All parents to be are warned! You have no sooner made your announcement and you are let in on the so called secret….”You will never have a good night sleep again!”… “Enjoy your sleep while it lasts!”. We were all warned but, like most things, until you are actually living it, it’s difficult to take seriously.

However, if you are like us and your new little bundle, in fact LOVES their sleep (just like mummy) you may too have been well and truly spoiled when baby began sleeping through the night relatively early. For us, this happened at about the month mark. Those early days, busily getting to know our brand new baby boy were blessedly followed by peaceful nights where Baby B performed a 10 to 11 hour sleep stunt night after night….agghhh.

The relief that those warnings weren’t true for me and my hubby as we ventured into parenthood, coupled with the underlying joy of being a well-rested Mum with a newborn (if perhaps a little cocky) led me to virtually ignore the never ending stream of sleep advice provided by dear family and friends, mothers groups, books and even social media. No need for sleep training in this house!

Then BOOM!!! Baby B hit his 8th month….he’s crawling-Fantastic! He pulls himself up now! Great! He is eating solids! How fun! But here too began the dreaded night waking’s…12 am, 2 a.m., 4a.m…. What is going on???? This bushy tailed Mumma quickly slipped into the hazy territory of sleep deprived parenthood with pretty much no warning and phrases like “Sleep regression” quickly became the cry of the day. 

As first time parents, we set about experimenting with a variety of sleep aids to help. In the quest to discover 'what works' we found ourselves constantly juggling devices; we were up and down switching night lights on and off, changing music, measuring room temperature, singing, introducing soothers-you name it! While we aimed to apply a minimalist approach to parenting, we ended up with countless gadgets, toys and aids.

There is a lot of research out there around what helps promote sleep in infants, from light colors and frequency, white and pink noise but as parents, we know that every child is unique and what may work for one may not work for another and what works today may not work tomorrow.

We needed something that recognised our child as an individual with individual needs, and one that would provide us with feedback and could evolve as our child's sleep pattern changed, not a device with one setting or preset that treated every child the same.

We just couldn’t find what we were looking for, so we decide to make it... and Santi The Sloth was born.