Written by Melissa Du Preez

Our journey with Brave Little Baby started back in 2019 when my eldest daughter was 5 months old. She woke up every hour and as a new mom I didn’t know what to do, so I fed her every time she woke up. This, however, was very exhausting as she would feed about 6 times a night. 

I was exhausted and it caused memory loss and has put a lot of pressure on our marriage. One day, exhausted and in tears, I phoned Zanda. With her calm personality she assured me that she will be able to help us, but we first needed structure and routine in our lives. It was just before the December holidays so we went on vacation and we were relocating to Pretoria. A lot happened in a short time…

Finally, when our baby was 8 months and we were able to start with the sleep training. We were quite nervous as various people warned us against it. At the time we were very desperate and we trusted Zanda to work out a customized plan to suit our family. Our baby did go to creche so she got used to the shush-pat method to fall asleep, but still woke up every hour at night.

After discussing our customized routine, we started the sleep training with Zanda. When Zanda told me that our baby will sleep 12 hours at night, this seemed unreal. I could not believe that our baby was capable of sleeping that number of hours in one night. At night 3 she slept through (12 hours). Zanda supported us through the whole process and gave us lots of tips and advice. Since then, we’ve never had any issues again, not even teething was an issue. She learnt to self sooth, so if she would wake up at night, she would fall right back asleep. No crying whatsoever. 

When my eldest was 19 months old, we welcomed her baby sister in the world. Already I was nervous about the dreaded 4-month sleep regression. We decided to do the newborn course, so that we could instill the right habits from the beginning. 

The Brave little baby newborn course:

The course was very insightful and we learnt things that we didn’t know the first time around. Zanda and Lindi gave us lots of advice and tips during the course, so it was never necessary to sleep train our second baby. She sailed through the 4-month sleep regression. We didn’t even know that she went through it. We are able to put her down without rocking or patting her to sleep. Zanda also guided me when we decided to take the dummy away just before she reached 4 months, which also made a huge difference in her sleeping routine, going forward.

If we did the newborn course with our first-born, we would never have been in the position we were in. No sleep training would’ve been needed. I wish we knew this at the time and I wish we never listened to the opinions of others…

Now, my eldest is 2 years old and my youngest is 6 months. Both of them are sleeping through the night, which gives us time to rest and to spend quality time together. 

I will forever be grateful for Zanda and Brave Little Baby. Zanda and Lindi gave us the gift of sleep. Without them, our lives would look a whole lot different…