Meet Ariana Gonzalez | Certified Pediatric Sleep & Lactation Consultant

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ariana Gonzalez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ariana, we’d love for you to start things off by telling us something about your industry that we and others not in the industry might be unaware of?
Pediatric Sleep Consulting/Coaching is a fairly new industry, so it’s easy for there to be a lot of misconceptions about what we do. The reality is that we are here to support parents in their parenting journey. We do this by helping them come up with sleep plans that they feel comfortable with implementing, while supporting them every step of the way.

With this being said NO not every family feels comfortable implementing cry-it-out, and we as sleep consultants should inform parents of ALL the other sleep training methods they could use! That’s right, you are hearing it here, cry-it-out is NOT the only sleep training method.

In fact, it’s actually a method I and other sleep consultants don’t work with!

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
What sets me apart without a doubt is my Mexican-American Heritage. My parents both came to the United States as teenagers, with nothing but the clothes on their back. They sacrificed so much to give my siblings and I a better life. Growing up my father only allowed us to speak Spanish at home and my mother insisted we go to Mexico as often as possible, sometimes going every moth.

As a child I grew up with very strong ties to Mexico and fully understand the first generation immigrant life. So when I became a sleep consultant, in a primarily white industry, I decided I wanted to lean into my heritage and serve my communidad. At first this was not easy! Sleep training is so new and foreign for Latinos, so the 1st year of business was all about educating and networking with my local community and with my extended network of friends/acquaintances. I kept going, because I knew I could help people like me and then little by little I started getting clients and now 3 years into my business I am so grateful that I did not give up and I stayed true to my community,

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I was born at Los Angeles General Hospital, and I was raised in Pasadena California, so without a doubt I would skip everything on the West Side, honestly it’s over-hyped. Instead I would stay true to Dena and its neighboring cities, so we would: shop and walk around Old Town Pasadena, go for a hike at JPL, catch a live event at the Rose Bowl, picnic at Eaton Canyon, catch a Dodger Game and eat some Dodger Dogs, grab street tacos in Eagle Rock, tour Pasadena City Hall, look at art on ArtNight (seriously such a great event), soak in the garden at Descanso Gardens or Huntington Botanical Gardens, drink at some local breweries (my favorite thing to do) and have breakfast at the Langham Huntington Hotel.

Pasadena is only a few miles from LA but it feels like a whole other world!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
When I first found out I was pregnant, I was overly confident (I mean, I had 17 years of auntie duties!) and thought motherhood would be a breeze with my experience and my mom by my side.

When I was 7 months pregnant, my mom suddenly passed away, and my village diminished greatly.

If you knew my mom, you’d understand. Her heart was larger than life. On countless occasions, she gave of herself: delivering home-cooked meals to expectant mothers, breastfeeding my cousins because my aunt wasn’t able to, being a mother to all of her siblings, nieces and nephews, co-workers, friends, and anyone who had the privilege of meeting her.

It’s my mother who taught me what it means to be a village to others. So of course I want to shout out my amaaa.

And last but not least my husband, who has always, sometimes to a fault, supported me in my journey as a small business owner.

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