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[quote=Anonymous]Hi DCUM,

My name is Denise and I'm the owner of Let Mommy Sleep.  We have had the privilege of working with some of you and are very thankful for that.  I wanted to take a second to answer the genuine question of “Who uses this service anyway and why?”   Not as a means of advertising or to feed the message board beast but just to actually answer the question because it seems to pop up from time to time.

Here is a list of some of the situations we see most often for which parents call upon overnight support.    It’s important to note that 100% of the time, parents want a partner and temporary support person for a few nights or weeks because they have no family help.  They don't want a parental replacement.    We’ve been with hundreds of families and I can tell you we’ve never had a parent- literally not one- who "just doesn’t feel like getting up at night".   It's the opposite-- parents want to do EVERYTHING they can for baby and sometimes this means reaching out for help.

More often than not, families have 1 or 2 things below happening for which they need/want support:

- They have newborn + older child(ren) so there is no rest during the day. 
- This is baby #3 for Mom and she wants the nurse to come a few nights so Mom can be rested to volunteer at the older kids’ school. 
- Mom has no maternity leave, or is up against the clock of ridiculously short maternity leave and wants to be present for the whole family during the day.
- Their family is unable to help.  Grandparents are elderly, far away or still in the workforce.
- Partner has no family leave and it’s up to Mom to do day and night shift without relief. 
- Partner has a job for which sleep is a necessity so all weekday/weeknight care is up to Mom.
- Baby has reflux and takes 45 minutes to feed and then needs another 45 minutes of being held upright to soothe reflux.  And then gets up to feed 45 minutes later.  All day.  And all night.
- Mom has a medical condition exacerbated by lack of sleep. 
- Dad/partner has a medical condition exacerbated by lack of sleep.
- Partner travels for work, again leaving Mom to take a 24 hour shift. Every single day.  
- Mom’s goal is to breastfeed but production is down.  Everyone keeps telling her the best way to up her production is to get some rest. But she has no time to rest.  
- Mom and partner have the flu and don’t want baby to get sick.
- Older siblings need parent’s attention through the night due to illness, still being very young, autism or adjusting to new baby.   
- They don’t have friends with kids and want someone to help teach them the best way to take care of their baby.
- Mom is prone to PPD.
- They want the security of someone who has cared for a child before.   They need some confidence and have no one who can answer their questions.  (Except Auntie Internet---and she often leads to more confusion). 
- They have multiples and managing 2 feeds for 2 babies who eat every 2 hours (24 feeds in 24 hours) is extremely difficult.
- Families find that 1-2 nights of sleep (18 hours out of 168 in a week) allows them to enjoy the early days, not just count the days till the newborn phase is over.

I hope this doesn’t sound snarky.  I do not intend it as such.  I just remember when I was a new mom falling off the cliff due to lack of confidence and rest and I wish I could have enjoyed that time more instead of feeling like an exhausted failure.  We have seen so many families who are hurting frankly because they do not have any support, and we just want to be able to lift those families up a little.

Thanks for letting me post here.

Denise Stern
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