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To recognize ten years of Sleep and Wellness Coach, Allison reflects on the journey that led her from a severely sleep-deprived working mom struggling with postpartum anxiety to becoming a pediatric sleep consultant who has now helped thousands of families.

She shares the personal story behind the creation of her business, including the exhausting early years of motherhood, unsuccessful attempts at sleep training, navigating postpartum anxiety in silence, and the moment she finally found the support that changed everything for her family.

Allison also reflects on the many shifts she’s witnessed in the world of children’s sleep over the past decade, including:
— the rise of wake window culture
— growing awareness around maternal mental health
— increasing research connecting sleep to physical and emotional health
— more dads taking paternity leave
— and the expanding understanding of how sleep impacts children of all ages

She also shares how Sleep and Wellness Coach has evolved from a one-woman side business into a growing team supporting families through one-on-one coaching, courses, workshops, a weekly podcast, speaking engagements, and now daycare sleep education programs designed to help even more families thrive.

In this episode, Allison discusses:
— Her personal experience with postpartum anxiety and sleep deprivation
— How improving sleep transformed her mental health
— What inspired her to become a sleep coach
— The problem with today’s obsession over wake windows
— Why sleep rhythms matter more than rigid schedules
— The growing cultural conversation around parental mental health
— Research linking sleep to child development and overall health
— Why she now works with children and teens of all ages
— The future vision for Sleep and Wellness Coach and daycare sleep education programs

🎉 10-Year Anniversary Giveaways
To celebrate 10 years of Sleep and Wellness Coach, Allison is hosting four weekly giveaways throughout June over on Instagram.
On the first four Mondays in June, a new giveaway will be posted featuring a mix of sleep and wellness favorites. To enter, follow along on Instagram and watch for each Monday’s post.

It’s a fun way to celebrate 10 years of supporting families—and to say thank you to the community that made it all possible.

Wondering if your child is getting enough sleep? Allison’s free guides take the guesswork out of bedtime. Learn the optimal sleep ranges for every age so your little one can feel their best—day after day. Get your free copy now: 0-2 Years Old or 3 to 10 years old

From baby sleep to toddler sleep, daycare naps to sleep training—How Long ’Til Bedtime? is the podcast for parents who want practical, guilt-free sleep tips they can actually use.

Hosted by pediatric sleep coach Allison Egidi, each episode delivers real solutions for every stage—from navigating newborn sleep struggles and weaning night feedings to helping your 3-year-old fall asleep independently (and stay asleep!). Whether you’re trying to make sense of daycare sleep patterns, craving your evenings back, or simply need a working mom podcast to keep you grounded, you’re in the right place.

Want more from Allison? Sign up here to get her weekly email with podcast updates and other helpful parenting topics.

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Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.

242. Celebrating 10 Years: What’s Changed + What’s Next
Before we dive in today, I want to make sure that you know about something special that I am doing to celebrate 10 years of Sleep and Wellness Coach. For the first four weeks of June, I am doing four unique giveaways. One each week. I’m giving away sleep consultations, one of my favorite books on motherhood. It’s full of poems, so it’s not a guide to motherhood. It’s just a lovely, lovely book of poems. And I’ve partnered with my friend Ashley at Green Bean Baby Boutique to give away some of my most recommended sleep products: a Hatch, a Kyte sleep sack, a Yoga Sleep white noise machine, and bamboo pajamas. They’re the best.

So each giveaway is going live on Monday during the first four weeks of June over on Instagram. And since this episode is dropping on Tuesday, June 2nd, the first giveaway is already live. So join me in celebrating 10 years of Sleep and Wellness Coach. And grab yourself a chance to win one of our great giveaways. You can find these giveaways over on Instagram. My handle is @sleepandwellnesscoach.

Okay, on to today’s episode.

Hey there, Allison here. Welcome back to How Long ‘Til Bedtime? 10 years, you guys. I have been a sleep coach for 10 years. When I launched Sleep and Wellness Coach in June of 2016, my girls were three years old and almost two years old. They are now 13 and almost 12.
The baby I lost so much sleep over, who ultimately inspired me to make a complete career change, is now a teenager. And I am still here. Still talking about sleep, still helping families, still completely obsessed with this topic, which says something because I get asked on a somewhat regular basis. Is it getting old? And no, I love it. Every child and every family is so unique. And it just constantly lights me up and fills my cup to be able to work with so many families.

I never could have predicted that this little side business I launched while working full-time at the University of Virginia would turn into this full-blown business. But here we are, and I am so grateful.

Today I want to do three things. I want to share my story, the story about why I became a sleep coach. For any of you who are newer listeners and haven’t heard it. I want to reflect on some of the things that I’ve watched change in the world of children’s sleep over the last 10 years. And I want to share a little bit about some of the new things that we’re working on here at Sleep and Wellness Coach as we head into our next decade. So let’s get into it.

Let’s start with how I got here. I like to say that being a sleep coach is professional Allison 3.0. Out of college, I was an investment banker for seven years in Chicago. And when I decided I wanted to move back to my college town, Charlottesville, I knew I had to make a career change because this was pre-COVID and working remotely was not nearly as common as it is today. And as a volunteer, I’d really enjoyed raising money for a children’s hospital in Chicago. It was actually the University of Chicago. So I decided that fundraising at my alma mater, the University of Virginia, might be a new career path I would enjoy. And I loved that job. I loved the donors I worked with, and I loved the mission that we were supporting.

And it was during that time I became a mom. When I was pregnant with my oldest, I shifted right into planning mode. I read books, I prepared, I had strong views on what type of parent I would be, and I had big plans for how I was going to handle all of the big topics. As it relates to sleep, I had read a book on infant sleep that had worked beautifully for several friends of mine. So I felt genuinely confident that I would have my baby sleeping well or at least well on her way by the time my maternity leave ended when she was 12 weeks.
And then that sweet little baby arrived. And I was humbled right from the start. My labor and delivery did not go according to plan. I had excruciating back labor despite getting an epidural, which clearly did not work correctly. I ended up pushing for five and a half hours before she finally arrived. After delivery, I hemorrhaged badly and I lost a significant amount of blood. I came home really weak and exhausted and quickly realized that breastfeeding wasn’t going according to plan either. Most likely because of the complications and the blood loss that I had had post delivery. I was rapidly learning how much was actually out of my control and how my plans, best-laid plans, were not going to all work. And her sleep was no exception.

Initially, I will say her sleep did follow the plan of the book. But after a handful of weeks, things started sliding backwards. She hated being laid flat. She would only do contact naps. She woke frequently throughout the night. By the time I went back to work, we had gone from getting a four-hour stretch of sleep at night to then having her waking every 45 to 90 minutes throughout the entire night. Going back to work was its own unique situation, full of mixed emotions. On the one hand, I got to go to work for a full day and feel like the person that I had always known. I was very good at my job. I felt in control there. But then I also felt guilty for feeling better at work than I did at home. All of this was in part fueled by undiagnosed postpartum anxiety, and my daughter’s sleep continued to be a roller coaster that just added more fuel to that postpartum anxiety fire.

I remember going to her four-month checkup completely exhausted, and I desperately wanted to talk to the pediatrician about sleep training. He recommended the Ferber book and gave me a quick overview on, you know, what I would be doing. And then I asked a couple clarifying questions. I really even now don’t think I was acting too off. But he kind of said to me flippantly, you’re clearly not ready to do this. So don’t even try it. It was a total punch in the gut, you guys. So I left that room feeling very defeated and not sure exactly what I was going to do. I stood at that checkout desk and I was digging through my diaper bag looking for the keys and I couldn’t find them. I mean, we went and looked in the waiting room. We went back to the room, exam room. They were nowhere to be found. Eventually I walked out to the parking lot and I found my car still running with the keys in it. That is how tired I was. I got into the car and I cried. I cried and I cried. I came home and we did try sleep training, then it didn’t really stick. We actually ended up trying it on multiple occasions. And each time was pretty painful. We would see some short-term improvement after a couple hard nights, but then nothing ever stuck. And then I found out that I was pregnant with my second daughter. And my youngest arrived when my oldest was 18 months and she was still not sleeping through the night.

During some of those sleepless nights and time at work, I had read a lot about newborn sleep and I had read started to read some studies on sleep. That was really I knew sleep needed to be different this go around. And I did handle my second daughter’s newborn sleep totally differently. And those changes, combined with her being more naturally inclined to sleep, set her up to sleep through the night at eight weeks old. It was glorious. But my oldest was still not sleeping through the night or taking consistent, reliable naps. Having two kids under two while running on no sleep was a lot.

My postpartum anxiety was literally growing in intensity by the week. I was really struggling, and the kind of struggle where you know things aren’t good, but you don’t know how bad it was until you get to the other side and you’re out of it, and then you look back. I had put on a really strong front so people on the outside did not know what was happening internally for me. And I now, I mean, I could cry thinking about it. I look back at myself in that period and I just want to like give me a hug. I want to give me a hug and tell me that it’s going to be better and that I should get help and that I don’t need to struggle in silence. So it was just a really, really challenging time.

The breaking point came that first Christmas when I had two babies under the age of two. We traveled back to the Midwest with to be with our families. Both of our families are in the Midwest. And that just threw everything off even further. We were in multiple different homes. We had to share a bedroom with our kids. We had to navigate everyone’s expectations. And I remember feeling constantly on the verge of tears. In addition to just being downright exhausted around this time of year that’s supposed to be f so joyful. All I wanted to do was go back home to like have the chaos be in my home environment versus the chaos be in our parents’ homes.

And on Christmas night, we had put the girls to bed before Christmas dinner. And then before the dinner was even over, my oldest was back up crying. And my husband went back up to soothe her. And I’m sure I started to look even more broken than I’d probably looked the entire day because my dad told me that he and my mom were worried about me and that I didn’t seem like myself. And I let it kind of let it all out because the truth was I didn’t feel like myself. And they were kind of just the first ones to call me on it. So we talked about it. I shared how exhausted I was. I shared some of the crazy thoughts that I was having about things, thoughts that I knew weren’t typical. But they were kind of running on loop in my brain. And I shared how I was just running on empty every single day. And how I truly just did not feel like myself anymore, that I just did not know who I was.

And my parents and I had a good conversation about it. And one of the things that they encouraged me to do was get help. And they even said, We don’t know what you need. We don’t know what type of help you need, but what they encouraged me to do was to kind of tap into the fact that I am a resourceful person and that I really needed to kind of dig deep a little bit to figure out what type of help I needed. And when we got home from that trip, what I stayed focused on was I needed sleep. I needed sleep. And then by the grace of God, I stumbled upon a sleep coach. I didn’t even know that was a thing, or I would have hired someone sooner, on Facebook through a sorority sister. And I was skeptical, but I was like, I don’t care, just take all my money. Because at this point I’d realized I needed help. And this it’s like appeared in my lap. And I was like, here you go. So even when I got her plan, I was skeptical, but I followed it. And 11 days later, my daughter was sleeping through the night and taking a consistent nap, and it was great with no tears. Two years of sleep deprivation was finally over.

And very quickly, I started to feel like myself again. Sleep for me was the treatment I needed to start to put my postpartum anxiety at bay. I started to really enjoy work again without so much guilt. So the mom guilt, the volume on that, got turned down significantly. And I really started to be able to find my groove to be really present at work and really present at home with my girls. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how crazy that two-year period was. I had switched pediatricians. I had seen multiple pediatricians within the office asking for help around my daughter’s sleep. And they did offer ideas, but ultimately they couldn’t solve her sleep puzzle. So one day I was in at the pediatrician’s office and I asked her about it directly. You know, why weren’t they able to help me? And then this sleep coach, you know, talked to me, came up with a plan, and it was fixed in 11 days. And she explained that pediatricians receive on average fewer than three hours of training around sleep in medical school. And in most cases, not all, but in most cases, they’re kind of sharing what worked for their own kids or what they’ve had parents of kids that are their patients share. And so it’s she’s like, it’s kind of like asking the mom at the park, like what worked for them. And this was shocking to me.

And it prompted me to start to read more of the actual research on children’s sleep. And since I worked at the university, I had access to the studies, not just the news articles with the headlines. And I got completely hooked. And I decided to get certified as a sleep consultant because I just wanted to learn more. I wasn’t even exactly sure what I’d do with it, other than I felt very strongly, it was going to help me with my own kids’ sleep. And while I was going through that process, friends started asking me for help. And part of the process of getting certified was working with three families that I had no prior relationship with. And so I found these three lovely families through a local mom Facebook group. And the feeling of joy that I got from helping those families was undeniable. I mean, to see them suddenly be able to get the sleep they needed and to feel confident that they could move forward even once we were done, it was kind of indescribable. I felt very, very impactful.

That’s what ultimately inspired me to launch my little side business. And I was started helping families on nights and weekends. And that was back in 2016, 10 years ago. The business kept growing, this little side hustle. And eventually I started to realize I was starting to have two full-time jobs. So I went part-time at the university. And then one day I realized I really am going to have to decide here on one of these jobs. And so I chose sleep and I’ve never looked back. So that’s my story of how parenthood completely changed my life, not only personally but professionally. And it’s crazy to me that I’ve been at this for 10 years.

So when I think of the last 10 years, I’ve kind of feel like I’ve gotten a front row seat to see some interesting shifts in the sleep realm. So let me just share a few that came to mind when I was getting ready to record this episode, one that really stands out and it’s just been a big topic for me just over the last handful of years is wake windows and wake windows becoming an obsession and not always in a way that is helpful. When I started coaching in 2016, I swear wake windows weren’t really a part of any mainstream conversation around baby sleep. I haven’t actually gone back to look to see when it started, but it was definitely not a thing that you talked about with all parents. And somewhere over the last decade, this concept has absolutely exploded. And I want to be clear that for some babies, wake windows work beautifully. And I think it’s for those babies who are frankly a little more naturally inclined to sleep and a little more flexible. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong or harmful about using them. But they are not evidence based.

And I have watched so many parents tie themselves in knots trying to figure out and hit some perfect wake window. And it leaves them stressed, watching the clock constantly, convinced that either something is wrong with their baby or they are doing something wrong. And that stress is real. And I hate that it can make parents feel like they’re failing or feel very worried that something’s wrong with their baby. Or the new go-to I’ve been hearing lately is apparently my baby has lower sleep needs. Y’all, that is not really a thing.

So that’s kind of the latest thing this past year or so, where it’s like, if these wake windows aren’t working, it’s because your baby has lower sleep needs. Again, not evidence-based at all. So one thing that I talk about a lot on this podcast is sleep rhythms and kind of sleep waves that come with those rhythms and with the sleep pressure, really focusing on a child’s biological clock. And signals on when is the optimal time for them to sleep. So these wake windows have really become a thing. But learning your child’s natural biological sleep rhythm is far more reliable than trying to run their sleep off wake windows. So I hope more parents will kind of find their way towards understanding their child’s ideal rhythm, and that some of this focus on wake windows starts to come down a little bit. But wow, what a shift over the last 10 years.

Something else I’ve noticed that I think is a positive is more and more dads are taking paternity leave. And I think it’s fantastic and I think it’s making a difference. This is just one of those changes I have thoroughly loved having kind of a front row seat to watch happen because I am seeing the trend I’m seeing most recently is that yes, dads will use some time at the beginning when baby comes home, but then as mom goes back to work, dad’s typically tap in for their paternity leave. And it’s doing a couple things that I think are a win. It gives dads dedicated time to care for and bond with their baby. And it’s allowing some of these moms, depending on how their setup is, to return to work knowing that their baby is still home with a parent. And not having that stress of having to entrust their baby’s care to even a relative or to daycare or to a nanny, that it’s it’s with that baby’s other parent. And it’s that’s lovely. And it’s kind of just a lovely, meaningful shift. I know we still have a lot of room for improvement, but I want to like share a little bit of hope in this realm because I’m seeing it with the families I work with. And so I hope this continues and that parents, both parents, are able to take time to be home with their baby as everyone adjusts to being a new parent or a growing family. It’s just such a massive adjustment. So I’ve seen growth in this area in this country.

The conversation around maternal mental health has grown and has shifted significantly, in my opinion. Ten years ago, conversations about postpartum depression and anxiety were happening, I’m sure, but they were quieter. I wasn’t even contemplating that I had postpartum depression or anxiety. Didn’t even cross my mind that that was something that one in five new moms deal with because no one in my world was talking about it. And if it had come up kind of randomly at that point, I would probably have been like, ooh. So I think there was still kind of a stigma around it. And me and lots of other parents were suffering in silence. And today that conversation is louder, it’s more normalized, and it’s more supported. I literally want to give the little clap response every time I see a woman or a man posting about it on LinkedIn, you know, our professional social media, I don’t know, do we call LinkedIn social media, but kind of this professional social networking outlet, when I see conversations around mental health, I just am so thrilled because that was absolutely not happening on that platform, this professional platform, 10 years ago. That I can say with confidence, because I was on LinkedIn, but that was not happening. So we still have a long way to go. I acknowledge that, but I am genuinely encouraged by how much more visible maternal mental health has become and paternal mental health around men and women’s mental health as they become parents and add to their family.

And as I’ve said many times on this podcast, sleep is one of the most powerful tools for mental health. And it’s one of the areas where I have my cup is so full when a family I work with, when the parents come back to me and say, Yes, our child is sleeping better, and my mental health has improved. That’s just like icing on the cake for me, because these two things are so deeply connected. And so I’m grateful that I get to play a small role in that. And I am just thrilled that the education and conversation around maternal mental health is getting louder and happening more.

Okay, other things that I’ve noticed. The research on sleep and health, the link between those two has become kind of impossible to ignore. It’s another conversation that’s getting louder. And when I started sleep coaching 10 years ago, people were very baffled by it a little bit. If you weren’t negatively impacted by lack of sleep or you didn’t even realize you were, or that sleep was so important. I always joke that I grew up when we were kids, it was like the sleep when you’re dead mentality. And I’m thrilled that the research on the importance of sleep for both adults but children’s health and development, while it was always there, it has really become more mainstream now.
And a major systemic review published just last year found consistent associations between better sleep and enhance cognitive performance, emotional well-being, and reduce behavioral problems in children. And researchers are increasingly framing sleep not just as a nice to have, but as a core developmental process that shapes children’s brains, emotions, and behavior. And I have more and more schools and pediatricians who are now sending families, referring families to me to work with them prior to getting occupational therapy involved or partnering with them prior to getting testing for ADHD. When children are struggling with their behavior in schools, I have school teachers and principals who will send kids my way because, because people are really starting to understand the impact sleep has in all of these areas for our growing and developing children.

And it’s not just for children. For adults, there was a comprehensive 2025 umbrella review that found sleep deprivation as a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders like obesity and type 2 diabetes, and that it was contributing to elevated anxiety and impaired emotional regulation. Less than seven hours of sleep per night is associated with increased risk of serious health outcomes. This is important, you guys, because it kind of links back to why I love what I do so much. Because when I can help children sleep better, I’m always hopeful that that means that their parents will get better sleep. And so it literally impacts the health and well-being of the entire family. And I have absolutely noticed the conversation around this shifting over the last 10 years, where it is not the mentality that we’ll sleep when we’re dead. It’s like if we don’t get sleep, we’re going to be dead. And I love that it’s starting to become kind of a pillar of our health and our children’s health. And I’m thrilled that I get to to play a part in helping an entire family get sleep because sleep is not a luxury, it is a health necessity. And I’m glad that the science is continuing to show what sleep experts have been saying for years. And that it’s getting picked up. It’s becoming a little more mainstream.

When I launched this business back in 2016, it was just me. Nights and weekends, just filling in around my day job, helping one family at a time. And today, Sleep and Wellness Coach looks different. Beth, who many of you know as the producer of this podcast, has been part of this team and this work. I try to look back through my email, I think it’s for about six years now. And she does so much behind the scenes that most of you never see. And this podcast would absolutely not be what it is without her. I joke that if something happens to Beth, the podcast will be dead because she’s doing all the things related to the podcast. And she helped me get this thing launched and going.
And I have Ellen and Sophie, the two other sleep coaches here at Sleep and Wellness Coach. And as of next month, they will have been part of this team for three years. And I just I’m so thrilled. Here’s what I love about their story. So Beth and I were friends. We met volunteering on a board, a nonprofit board, a an Equestrian Center board in our community. And so we had a friendship, but it had started in kind of a work capacity. We were really running that place. And so that’s how we got connected and and how I knew she’d be a great person to work with me. And then Ellen and Sophie were both previous clients of mine. And they came to me as exhausted parents who needed help with their children’s sleep. We solved those sleep puzzles together. And then inspired by that experience, they both went on to become sleep coaches themselves. And then ultimately they joined my team.

And they are fantastic, hence the reason they’ve been with me for almost three years. They’re fantastic people. They’re fantastic at what they do. But as I think about them and how grateful I am for them, I also just think about how many clients I have who have become sleep coaches, that not just part of my team. They have their own businesses or they’ve joined other teams. But I actually have quite a few previous clients who have gone on to become sleep consultants or coaches. And that also fills my cup. It’s another reason I love this work, there’s this ripple effect that I’ve been able to help a family get more sleep. And sometimes that family is so impacted by that, similar to how I was, that they go on to help other families. So that’s been really fun to see over the last 10 years.

And some of the things that we offer here at Sleep and Wellness Coach have shifted and changed a little bit. So as I mentioned, when I launched the business, I just worked one on one with families. And then I was working exclusively with children. I think when it started, it was five and under. I don’t think it was three and under. I think it was five and under initially. But today I work with children 17 and under. Because what I came to learn is that sleep challenges are not just impacting babies and toddlers. They are absolutely impacting children of all ages. So it went from kind of focusing on zero to five, and then I looped in early elementary years, and then I realized there were some middle school children who were really struggling. And so I started to work with families with middle school children.
And then I started to get inquiries from high schools. And so it just kind of grew because children of all ages have different types of sleep struggles. And it’s been really, really impactful for me to be able to expand to help children at at all the ages with all the different types of sleep struggles that you have during those different seasons of life.

And also over those last 10 years, we’ve developed online workshops and courses and programs. And I started speaking at schools and with parent groups. And just a lot of things have expanded from just one-on-one nights and weekends coaching families.

So I’ll close with a little peek at one of the things that’s coming next. And that’s the fact that I’ve become increasingly passionate about supporting working families in a bigger way. And one of the most powerful ways to do that, I think, is through education provided to daycares. When an infant or a child is able to nap well at daycare, when they’re able to take more consistent naps, because the caregivers have set up a good environment and they understand the basics of sleep science and healthy sleep hygiene, the impact can literally ripple across out to hundreds, my goal would be thousands of families.

Better naps at daycare mean better nights at home. Better nights at home mean more rested babies and parents. More rested babies and parents means calmer mornings. Parents who are feeling more patient and present. This is leading to better well-being across the board. So I have developed trainings that are specifically for daycare providers, and I am really excited about expanding that work to reach more daycares, to be able to educate and train more caregivers, which will ultimately help more families sleep better and make being a working parent easier. So that’s kind of my current passion project and dream is to help as many families as possible, through individual coaching, yes, I will never drop that. I’ve never dropped it. I never will. It’s how I continue to learn every day from real families. And I’ll continue to offer my online workshops and my speaking engagements, but also these daycare trainings.

So to wrap up, 10 years ago, a previously, maybe we’ll say recovering, completely exhausted, postpartum anxiety-ridden working mom of two decided to turn her worst experience into her life’s work. And it has been the greatest professional decision that I have ever made. I am so grateful to every family who has trusted me with their sleep struggles. And I am so grateful to Beth and Ellen and Sophie for being part of this team.

Thank you to the thousands of families who have trusted me to help them solve their children’s sleep puzzles. And I’m so grateful to every single one of you who listens to this podcast. Whether you’ve been here since episode one or you just found us this week, thank you. You are why I keep showing up every week. So here’s to 10 more years. And as always, thanks for listening. Bye for now.