Baby O – 5 Month old Bubba who was co sleeping and breastfeeding to sleep at every waking (around 5 times a night) and every nap. Bedtime was around 10pm and morning wake time 9am. Bub had recently begun to roll and had actually fallen out of bed recently. Mum was exhausted, desperate to change things before they got worse and Dad really wanted to come back to bed with his Wife.
When Mum called for help she decided that after being presented with all the package options a Day Stay Consultation would be best for her family. She would rather have the hands on support one on one then be unsure if she was implementing her chosen sleep training method correctly, this way she could ask questions as we were implementing rather than after the fact.
Prior to our consultation I had asked Mum to put a few things in place to optimise our time together, these strategies in themselves started to make an improvement in O’s sleep.
I arrived at 8am, to a smiling excited Mummy and a beautiful baby boy having nappy free time on his playmat. I had asked Mum to wake Bub at 7am so that his naps would align with biologically optimal timeframes. I spent the first half an hour or so getting to know Mum and Bub, talking about any reservations, questions or concerns she had, and what she did or did not feel comfortable with, we also discussed what may be best suitable for baby O given his calm, happy nature. We decided to leave the cot in Mum and Dad’s room and work on an in room settling method, incresing our intervention should we feel that he needed more support.
First nap: Mum asked that I implement for the first go, so that she could watch, as communication is difficult when in a dark room and trying to be peaceful and quiet so Bub can sleep as easily as possible. Baby O did amazingly a few cries, but mostly grizzling, and we even left at the start because he was happily chatting to himself. He settled within 20minutes and Mum was extatic, didn’t even need hands on, he just put himself to sleep.
Seccond nap: Mum’s turn to implement. I had expected some more crying as Mum was there with boobs full of milk and this was baby O’s 2nd time in his life not feeding to sleep. 7 minutes of quiet grizzling and chatting is all it took! Baby then slept for 1hour and 15minutes, longest in his life!
Third nap: Much of the same, took a little longer as we were attempting this in the cot, and I usually suggest to do this in a pram or car as there is no biological sleep window here, 30minutes of mostly talking, again baby O needed minimal assistance, and just,Put. Himself. To. Sleep!
Mum was so happy with the results and surprised at how it was not “traumatic” at all. I left Mum feeling confident with her new settling method, excited to show Dad and excited for the night ahead….That night baby only woke twice for a feed.
