Seriously £700 AIBU

[wakeupandsmellthecoffee]

Was I BU to tell my work collegue that I thought £700 was a bit much to pay a sleep specialist to sort a programme out for their 18 month old baby to get to sleep.
I truly believe this is madness. She has told me they cant afford this money but are desperate for sleep.
Im afraid I told her COD style (LOL) that they as a couple had caused this problem not the baby and to get a back bone and sort it out. That they didnt have to do controlled crying as she truly cant cope with the stress of it but to be strong and do it Tanya Byron style.
Has anyone got any further advice . ? As it now seems the husband wants to talk to me . They dont want to pay but they want sleep it seems.

blame it on the boogey that looks so much like a better option . I will say sleep boards and that place as well .

Well, if her friends are telling her she caused the problem and she needs to 'grow a back bone' I'm not surprised she feels desperate enough to pay someone £700 to sort it out.

YABU and incredibly unsympathetic, I wish you many, many nights of broken sleep.

Gazing whistfully at the floor in a public loo, thinking that i could lay down and lock the door and go to sleep for a few hours and becuase the door would be locked, no one would bother me....also considered doing this in the comfy chair in the breastfeeding room in Ikea

oooh dark days!

£700 is an awful lot.

It's my understanding that it's more the support through the process rather than the actual advice though. It's someone there (physically or at the other end of the phone) to coach you through it and tell you that although your child is crying blue murder, they are ok.

I don't think that laying blame with the parents is really helpful though OP. It's not always the parent's fault and some children just sleep less/wake more than others.

YWBU, assuming that your opinion on what the couple spend wasn't solicited. You were also deeply unhelpful and rude to tell them to "get a backbone" and say it's their fault that their child doesn't sleep.

FWIW I solved the problem with my child after 16 months of waking on average 8 times a night. I left my child to it. It was that or go completely mad, I didn't have £700 to resolve the problem and I'd tried everything else. It worked for me.

Yes, yes boredandrestless, for every non-sleeping child there is a parent mentally screaming,"DO YOU NOT THINK I'VE TRIED THAT?" to a smug well meaning friend.

My DD goes through patches where she won't sleep if me or DH aren't lying next to her but still wakes regularly every 90 mins or so A smug well meaning friend said she wakes a lot because we disturb her which was news to us since she wasn't sleeping for longer than 10 mins if one of us wasn't there.

I think £700 sounds like a lot of money but without knowing exactly what they're getting for that money, I can't judge on whether it's a piss take.

I should add that I have never used this kind of service, but do know people who have. It's not for me, but if you are on your knees with sleep deprivation it's certainly an option.

I go with they all sleep eventually and when they're teenagers you have to drag them out of bed. Until then it's survival tactics.

OP controlled crying doesn't bother me one iota, I think you just need to keep your own counsel and stop focusing on the money side of things - it's up to them what they spend it on. Clearly they CAN afford it or it wouldn't be an option.

It IS a lot of money but there isn't enough info on exactly what it involves, if it's a partly residential course and lots of experts on hand then it sounds pretty reasonable. A person working from home and just dishing out advice sounds a bit steep.

YABVVU. I would have sold my leg to get 3 hours unbroken sleep when DD was 6 months. If you haven't had a sleep refusing baby then you have absolutely no idea how bad prolonged sleep depravation is or what you would do just to have any sleep.

It took a hell of a lot more than just patting her back and and edging out of the room over a few days to fix her sleep.

No cry sleep solution book. Wish I'd found it sooner! Ds didn't sleep until he was 3 and a half.

My old HV was a sleep specialist and ran her own clinic for people all over our area, is there nothing like that? It was free.

I am very much with tightwad on this one - nothing I did made a jot of difference with my third child, nothing. I remember almost nodding off in the dentist's chair about 2 years in...

IME - a lot of people pay for night nannies when they get to the end of their tether with lack of sleep (andI can't see them getting much change from £700) - and normally what happens is the night nanny 'gets the baby into a routine' - and does this via controlled crying. But this way, the parents arent the ones doing it...

As a nursery nurse I used to advise parents on sleeping issues,assured them that finding the right routine would work,held the opinion that a sleep problem was a parenting problem-all children need to sleep,I myself had had 2 perfect ds who slept well even in the early days.......fresh air and healthy diet,tire them out I would suggest,of course Id read all the books listened to my tutors lectures .......

then...

Ds3 arrived and slept 3 hours out of 24 for 3 years - consider it karma .

I nearly paid more than that for a sleep consultant to sort out my DD2's sleep, when you are utterly exhausted and at the end of your tether you will consider anything.

She cancelled on me at the last minute and DH did it, we used a sleep forum called babysleepanswers and paid £50 to register and get one to one email consultation for a week while we did sleep training and after 3 nights my DD was sleeping 8 hours unbroken, 6.5 hours more than she had ever done in a stretch since birth.

So yes it is a crazy sum of money but YABU to judge them over this as you have no idea how close to the edge they may be feeling.

Oh everyone is such an expert on other people's children's sleep.
I won't comment on the £700 as I don't know what it entails - on site support for first night, etc - could bump up cost.

But YABVVU and annoying with your comment about it being the parents' fault, not the baby's.

Your magic spell (no eye contact - blah blah blah) makes it all sound so easy. All of that sort of obvious stuff helped my child settle at bedtime - never stopped her waking in the night!

Baby sleep - everyone's a blooming expert!

£700 I am so in the wrong job ???!!

None of your business and whilst £700 is a lot of money it is a small price to pay for some sleep - some people will never understand the hell that is sleep deprivation - and for the op to question this - you clearly have never been in her place. Mind your own business or offer to have her children for a few nights.

£700 is a lot of money it is a small price to pay for some sleep

earplugs are cheaper

I think you are being a bit harsh. I considered it with ds, I was desperate as for the first year he woke every single hour. I would have done anything for a few hours sleep. I decided to bite the bullet and do cc for a week before doing anything else, and luckily it worked. But if it hadn't worked I may well have done it. Those were dark days. I wouldn't knock someone for considering doing that at all. I was getting to the point where I would have paid £700 to take ds away

People who have never had to deal with a child who doesn't sleep simply don't get it. There comes a point when you would be prepared to do almost anything, just for a bit of relief.

If they resist controlled crying in that utterly desperate state, believe me, it isn't because it's difficult. It's because they believe in the very core of their being that it's the wrong thing to do for their child.

DD was a terrible sleeper, I felt as though I was being tortured. I read loads of books, tried to follow all of the advice, but it didnt work. I'd have considered paying someone to help, if I'd been persuaded that they could resolve the problem without resorting to controlled crying.

Eventually, co-sleeping proved to be the answer for us. DD is still a poor sleeper, even now, but it's much, much better than it was.

Your colleague needs support, not blame. If she has to function at work and then go home for the nightshift, she is probably right on the edge. Poor woman.:(

wish i had £700 to sort out ds 6 sleep.

he don't sleep till gone 9, hit and miss if he wakes in the night and up by 6.30

My ds is 11 and he never sleeps unless Im there (not neccesarily with him obv but in my bed asleep) he could and would stay up until the very early hours until I went to bed .....if he goes up before me (as we used to insist he did) he lies there tossing and turning - the minute im up in the morning -so is he!!!

God help him if I ever get a night job or when he gets married hed be saying to his wife 'ill just ring mum and see if shes in bed yet' .

Hes never needed sleep and only naps in the daytime if hes ill - dont know how he does it tbh.