Deb Herdman: When Business and Parenting Collide

Renovating houses, breeding and showing horses, taking singing and musical theatre lessons as a teen/young woman and even acting... forget about dull moments! Deb even went on to become a health professional, is a former neonatal nurse and a proud mum of three kids.
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"Follow your passion. It is the driving force behind every mountain that needs to be climbed and the driving force that keeps you moving forward every time you fall over. If you believe in yourself, go for it!"

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Deb Herdman's powerful piece of advice rings true, especially after learning more about her remarkable story and how a creative flair was destined to lead to her founding Nigh' Nigh' Sleepy Head® back in 2011.

Renovating houses, breeding and showing horses, taking singing and musical theatre lessons as a teen/young woman and even acting... forget about dull moments! Deb even went on to become a health professional, is a former neonatal nurse and a proud mum of three kids.

After raising two kids and seeing them grow into adults, Deb suffered from a severe case of empty nest syndrome - a problem she and her husband solved by having another child after a 21-year gap. Having never been happy with the education system, Deb made the brave decision to home educate her new baby, sparking an interest in learning music so that she could pass this knowledge onto her son, Tyler.

A year after her son's birth, Deb's family chipped in to buy her a keyboard for her birthday, which soon made formal piano lessons a necessity. When Tyler was 10 months old, Deb returned to work but this failed to dull her passion for the piano. Instead, every spare moment was spent playing her piano and soon, she'd paid off a Roland electric piano. Armed with her headphones, this meant she could play the piano for hours without disturbing a soul.

"Playing my piano became my passion and my sanity saver," says Deb.

Eventually, Tyler went from a baby that catnapped through the day, into a toddler that could take anywhere between two to three hours to settle for sleep each night. Any parent can feel how painful that scenario must have become at times.

One day, Deb took to the piano and composed a lullaby that not only settled Tyler, but made bedtime from then on in, something truly special.

"I really wanted to sing lullabies to my problem sleeper, but I disliked the same old choices that were written for yester-year. Rock-a-bye baby was such a poor choice for the 21st Century!

I loved classical music and we played a lot of that, but no lyrics and changing crescendos often used to wake up my sensitive sleeper.

I composed the Nigh' Nigh' Sleepy Head music and lyrics to include everything I thought was missing... lyrics that talk about going to sleep and are repetitive enough to remember, combined with instrumental that was meditative in quality."

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According to Deb, the music took almost one year to arrange - time very well spent when you consider where she has managed to take the Nigh' Nigh' Sleepy Head music system today. In addition to the CD, Deb went onto develop the Sleepy Head TED, a sleeping polar bear dressed in pyjamas that match your little munchkins' sleep time wear. And of course, another bonus comes in the form of the bear's magnetised paws that make cuddles a breeze.

"Bedtime should be about keeping the mood light and experience positive and fun," says Deb.

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What started as a solution to her bedtime woes developed into a business plan within a week and today, even midwives use the Nigh' Nigh' Sleepy Head CD to calm babies in utero for monitoring.

"The bottom line is we all need to sleep to function at our optimum. No one needs to suffer at the expense of another.... it can all be done so gently and easily!"

If you're a parent with a baby or child who struggles to sleep, chances are, you're screaming 'where can I buy this CD?' at the screen now. Check out the www.nighnigh.com.au website for more.

Keen to read about more incredible women and businesspeople? You can in the first issue of This Woman Can, a new digital magazine, which will be released in early 2016.

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Can you remember a time when business and parenting has collided for you?

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