The Baby Calmer

Get to know The Baby Calmer

From The Baby Calmer's website.

• Our approach

  The Baby Calmer offers a baby-centred, attachment-focused, trauma-informed approach to supporting infants and young children, particularly with sleep challenges and parenting concerns. Sessions are emotion-focused and therapeutically sound, incorporating somatic processes, practical guidance, and nurturing support rather than sleep training or controlled crying methods. The work is grounded in current neuroscience, attachment theory, and research into infant development, with a strong emphasis on preserving the parent-child bond. A key principle is that babies always need and deserve immediate caregiver response—no baby is ever left alone to cry. Sessions integrate talking therapy alongside somatic experiencing, recognising that healing happens through multiple pathways beyond conversation alone.

• Working with families

  Parents and carers are central to all work, with The Baby Calmer providing practical support, advice, education, and counselling tailored to enhance parenting skills and capacity. Communication happens through multiple formats—clinic sessions, telephone, email, Skype, and in-home visits—making it accessible to your family's circumstances. The approach includes dedicated parenting support and mentoring, particularly for challenges like postnatal depression, birth trauma, bonding disruption, and general early parenting concerns. Throughout residential immersion packages, parents receive therapeutic support, somatic education, and nervous system regulation guidance during the day, with the goal of helping parents return to their own inner guidance and develop calmer, more confident parenting.

• Meet the team

  Anne Thistleton is the practitioner and holds extensive qualifications including B.Ed, M.REd, M.Couns, Grad. Dip. Nut Med (MHealth), Cert EF & TTh, Cert SP & SW, and CIMI credentials. She brings almost thirty years of clinical experience supporting children, parents and families across educational and therapeutic contexts, combined with over sixteen years of university, postgraduate and professional development training in education, counselling, emotion-focused and transpersonal therapy, sandplay therapy, nutritional medicine, pre and perinatal psychology, birth trauma therapy, aromatherapy, somatic experiencing, and craniosacral therapy. She specialises as an Infant and Early Years Sleep Therapist, Parenting Consultant, Educator, and qualified Psychotherapist, and is professionally supervised and mentored by leading international experts in early parenting, bonding, attachment, infant development, pre and perinatal psychology, and birth trauma therapy.

• Your first visit

  Your first appointment begins with a complimentary 45-minute introductory consultation, which can be conducted by telephone, email, Skype, or in-home, allowing you to explore whether the service is right for your family without financial commitment. This consultation helps establish a safe, empathic and non-judgmental space where your specific concerns and challenges can be discussed. Depending on your needs and preferences, you may choose clinic-based sessions, the Sleep Centre for theoretical and practical education, residential immersion packages with on-site accommodation, or ongoing telephone and email support. The practitioner will work with you to tailor an approach that fits your family's unique situation and supports your parenting capacity.