I feel like if I met the women who wrote this book - the titular 'sleep sisters' - we would get on like a house on fire. I agree with so much of their opening gambit. I don't believe that you just have to sigh and suck it up about eighteen years of crappy sleep the second you become a parent. And believe me, the sleep deprivation sucks. I was cheering along with Squires' description of what it is to be a sleep-deprived mummy every day. But. There isn't a lot else in this book other than descriptions of how things get better once you follow their Calm and Bright programme and ... well. The Calm and Bright programme is an additional paid extra. The message behind this is a good one - it is not selfish for a mother to feel like sleep is a requirement. But it feels more like a sales brochure than an advice book.

I requested this as I have an 18 month old who isn’t a bad sleeper but probably isn’t the best either. I started to read it with no real expectations of what I would find or that I would want to change anything at the end of reading it but by about half way through the book I had completely changed my mind.
I wasn’t aware of Calm and Bright as a company so I came to the book as a complete newcomer with no prior knowledge of their philosophies or their business and the firs few chapters do a good job of filling you in on who they are and what they are about and they are definitely not about strict sleep training, underlined by the subtle way they refer to their method as sleep teaching rather than training. The chapters are interspersed with personal reflections from Eve and Gem and from their other experts and customers and while sometimes the customers can make it feel as if you are just reading an advert for their paid for service the other accounts are honest and they don’t hide where they have made mistakes or assumptions and this helped me as the reader to feel more like this book and what they are saying could be for me.
It can feel a little vague at times as they never put down in black and white what to do to sleep teach your child but they discuss many tips and tricks and things that can help and hinder sleep. The idea being that you put all this information together and apply it to your situation. Reading this actually helped me see I was being a bit too laid back about sleep and my child would benefit from more sleep at night and that I can also build on her self settling skills so while in the beginning I didn’t think I was getting anything from this book, by the end I had several things I wanted to implement into my child’s regimen to improve her sleep and therefore her day too.
My only criticism is in the chapter where the talk about sleep training and cortisol flooding the brain of a baby who is being sleep trained. They talk about Romanian orphans who are treated terribly and while by reading the rest of the chapter and making a bit of a leap I can make the link about why they brought this in, it isn’t actually clear within the text. They don’t discuss why this is relevant to the point they are making. It almost feels like there is a paragraph missing.
Apart from this though, I found it to be a good informative book and relevant to my situation as a parent of an 18 month old. They cover many issues in easy to digest language and are non-judgemental about anyone’s parental choices. I would recommend anyone with small children reads this, even if you don’t feel you need the advice and it’s just to improve your knowledge of infant and child sleep. Although I think, like me, you’ll find some areas where you could make small improvements for big gains.