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To be honest MistyB I think that's potentially the route we need to investigate. I'm pretty convinced now she isn't waking out of habit, but is in pain/uncomfortable. I've removed as many sleep props as possible no problem but she still wakes, often screaming.

Would love to hear your experiences...

Not personally.

I took the approach that it would resolve in time, and it did.

You might want to look at the Isis Project website. They have independent info on sleep training and what is normal sleep-wise for small children.

DS2 also has food issues, had terrible skin, terrible bowels and I think he was really uncomfortable / in pain. Would you consider seeing a nutritionist to investigate food intolerances and rebalance her gut with supplements? I will send some more of our history / experiences later.

funnily enough we've just taken dairy out of her diet mainly because of her skin, which started looking bad when she weaned but went mental when we moved her onto cow's milk last week, and she starts some reflux medicine tonight because I'm also not convinced she's waking for no reason....

My ds was a terrible sleeper for about a year, until we realised he had silent reflux and certain foods set him off. Once we removed dairy, egg and soya from his diet he was fine and started to sleep through the night. He could tolerate dairy and soya again after a couple of months and can have egg cooked in food, eg cake, so it wasn't too drastic a change. But it made all the difference in the world to start getting a bit more sleep.

We had done cc a bit with ds but it didn't work particularly well because he was in pain rather than just wanting attention

I am a (trainee) sleep consultant. I would never do controlled crying

oh god I have tried various things including weeks of reduced intervention, attempted and aborted CC (she's now 1yo), no longer feeding to sleep OR feeding in the night AT ALL,

We're def at that point of an external party just giving me a sodding plan and support, I own NCSS but haven't the time or energy to even read the bloody thing!

We didn't do controlled crying either. How old is your DD?

Our wining changes were:
Reducing night feeds, leading to more eating during the day and more sleep at night.
Patting and shushing but gradually reducing intervention. This meant really analysing what we were doing to help him to go to sleep and picking it apart so we could gradually reduce our intervention.
Removing the link between feeing and sleeping so the last feed was before bath.
Being consistent day and night though to be honest that was half heatedly implemented!!
Our sleep consultant suggested we used colour coding to record wakings, settlings and sleep times so we could really see what was happening and see improvements and advised that we would see improvement in two weeks but it would require continued work for a further four weeks to get to 80% so we knew we were not looking at a three night solution.

He still wakes at night to drink but it is a million miles from where we were!!

We needed an external party to tell us which bits we needed to change, to tell us to do it and to ask us if we had done it when it all felt too hard and hopeless or that we were not getting anywhere.

Oh and it cost about £300 for one house call and phone support for 6 weeks.

I used one. We were too sleep deprived to make sense of any books and found one who didn't recommend CC, which we couldn't have done.

Was a god send, sensible advice and support when we needed it. Just make sure you agree with the suggested method of training.

fraktion what should we be looking for in a sleep trainer? I don't really know where to begin and imagine, being based in LA, it is going to cost the earth!

I have sleep trained a few babies as a night nanny and only done CC twice because that's what the parents wanted and couldn't do by themselves without getting more upset than the baby.

We can't CC DD, previous attempts have failed miserably and resulted in her not napping at all and screaming whenever I move out of her eyeline. I'm not averse to it - worked with DS!

I wouldn't because a sleep trainer will just do some variation of controlled crying. There is no magic to it.

I can't remember I'm afraid, the first one was 7 years ago. More than £100, less than £200 I think. On both occasions we had one home visit and follow up phone calls which worked for us. Their current fees are on their websites.

Yes here too. We used Andrea Grace

www.andreagrace.co.uk/

She's London based but offers Skype consultations too.

We paid a consultant for DS aged 14 months and she didn't tell us a huge amount of new stuff - it was more a reality check and gave us the kick we needed to do CC which I'd been resisting until then but was definitely the right thing to do for us then.

Really good to know - do you mind me asking how much you paid each time?

Yes! Absolutely. We had advice for DS1 when he was waking at night and very early in the morning. We needed help before DD arrived and it was worth every penny. DD was a dream baby and we followed the advice the sleep consultant gave us for her. Then DS2 arrived and I have read every book going and had what I thought was a golden rule book but he was something else all together. We got another sleep consultant in (we had moved so couldn't use the previous one) and again, it was worth it. I would do it again in a minute and do recommend it to others who are struggling.

Both gave us techniques to use and things we hadn't thought of but most of all, it was about making a plan, having someone else tell you it will work, buying in to it (literally!!), recording everything and then reporting back, getting encouragement to keep going, additional tips if appropriate.

We used Naturally Nurturing in the South East and Gentle Sleep Solutions in Yorkshire.

DD is a shitty sleeper. We haven't in fairness tried every technique and those we have I'm often too tired to follow through on. I am exhausted and cross and sad and just want us all to get some fucking sleep!!!

Would you pay a sleep trainer who will undoubtedly just give you advice you've already read about?!