Holistic Sleep Coaching: Gentle Alternatives to Sleep Training for Health and Childcare Professionals

"Lyndsey Hookway’s Holistic Sleep Coaching is the book parent-child health professionals have been waiting for regarding infants’, children’s, and parents’ sleep! The comprehensive content is comprised of an exhaustive review of the sleep literature, but it is written in a reader-friendly discussion format. (References are cited in text with the complete reference list in APA alphabetical style at the end.) I appreciate Hookway’s evidence-based approach with its emphasis on human sleep biology. Yet her words constantly model sensitivity and empathy for both babies/children and their parents who live in our current cultural landscape of isolated nuclear families dependent on two incomes and often miles from physical support."

-Karen Kerkhoff Gromada, MSN, RN, IBCLC, FILCA Author: Mothering Multiples: Breastfeeding and Caring for Twins or More

"There is much to like in Hookway’s book, including her clear understanding of the link between breastfeeding and sleeping, and the importance of sleep for parental mental health. Educating practitioners about normal infant sleep is an important task. Too many are only aware of extinction methods for addressing parental sleep concerns: with Holistic Sleep Coaching Hookway is laying the groundwork for the development of a more evidence-based and systematic approach."

-Helen Ball, Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Durham Infancy & Sleep Centre (DISC), Founder of the Baby Sleep Info Source (Basis)

"As a breastfeeding professional, I was curious and hopeful when I began reading Lyndsey Hookway's book, Holistic Sleep Coaching. One of the biggest worries for most new parents is how lack of sleep will impact their family, particularly within the context of breastfeeding. This book is not about training a baby how to sleep, or using dangerous methods that can comprise the breastfeeding relationship. This book IS about understanding how sleep works and how to use that knowledge to understand one's baby. It enables parents to support the uniqueness of their child, continue breastfeeding effectively, and identify how to create the most supportive environment possible to optimize sleep within their distinct family. I would definitely recommend this book as a MUST for new parents before their baby arrives, as well as an integral resource for all perinatal professionals!

-Laurel Wilson, IBCLC, RLC, CLE, CLD, CCCECo-Author of The Attachment Pregnancy and The Greatest Pregnancy Ever

Infants are probably sleeping no differently now than they were 1000 years ago. However, parenting has changed. We are dealing with the paradox of parenting information overload, coupled with time-poverty. Parents know more than ever about the importance of love, attachment and security to young children. They may know about good nutrition, stress management, toxins, skin to skin, breastfeeding, one-to-one time, emotion coaching and organic food. Parents are bombarded with appliances that are supposed to make their lives easier, and yet end up confused about what is really necessary. At the same time, modern parents are leading busy, expensive lives, and have jobs that they love or need. And within all this, their babies are still sleeping the same as they always have.

Some sleep experts are quick to suggest quick fixes to lengthen infant sleep, but there is growing concern that techniques such as extinction may have negative outcomes for infants as well as being stressful for parents. Holistic Sleep Coaching is a multi-dimensional approach that looks at the big picture and recognises that babies’ needs are not just physical but psychological, emotional and relational. Holistic Sleep Coaching provides an evidence-based overview of how to optimise sleep without leaving babies and children to cry for health and child care professionals.

Lyndsey Hookway is an experienced London trained Paediatric Nurse, Specialist Community Public Health Nurse (Health Visitor), International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Holistic Sleep Coach and Birth Trauma Recovery Practitioner, with almost 20 years experience working with infants, children and families in hospitals, neonatal intensive care units, clinics, and the community mainly in the UK, but also in voluntary roles in the Far East and Kenya. Lyndsey has worked in many NHS roles in the UK, and now runs a busy private practice offering group and one-to-one specialist breastfeeding, bottle feeding, gentle sleep, eating, behaviour and parenting support to families Internationally. Lyndsey has published a number of articles in academic journals, as well as parenting magazines regarding breastfeeding, caring for premature babies and sleep issues in children. She is the co-founder of the Holistic Sleep Coaching Program, and regularly teaches health and childcare professionals, lectures as an independent speaker, and hopes to begin her PhD soon. Lyndsey is passionate about addressing the sleep needs of parents committed to gentle parenting by providing quality information and support, balancing realistic expectations of normal sleep with transformative sleep biology which can have a profoundly positive effect on sleep without the need for sleep training.