You might relate. You, a small baby, it’s the middle of the night and it feels like the sleep is just never going to happen. The baby is crying every time you put her down. Or maybe she’s not crying but is behaving like it’s time to play. You feel mounting pressure not just because you’re exhausted, but there are other people in the home, and you feel responsible for getting the baby to sleep so they can rest as well.

That was me. Not once but over and over again when I began walking the path toward becoming an infant sleep specialist back in 1999. Fresh off the plane in London Town, I’d become a night nanny. That meant I was paid to get the baby to sleep while the family slept. It was a lot of pressure. One night, in the darkness of a penthouse apartment in Notting Hill I began talking to the baby instead of rocking, pacing and shhhhing.

I said, ‘I know it’s hard being a baby. Not knowing when to go to sleep and when to be awake. But it’s sleepy time my love. Sleepy time off to sleep’. I noticed the baby stop crying the more I spoke. I decided to sing the words I spoke, without consciously realising they were to the tune of Kumbaya. I continued singing it as I looked into her eyes. She began to calm, and not long after, she fell asleep. That was the night the sleepy time lullaby was born.

Babies like to be spoken to like whole beings from birth. Babies also like the sound of your voice. And Babies need help understanding what is happening next. One of the most soothing aspects of your being is your voice. Another aspect is the predictability of a sequence of events so that they can anticipate what is happening next. Predictability lowers anxiety. The lowering of anxiety allows a baby to — as the great late Magda Gerber used to say — ‘relax and let sleep come’.