How to Become a Pediatric Sleep Consultant: Interview with Jayne Havens

Imagine this: It’s the third month of your baby not sleeping through the night. You have to rock them to sleep, and then, just as you finally drift off, they wail again. You hope they’ll fall back to sleep, but they keep screaming. They’ve dropped their paci, or they had a bad dream… you won’t know until you check. You drag yourself up – again. You’re probably too tired to wonder how to become a pediatric sleep consultant, but you might be a perfect candidate.

Now imagine that a friend mentions she used a sleep coach to end the chaos of her children's nighttime wakings. The advice is like a lifeboat. You call, and a certified sleep consultant saves you. They provide the right tools just when you need them, with a blend of compassion and firmness. 

And, even better, you can reach her virtually from your own living room. You don’t even have to try to clean the house on no sleep!

Is pediatric sleep consulting a legit work-from-home option?

Well, with searches for seemingly endless “get my baby to sleep” variations, there’s clearly a need. Parents are looking for someone less groggy than they are to help them sort out their little one’s lack of sleep. 

Many parents are willing to pay several hundred dollars for reprieve. This can be a personalized two-week plan with online support to help their children learn how to fall asleep – and get back to sleep – independently, so they can sleep, too.

Because, really, a good night’s sleep is the key to everything!

As a matter of fact, ZipRecruiter says that, the average per-hour fee for a pediatric sleep consultant is $42. 

So, how can you become a pediatric sleep consultant?

Meet Jayne, a pediatric sleep consultant and course creator

Jayne Havens was a mom who needed a good night’s sleep. She scoured resources for answers, and once she had worked through her son’s sleep struggles, she started helping friends. Eventually, she realized she could earn money with her skills. She got certified as a sleep consultant and started her own business, Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens.

Jayne realized that the courses currently available did a good job of teaching the techniques consultants need to coach parents. But they didn’t do anything to prepare coaches to build their businesses.

In other words, they could teach you how to become a pediatric sleep consultant. But if you wanted to earn money at it – not so much.

And so, the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management (CPSM) was born. 

A comprehensive pediatric sleep consultant course for your whole business

These days, Jayne helps train other sleep consultants. Her course includes everything you need to know to become a pediatric sleep consultant – and create a thriving business.

She’s also created a personal community. Here, students and graduates working in their own businesses can help each other out and cheer each other on. By the way, do you need tips on how to find the time for the course with young children? Try our mom-tested time management tips!

I recently had the chance to chat with Jayne about how CPSM came to be, what she loves about her work, and what she thinks is the biggest obstacle moms face when their kids aren’t sleeping well.

Hi, Jayne!

Can you tell us about your life before the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management? 

I live in Baltimore, Maryland, with my husband and my two kids, Sid and Ivy. Sid is now 12 years old, and Ivy is eight. But before becoming a sleep consultant, I was actually a stay-at-home mom. I quit my job in catering sales – I was an event planner – when my son was born, 12 years ago, to be a stay-at-home mom.

 I was raised by a stay-at-home mom, and it was literally my life's dream to just be home with my kids, and so I gave up a very successful career to stay home with my son, and I was very happily home with him for four years. 

And then my daughter was born, and she was very challenging. She had a milk soy protein intolerance. She was colicky. Literally cried every moment that she was awake. And that drove me into wanting to go back to work, but I was also really overwhelmed with the idea of putting my kids in daycare or hiring a nanny. 

So I was looking for something that I could do that would allow me to stay at home and be present for them and be their primary caregiver. I was always really good at getting my own kids to sleep, and for years, I had helped friends and friends of friends with their own kids’ sleep and have helped countless families sleep train their babies. 

And so when the time came to get back into the workforce, I just kept thinking about becoming a sleep consultant. I went online,  got certified, and launched my business, which is called Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens. 

That was in 2018. And what was intended to be just like a little side hustle or a passion project, very quickly turned into a very successful and lucrative business. Not too long after that, I launched the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management. 

On your website, you mentioned you first explored sleep consulting when your son stopped sleeping regularly. Can you take us through the journey to help him sleep independently? 

Sure. So my son, when he was born, was full term. He was almost eight pounds, and he was really healthy. He was formula fed, and he slept really, really well for the first, I would say, three, three and a half or four months of his life. And right around that four-month mark, he experienced what is commonly known as the four-month sleep regression. 

But as a brand new parent, I had no idea what was going on. He had previously been sleeping through the night from a really early age, and then all of a sudden, his sleep very quickly deteriorated to the point where he was waking up every single hour. He just needed a pacifier to be popped back into his mouth, and then he would go right back to sleep. 

But it was really wearing on me and my husband. 

This was before Facebook groups. This was really before there was so much information accessible online about this. And so I actually found myself on the floor of Barnes and Noble surrounded by books, and I sort of was flipping through them. I bought a few. And long story short, I realized that in order to have his sleep improve, I would need to teach him how to fall asleep and back to sleep independently. 

So we implemented some sleep training, which is teaching a baby how to fall asleep independently. And the experience was really transformative. Within two or three nights, he was back to sleeping through the entire night. 

And ultimately, I think that's what made me want to get into this line of work myself. 

At what point did you realize this was a valuable service you could offer to other parents? 

So I had been offering this service for free for years. Once I had sleep-trained my son, all my friends were jealous, and they wanted to get their babies to sleep through the night, and I would just help them to achieve that in their homes. And I did it for free for years, and it was, I would say, probably four or six years of doing it just as a hobby for free, before it occurred to me that I could turn it into a consulting business. 

And I think it was just the fact that I had been home for a certain number of years. I think it was about six years of me being home with my kids, by the time I really realized that I needed to get back into the workforce and do something. 

And I just kept coming back to sleep consulting, because I was sort of already doing it. I just wasn't getting paid for it, and it was really meaningful and transformative work

What's your Big Why for creating the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management? 

So the whole reason I created the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management is because I was going through a sleep consultant certification program myself, and then once I came out of that program, what I was seeing was that a lot of the students were very well-versed in how to sleep train a baby. They knew how to coach parents of toddlers and preschoolers. They knew all the sleep stuff. 

But what they were lacking was training and support with regard to building a successful business. Nobody was teaching business building and entrepreneurship inside a sleep consultant certification course. And to me, that was the missing piece of the puzzle, because there were all of these women out there ready to support families and to help them with sleep training, but they didn't know how to find clients, they didn't know how to market themselves, they didn't know how to position themselves as experts in the field. 

And so that's why I created my program. I wanted to facilitate a really high level of support for my students, and also teach them sales, marketing, business growth, strategy and mindset inside of the course.

What is your favorite part of what you do? 

So I have two favorite things. One is supporting families. I love getting text messages from my clients early in the morning, letting me know that their children slept through the night for the first time. 

I've been doing this work, well, getting paid for it for six or seven years. But I have been doing it for much longer than that, and it literally never gets old to get those messages from families when they get that first night where their kid sleeps through the night. It's the best feeling in the entire world. So I love that. 

The other thing I love is supporting my students, my graduates from my program, and watching them go from timid, nervous, anxious people to thriving entrepreneurs. And it's a process. The people who come to my program are helper people. They want to support moms. They love working with families, but they're not necessarily savvy business owners, and so I love coaching them and mentoring them and supporting them through the process of growing successful businesses. 

What's one thing you would change if you could?

I think that a major barrier for families, with regard to getting the success that they're looking for for their children, is actually mom-on-mom shaming. I know that there's so much negativity and nastiness on the topic of sleep and sleep training, and if moms were just kinder to one another and more supportive to one another, I think everybody would be better off. So I guess that's what I would change.

You've had a second child since learning how to help children sleep independently. How different was your experience with her sleep? 

Great question. So I actually had a much easier time with my daughter because I knew what to do. That being said, my daughter had some complications that my son did not have. 

So, you know, my son was healthy and thriving, and his sleep was great until it wasn't. And then once I got it figured out, it was great again. 

But with my daughter, I was able to implement healthy sleep habits from the beginning and really sort of set the stage early on. 

That being said, she had some health challenges. She had allergies to the formula that we were feeding her. There were some unique challenges there. I think if she did not have those health challenges, it would have been night and day easier the second time around, but she was just a tricky baby.

How do you fit your business into your life and still have time for your family?

So I will say that the whole reason for why I started in this line of work is because I didn't want to go back to work in the traditional sense, and I do have to remind myself of that regularly because my business is now much bigger and it's much more demanding of my time and my energy than it was when I first started.

That being said, my children are older now. They're in school a full day, and I have more time to work on my business. So I always like to say that my business is growing up alongside my children, and as my children become older and more independent, it allows me to spend more time working on my business.

I do feel like even though I'm so busy and I have a really successful business, I'm still able to do everything with my kids that I did when I was a stay-at-home mom. I'm the one who makes their lunches and takes them to school and picks them up and spends time with them in the basement between the hours of four and seven o'clock at night.

Are there places where you struggle with that? 

You know, my weekends are free. I really am able to slow down if I feel like my kids need more from me, whether it's because they're on a school break, or whatever the circumstances may be, I'm always able to sort of slow down my business and pick up extra quality time with my kids, and then I can ramp my business back up when things go back to normal.  

When I want to slow things down, I simply let marketing take a back seat. If people still hop onto my calendar for discovery calls (because they are referrals from former clients, etc) I just let them know that I will not be starting with any new families until X date. When they are anxious to start ASAP, I will refer them to a colleague for support. If I want to ramp up business, I am more active on social medi,a and I make a greater effort to touch base with my best referral sources.

I feel like my work is really flexible. I'm busy and I'm always working, but I'm also doing all of the things that I love to do. I take tennis lessons twice a week. I meet friends for lunch. You know, I have plenty of quality time with my kids after school, so I really feel like I can do it all. And I feel very, very fortunate.

What limiting beliefs did you need to root out to go forward with your business plans, and how did you overcome them?

So I am not one who really struggles so much with limiting beliefs. I will say that I struggled with people telling me that I couldn't do things. You know, one thing I remember very vividly is that when I first told my family that I was going to launch a sleep consultant certification course, my brother questioned me and said, like, why would you do that? There are already so many sleep consultant certification courses on the market that are really well established. Why would anybody enroll in your program?

And it's hard when everybody's telling you that you're not going to be able to do something, to believe that you're actually capable of doing something. So I'm fairly good at rooting out all of the negativity and just focusing on what I want to do. But there are a lot of people around that will tell you that you can't do something, and you have to be willing to put all of that in a corner and really, truly believe in your own abilities.

I would say the only main limiting belief that I had, and I still have, is that I'm not very tech savvy. I have a really hard time with technology, and that is my biggest struggle when growing my business. But as my business has grown, I have gotten better about outsourcing things that feel hard for me. I have virtual assistants and people who support me in various areas of my business, so that I don't get stuck with tasks that just feel hard for me but for somebody else would feel really manageable.

How many hours do you work in an average week?

Okay, so this is really hard to answer. I would say that generally speaking, I work 10 to 2 every day. So what is that? I think four hours. I work 10 to 2 most days, and then I also put my laptop on my lap once the kids are in bed, after eight o'clock, I might do another hour or so.

There are some days when I literally don't work at all, and then there are other days where I work eight or 10-hour days. So it really varies.

But it can be whatever I want it to be, and that's a good thing.

How has starting your own business changed your life? How about your family life?

So I would say that I'm a much better mother now that I have something of my own that really lights me up and excites me. I think that before I started working, I was, you know, I was home with my kids, and I understand what a privilege that was, but I didn't feel fulfilled. I didn't feel like I was using my smarts and my brain power, and I wasn't living up to my highest capability.

And now that I'm working, I feel better about myself and I'm happier, and that, I think, in turn, makes me a better mother.

I will also say that the income is helpful, right? Like before, we were a one-income family; now we're a two-income family, and I'm able to say yes to my kids whenever they want anything, whenever they ask for anything, we’re generally able to provide for them, and that is a really beautiful thing that I don't take for granted.

Do you have clear financial goals for your business, and if so, are you attaining them? 

So this is always a funny question for me to answer, because I feel like I've already sort of exceeded all of my wildest expectations for myself.

I never imagined that I would be sitting at my kitchen table running a multi-six-figure business while wearing a hoodie and leggings and no makeup and totally running a business the way that I want to be running it – in a way that works for me and affords me an amazing lifestyle.

So as far as financial goals, I just want to keep growing, and that's not necessarily financially, but I want to learn how to do new things in my business. I want to become more efficient in my business, and I just want to make sure that as my business continues to grow, I maintain happiness in my line of work, and that it really does serve me and my agenda of being present with my family and all of that good stuff.

What would you say is the most important skill or thing to remember about sleep consulting?

I think the most important thing to remember is that parents are coming to us in a really vulnerable state. They are extremely sleep-deprived. Sometimes their marriage is struggling because they're not on the same page about how to handle the circumstances that they're currently in.

Families really do come to us at rock bottom, and we need to show up in a way that is patient and empathetic and kind, and really understanding of their circumstances. In the same breath, we also need to be sturdy. We need to show up with sturdy leadership to really get them from the bottom of the barrel to the top of the mountain, and when we show up as our best selves and really empower them to be the parents that they know that they want to be, that's when the transformation happens. 

What do you think parents should know about building a work-from-home business with a family? 

What I will say is that parents who are thinking about becoming sleep consultants or building a work-from-home business with a family should understand that if it were so easy to grow a successful business from home while taking care of your kids and managing the household, everybody would do it, and nobody would go to their nine to fives, right?

Growing a business is hard work. It's not something that happens overnight. It takes passion and persistence and determination, and work ethic. It takes all the things. 

But what I will say is that once you gain some momentum and sort of build a reputation for yourself, it really does pay off to put in all of that hard work on the front end. 

What's most gratifying about your work? 

I would say the most gratifying thing is helping families. You know, parents have told me that I've saved their marriage. Parents have told me that I have allowed them to enjoy being a mother again. I've been told that I've saved their lives. 

And I really don't think that they are being overdramatic. I think this is very, very real. Parents come to us in a very, very dark state, and the transformation that we're able to provide for them is incredible, and it's really, really special. It's incredibly gratifying.

If you could impart one message to your students, what would it be?

Hard work pays off. Hard work pays off. 

I think that’s the difference between those who are successful and those who are not successful in this line of work, and really anything when it comes to consulting or starting your own business.

I think that the people who are successful are the people who don't quit before they gain traction. So you’ve got to keep working – one foot in front of the other. 

Commit to doing something to move your business in the right direction every single day, and progress will come. 

What advice can you give to others to help them build their businesses?

I would say, find a business bestie, find yourself a friend or a colleague that can support you, hold you accountable. Entrepreneurship can be very, very lonely, so finding a friend or having a community to support you as you grow your business is really, really valuable. 

Don't give up. One foot in front of the other and commit to doing something productive for your business or inside of your business every single day. 

Thank you, Jayne!

Bonus: What Makes A great Sleep Consultant?

The #1 question Jayne Havens gets from aspiring sleep consultants:

“Okay, I finish the course… then what?”

According to Jayne, this is the right question, because that's what separates good consultants from great ones.

The great ones never stop learning.

Here’s a quote from Jayne:

“As the owner and founder of Center for Pediatric Sleep Management, I take responsibility for producing the best sleep consultants in the field.

Our graduates are a reflection of me and the program.

That's why continuing education isn't an afterthought. It's built into the CPSM experience.

If you enroll in CPSM, you get to continue your education for as long as you want, at no additional charge.” – Jayne Havens, owner and founder of Center for Pediatric Sleep Management

Recently, CPSM graduate Aurielle Martin, MSPAS, PA-C, updated the Evidence Review section inside the course.

This update includes:

•  A review of previously discussed studies
•  Additional research 
• Expanded discussion around what evidence-based practice actually means
• Guidance on locating and reading full-text articles 
• A new section covering commonly misquoted or mis-cited studies, as well as some of the most frequently debated topics related to sleep training

When you enroll in CPSM, you're not just getting access to a curriculum. You're joining a community of professionals who are committed to lifelong learning and helping one another grow.

Because, as Jayne says, certification is just the beginning.

Conclusion: A Good Night's Sleep (and a Good Profit!)

Remember that sleep-deprived parent at the beginning of this post? If you’ve ever been there, or know someone who has, you can help!

All you need is the will to succeed and a strong work ethic. Oh, and the right training, too. Training that teaches you how to become a certified pediatric sleep consultant. And how to build a strong business on your own terms.

Jayne Havens wants to help you develop those skills. She’s well-equipped with her years of experience and all the knowledge she’s gained along the way.

So, are you thinking about helping families sleep like a baby who knows how to fall asleep on their own? Then click the button below and start learning how to become a pediatric sleep consultant now.