I became a mother five years ago, when my daughter was born — and like many parents, nothing truly prepared me for how vulnerable that transition would feel.

As I settled into life with a baby, my social media feeds quickly filled with baby sleep content. Even though I could recognise that much of the information being shared was inaccurate, oversimplified, or poorly communicated, I still found myself doubting what I was doing — especially in the haze of sleep deprivation and the emotional intensity of early motherhood.

I remember wondering how so many accounts were allowed to sell this kind of advice so confidently, and how profoundly it was influencing the way parents responded to their babies — from how they interpreted their needs, to how often they fed them, to whether they trusted their own instincts at all.

At the same time, friends who were also becoming parents began turning to me with questions about sleep. It was then that I realised just how pervasive this messaging had become. Baby sleep wasn’t just a topic — it was a phenomenon. A source of anxiety, pressure, and self-doubt for so many families.

What struck me most was that, despite having spent six years working in sleep medicine and sleep research before becoming a parent, I had never encountered many of the concepts dominating parental conversations: wake windows, overtiredness, age-specific routines, “drowsy but awake”. Who came up with these? And it didn’t stop there. There is a whole industry of sleep and parenting advice, most of which is conflicting or describing either you, your child or both as problems that need fixing.

This is where my journey to creating Early Nurturing began.