“I’ve got that demeanor that says, ‘Excuse me. She likes to handle babies soon after she walks in the door, to get to know them and to help them realize that there is a new sheriff in town. Her standard service involves a three- or four-hour consultation, during which she talks, you listen, she watches you put your baby down for a nap, and then she tells you, for the most part, what you are doing wrong. Hart materialized at our house, driving an Audi. When I heard our younger daughter bounce merrily out of her bed at 5:55 A.M., alert and brimming with schemes for the day ahead, all I felt was fear. We were getting an hour or two of sleep a night. Starting at 11 P.M., while one of us slept in another room, my wife or I battled through until dawn, feeding and rocking the boys, falling into a bed next to their cot when they had settled, only to rise again when one of them stirred. My wife and I had been bearing up, more or less (we have two daughters, aged seven and four, so these things are relative), but the situation had really begun to fall apart a couple of weeks earlier, when the boys’ sleep had deteriorated. John and Arthur were born last May, just past the initial peak of the pandemic in London. Hart, who is sixty-one, with shoulder-length, graying hair, was perched on the corner of our stained white sofa, inspecting our four-month-old twins, who were staring back at her. She doesn’t come all, you know, sweet and singing.” “The big buckled shoe comes in the door,” the client recalled. Another mother who hired Hart likened her to a Roald Dahl character. I hadn’t seen shoes like that since my grandmother died. A pair of brown, low-heeled pumps with sturdy bows were sitting on the stairs of our house. My first encounter with Hart was with her shoes. “I said, ‘Oh, my God, are you a witch?’ ” Raphael complied that night, to the minute. and 2:15 A.M.-and then sleep until 7 A.M. Bett laughed when Hart explained that from now on her son would wake just twice-at exactly 11 P.M. A few years ago, Hart was hired by Sal Bett, the mother of an eight-week-old boy, Raphael, who was waking every twenty minutes. Nearly all these rumors are true, but they fail to account for Hart’s effectiveness, or for the directness of her methods.
Others talk about her time in Bogotá or mention her pet tortoise, George or claim that she once worked, by night, as a nanny for a Prime Minister, slipping through the gates of Downing Street after dark. People say that she has been employed as a governess in Dubai and that she has a twin. Hart’s aura encourages speculation about her past. “She doesn’t fuck around,” one client told me.
Hart’s number comes with a warning: she is a matron of the old school. Hart claims to be the most effective sleep trainer in the city, and the bliss of unbroken nights is the reason that parents who have used her services speak of her with wonder and bewilderment and recommend her to friends, relations, and near-strangers whom they happen to meet by the swings and in whose eyes they recognize a dull and glassy look. But sleep is her overwhelming source of business. Hart’s Web site advertises other services, too: she can help with fussy eaters, potty training, and newborns. The number belongs to Brenda Hart, who is a sleep trainer. There is a telephone number that is passed among the parents of babies and young children in London who have reached the limits of their struggle with sleep deprivation.
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