The Baby Sleep Plan

Cheryl Ott is a certified pediatric sleep consultant and the founder of Restful Nights, a private sleep coaching practice serving families across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Michigan and a certification in pediatric sleep consulting from the Family Sleep Institute.

Over the past twelve years, Cheryl has worked with more than three thousand families, helping them navigate the full arc of infant and toddler sleep challenges from the newborn period through the preschool years. Her approach is grounded in developmental science, clinical experience, and a deep respect for the diversity of family structures and parenting philosophies. She works with single parents, same-sex parents, foster and adoptive families, parents of twins and triplets, and families managing medical complexities including reflux, food allergies, prematurity, and developmental delays.

Before founding Restful Nights, Cheryl spent eight years as a neonatal intensive care unit nurse at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That experience shaped her understanding of infant sleep in a profound way. She learned to read the subtle cues of exhausted newborns, to support parents through the emotional intensity of caring for a medically fragile infant, and to appreciate the wide range of normal in infant development. She brings that clinical precision and compassionate realism to every family she supports.

Cheryl is a frequent contributor to *Parenting Science* and *The Baby Sleep Forum*, and her work has been featured in *Motherly*, *Romper*, and *The Bump*. She speaks regularly at pediatric grand rounds and early childhood education conferences, where she advocates for evidence-based sleep guidance that respects both parental intuition and research findings. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her husband and two children, neither of whom slept through the night until they were ready.