Story Extras

Discussing All Things Sleep with Nora Murray, CEO & Founder of Oolie

Nora Murray is a sleep expert, mom to three young kids, clinical psychologist, and founder of Oolie, a Certified B Corporation whose mission is to help families toward better sleep and a more peaceful home. Oolie also produces thoughtfully designed, certified-organic bedding and baby products for which Nora creates all the illustrations and patterns.

We’re big fans of Oolie, and I sat down with Nora to talk about sleep.

LISABETH: I’m so excited to talk to you, Nora. So many families struggle with sleep — for parents and kids alike. What do you see as the biggest sleep challenges for families?

There are three main phases where we see sleep problems:

• falling asleep,
• staying asleep, and
• returning to sleep after waking.

Let’s explore each of these, starting with falling asleep.

Everyone has their own opinions about how to help children fall asleep. There must be 1,000 books on this alone! Timing, temperature, room layout, clothing, music, sound machines, humidifiers (or dehumidifiers?), blackout curtains, fans, melatonin, parental attitude, screen time, meal and snack timing, reading books together… You name it, someone has a strong opinion about what works.

Once your child is sleeping, congratulations! You’re into the next phase: “sleep maintenance” or staying asleep. It’s very normal to wake up during the night, in between your body’s natural sleep cycles. When parents want their children to “sleep through the night,” think of this as “building the ability to go back to sleep without intervention.”

Most sleep advice is focused on how to get your child to sleep. But what about you, the parent?

In my clinical practice, I address the impact on parents when their children struggle with sleep. Because when the kids aren’t sleeping, you’re not sleeping.

LISABETH: Yikes! So tell me about what you see in parents, and how you can help.

Have you heard the term mom-somnia?

Mom-somnia is when the kids are finally in bed and asleep, but mom resists going to bed. Even though her body is tired and ready for sleep, she stays up later in a very rational attempt to claw back some time to herself, or grown-up time with a partner. That grown-up time is so important, but comes at the cost of being under-rested the next day. (Of course, mom-somnia isn’t limited to moms! Dads and other care providers share this experience. Mom-somnia is just a cheeky name for the phenomenon.)

I also work with parents who:

• have difficulty falling asleep because they find it harder to calm down,
• have become more alert to nighttime noises (like baby’s cry!), so they wake more easily, or
• whose sleep habits were so disrupted by having kids that they need a full reset once their kids are older and more independent.

For some parents, sleep disruptions can last weeks, months, or even years. Even after the children are able to fall asleep and stay asleep on their own, the parents may need to tweak their own sleep habits to find that truly restorative sleep.

It is so important that you, the parent, get the sleep you need. I built our free five-day course - Better Sleep in Less Than a Week to help parents and children alike.

LISABETH: How did you first get interested in sleep?

Pre-kids, I wasn’t bothered by my own sleep habits, even if they weren’t ideal. (Yes, I watch TV and read on my phone before bed!) Before kids, there was room for me to sleep when it suited me.

While training to be a clinical psychologist, I worked in a hospital that served people with PTSD — people who had experienced stress beyond what their bodies or minds could make sense of. Recovery from PTSD can be complicated and nonlinear; it affects so many aspects of one’s life, and the path to healing can be slow. People with PTSD often have serious and chronic sleep problems both resulting from the PTSD and further exacerbating its symptoms.

In training, I learned an intervention that generally brought consistent and quick relief. Called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBT-I. CBT-I is a time-limited behavioral treatment with a robust evidence base that helps people with sleep problems get the rest they need.

And by “robust evidence base,” I mean “scientifically proven to help people sleep.”

It is so rewarding now to improve my patients’ sleep, because the pay-off is absolutely life-changing. Getting better rest improves every area of your life — mood, energy, focus, physical health, everything.

LISABETH: Did you have sleep challenges with your own family?

Yes! I didn’t appreciate the importance of sleep in my own life until I had kids, because none of my babies were restful sleepers. None of them ever slept in a crib, ever.

Seriously, I owned a beautiful crib for seven years, and it was used only by our cat. Not one of my babies ever slept in it; we’d shush and rock them to sleep, only to see them startle and wake the moment we lay them down. We tried every gizmo and gadget on the market. We hired consultants and sleep doulas. We tried sleep training with the “cry it out” method. We even tried the Snoo, the electronic bassinet that is supposed to responsively rock your baby the sleep. I am sure it works for some babies, but not mine!

In the end, nothing got our kids to sleep without us.

The only way we could get the kids to sleep was through wearing them, holding/rocking them, or snuggling them. The only way they stayed asleep was bed-sharing, also known as co-sleeping.

LISABETH: What can Sparklers do to help improve their own sleep?

I recommend my free, 5-day email course called Better Sleep in Less Than a Week.

I created this course to make the core concepts of CBT-I more accessible to everyone — but especially parents with young kids.

Each day, I email you a brief lesson and an interactive activity. There are quizzes, videos, and relaxing guided audio exercises. It’s fun! But it’s also based on real science about how the brain works.

LISABETH: Why did you start Oolie?

Honestly, having my third baby pushed us over the edge! We were so desperate for sleep, and by #3 I had accepted that the official advice wouldn’t work for us. So I thought, “Okay, we are going to bed share with this baby. I accept that. How can we make it safe?”

I knew that “pillow barriers” weren’t safe; it’s critical to avoid suffocation hazards. So I sat down at my sewing machine and prototyped what I now call the Oolie Nest; it’s like a fitted sheet but with zippered flaps on all four sides to secure firm bolsters in place. It turns your floor bed into a cozy space with soft (but safe!) bumpers on all four sides.

I put the Nest on my baby’s bed, and that was the first time he slept through the night, all by himself, in his own room. No joke. It was my transformative a-ha moment. Maybe I’m on to something here…

Ever since that moment, everything we make is designed very intentionally to support sleep — from small details like no internal tags on our baby garments to innovative products like the Oolie Shoosh, our unique door silencer and safety bumper. I designed the Shoosh after trying everything else on the market — and learning that my sneaky toddler was clever enough to remove them all! Well, the Shoosh is a beautiful object that eliminates that door-click sound, and your child can’t remove it themselves.

LISABETH:  You know, I had something like the Oolie Nest for my babies, but that was in the early 2000’s and I had to have it custom made! It was how we did co-sleeping as well. So glad to know it’s available through your company!

I know you're a Sparkle listener. Tell me — how did you discover Sparkle Stories?

We discovered Sparkle Stories in 2020, right after my youngest was born. My oldest wasn’t quite reading independently and bedtimes were a real chore. (Now, she can read herself to sleep, thank goodness!)

With a newborn and two very young kids, everyone still needed a lot of active handholding! Sparkle Stories was transformative for us — our daughter loved the stories, I felt good about them, and they would keep her interest — so her dad and I could take a breather.

I honestly think we only survived the pandemic thanks to Sparkle Stories. In that scary time, we were sleep-deprived with our newborn in lockdown. There was no child care available, no school, no camps, no breaks. Anyone else who parented through that time knows what it was like. Sparkle Stories gave us the reprieves we needed.

LISABETH: Anything else you’d like to share with Sparklers?

After so much of the mainstream parenting advice failed me and my kids, I realized it’s mostly just the opinions of other people — people who don’t know me, my kids, or our needs.

I want everyone to know that there are no one-size-fits-all sleep solutions for families because every family is different, each child and each parent is unique. And that’s a beautiful thing!

That’s why at Oolie, we aren’t dogmatic; we want to support everyone throughout their own sleep journeys as they figure out what works for them.

LINKS:

• Better Sleep in Less Than a Week: A free, 5-day email course
• Oolie Shoosh door silencer and safety bumper
• Oolie organic baby garments

Looking for more sleep support? Trying listening to our original audio story collection Sparkle Sleepytime!

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