meet maryam
Hi, I’m Maryam - The Mom Friend that you’ve Always Deserved.
“The one who doesn’t compare, who listens to your story, cries with you during the peaks and valleys, doesn’t make you feel guilty and encourages you to keep going because you’re the damn best!”
No matter what, she just couldn’t sleep without us.
I thought something was wrong with our baby.
I am a civil engineer by trade, who is the poster child for ‘choose the career that your parents tell you to’, until a decade in as a structural aviation engineer, when my life’s purpose completely changed.
In 2017, I had my first daughter, who was my biggest teacher and greatest joy. She did absolutely nothing my friends’s babies were doing, and the opposite of what all the ‘bringing home baby’ books described.
My husband and I found ourselves living in the dark, bouncing on a yoga ball, timing feeds and wake windows, all to the new soundtrack of our lives: a bathroom fan and a running bathtub - white noise wasn’t a thing back then!
To add to the exhaustion, our precious baby girl would not sleep 1 second in the bassinet, only near or on us. So what did we do? Well, since we were told ‘never bring her in bed with you’, we took turns sleeping in a rocking chair with her, while the other parent watched.
It still breaks our hearts to think of how lost, confused and desperate we were to be that unsafe. Not to mention lucky.
Within a week, I knew something had to change.
I finally listened to my gut, pulled the mattress on the floor, stripped it down to the fitted sheet, ditched the swaddle and kicked my sweet husband to the guest room.
What I didn’t realize in that moment was how much I was learning about my daughter’s unique personality, and that this moment would soon be the catalyst towards helping others through their own sleepless nights!
Over the course of two years, we struggled to navigate split nights, early wakes, false starts, teething, mom returning to the office, weaning and moving her to her own room.
There were so many moments where I thought ‘this is our fault for not sleep training her.’ Every time I heard a sleep training success story at toddler group, or was shamed at the pediatrician, I felt sold, committed and guilty for not trying earlier.
But once we were home, my intuition would sound off the alarm that it wasn’t the best choice for our family.
Why?
I needed cry it out (because that’s what it would be for her), to make sense in my logical mind, but it never did.
I kept going back to the year before becoming a mother: sleeping in bed with my Pomeranian and my husband, limiting the stress in my life to increase our chances of conceiving and carrying a healthy baby to term…and listening to my intuition.
Yet, 6 months later, it was ok to ditch it all, induce stress and make her sleep all alone? Ignore my inner voice, and go against every bone in my body?
Something didn’t add up.
I never judge a family for sleep training.
I get it.
But what if there was a unique method you could try first?
Ultimately, I decided not to sleep train - my husband wasn’t 100% sold, but he supported my decision, albeit reluctantly.
Into her second year of life, I finally trusted myself as her mother, learned to let go, accepted that our daughter was highly sensitive, but that it was also ok to make changes that we needed in order to be more than just surviving.
I openly shared our story to every mom who asked or who was in a similar struggle. Being the oldest of three daughters, you can imagine how many women there were in our lives that needed support and a familiar ear to listen. I was honored to provide them with encouragement and tools that would hopefully benefit their families as well.
After we welcomed our second daughter, I knew I needed to make this journey official and permanent, so I enrolled in my first Holistic Sleep Certification. Luckily, my youngest was a much better sleeper, so I had the time and energy to chase my dreams of helping families achieve their sleep goals through education, support, tools compassion and understanding.
Since then, I have worked with families all over the world through private and group consultations, and this is just the beginning!
