Jo Ryan - Babybliss

I have always been around babies and small children. I come from a large family and, as one of the eldest children, I spent a lot of time with the younger babies. I loved it and found I had a knack for reading what was going on with themand they responded well to me. My desire to be a paediatrician was quashed pretty quickly when I realised how much study was required, and so, with a little push from my mum, I decided to study nursing when I left school.

My first hospital placement as a student nurse was on a paediatric ward and I absolutely loved it. I thought the kids were all so brave and wonderful, and although their stories were often incredibly sad, I was in awe of their resilience. And again, I found that I was able to relate to them really well.

After finishing my nursing training I decided to specialise in paediatric nursing, and so I had many wonderful years working in specialist childrens hospitals. During that time I travelled overseas and worked as a live-in nanny in the United Kingdom. This is when I began to understand how demanding looking after children could be. I had many jobs, some not so wonderful, but nannying gave me a great insight to the pressures of raising a family and how relentless, but also incredibly rewarding, being a parent is.

I spent a few years working in the corporate world on my return to Australia and it was in one of these jobs that the seed was planted for my business, Babybliss. One of my bosses had a small baby, and when she discovered I was a nurse, she would ask my advice on how to deal with what her young family was going through. She happened to say to me one day how great it would be if I had a business that dealt with these problems because there really wasnt a lot of support around for new parents. It was then that I knew this was something I really wanted to do.

It was a few more years before I got up the courage to take the leap to start my own business. I studied for my Masters of Public Health in the meantime, examining support services for women and babies in a public health context, and after a life-changing, inspirational trip to Mount Everest, I decided it was time to start my Babybliss business. Now, four years later, I have worked with hundreds of families all over Australia. I deal with babies who are one day old and children who are five years old, traditional families and some families not so traditional. Every day, I learn something new from the children and from the parents. That is the best part of what I dotalking to parents, getting to know them and their family, giving advice and getting advice and hopefully making family life that little bit easier for them.

Over the years of dealing with babies and primarily working to improve their sleep issues, I have developed my own philosophy on how you can get your baby to be a great sleeper, all the while enjoying the early years without having to go through too much stress as a family. Now obviously there will always be hiccups along the way and times where you feel you have no idea what is going on. The Babybliss Settling Technique and the Babybliss philosophy give you something to fall back on during these times and some guidelines to follow through your babys young life.

I believe that if you get the early days of your babys life sorted, then the rest will fall into place. I dont believe in being very strict and rigid with routines while your baby is a newborn. The Babybliss Technique is all about getting to know your baby in the early days and letting him set the pace in regard to feeding and sleeping. That said, you can definitely have a plan, but rather than looking at the whole day, you look at each cycle of feeding, activity and sleep. These cycles can be anywhere between two and four hours long with a newborn, but they revolve around feeding your baby when he is hungry. This pattern will set up your milk supply, and it also means your baby will settle and sleep well after each feed.

As your baby grows you can have more of a structure to your days and nights, and by three months you should have a definite routine for your baby. The best thing about the Babybliss Technique is that it offers you an effective way of teaching your baby to be a good sleeper without having to resort to such stressful techniques as controlled crying. The technique is a gentle way to get your baby to learn to self-settle as soon as he is able to, and it encourages your child to have good sleeping patterns, as well as being happy and secure in the cot or bed at night.

We all know that mothers and fathers have an innate instinct about their children. This instinct kicks in when you first get pregnant and continues on for the whole of your childs life. Tapping into and using your instinct can really help you understand your baby, connect with him and make your way, successfully, through the challenges you may face, especially when your child is young.

There is so much information out there these days on parenting, much more so than when our parents generation had small children. My parents had Dr Spock and that was about it. Today we have the internet for instant answers to our questions; countless books giving us contradictory methods as to the best way to bring up our children; friends, relatives, members of mothers groups, neighboursall spouting advice. And although I think there is a place for all that advice, I also think that you are the best person to work out what is best for your family. The way you do this is to watch your baby closely, observe and listen to the way he behaves and reacts to things, listen to the way he cries, notice the way he feeds and sleeps. Get a sense of who your baby is, even though he is tiny.

I really encourage you, more than anything else, more than following any routine or strategy, to really look at your baby, notice who he is and how he responds to you. If you team your innate instinct about your baby with the knowledge you will gain from this book then you will achieve the best possible experience for your young family.

The birth of a new baby is truly a blessing, but it can also be an overwhelming and difficult experienceand thats just the delivery! Bringing your first baby home and beginning the parenting journey will affect you in ways you never imagined, and its important not to underestimate how much your world will change.

Babybliss is designed to make the early stages of parenting a bit easier. Each chapter explains what you should expect during the phases of your babys early development, with advice and tips on how to give your baby the best possible care, while caring for yourself as well. I explain some of the myths surrounding early childhood, answer frequently asked questions and provide a number of parenting alternatives, so you can decide what works best for you. Some of the things I discuss may seem obvious, but every parents knowledge and understanding of caring for a baby is different, and it can help to have straightforward guidelines to follow.