Sleep is as natural to the human condition as breathing — and just as critical. Without it, we wouldn’t survive.

Despite that, sleep often doesn’t always come naturally, especially as we get older.

But one would thing it should come naturally when we’re young. And it does, of course.

But dealing with the seemingly random and choppy sleeping patterns of newborns can drive parents to distraction, not to mention the ups and downs of raising small children who won’t sleep when you want them to, and the challenges of nightmares and night terrors and the rest.

And if our kids don’t sleep, well, then neither do we. As if parenting isn’t tough enough already, exhaustion triggered by lack of sleep chips away at our health, shortens our fuses, and can harm our relationships with our spouses.

So it’s a big issue for parents; and joining us to talk about that today is Kida Stevens. Kida is a pediatric emergency nurse at Alberta Children’s hospital, a wondrously talented nurse who I’ve had the privilege of working alongside for fifteen years.

She’s also a parent of two kids — ages three and six — and she’s leveraged her experience as a mom and pediatric nurse to share her expertise in kids’ sleep issues with parents. She runs a sleep coaching business for paents called RestfulNights Sleep — restfulnightssleep.com

As always, thank you for listening.

Raising children to be healthy eaters is a major focus for parents. One of the most common questions pediatricians field from parents is "What can I do about my child's picky eating?"

In this episode we interview Anne Blocker, a dietician and the Executive Director of the Ellyn Satter Institute (https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/), an organization dedicated to fostering healthy attitudes and strategies around eating.

Join us as we discuss how to properly frame the eating experience for kids, and how to erase the worries parents may have around raising well-nourished children.

Losing a child is every parent's worst nightmare. On today's show we tackle that topic head on as we interview a mom, Cheryl, who lost her little daughter Emma to cancer.

Cheryl shares Emma's — and her family's — journey through her illness. She shares the shock of diagnosis; the details of Emma's medical journey and her passing; what little Emma was like; how her family survived her departure; and the deep impact Emma had — and continues to have — on their lives.

It's a profound conversation, packed with life lessons for the rest of us.