Are sleep clinics worth the money?

[Gangle]

DS's sleeping patterns are getting worse and worse. For the first 5 months it used to takes us about 3 hours to settle him to sleep. He then used to sleep until 4am or so which was fab but since about 5 1/2 months has been waking several times during the night. The last 2 weeks it has been almost hourly between 12 and 6 am, usually resulting in about 2-3 hours sleep for me and DH. He also fights sleep during the day so I never really have a minute to myself so end up feeling completely frazzled. DH has been saying for ages that we should use a sleep clinic like Millpond or Naturally Nurturing to advise us on what to do but I've been reluctant because a) I don't think they will tell us anything we don't already know and b) the only solution will be controlled crying which I'm not prepared to do for more than 20 minutes or so. Has anyone used them with any success? I was firmly of the opinion that we should put up with it and it would sort itself in time but I'm going back to work in 2 weeks and not sure how I'm going to do a 5 day week, look after DS and remain sane unless I get some sleep!

They will do controlled crying.

how do you know eekamoose?

Because that and drugs are the only ways to get a baby with your baby's sleep habits to sleep relatively quickly. So-called gentler methods of controlled crying (pick up put down, gradual withdrawal) take weeks or months to work.

So assuming you don't want your baby to have drugs(?) and if you can't afford sleep clinic for weeks or months, then they will do controlled crying.

(I am related to a consultant in a sleep clinic in a major NHS hospital).

oh dear. Do you know how long they will do it for? What if I tell them controlled crying doesn't work on my DS? He really doesn't respond to it. Also, do you they have sleep clinics on the NHS? What do you need to do to get referred?

Have you looked at www.andreagrace.co.uk?
DD2 was still waking during the night for a BF until she was 15 mths - I had gone back to work when she was 7 mths and was really at the end of my tether. I didn't want to do cc as I felt it wasn't for me.
Andrea listened and came up with a solution which worked. First of all we had to change our bedtime routine to break the milk sleep link which dd2 was reliant on for falling to sleep.
Andrea asked me to ring her twice a week to provide updates and she was so supportive - particularly as we were going through a tricky teething phase. We haven't looked back since - the best money I've spent on dd2. Her day time naps improved too.
Hope this helps!

Some babies' sleep is horrendously disturbed by teething and/or developmental leaps. I got the latter who, at your baby's age, was waking up hourly due to having learned to sit up, pull up and crawl in one week and started nursery the following week. I work full-time (DH is a student) and bf AND DS refused bottles so you can just imagine. Co-sleeping and getting early nights is the only way I survive. He's 20 mth now and this week on the days that he is not suffering horrid teething pain (late teether), he has finally been waking up "only" twice a night. I think we'll turn a corner when he finally has all his teeth, but met someone today whose 2.5yo still wakes twice a night so who knows?

There are a few things you can do to cope. The first is to try everything which doesn't rub you the wrong way. If you have the money, a sleep clinic is probably the first thing to try. The second is to accept that your baby wants to sleep, but needs help. The third is to accept that you can't do it all and between baby, DH and work, that's the order of importance. Twice I've gone to the loo at lunchtime and discovered my shirt on inside out. It's rough, but at the end of the day I know that I will measure myself by whether I'm a good mom, not whether I've brushed my hair this week or gotten a promotion.

I used www.sleepnannies.co.uk Eighty pounds for three phone calls and it worked fantastically. DS now sleeps from 7pm to 7am. Took about 2 weeks.

i am just wondering if my health insurance will pay for sleep training. i see a consultant at the portland has been reffering people.

Please try this website -can't figure out how to do a link -babysleepanswers.co.uk

The lady who runs it, wendy, has basically put together a book detailing the best of all the baby books on the market. You pay £10 to join the website. You get sent the book and access to a forum where members of the dream team (volunteers who have solved baby sleep problems -I volunteer on this) advise you on how to sort out sleep problems.

You can also pay £20 for a 10 day 1-1 e-mail consultation with Wendy or one other person. It is really cheap and amazing. Through this, we sorted out some sleep problems we were having and we also got help to ditch dd's dummy. As a result, she has been sleeping fro 7-7 (with a dreafeed) from 16 wks (she's now 5.5 mths).

You don't have to do cc unless you want to. We didn't. They will help you get into a good routine and work out any sleep problems. I couldn't recommend it more. It helped me so much. I think dd would still be waking several times a night looking for her dummy.

I used naturally nurturing when my son was 4 months old - didnt use Millpond as was not willing to go down controlled crying route. Naturally nurturing (Chireal) were lovely and very understanding - we had a speak on the phone, she came to our house and we spoke for a couple of hours about the issue and she made lots of immediate easy to follow suggestions and we then remedied his sleep issues over the next 4 weeks. Have never looked back - was worth every penny - and never had to do controlled crying; was all about teaching him to self settle and rest himself.

There is now evidence based research on the short and long term emotional damage caused to babies by controlled crying techniques. Even the 1980's inventor of "controlled crying" - Dr Richard Ferber re-wrote his "Solve your Child's Sleep Problems" recently. He has backed down on the stringent approach accepting that emotional welfare of the infant should be considered in techniques used to settle them. Amongst several eminent pieces of recent research Professor Margot Sunderland of the Institute of Child Mental Health London has proved in longitudinal research studies that allowing a child to cry itself to sleep changes the emotional development of the brain which leads to future emotional problems such as adults self soothing with alcohol drugs etc amongst many other very worrying emotional and mental health problems.

Professor Sunderlands states:

• "A baby is not capable of settling himself to a state of ...... well being"

• "Protest - despair - detachment"

• "A baby who is trained out of his instinct to cry on being separated from a parent should never be mistaken for being in a state of calm. His stress levels will have gone up, not down. Studies show that after being left to cry, babies move into a primitive defence mode. This results in an irregularity in breathing and heart rate, both of which can fluctuate wildly, and high levels of cortisol. Infants who have been trained not to cry can often be seen staring into space with a fixed stare."

Allan Schore neuropsychoanylst (2003 New York) refers to this state as "the black spot of going-on-being"

I have managed NHS sleep clinics for 10 years and currently also provide private sleep support in Leeds and York. It is very possible to solve sleep problems holistically using a child centred approach without the need to be an 1980s parent. I am hoping that controlled crying will be relegated into history just as we now do not send children up into chimneys.

We have a sleep clinic locally that's run by the health visitor service. It's a drop-in every two weeks - I actually went today. The advisors are HVs but they have training in sleep problems and were very helpful (I asked my normal HV for sleep advice once and she was useless!). It's obviously free. She even gave me her phone number so I can call her with questions.

Maybe you have something like that locally?