Millpond Sleep Clinic

[annasmum15]

Anyone else had a bad experience with Millpond Sleep Clinic? We chose them after almost a year of hourly wakings because they claimed to work with your parenting style. We felt quite supported at first but then felt we were being pushed into forcing night weaning and other things that just didn't sit well with us. Their techniques seems based on quite old school approaches and if I questioned anything, our consultant would change tack and just agree with whatever I suggested. A few helpful things came out of it but overall I have to say it just added to the stress and near the end of our package we stopped as just felt it wasn't right for us. We ended up in a worse situation than we started. The founder spoke to us and tried to help but we just felt belittled by it - felt like being told off for not complying and asking too many questions. I know lots of people swear by them but just wondered if anyone else encountered problems and how they were resolved. They offered us a goodwill gesture of a 20% return of their not inexpensive fee.

To be honest it is very difficult to get babies sleeping better at night without "old school techniques". There is no modern fancy innovative way to help babies sleep better. You just have to help them learn to go to sleep on their own so that they can link sleep cycles together.

Indeed - even though there's a growing body of evidence that this may not be very good for them. Maybe the help parents really need is in how to support their children to learn this when they are developmentally ready to and how to cope best in the meantime instead of regarding normal infant sleep as an inconvenience?

No experience of millpond but you might get more replies in the sleep section

Thanks!

I went to Millpond several years ago to encourage my toddler to go back to sleep after she got up in the night for a wee. She thought it was playtime. The advice was something I would not have thought of, but it worked!
Just reading your initial post regarding your experience, I am puzzled as to why you approached a sleep clinic to help your child to sleep if you didn't want to stop night feeds. You say you had a year of hourly wakings - understandably you would feel frazzled - but a baby of over a year doesn't need night feeds surely?