STERLING — Most parents can relate to the agony of sleep deprivation, especially parents of very young children.
Enter town resident Arielle Greenleaf, who has helped more than 1,000 clients get the sleep they need through her consulting business Restfully. The inspiration behind launching her first business in 2016, Expect to Sleep Again Sleep Consulting, came from a very personal and very tired place for the mom of one.
“I hired a sleep consultant to help me when I was in a place of desperation, depleted physically and emotionally due to sleep deprivation,” she recalled of those hazy newborn days after her now 8-year-old daughter was born. “Within two weeks, Ashley and I were both sleeping and happy.”
After that, Greenleaf said she “felt called to help other parents in a similar situation,” so she founded Expect to Sleep Again, and then in 2020, amid the pandemic, founded a new business, Restfully, with two business partners and a team of coaches in Canada and the U.S. The goal was to “reach families across the world.”
“My business was born out of my pain point,” the Concord, New Hampshire, native shared. “I was suffering greatly before I hired my sleep consultant; she truly saved my life. After that experience, I looked around and saw so many other parents in need. I knew I needed to help them get to the other side, to get their families healthy again.”
Greenleaf grew up on the campus of St. Paul’s School, where her father was an administrator and teacher. She graduated from Boston University with a degree in print journalism and worked in communications for years before starting her own business.
She and her daughter have lived here in Sterling for five years.
The most common sleep issues they address at Restfully for those in the newborn to 6-yearsof- age range, she said, include helping a child fall asleep and go back to sleep independently, e.g., without feeding/rocking/ bouncing/sleeping next to them.
“Other common issues are short naps, bedtime stalling, middle of the night waking, crib-to-bed transition, and nap transitions,” Greenleaf relayed. “One of the most critical pieces to solving sleep issues is getting a child on an age-appropriate schedule. Every child’s schedule will be slightly different … based on their individual sleep needs. We use methods approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics and informed by the child’s individual needs to achieve the ultimate goal of restful sleep.”
She currently serves as chief coaching officer at Restfully and does coach training and mentorship as well as “quality control with regard to any education information we share with the public.”
“It’s really important that we share evidence- based information versus anecdotal information, which is widespread on social media and the internet and can lead parents down a very wrong pathway,” Greenleaf said.
In the all-virtual Restfully program, clients work one-onone with a sleep coach through their iOS app for two weeks to implement a customized plan for their child.
Greenleaf herself has helped hundreds of clients, either individually or in a group setting.
“Coaches work closely with parents and analyze sleep data in order to truly customize the experience and ensure they reach their sleep goals,” she said of the next step after the initial two-week period. “We offer an additional two weeks of support as part of our initial program so that parents can continue to ask questions and connect with an expert. We also offer a monthly subscription to our app following our initial program, which gives parents access to our tracking tools and age-appropriate resources and activities for their child.”
When asked what the response generally is when she and her team are able to help a family get more sleep, the holy grail in parenting, Greenleaf quipped that while she has been “called a magician many times, the typical reaction is sincere gratitude and relief.”
“The transformation that takes place in such a relatively short time is the most fulfilling,” she said. “Some families have struggled for years and some for only a short time, but they walk away more confident in themselves as parents, happier and healthier. I’m not sure there’s anything better.”
For more information, visit restfullysleep. com, email arielle@restfullysleep. com, and follow Restfully Sleep on Facebook and Instagram.
