The Happyly Story

I vividly remember the 2am walks around the block, hoping he would drift back off. The jarring moments when we’d just gotten him down to sleep (AGAIN) at 3am, everything’s quiet, we’re back in bed literally on the edge of drifting back off to sleep and suddenly we’re jerked out of near-sleep bliss by a shriek! We know the struggle.

Our first child’s sleep patterns were so difficult we were beside ourselves. Tired and desperate for solutions, we were sleep tracking everything on spreadsheets, trying to find patterns and insights into what was happening. We read a lot of material on sleep; books, research and other parents’ experiences.

Eventually, after extracting all of that info, we found research-based approaches that actually worked and we used them for all 4 babies. It was transformational. Still challenging, no doubt (when is parenting not hard?!), but it made such a huge difference for us.

I came up with this idea because I thought: “How cool would it be for young parents to have this research distilled and available to them at their fingertips on demand and in a personalized way? No reading 5 books and 15 research papers necessary! And what if we could make it so that the research-backed advice and guidance was specific to each child’s patterns and rhythms and each family’s situation?”

This project is about enabling parents and families to get into great sleep rhythms that empower them to be happier and more well rested. “Well rested” is such a simple idea, but so difficult when you have babies and toddlers in the mix!

In building this app I’ve taken the research and evidence-based principles we used and baked them into the system. Every piece of advice you get, every suggestion, every idea is sourced in the research-based principles that worked for us, in real life.

We aren’t a huge corporate with “VC” funding and big shareholders. We are just two parents living in New Zealand who used research-based practices for baby and toddler sleep that really work, and we’re keen to share it with you too.

Truth be told, the idea that we’re helping other parents also get the sleep benefits we did without the confusion, tedious book reading and long-winded research makes me stoked!