Is using a sleep consultant/specialist worth it (baby)?

[Ottie89]

Anybody that’s used a sleep consultant/specialist for their baby was it worth it and if so at what age did you find it useful?

My baby is only a couple of months old and I’m struggling with the lack of sleep and how broken it is! I’ve been wondering about using a sleep consultant but as he’s so young, feeding on demand and with the possibility of sleep regressions coming up I just wonder if it’d be a waste of money at the moment.

I do a lot of scrolling online for sleep advice but think I’ve read too much conflicting advice and maybe it’d be good to talk it through with somebody. They also seem to be quite expensive so whilst I’d be happy to pay out if it’ll help I also don’t want to waste money!

Have you tried talking to anyone in your health visitor group with a special role in sleep? I'd call you HV first before I paid for advice.

I wonder also if the money isn't better spent on breaks for you at this stage - sleep help a bit later on would be worth it I feel.

Nooooo they just force you onto some routine that might go completely against your own instincts and might therefore affect your bond with your baby/how you see your own baby. I know others feel differently but I see them very critically. They take advantage of vulnerable, sleep deprived young parents by styling themselves experts in your baby's care?!

I would do anything else first that you can do to maximise sleep. Go to bed early, do shifts with your partner, nap when baby sleeps in the day (if you manage to put them down), co-sleep safely at night (look up safe guidance), breastfeed back to sleep at each wake up (this then gets much quicker over time). Your baby will naturally sleep longer stretches in time!

Imo they are so expensive because it makes the parents feel that they must be 'experts' then. In reality they are not - sleep consultant is not a protected term or recognised profession or anything. They first make parents who don't yet know any better feel that they need their services by convincing them that their baby's sleep is a problem - when in all likelihood it's completely normal and developmentally appropriate. Then they charge huge sums of money so that the parents feel justified in following the consultant's instruction even if they make the baby cry in distress which otherwise would have likely gone completely against the parents' own instincts. You end up feeling/being told that someone else knows better about your own baby and therefore you might end up less responsive to your baby.

Have you come across Sarah Ockwell-Smith's book Why your baby's sleep matters? It's a small, thin book - quick read - and explains this all very well.

Lots of sympathy though OP, this is a very difficult stage 😔Sleep deprivation is so horrible and can make everything feel so bleak. I promise you it does get better eventually! And you get more used to the broken sleep as well I think.

How old exactly is your baby?

but no, it’s not worth it. Your baby hasn’t read the book and if they are only 8 weeks old they’re far too small for a routine, and for sleeping through the night.

you have potentially got years of this :

my DS 1 was about 17 months when he reliably slept through the night .
ds2 was my sleeping superstar and he was about 13 months
ds3 was 3 YEARS old.

it’s a marathon not a sprint and you can look for a magic solution you can throw money at to buy but there isn’t one…

I have looked as there are a couple local to me that come very well recommended. Touch wood our main issue- ending co-sleeping we seem to have managed to sort so don't need anyone at the moment. However I did see that most if not all the ones local to me said 6m+

DD is just coming up to 6m now, she still wakes twice in the night but I can cope with that at the moment. As I said our big issue was getting her out of our bed.

Yes, and it was literally life changing. I went from so tiered I was hallucinating and fell down the stairs with exhaustion, to DD sleeping stretches of 5hs at a time.

it wasn’t a forced routine, she spent a long time listening to what DD was like and suggesting things that would work for us.

I’m sure I could have got the same ideas from a book, but I was too tired to read one let alone implement it without someone holding my hand.

My health visitor told me my baby didn’t sleep well because she wasn't loved, which made me feel like shit and obviously wasn’t helpful.

I spoke to a Couple of sleep consultants before I found one who worked for us. Happy to give a recommendation if you want to PM me.

Waste of money. We had one appointment, ditched the shyster and started co-sleeping and sharing the nights a bit. It still works and now she's 9 months old and we're both back at work. I don't know anyone that's had a good experience with a sleep consultant.

HV didn’t turn up for her last appointment and now I’m told she’s leaving…

I’m a HCP in community paediatrics (sadly nothing to with sleep or small babies) but know from this that there are no such sleep services and general services are thin on the ground which is why I’m thinking of a private consultation.

I’m not looking for any sort of cry it out method or for my baby to sleep through the night but I haven’t had more than 2 hours sleep at any one time in months. DP is usually awake with me because even when asleep baby grunts so loudly (grunting baby syndrome apparently…)

Too scared to bed share but he’s in a next to me.

I have so many child development books and re-read several before baby was here I’m just too tired to take much in which is why I wonder if it may be worth it at some stage presuming things don’t get better.

Thanks everyone!

@custardandcuddles no I haven’t will check it out if it’s only thin 😅 thanks!

@Honaloulou sorry to hear about your HV she sounds awful! That’s what I’d be hoping for 5 hours sounds like a dream 😅 I’ll send you a PM!

Very weird of your HV to say that…did you report her? Or did she not really say that at all🙄

She's too young anyway for any sort of sleep training. I'd focus on getting a bedtime routine started for now (bath, nappy, PJs, feed, song/book, cuddle, bed). When you put her to bed isn't so important at this age as she won't yet follow one but good even for parents to get familiar with a routine

Yes and it really was worth it. My only regret is paying for the top tier package for 6 weeks of support when we only needed one of the basic packages with a few check ins.

DS was sleeping through the night from day 3 of the support.

@kitcat15 trust me, she said it. Apparently babies don't sleep if they don't feel loved, so I had to give her lots of cuddles. At this point I was co- (not) sleeping, and BFing for what seemed like 23hs a day. It was lockdown one, so it wasn't like I had anything else to do!

But thanks showing an interest 😘

I haven't used a sleep consultant but have heavily relied on a few different resources. Totally understand where you're coming from re conflicting information. I remember when I started reading the books first I was so tired I couldn't follow what was being said. I followed Lucy Wolfes The Baby Sleep Solution and she has good info on her Instagram. I haven't used her online course so can't comment on that. My friend got the Just Chill Baby Sleep online course which I felt was very similar to the information I had read up on. She also has good info on Instagram. Fingers crossed you get more sleep soon

Yes, life changing!! By 5 months we had 1.5 months of getting up every 30 minutes, horrific!!

she helped us ditch the dummy which was our main issue as it would fall out and within 5 minutes baby would be awake again.

helped us put into place a solid sleep environment

lastly it was just so bloody encouraging to have someone to speak to if I was unsure on when nap should be depending what happened. Ours didn’t use a cry it out method, biggest tip she said was babies love consistency. Ours went from only napping in the pram to amazingly long naps in her cot and nighttime was a dream.

best money we have spent! I do think it’s unrealistic to expect a baby to sleep all night, but they do need a decent amount of sleep and it’s our job as parents to help them get that. We couldn’t believe how much our babies development came on with all the extra sleep, I’d highly recommend the one we used!

Another here who found it life changing. But there are some qualifiers on that. I think it's only worth doing if you're up for some form of sleep training, involving some crying (which doesn't necessarily mean cry it out). Sleep training is proven to work in the majority of cases. Anyone promising to get your baby sleeping in any other way I'd be more dubious about. You shouldn't do sleep training until six months plus so no point going to one now (but you can have it as a glimmer of hope on the horizon if things don't improve before then). Also, yes, whatever they tell you is probably available online, for me the value was more in having someone to hold our hand through the process and also a single point of reference for questions etc - so you can avoid going online and getting 100 different answers, which was something I really struggled with in relation to baby sleep. So yeah, for us 100% worth it, also happy to PM a recommendation though I don't think she does anything under five months, but might well be willing to have a chat in the meantime

I've used two. All they do IMO is hand hold you through letting your baby cry (to some extent small to large) they won't tell you anything 30 minutes online research won't. But you go to them (usually) as you're looking for the magic bullet to not let baby cry... then they say 'let them cry' and you obliged OR persuaded.

No not interested….just thing you telling pork pies🙄