Bridging Nursing, Holistic Pregnancy & Maternal-Infant Sleep
Meet Diana Fialho, nurse, maternal-infant sleep consultant, founder of BabiesPlace, and graduate of the International Parenting & Health Institute’s Holistic Pregnancy & Childbirth Consultant Certification Program in Portuguese.
Based in Portugal, Diana has developed a professional path that brings together nursing, pregnancy and postpartum education, infant and family sleep, parental education, and maternal wellbeing.
Her work reflects an important principle:
Supporting a baby also means supporting the people caring for that baby.
Diana’s professional philosophy looks beyond a single symptom or behavior and considers the larger family experience, the baby’s needs, parental wellbeing, feeding, sleep, emotional connection, family dynamics and the realities of life after birth.
Today, through BabiesPlace, she helps families navigate one of the areas that can have an enormous impact during early parenthood:
sleep.
But Diana’s professional foundation reaches much further.
A Foundation in Nursing
Diana is a licensed nurse, having completed her nursing education between 2003 and 2007.
Her professional background includes work with Centro Hospitalar do Oeste, and she has continued building specialized education around the health and wellbeing of babies, children and families. Her public professional profile identifies her as postgraduate-trained in Infant and Adolescent Sleep.
That clinical background gives Diana a distinctive perspective when educating parents.
Pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, feeding, infant development and sleep aren’t completely separate experiences.
They unfold alongside one another.
And the transition into parenthood can affect the wellbeing of an entire family.
Expanding Her Education Into Holistic Pregnancy & Childbirth
As Diana’s professional work evolved, she expanded her education through the International Parenting & Health Institute’s Holistic Pregnancy & Childbirth Consultant Certification Program, completing her training in Portuguese.
This education added another dimension to a professional foundation already rooted in healthcare and family wellbeing.
A holistic perspective on pregnancy and childbirth recognizes that preparing for a baby isn’t simply about preparing for the physical event of birth.
Families are also navigating:
physical changes,
emotional changes,
relationships,
expectations,
birth preparation,
postpartum adjustment,
feeding,
infant care,
sleep,
and the transition into parenthood.
For Diana, that broader framework complements the maternal-infant work she continues today.
Creating BabiesPlace
Diana went on to establish BabiesPlace, a platform through which she provides education and support to families.
Her current professional presence identifies her as a Maternal-Infant Sleep Consultant and offers services that include online infant sleep consultations, in-person consultations, home consultations and parental education. BabiesPlace also provides educational resources and workshops, including education specifically addressing infant sleep during the first year.
Diana’s work has also expanded into multidisciplinary settings.
She currently provides sleep consultations through Alcance, a pediatric and children’s therapy clinic, and is publicly identified as an Infant Sleep Specialist Nurse among the professionals at Árvore dos Bebés, a maternal-infant support center.
This multidisciplinary presence reflects something important about sleep:
Sometimes sleep is the presenting concern.
But understanding a family’s situation may require looking beyond sleep itself.
Sleep Is a Family Experience
One of the most compelling aspects of Diana’s public education is her refusal to treat infant sleep as though it belongs only to the baby.
In a detailed 2024 interview about maternal exhaustion, Diana explained that infant sleep and maternal wellbeing are closely connected and argued that families should receive more education about sleep when preparing for parenthood.
Her perspective is family-centered.
When a baby is waking repeatedly, the consequences aren’t experienced by one person in isolation.
Parents may be exhausted.
Feeding decisions may be affected.
Relationships can be strained.
Daily functioning changes.
And mothers, who frequently carry a disproportionate amount of nighttime caregiving, can experience a tremendous physical and emotional burden.
For Diana, supporting infant sleep therefore also means asking:
How is the mother doing?
How is the other caregiver doing?
What is sustainable for this family?
What does this family actually need?
Making Space for Maternal Wellbeing
Diana speaks openly about something that can easily disappear from conversations about babies:
the mother.
In her public education on maternal exhaustion, she emphasizes the importance of a support network and challenges the idea that postpartum life should automatically mean prolonged self-neglect or accepting severe exhaustion indefinitely.
Her message isn’t that babies shouldn’t need their parents.
Quite the opposite.
She recognizes babies’ need for closeness, comfort and responsive care.
But she also recognizes that the caregiver is a person with needs.
This creates a more nuanced conversation:
How can we respond to the baby while also protecting the wellbeing of the person providing that care?
That balance is a recurring theme in Diana’s work.
Responsive Sleep Without Leaving Babies to Cry Alone
Diana’s approach to sleep is also notable for what it doesn’t center:
leaving babies alone to cry.
In discussing her own children and professional philosophy, she has described supporting sleep without having her children fall asleep crying alone or without comfort and co-regulation.
In another educational interview, Diana addressed the misconception that infant crying is simply manipulation or a “tantrum,” discussing responsive ways of understanding and supporting babies while also acknowledging parental exhaustion.
This is an important connection with IPHI’s holistic philosophy.
The goal isn’t merely to produce a particular nighttime behavior.
It is to understand what is happening within the baby, caregiver and family system and determine what support is appropriate.
Bringing Evidence and Compassion Together
Diana has a phrase that captures her professional philosophy especially well:
She doesn’t want to be fundamentalist, she wants to be well-founded.
That distinction appears throughout her public work.
Families encounter enormous amounts of conflicting information.
Breastfeed.
Don’t breastfeed.
Bed-share.
Never bed-share.
Hold the baby.
Don’t create habits.
Respond immediately.
Teach independence.
Follow schedules.
Ignore schedules.
For new parents, the volume of advice can become overwhelming.
Diana’s work creates room for something more individualized:
information, context, family needs and informed choices.
Educating Families About Shared Sleep
Diana has also publicly addressed topics that parents are often afraid to discuss openly, including co-sleeping, room-sharing and bed-sharing.
In a 2025 educational interview, she discussed these different forms of shared sleep, why families may choose them and the importance of understanding safety considerations rather than pretending the practices don’t occur.
That willingness to address real family behavior rather than idealized parenting is another important element of holistic education.
Parents benefit from having a space where they can ask:
What are our options?
What are the risks?
What works for our family?
How can we make informed decisions?
Education Beyond the Consultation Room
Diana’s impact also extends beyond individual families.
She contributes to public education through interviews and professional collaborations addressing subjects such as maternal exhaustion, infant crying, co-sleeping, safe sleep and infant sleep.
She is also identified as a member of the Scientific Committee of Parenting Portugal, where she contributes her expertise in infant sleep.
In 2026, Parenting Portugal published infant-sleep education validated by its Scientific Committee team of infant sleep specialists, including Diana.
Her work therefore now extends from individual family support into broader professional and public education.
From Pregnancy to Parenthood
What makes Diana’s professional journey particularly relevant to IPHI is the continuity between the different areas she has studied.
Pregnancy does not end as an isolated chapter when the baby arrives.
Birth becomes postpartum.
Postpartum becomes infant care.
Feeding and sleep enter the picture.
Relationships shift.
Parents adapt.
Babies develop.
New challenges emerge.
Diana’s education through IPHI’s Holistic Pregnancy & Childbirth Consultant Certification Program sits within this larger continuum.
Today, her specialty may be most publicly associated with maternal-infant sleep, but the families she supports are still navigating the much larger transition that begins during pregnancy:
becoming a family.
Professional Profile
Diana Fialho
Nurse | Maternal-Infant Sleep Consultant | Founder of BabiesPlace | Holistic Pregnancy & Childbirth Consultant
Location: Portugal
Current Professional Work
Founder — BabiesPlace
Maternal-Infant Sleep Consultations
Parental Education
Family Sleep Education
Workshops & Educational Resources
IPHI Certification
Holistic Pregnancy & Childbirth Consultant
International Parenting & Health Institute
Portuguese-language program
Professional Education & Recognition
Degree in Nursing
Postgraduate Education in Infant & Adolescent Sleep Pulguinhas
Member, Scientific Committee — Parenting Portugal Parenting
Additional Professional Collaborations
Infant Sleep Consultation — Alcance Clínica Alcance
Infant Sleep Specialist Nurse — Árvore dos Bebés Árvore dos Bebês
Professional Focus
Maternal-Infant Sleep
Infant & Child Sleep
Pregnancy & Parenthood Education
Maternal Wellbeing
Parental Education
Responsive Infant Care
Family Sleep
Postpartum Adjustment
Co-sleeping & Sleep Education
Family-Centered Support
Supporting the Baby by Supporting the Family
Diana Fialho’s career demonstrates how maternal-child education can continue evolving across different stages of family life.
Her foundation in nursing provided a healthcare perspective.
Her holistic pregnancy and childbirth education expanded the lens through which she could support expecting families.
Her specialized education in infant and adolescent sleep deepened her expertise.
And BabiesPlace became a way to bring these areas together for families navigating real-life parenthood.
Perhaps the strongest thread running through Diana’s work is the understanding that we cannot separate the wellbeing of a baby from the wellbeing of the people caring for that baby.
Babies need responsiveness.
Mothers need support.
Families need information.
Parents need permission to ask for help.
And education should empower families to make informed decisions without requiring them to abandon either their baby’s needs or their own.
That’s the kind of whole-family thinking that turns professional education into meaningful support.
💙 Congratulations, Diana!
We are proud to recognize Diana Fialho as a graduate of IPHI’s Holistic Pregnancy & Childbirth Consultant Certification Program in Portuguese and celebrate the way she continues to bring nursing, maternal-child education and family-centered sleep support together through her work in Portugal.
