
FIND YOUR SUPPORTI’m a practitioner
You were trained in a model you've quietly stopped believing in.
Foundational training and masterclasses in the Mama Matters method - for psychologists, midwives, social workers, nurses, OTs, doulas and allied health, wherever you practise.
TRAIN WITH USI’m an organisation
You meet mothers at their most vulnerable, and were never taught how.
Team training, in-service education and speaking for childcare centres, health services and early-years providers. Tell us what you're working with and we'll build it.
START A CONVERSATION