Hello all, I'm considering getting some help from a sleep consultant as I am really struggling now. My two year has always been a bad sleeper, but I thought we had finally totally cracked it - she went to bed and napped like an angel, slept through 11/12 hours a night and didn't get up before 7.30 am… Then it all went horribly horribly wrong…
To be fair to her, there has been a lot going on, we have a new baby who is now three months old, she has had a chest infection and chicken pox (one after the other), we went and stayed at my Mum's for a week while OH went away and the bl**dy clocks changed!
Now she won't fall asleep without me being nearby (although I am now on the landing rather than in her room), and won't go to sleep before 9pm when previously she was asleep by 8pm. She is also waking most nights at least once, and getting up early and wanting to come in our bed.
My biggest problem really is that OH and I disagree massively on sleep training techniques - he thinks we should shut the door and leave her to CIO no matter what (and not even check on her when she wakes in the night!) whereas my view is that is bordering on child abuse…
So I have done all the sleep training on my own and used gradual retreat methods which are slow but which have worked in the past (although every trip away and teething/illness has sent me more or less back to square one). However, we now have baby no.2 so I can't spend the time that I used to with DD1 getting her to settle.
I also need to get DD2 to self-settle in her crib - she is a very windy baby and generally has been rocked off to sleep with a dummy (out of sheer desperation!) but I know I am travelling a bad road here and need to put a stop to it!
So, at the end of this ridiculously long post (exhausted rant!), I'm looking for someone who can give us a gentle sleep plan for both DDs that we can both follow - and largely to convince OH that CIO is not the only way!!
I was looking at Ann Caird of Nurturing Sleep as she seems to have a lot of recommendations and I like the way she looks at the big picture (and of course is anti-CIO). However, she is not taking on any more families at the moment :-(
So can anyone recommend anyone else that works in a similarly gentle way? I know of Millpond but they seem to use CC a lot and I'd rather avoid that if possible.
Thank you so much for any help (if you have made it this far!)