When sleep enters the room
A 60-minute masterclass for professionals who work with mothers and babies
THURSDAY 17 SEPTEMBER · 12PM AEST · $37
REPLAY INCLUDED
You’re not a sleep expert (nor do you want to be).
But there’s a mother in your room, and she’s crying about her four-month-old’s naps, and you’ve got ten minutes left in the session.
Or she mentions it in passing - he’s still up three times a night, but that’s normal isn’t it? - and you can hear that it isn’t a passing comment at all.
Or she arrives with four conflicting pieces of advice from four different people and asks which one is right.
Sleep keeps entering the room. And most of us were never taught what to do when it does.
Here’s what usually happens.
You say something reassuring. That’s completely normal at this age.
Which might be true. It might also close the conversation before you find out that she hasn’t slept properly in seven months, that she’s checking the monitor forty times a night, or that she’s genuinely worried about something and has just been told not to be.
Or you go the other way and offer a suggestion - a routine, a wake window, something you read - and with that, you’ve just become the fifth voice telling her what to do.
Neither is a failure - it’s what happens when sleep arrives in a room where nobody quite knows how to manage it.
What we’ll cover
✺ Why sleep has become so loaded for modern mothers, and what that pressure is doing in your consulting room.
✺ What maternal sleep anxiety actually looks like when it's sitting in front of you - and what it usually gets mistaken for.
✺ A simple way of thinking about the baby, the mother, the relationship and the context before you respond to any of it.
✺ And then we'll work through a real case together, because it's much easier to use something once you've watched it being used.
Sixty minutes, then fifteen minutes of questions for anyone who can stay. Recorded, and the replay comes to you the next morning - yours to keep.
Who this is for
Psychologists · social workers · midwives · nurses · lactation consultants · speech pathologists · occupational therapists · physiotherapists · doulas · maternal and child health nurses · parenting educators · family support workers · perinatal mental health practitioners
— and anyone else whose work brings them into rooms with mothers and babies.
It’s also for you if you’re moving into this space, or you simply want to think about infant sleep more carefully than the internet allows.
— You’ll leave able to:
01
Understand why infant sleep has become such a loaded issue for modern mothers
Recognise when a sleep concern is actually anxiety, hypervigilance or pressure wearing a different coat
02
03
Tell the difference between a sleep concern and a genuine need for intervention
Consider the baby, the mother, the relationship and the context before you respond
04
05
Avoid accidentally becoming another source of sleep anxiety
Know when to listen, when to explore, when to educate, when to support, and when to refer
06
07
Recognise where your scope ends
I'm Fi, and I'm a social worker. I've spent years working with mothers and families, and the same thing kept happening - a mother would come to me worried about her baby's sleep, and the biggest thing in the room was never the sleep. It was how she felt about it.
That's the gap I've been working in ever since. I'm a Circle of Security Parenting facilitator and a Motherhood Studies Practitioner, and I've taught infant sleep perspectives to psychologists, social workers, midwives and allied health practitioners through Making Waves.
The thing I want most is for a mother to look at her baby's sleep and not see a judgement about herself in it. That's what all of this is for.
About me
When sleep enters the room
A 60-minute masterclass for professionals who work with mothers and babies
THURSDAY 17 SEPTEMBER · 12PM AEST · $37
REPLAY INCLUDED