Sleep consultants - are they worth it?

[Sleepymama285]

Just that really...I have a completely wired/excitable 6 month old who is a shocker for sleep (both day and night). Thinking of sleep training as the sleep deprivation is getting increasingly tough but could do with some guidance on what approach to take. Just wondering if others have found sleep consultants to be worth the expense or if Dr Google can produce similar results?

We used one and thought it was completely worth it. We were completely sleep deprived, and we needed to be told exactly what to do and how, and to be supported as well. It's some of the best money I've ever spent.

It's important to use someone whose approach you agree with.

There's a couple sleep consultants on mnet if they see your thread. What's going on?

Maybe we can help?

@MsEmmeline thanks, really helpful to hear your experience.

@Fancyties Thank you. appreciate any advice (and meant no disrespect to the profession by my question...just reading it back I realise it might appear a bit rude!)

So here's the situation. My Lo is 6 months old and EBF. She was a very unsettled and refluxy baby from birth, and has been very alert from the outset. She would scream for hours and was very hard to settle, especially in the daytime. Until about 4.5 months and the dreaded regression/progression her overnight sleep was amazing (sometimes 8-9 hours straight after being fed to sleep).

The reflux seems to have improved now and she is rarely sick, but daytime sleep remains a challenge and for the last 7 weeks nighttime sleep has been horrendous. We are on our knees with exhaustion.

In the daytime she will only sleep with constant movement (car/pram/sometimes bouncer), so I'm racking up several miles walking a day and some large petrol bills! Stopping the car or pram even for a few minutes usually results in her waking.

By 5.30pm she is exhausted, so I take her to a dark bedroom to feed to sleep (takes at least an hour before I can even attempt moving her to the crib) and we then begin the merry dance of her waking every 5mins to 1 hour and being repeatedly rocked or fed back to sleep for the rest of the night. Sometimes around 4am I try and bring her into our bed but she will usually only co-sleep with a boob constantly in her mouth and even that is hit and miss. I don't really want to co-sleep long term as I find it very uncomfortable and it doesn't seem to work that well for us anyway.

We have a bedtime routine (nappy/PJs/story/sleeping bag/feed) but this doesn't seem to be helping. I can only describe it as her being permanently 'wired' - she is frantic/very vocal and quickly bored/frustrated wherever she is during the day and doesn't seem able to wind down.

Any advice on how to help us all get some sleep would be much appreciated. We are exhausted and LO seems grumpy a lot of the time due to being permanently knackered, poor thing!

I think they're worth it when you're so tired you can't weigh up different approaches etc and just want someone to give you a plan.

All they do really is regurgitate bits of a sleep training book you could buy for a fiver. Plus giving you assurance that a particular sleep training approach won't harm your baby and will be worth the effort. But £200 is absolutely worth it if the alternative is a grumpy baby and sleep deprivation hell.

I suspect a sleep expert would say your baby is overtired and needs to crack napping at home without movement. They will tell you to put her down in a cot for naps and persevere until it works. Easier said than done! Good luck.

Dummy?

We used Kerry over at care it out, and it was completely worth it with our nightmare second child who made me feel like a total failure. She has loads of free tips on her insta to try first, as it is quite spendy. We were desperate though!
instagram.com/careitoutsleepconsultant?utm_medium=copy_link

I remember the walking and driving to get DC to sleep 🙈. Horrific.

The sleep consultant I used did use a strategy described in a book, but she wrote the book TBF 😄.

Sounds just like my DD but we introduced formula feeding at night at five months as it meant we could tag team and both get some sleep.

At nine months, still no improvement. She was sleeping 5 hours out of 24 and more often than not they weren’t at night. She wasn’t unhappy or wanting feeding, just wanted to be entertained. We did the whole night time routine thing, bath, bottle, story and bed and then keeping the room dark and quiet.

The health visitor was in the process of sorting out some professional help but in the meantime she suggested nursery or other childcare to give me a break (and some sleep). We signed her up for two mornings a week and it worked really well. She got less reliant on me and enjoyed being “busy” with other children. She also started crawling which seemed to wear her out a bit more.

Sleeping improved slightly but not much.

Sleep professional validated we were doing everything right. Didn’t really have very much to add. Best advice she gave? Some people just don’t need a lot of sleep. She worked with us on how to help DD be settled and comfortable in her own company at night, and probably more importantly, how we could be reassured that if we were asleep and she was awake that everything would be ok.

DD is now a teenager and still needs very little sleep. She is an avid bookworm and often reads until 1am. She only needs five or six hours of sleep a night. She’s an exceptionally busy person who plays a lot of sport which she finds helps her sleep better.

So I guess what I am saying is sleep consultants don’t always help you get your baby to sleep. They can help with adjusting mindset and behaviours to help support both parents and children.

Without question it was worth it for us. We saw Andrea Grace in London.

Have you thought about cranial osteopath?

I may not have spelt it correctly

It was like we got a brand new baby and it literally saved us.

Sounds like you've had six rough weeks having been spoilt before that. It comes as such a shock if you have had decent sleep that goes AWOL.After the 4 month leap it's often time for a new approach as whatever you were doing before stops working. Things like shush pat are very straight forward but don't work for all.

Are you sure your baby doesn't need a much later bed time? Not all babies naturally want a 7pm bedtime. Some do much better winding down at 9pm onwards.

Worth it for us... twice, two different children.. middle child was a dream. I had read every book and tried every method.... we needed someone by our side, that we had to report back to. Noting the smallest changes and smallest improvements was helpful as it was not an easy journey.

Thanks for your replies everyone.

@GrendelsGrandma I think you're right about cot naps without movement, it just seems so impossible I don't know where to start! Will try and give it a go though! I guess I'd start with feeding/rocking in a dark room like I do at night...just worried if it doesn't work she'll get even more overtired.

@SmallGreenStripes Unfortunately she refuses the dummy!

@MsEmmeline Out of interest which consultant did you use?

@Theyweretheworstoftimes haven't tried an osteopath as my dh is sceptical. Will consider it again though.

@WTF475878237NC I did wonder about a later bedtime but she's so desperate but 5.30 I don't know how we could stretch it further!

Thanks for sharing your experiences @byronicheroine and @Zodlebud @Wouldlovetobeinthesun

and thanks @ChateauMargaux too : )

I didn't think you were rude. lo has got used to the rocking motion of you as a habit to go sleep. That's the habit to break. Have a Google and then pop mumsnet on end, there's loads of insight to what technique you can use to gradually retreat from doing it.

The osteopath saved my sanity and my marriage. I was really cynical about it but I was proven wrong. Happy to answer any specific questions if you have any

Up to you completely, but I think if you used a sleep consultant they'd tell you not to get the baby to sleep before you put her down - feed, cuddle then into cot and pat or song etc.

She might cry but she'll go to sleep eventually and you're right by her.

I'm not telling you to do this, do what works for you but if you forked out for a sleep consultant I think their focus is usually on getting the baby to sleep without needing to be rocked or fed to sleep.

We did sleep training with 2dc, at 13mo and 9mo. It was hard but worth it. I learned that it's all about sleep associations - she associates the pram and car with sleep now, so it's easier for her to get to sleep there. It's possible for her to learn to associate her cot, a song, a teddy etc with sleep but it won't happen magically.

That said, your baby is little and sleep training doesn't always work for everyone. But probably worth a try!

We used Andrea Grace remotely (pre-pandemic 😄!) - so initial meeting by phone call, then plan by email and support by phone call. Her book is really clear, but I don't think we could have done it as easily without her help.

DS was a bit older, about 9 months old I think.

Worth is for us. My child was older (nearly 18m) but she was waking 3/4 times a night for no apparent reason for an hour at a time then waking finally for the day at 5am. We were dead on our feet and our older child was being disturbed too.

We'd tried everything, so we thought. Perfect sleep environment (we'd already sorted lighting, temperature etc etc) we had a great bedtime routine, we'd tried putting her to bed earlier/later etc.

Sleep consultant came in and assessed. Said we'd got a lot of things right but sorted out a new routine where over a few weeks we moved everything - mealtimes, nap times, play times etc. It took probably a month, cost us £300 but it was money well spent and it did the trick. Nearly two years later and she still sleeps through - obviously doesn't nap anymore - goes to bed at a decent time and wakes at 6:30.

If you get a good one they're worth their weight in gold! If you get one that just tells you to let your (young) baby cry then I wouldn't bother. I'd make sure you get one that right at the start you explain what your parenting style is. I knew I'd never just leave mine to scream or do it for set periods etc, and I said that right from the beginning. Mike obviously did have a bit of a whinge while she got used to the new routine but we did it so gradually it really wasn't painful or upsetting for anyone.

Having read your update properly it does sound like your baby is probably overtired (I know, makes no sense!) and not sleeping well at night because of that. I would concentrate on cracking day naps and then with luck, night will follow. Easier said than done, obviously!

I sympathise. My eldest has silent reflux and it was horrible and it does affect their sleep. I'd expect a 6m old baby to be having three naps a day then a solid-ish lump at night. Realistic expectations are your friend too, hardly any 6m olds sleep though the night especially EBF ones. But what you're doing is unsustainable, you're going to make yourself ill.

Can you start by stopping the rocking and feeding to sleep in the day? So go gradual. You feed awake, then you cuddle to sleep but don't rock sit still. Even if she cries, if she's being cuddled, she knows she's safe and you're there, that's ok. Once she's cracked that, you move to putting her down to settle once she's fed - again, sit with her and soothe by shhhhhiing, patting etc. It might take a few weeks but once she's napping easier in the day, you'll find she's used to the feed, put down to sleep thing and at night you might get down to a couple of wake ups to feed when you do exactly the same again. Feed, put down, baby settles (hopefully!).

Good luck. This will pass, eventually!

[quote byronicheroine]We used Kerry over at care it out, and it was completely worth it with our nightmare second child who made me feel like a total failure. She has loads of free tips on her insta to try first, as it is quite spendy. We were desperate though!
instagram.com/careitoutsleepconsultant?utm_medium=copy_link[/quote]
Another vote for Kerry. Her podcasts are excellent, and she’s very reassuring and supportive. We paid for an hours phone call with her, and found that extra support and advice invaluable. Our 10 month old went from being a boob monster who found sleep some kind of personal affront to sleeping independently in her cot for all naps and night sleep - now we just pop her in, and she goes to sleep. And I never, ever thought we would get there with her, but we did and my life has colour and joy in it once again! I hadn’t realised how much damage sleep deprivation had done. So, there is hope OP, and there is plenty of support and advice out there - things can get better

Thank you so much everyone. Your posts have made me cry! I do feel quite ill and broken with the way things are but have hope they will get better. Have contacted a sleep consultant as I think it will really help us to have a clear plan of action.

@Sleepymama285 we are now in the same situation as you. Did you end up using a sleep consultant, and did it help? Thank you!

Hey @Movingsoon21 Yes we did, and yes it helped enormously! As others have said, she didn't tell us anything groundbreaking but just gave us different options for how to help our daughter go to sleep in the cot rather than trying to put her down asleep. We did a gradual retreat method. She cried a lot the first night, but we never left her, just kept picking her up to reassure her and then put her down again for a few mins. Also kept in a couple of feeds as she was still little. It worked very well though, once she was off to sleep she only woke once that night! We also introduced a bunny for her to cuddle/chew as a source of comfort. She now settles herself to sleep with her bunny. We still have unsettled periods with teething/illness and she will cry for us if needed, but generally she sleeps so much better! Hope things improve for you soon and let me know if I can do anything to help : )

Fab update, that's great news 🙂.