Whether you're expecting, have a newborn or already into the toddler years, figuring out how to get your kid to sleep well and sleep through the night can sometimes feel like a huge mystery. This week we're talking with Desiree Baird, a pediatric sleep coach and mom of three (including twins!). Desiree breaks down what good sleep actually looks like, how to build healthy sleep foundations, and why it's never too late to make changes. You'll learn some of the secrets of sleep transitions, which products are worth the investment and which aren’t, and most importantly—how to be patient with your unique child's sleep needs.
Note: Information in this episode is based on personal experiences and is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. Information in the podcast does not constitute personal professional advice. We encourage you to independently evaluate any content and consult with appropriate professionals as needed for your specific circumstances.
Getting Started with Baby Podcast
A Few Key Quotes
On understanding normal wake-ups:
"Usually around that three-hour mark is when they're going from a deep sleep to a lighter sleep phase, and many babies wake up at that three hour mark. Parents mistake it as needing to eat, but it truly typically is not unless they're a newborn." — Desiree Baird
On being patient with individual differences:
"Every baby is different. Don't compare to your friend Sally down the road who has a baby that's sleeping 12 hours a night and four hours during the day. Maybe your baby is perfectly healthy and only needs 11 hours a night and 3.5 hours during the day." — Desiree Baird
On making the change to independent sleep:
"It's never too late [to work on independent sleep]. [If your child is older], you might have to take a different approach. It might take a little bit longer, but it’s never too late. I work with three, four or five-year-olds that were used to co-sleeping through the night since day one." — Desiree Baird
The Takeaways
- Understand the 3-hour wake-up phenomenon: When babies wake around the three-hour mark after bedtime, it's usually not hunger—especially for babies 4+ months old. This happens because they're transitioning from deep sleep to lighter sleep phases. Before rushing to feed, consider if they truly need calories or if they're just learning to transition between sleep cycles.
- Focus on sleep foundations before sleep training: Before making any major sleep changes, ensure your child has the right room environment, no underlying medical issues (like reflux, allergies, or airway restrictions), proper feeding schedules, and elimination of sleep props. Address these fundamentals first for the best chance of success.
- Good sleep is about routine, not perfection: Children typically need 10.5-11.5 hours of nighttime sleep (not always 12 hours). Quality matters as much as quantity—sleep should be silent, still, with mouth closed. If you notice snoring, excessive movement, or mouth breathing, you may want to investigate potential causes.
- Crying during changes is normal communication: When transitioning away from sleep associations (like nursing to sleep), crying often indicates frustration with the change, not physical distress. You can still comfort and support your child while making gradual adjustments—sometimes progress means taking "three steps backward to go forward."
- Every child has different sleep needs: There's a wide range of normal sleep patterns. Your baby might be perfectly healthy needing less sleep than other children. Focus on your child's individual patterns rather than comparing to others, and adjust expectations accordingly.
- It's never too late to make sleep changes: Whether your child is 6 months or 5 years old, you can work toward independent sleep. Older children may take different approaches and more time, but change is always possible with patience and the right strategy.
- New parents should start simple: For newborns, focus on safety and bonding first. After about a month, gradually introduce simple foundations like consistent bedtime routines and keeping baby in their own safe sleep space.
Desiree's Sleep Product Picks
Credit: Amazon
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth
The foundational sleep book that helped Desiree navigate her twins’ sleep. She didn’t love every method, but the sleep science—especially the age-based “what’s normal” summaries—was invaluable.
* Please check the retailer for latest price.
Credit: Amazon
Yogasleep Dohm Classic
A simple, fan-based sound machine that’s been the gold standard since the 1960s. The real fan creates consistent, natural white noise that masks household sounds better than many digital options.
* Please check the retailer for latest price.
Credit: Amazon
Credit: Amazon
Quality Blackout Blinds (e.g., ChrisDowa Cordless)
A truly dark room supports natural melatonin production. Choose true blackout coverings (not just light-filtering) to create an ideal sleep environment.
- Amazon: $43.99
* Please check the retailer for latest price.
The Full Conversation
[edited from audio transcript for clarity]
Jane Dashevsky: Today's topic is big—we're covering sleep. Whether you're expecting or have a newborn or already into the toddler years, figuring out how to get your kid to sleep well and sleep through the night can sometimes feel like such a mystery. Today's guest, Desiree Baird, is a pediatric sleep coach and a mom of three. She's here to give us the inside track on what good sleep looks like, how to get there, and if you need it, where to find help to make sure everyone in the family, including you, is able to get that much-needed rest.
Welcome, Desiree. We're so excited to talk to you.
Desiree Baird: Thank you for having me.
Jane: To get started, could you share a little bit about your background and your experience?
Desiree: Sure. I'm a pediatric sleep coach. I work with families virtually. I've been doing this for eight years now. I was certified as a sleep consultant formally in 2017. I also have a set of twins and a third child. He's now eight years old, and that's why I fell into the sleep world by mistake. The twins are the reason why I got interested in sleep to begin with, and my third pregnancy ignited that flame again because I didn't want to go through that mystery of trying to figure it out like I did the first time around.
Jane: How did you get into sleep coaching? You mentioned it was a little bit by accident, but I'm fascinated.
Desiree: I had my twins in 2008. I'm from Pennsylvania, so I had little support here in Washington. My husband was busy working to support the family. We went from zero to two very quickly, and he was traveling three to four days a week with his position. The first couple of months were typical—wake up, feed, every three hours or so. I was used to the exhaustion, but they were napping pretty well the first couple of months.
Then when they hit three to four months, they came out of that fourth trimester and became alive and stopped napping for me. Everything was a mess. I remember contacting my pediatrician thinking there was something wrong because they weren't sleeping anymore. Their sleep got really, really bad around four months—the four-month regression.
My pediatrician just kind of wrote me off. She wasn't being intentional, but she was confused. She said, "You just pick them up a couple of times a day, put them down for a nap, and that's it." And I said, "Well, that's not working. I have two babies, and I had one that slept better than the other." My son was kind of the go-with-the-flow child, but my daughter was definitely not like that.
It was overwhelming. I was by myself a lot, sometimes four nights in a row, handling all days and nights. I was going from having a full-time career to taking care of twin infants. So, I took charge of it. There was no such thing as a sleep coach at the time—I remember saying to my husband, "I wish there was," but there wasn't that I could find.
I started doing the research on my own. We purchased a book, Dr. Weissbluth’s, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. I wasn't crazy about his methods, but I liked the sleep science behind it. At the end of each chapter, he summarized what was normal for sleep at each age. I just honed in on sleep, and the twins were sleeping through the night on their own at five months without any sleep training.
Eight years later, I was pregnant with my third child. I remembered the hardest part for me as a mom was the sleep aspect because I needed some time for myself—to take a shower, to eat. I saw that there was a sleep certification course and took it for myself as a refresher, since I was essentially starting over again because my twins were eight years old when I had him.
I took that course, fell in love with it, applied all the concepts I learned to him. And I’m not saying this is normal since all kids will have a different normal, but he was sleeping through the night by the time he was two months old. I started my own business in 2017, and the rest is history.
Jane: That's an amazing story and sounds so tough in those early days, trying to balance not only one kid's sleep schedule, which is overwhelming in itself, but two infant sleep schedules.
Desiree: And they were very different. My son was high-needs and my daughter was low-maintenance, so it was hard to get them on the same schedule, but it didn't always work out that way. I had to learn to have some flexibility.
Jane: What was that aha moment for you with the kids?You mentioned letting the kids take the lead. What does that actually look like in practice?
Desiree: From my research, I knew what they were capable of, but I let them take the lead. So if they were truly hungry—let's say they went to bed at 7pm and woke up at 10pm—I knew they weren't hungry at 10pm based on their age and what they should be doing. So, I didn't necessarily just go feed them right away.
Taking the lead meant I knew what they should be doing—at least six hours before having a feed. I made sure I didn't feed until that six-hour mark to make sure they were truly hungry. I also let them wean off their feeds on their own. In terms of sleeping through the night, they just started doing it on their own and eliminated their feeds together.
Working on that sleep schedule—naps didn't get completely better until they were about seven months old. That's when I noticed that my daughter just didn't need as much sleep as my son. It took about three months for me to really figure that out and realize she wasn't ready when her twin brother was to go down for a nap yet. I started experimenting and realizing she just had different sleep needs than him. I had to accept that they were on similar schedules, but not on the exact same schedule.
Jane: That's such an interesting story about waking up a couple of hours after you put the kid down when you know they should be sleeping through the night. I remember going through that exact same thing with my son. We thought maybe he was hungry, and I had to discover—wait, he can sleep through the night. What am I doing? It's so easy to fall into that trap. Right?
Desiree: Because it's natural. You just panic. You hear your baby crying, you run in, and then you go to feeding. But that's not how it should naturally go. There are different times of the nighttime where brief arousals happen because the deepest part of sleep is the beginning of the night. Usually around that three-hour mark is when they're going from deep sleep to a lighter sleep phase, and many babies wake up at that three-hour mark.
Parents mistake it as needing to eat, but it truly typically is not—unless they're a newborn or two months old, that would make sense. But if your child is four, five, six, seven months old and waking up at that three-hour mark, that's typically because they're coming up out of deep sleep into a lighter form of sleep. They either haven't learned how to self-soothe yet, or you're rushing to them immediately, or maybe there's something wrong with their schedule.
Jane: Absolutely. That makes sense. And it's so powerful to have that knowledge because obviously, if you're woken up from sleep as well as a parent, it's hard to stop and think, "What's going on here?"
What does good sleep for children and parents actually look like?
Desiree: Good sleep—whether parents like to hear this or not—is about being on routines. The body functions best when it's on a routine. Of course, there are those children that can go with the flow, those sleep unicorns that can sleep on-the-go and just sleep anywhere and sleep 12 hours a night. But that's not the norm.
Depending on the age of your baby, the norm is typically anywhere from 10.5 hours to 11.5 hours. Unless they're a newborn, they might be able to sleep 12 hours at night, but typically that's not the norm. The norm is that your baby needs structure. Your body functions best when it has routines—when it's in the same sleep space, when they're going down at the same times every day, when they're going to bed around the same time every day.
Not necessarily always wake windows. A lot of parents follow wake windows, and it's good to a certain point. But once a baby reaches a certain age, wake windows really isn't the best way to go because depending on their naps, their bedtime can fluctuate by two hours if they have a bad nap day.
Another thing that's important is not just the quantity of hours, but the quality of sleep. If your child is snoring—even for adults—we should never normalize snoring. If your child is sick with a cold, I understand because they're stuffy. But your child should be pretty much still. You shouldn't be moving around all over the place. Silent and still with mouth closed is typically the best quality of sleep.
Jane: If there is sound or movement, what does that say?
Desiree: That's when I start diving deeper. Does the child have reflux that could be causing some hoarseness? Do they have environmental allergies that's causing their nose to be stuffy, so therefore they're having an airway restriction? Do they have a tonsil and adenoid issue? Do they have ties like a tongue tie or lip tie that's causing them to not be able to keep their mouth closed? Are they one year old and still using a pacifier?
Pacifiers can cause issues with airways. The tongue should be at the very top of the mouth and helps form the palate. But if it's at the bottom of the mouth, maybe it has low tone. If your baby had a pacifier for maybe their first two years, possibly their tongue is not strong enough to reach the roof of the mouth, and that could be a low-tone tongue that's causing your baby to leave their mouth open and not have proper sleep posture.
When I'm on my discovery calls with my clients, I explore all of this before taking on a client. I work on the foundations first, so I need to make sure that your child is in a good spot before we start changing habits. That's by ruling out some of those medical issues that could be causing poor sleep.
Jane: I heard you mention a couple of times "foundations of sleep." What does that mean? What are the foundations of sleep?
Desiree: Foundations are making sure your child has the right room environment. Making sure they don't have other underlying medical issues. Making sure that their feeds are during the day and not always at nighttime. For example, I have a new client that came to me where we're going to have to reverse that cycle of feeds—making sure we're doing feeds at proper times, or at least trying to reverse that feeding pattern.
Making sure that we're eliminating sleep props. So, if the baby is nursing to sleep, we need to take that out of the equation before we do any sleep training. Schedule is a big one as well.
Also grounding the parents—that sounds funny, but a lot of parents are triggered very easily with crying. I try to eliminate crying, but your baby might cry even if you stop nursing to sleep and only rock them to sleep. They still might cry because of the change. So making sure I'm grounding the parents and preparing them for sleep training or the changes that your little one is going through.
That's the foundation, as well as making sure that the parents are 110% ready to make those changes, knowing that we can support our children as we're making those changes. Sometimes we can't control crying, even if we're going from nursing to rocking to sleep. Your baby might cry because of the change.
Jane: That's such a good point, because I know a lot of parents—even when we talk about the term "sleep training"—that concept can be hard because of crying. Parents struggle with not reacting to crying, or they see crying as a need not being met. What would you say to parents in that situation?
Desiree: You can react to your children. I don't want you not reacting to your children. I want you to go to them and pick them up and give them comfort. But I tell parents that crying is a form of communication. Your child might be just frustrated because you're going from nursing to rocking to sleep. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're in any pain—they're not in physical pain. They're upset at the change because they're so used to being nursed to sleep.
That's a perfect example because a lot of babies that are being nursed to sleep will cry because of the change, but we're still fully supporting them by rocking them to sleep. So we're changing one sleep prop for another. But eventually, sometimes you have to take three steps backwards to go forward. Rocking to sleep is a step backward, but you're actually making progress because we're eliminating that nursing to sleep.
I'll give you another example that happened recently. I have a baby that's 13 months old, and we just finally started the sleep training portion this week. Baby was co-sleeping with mom and dad, and he wasn't feeding at nighttime at all because he was 13 months and never had that issue. But he was so used to being in mom and dad's room and co-sleeping, he didn't even like being in his room.
We worked on those foundations first—just getting him used to being in his room. Then we had dad sleep in the room for a while because it took a couple of weeks of him just getting used to everything. We started sleep training on Sunday night, and it took seven minutes and he went right to sleep.
Jane: That opens up so many fascinating questions. Obviously, there are a lot of loaded terms and perspectives and philosophies around sleep—whether it's co-sleeping or the concept of sleep training. Parents have very strong perspectives on sleep. How do you think about that?
Desiree: I tell them whatever works for their family. But if a family wants to have independent sleep, that's when they come to me. It's judgment-free if someone wants to co-sleep with their children from day one, I hope that they do it safely—that's the most important thing. I would imagine the pediatrician would feel the same way. As long as you're following safe sleep guidelines. It's really up to the family and what works for them.
But families that come to me are typically at the point where they don't want to co-sleep anymore, either because they're not getting good sleep from co-sleeping, they realize the baby and them are not getting good sleep even though they're co-sleeping, or there's some other reason that they just realize, "Now it's time to make this change."
Jane: Especially with big transitions from doing one thing to doing another thing. I think sometimes I've heard parents express that they feel like they've missed the boat when it comes to sleep. Whatever their family has gotten into, they don't know how to get out of it now. Is there a "too late?"
Desiree: Never too late. We might have to take a different approach. It might take a little bit longer, but never too late. I work with three, four, or five-year-olds that were used to co-sleeping through the night since day one, and we work on independent sleep.
I have one family based in New York. They wanted to have another baby, but they had a two-and-a-half-year-old that was in their bed with them and also nursing through the night—using mom as a human pacifier, still at two-and-a-half years old. They were like, "How are we going to make a new baby?" It took about a month, but we got that two-and-a-half-year-old sleeping in his own room, napping in his own room, and they were able to get pregnant again.
Jane: What should parents expect if they're trying to make a big change like that? I assume not an overnight change, right?
Desiree: No, no, no. Well, it depends on the child and how they react. Every case is different that I work with. But I put together a plan for parents, so it's strategic. We might do step one, and then we add on goals. We layer on different goals week-by-week or even every five days, depending on how the child responds.
Nothing is instant. That's not how little humans work. Sometimes we take three steps back before we go another step forward because you have to see how the child reacts before you move forward. Sleep just takes time, especially new routines. When it comes to a schedule, it takes a good seven to ten days for a child to get used to and adapt to a new schedule.
It's really personalized in terms of what the issue is and what we're trying to solve. Most of my packages are three to four weeks because it takes time. For naps, I have a two-week package because it takes about seven to 10 days for that new schedule to really take place. I like to stay there for the duration of that whole time when we're making the change to a schedule.
Jane: You obviously went through that experience with your kids as well—having one experience with your twins, a different experience with your younger kid. What advice would you give to a new mom? You have a fresh slate. How do you set yourself up for success?
Desiree: In the beginning, just go with the flow. Your baby's fresh. Enjoy those snuggles. You can't spoil a newborn. Just enjoy that newborn as much as you possibly can.
After a month, start doing something simple, like adding a bedtime routine. Something just small. If possible, try to keep your baby in the crib or bassinet instead of automatically co-sleeping—maybe there's something else going on with your little one. The reason I say that is not because of independent sleep, but more because of safety. You want to make sure that your baby is in a safe space, and you're not going to be so tired that the baby falls off the bed or something else happens.
I wouldn't do it right away, but within a month or two, you want to start implementing some things like bedtime routines, maybe a little bit of a schedule. Not super rigid, but a little bit of a schedule. Maybe waking the baby up at the same time every day so that schedule can start evolving. Also trying to resolve day-night confusion if your baby has it. Those would be some of my tips in the beginning.
Jane: If someone did want to work with a sleep coach, what should they expect from that experience or working with you? What does that process look like?
Desiree: It starts with a discovery call with me so that I can rule out underlying medical issues and make sure that they're a good candidate and a good fit to work with me. Also to make sure I'm answering all their questions.
One thing I tell parents is you have to be 110% ready to work on sleep. That means no traveling during this time. I need you to focus on it. If you have daycare, the daycare needs to be agreeing to it as well because I don't want you to waste your money and time on my services unless you're going to be able to focus on it. I want the best for my clients, so I know that I can't do my job and get success unless you're able to focus on sleep at that moment.
Once a client signs on with me, they get an onboarding guide and have to start tracking sleep and doing a couple other little things so I can get some background. Then I create a plan for them—just a brief outline. When we get on our first call, I go over that outline with the parents. This is what we're going to work on over a period of three to four weeks, depending on the package they have.
I start setting goals and also setting realistic expectations like, "Your baby might only need three days to get used to these goals, but they might need seven. Let's just see what happens." We stay in close contact because if they're responding in three days, then we're going to layer new goals in right away to jump on that success train. But if it takes them seven days, that's okay as well because every child is different.
I do email support every day, so it doesn't mean that I check in every day. It means that the parents have access to me every day. Although if I don't hear from a parent and it's been two or three days, and it's been radio silent, I will check in at that point.
We do weekly calls, typically depending on the package they purchase, so we can go over our checklist. I'm a big checklist person. I go over and check off what we achieved, then ask, "Are you ready to move forward?" If the mom and dad say yes, then we move forward.
When our time is up together, I want parents to feel fully supported all the way through toddlerhood and beyond. I have a group called the Sleep Elite Group that's part of my premium package so parents can reach out tome at any point in time. I was finding that parents would work with me, then come back six months later because they traveled or something else was going on and needed to fine-tune things again.
Jane: I think that's such an important expectation to set—that there may be bumps. Routines change, schedules change, you travel, there's illness.
Desiree: Even milestones can cause bumps in the road. But once you get through those milestones, things go right back to normal.
Jane: Switching gears a little bit, one of the things we do with the Starter Set, which sponsors this podcast, is try to help parents sort through all of the product noise that's out there. I'm super interested to know as a sleep coach and as a mom, is there anything that you swear by in terms of products that help with good sleep practices?
Desiree: I have to say "less is best." It drives me crazy having all of these products out there. What I will say is I would invest in a good sound machine. My favorite one is the one by Yogasleep. It was owned by a company called Marpac. It was built in the 1960s and looks like it was built in the 1960s. It's a simple design. There's a fan inside of it; that is the best sound machine on the market.
A good swaddle—I do like lots of models. One of my favorites is the Love to Dream swaddle. That's because the natural way a baby should sleep is with arms up. The Love to Dream allows the baby to have their arms up, and then they're able to have access to their hands. Even though it's through the swaddle, they can suck on the material. It's not going to hurt them. A baby self-sooths by sucking their hands –it’s very common.
I would also invest in good blackout blinds. Dark room is the best. It helps the pineal gland produce melatonin. Adults and most children need darkness for that pineal gland to kick in the melatonin to fall asleep.
Jane: What about things that you think are probably unnecessary that sometimes parents are getting?
Desiree: Unnecessary—I know everybody wants good sleep, but the Snoo. I work with so many clients that have to get their baby out of the Snoo. Yes, babies like motion, and that's what the Snoo provides. But your baby's going to grow, and it's just a temporary Band-Aid. It might last for 12 weeks, 16 weeks. But you eventually have to have your baby out of that Snoo, and it is a struggle for some babies getting out. I know a lot of people love it, but I also have a lot of clients that come to me because of it.
Just because technology evolves doesn't mean that humans' needs evolve for sleep. The Merlin suit—absolutely big no in my book. Weighted suits—absolutely big no. It's considered a container just like the Snoo because you're strapped in, and it can cause torticollis, it can cause flat heads, and it can also cause problems with milestones. Your baby should have room to roll when they're ready to roll. They should be able to move around because that flat head or torticollis can occur from being in the same spot all the time.
Mobiles are obviously nice to have and they look cute, but I want the room to be as boring as possible because they could be too stimulating for your baby. If you're going to have a mobile, maybe do it over the changing station so when you're changing a diaper, you have something above them that can distract them. But for sleep, I typically do not like that.
Pacifiers are great in the first six months, but the AAP recommends eliminating it at 12 months. I recommend eliminating it anytime between six and 10 months. The longer your baby has it, the harder it is for them to eliminate it. If we're going to sleep train, and it's causing more problems than good, if the child can't put it in their mouth on their own, then we eliminate it pretty quickly as well.
I am not against pacifiers, but I'm not pro-pacifier after a certain point because it can cause problems with the palate and the tongue. The tongue's pinned down instead of being able to hit the roof of the mouth. There's a time and a place for the pacifier—those early months, absolutely. But it's not something you want to keep.
Jane: This has been super fascinating. It's made me reflect on my own kids' sleep journeys. If there was one thing you wanted parents to take away from this, what would it be?
Desiree: One takeaway would be that every baby is different. And to be patient. I had to learn it the hard way with twins. Like I said, one needs more sleep than the other. They're 17 years old and they are still very different when it comes to sleep.
Be patient. If you need help, reach out to someone like me. Don't compare to your friend Sally down the road who has a baby that's sleeping 12 hours a night and four hours during the day. Maybe your baby is perfectly healthy and only needs 11 hours a night and 3.5 hours during the day. There's a variation—there's a wide range of what's normal, and it all depends on what your baby needs specifically.
Jane: That just sums up the challenge, right? It's so hard to know what's normal.
Desiree: It may be. So, if you are doubting yourself, or if you're feeling that your little one's not getting enough sleep, or you're frustrated because they're not sleeping at certain times, there are people like me out there that can help.
Jane: And that is such a comfort and such a great way to cap it off. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been so interesting, and like I said, it definitely has made me reflect on my own sleep journey and about some things that I might need around here, like blackout blinds.
Desiree: Thank you, I appreciate it.
To hear more from Desiree or get in contact, check out PediatricSleepCoach.com.
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