Sleep consultant techniques

[PeachesMcQueen]

If you have had a sleep consultant to help with your babies sleep around the 12-14 month old stage, what techniques did they use? And how long did it take to see a difference?
Tempted to ask one for help with our little one but I don’t want to do anything harsh. She is up so many times in the night and will only settle with a feed.

We didn't use a sleep consultant as I think they're a load of rubbish. I have a very low sleep needs 18 month old and I honestly think most sleep 'issues' are solvable by recognising they don't need as much sleep as you think. Yours sounds under tired - I'd be cutting down on day sleep and doing later bedtime, and always wake by a set time in the morning. We cap day sleep at 1 hour, it's worked wonders. The average sleep needs are 11-14 within 24 so if you are expecting a 12 hour night, most kids can't then have 2 hours of day sleep.

My baby is 8.5 months and I would love some help from other mums who have conquered sleep battles. Everything online appears to be behind a paywall.

my baby won’t nap unless she is in a buggy or the car and wakes at night. We were learning to self soothe and then she got a cold. Now we are waking every hour

@NewMuma2025 by learning to self soothe, I imagine you mean you were sleep training. If you sleep train, you must repeat the sleep training after every illness/tooth. And you have to do it immediately, if you wait too long they forget all about it and it's horrible.

We sleep trained around 6 months and it was super easy, think he cried for maybe 8 minutes in total. He was waking every 2 hours before that. We thought we cracked it, we couldn't believe it. Oh how smug we were.....By 9 months it all just went to pot. So many teeth, so many viruses, it was impossible so we gave up. I didn't have the heart to actually let him cry and cry, i think we had just got lucky at 6 months. And he was walking at 10 months so he was suddenly able to REALLY hurt himself if we tried to leave him in the crib to "self soothe".

He's almost 2 and we breastfeed or rock him to sleep. Somewhere around 16 months he decided to just....sleep through the night, for 10.5 hours. Zero wakes. Despite us still helping him to sleep, which is against all sleep training advice.

I wish I hadn't wasted SO MUCH TIME reading about sleep and sleep training. Babies will sleep when they're ready. And speaking to people now, it seems almost everyone finds sleep between 6-18 months quite tricky. There is this expectation that a 6 month old should sleep 12 hours but they're the minority really.

This is completely normal? Don’t worry about where naps happen, not worth the battle. Frequent wakes I’d be first looking at a later bedtime so theyre more tired. Or cut down day time sleep. Self soothing cant be forced, it’ll come eventually. Mine has started sleeping through at 18 months without any sleep training

I used a sleep consultant, and it was 100% what I needed at the time - she made a plan based on gradual withdrawal (and boy, was it gradual), and she also provided ongoing support throughout.

Some of the best money I’ve ever spent.

We used sleep consultant. Her main message was that night sleep often comes together when day sleep does, and there’s little point employing techniques for night time of day time wasn’t sorted out properly. Our twins were notorious cat nappers. From 3 months to 1 year they only ever slept for 30 min burst – so of course they were exhausted all the time. As was I.

What’s your baby’s day sleep like?

If your baby struggles to nap, it’s likely that their opportunities for bad are occurring at the wrong time of day? What’s the current schedule?

There IS a point tackling naps (despite what other poster told you) and your first port of call should always be to address day sleep to tackle night sleep, NOT deprive them of sleep during day.

I used a sleep consultant too, twice, for my 12 month old and again for my 4.5 year old. Best money I ever spent, re the latter. For my 12m old we started with daytime and bedtime, we'd planned to do controlled crying but actually I found her didn't cry and me not going in, in a misguided attempt to get him back to sleep, meant he started to do it himself.

It’s not depriving, it’s shifting. Babies will low sleep needs cant have long naps and decent nights. ‘Sleep begets sleep’ is the type of rubbish ‘sleep consultants’ (no qualifications obviousl) say.

How do you know her baby has low sleep needs?

I’m afraid that consistent, high-quality and predictable sleep supports the quality of future sleep. Overtiredness disrupts circadian stability, and cortisol and adrenaline from this physiological state interrupts the ability to fall asleep and stay asleep.

I’m sorry if sleep science makes you upset.

@Peonies12 that’s so interesting. Please can you help me work out - if daytime nap is 1.5 with me and 1.5-2 at nursery (they won’t wake them up), and we have a wake up of 7am, what bedtime should we be looking at? I’m wondering if this could be the solution to our problem!

I’d be doing bedtime of at least 8pm. Average overnight is 10-11 hours whilst still having a nap. Mine is 19 months now - she has about 1 hour nap, bedtime 8pm and usually sleeps til 6.30ish.
she has slept through since we capped the nap at 1 hour and moved bedtime to closer to 8. Overtiredness isnt a real thing. Look at the Possumsorg on instagram

Thank you I will take a look. We are willing to try anything at this point.