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Newspaper Article: "Parents need to teach their infants how to SLEEP LIKE A BABY" After months of subsisting on two or three hours of intermittent sleep a night while she and her husband tried to get their son, Declan, to nod off, Ms. McKevitt was at her wits’ end. “Everything you can think of, we tried, aside from standing on my head to entertain him,” she said. Then on a visit to her pediatrician, Ms. McKevitt heard about Kim West, “The Sleep Lady”. At the time, Declan, now 2, was 11 months old and he’d been a problem sleeper for at least half his young life. It took about a month for things to improve after the McKevitts met with Ms. West, but these days there are only pleasant dreams for the entire family. “She’s like one of my favorite people in the absolute world,” Ms. McKevitt said earlier this week from her Crofton home. “It’s worked wonders. I just think she’s fantastic.” So do scores of other frazzled parents. Ms. West, 40, estimates she’d had more than 1,000 clients, both local and from as far away as Bolivia, Mexico and Canada. And she’ll probably get even busier now that her first book is out. Released this month, “Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady’s Guide to Helping Your Child go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy,” outlines the methods Ms. West has honed over the past decade. The 350 page book, written with journalist Joanne Kenen, has chapters on her “system” for getting children to sleep, as well as specific sections arranged by children’s ages. The book covers newborns to age 5. “I feel so fortunate to be doing what I love,” said
Ms. West, a Severna Park resident. Her foray into sleep began 10 years ago, when she witnessed the problems her sister-in-law was having getting her son to sleep. Ms. West was pregnant with her first child at the time and petrified of what might be in store for her. To stave that off, she began extensive research into sleep. All the preparation worked, and both her children turned out to be good sleepers. Carleigh is now 10 and Gretchen is 7 ½. Ms. West dedicated her book to her sister-in-law, whom she eventually helped with her son’s sleep problems. That led to helping friends, then friends of friends, and so on. About a year and a half ago, her practice became all sleep, all the time. “It’s pretty interesting. She always has a fresh supply of newborns, even though it’s been years since we had our own,” joked her husband, Bill West, who is the director of Community Health and Wellness at Anne Arundel Medical Center. “When Kim gets interested in something, she can become very passionate about it,” he added. “(The Book) is just fabulous. I can’t tell you how proud I am of her.” Sweet Dreams It’s kind of ironic, but The Sleep Lady rarely gets all the shut-eye she needs. Ms. West likes to get nine hours of sleep a night, but with the new book, a blossoming practice, and TV and radio appearances, she’s pretty busy. She’s not the least bit tired of sleep work, though. Ms. West said she relishes her time with families. She meets with some clients in person at her Arnold office, and then does follow-ups by telephone. She’ll also do work strictly by phone if people live too far away. She charges $125 an hour for her services and typically works with families for three weeks. During that time, she has an initial consultation with parents and then stays in contact by telephone until the child’s sleep habits improve. Rather than coaching the babies, Ms. West is teaching parents her methods, which involve patience, consistency, putting up a “united front” of mother and father, and something she calls the “Sleep Lady Shuffle.” The shuffle is her way of creating an independent sleeper by gradually removing a parent from the process. “Putting yourself to sleep is a learned skill,” she explains. Aleece Sipe of Edgewater is a believer. Ms. Sipe sought out Ms. West when her son Lucas was 11 months old. He wasn’t napping or sleeping well at night. “I was beside myself and I felt like I was a terrible mom,” Ms. Sipe said. But just two or three days after she started seeing Ms. West, things started getting better. Lucas is now 20 months old. “I would definitely recommend her to anybody,” a smiling Ms. Sipe said when she visited Ms. West’s office last week to catch up. Before Ms. Sipe left, Ms. West signed a copy of book for her. The inscription read: “Sleep tight, Kim West, The Sleep Lady.” Tips to make bedtime better
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