” I contacted Lucy when our little girl was 16months old, I was 12 weeks pregnant with second baby,working full time, doing all the bedtime and night time ups and downs as my husband was away most of the week and I was at the end of my rope.
I got into bad habits when I went back to work, doing a very quick bedtime routine usually down stairs, doing night time bottle with cuddles and letting her fall asleep on my lap before being put in her cot and giving her up to two bottles a night when she woke.
She usually woke within an hr of going down first and I always had to pick her up and settle her back to sleep In my arms, (she wouldn’t go to bed or settle for anyone else, so in 18 months, I never left her at night)and then she could wake anywhere between 3 and 6 times a night. When she woke in the night it could take me anywhere from ten mins to three hours to get her back to sleep and this was every night, in 16 months she had never slept more than 4 hrs solid..
Come morning we were both exhausted, we were cranky, and when I found myself snapping at her and my husband and crying in the car from exhaustion I knew I had to do something. I had put off getting help for so long, due to (A) Thinking it would sort itself as she got older (B)embarrassment that I couldn’t manage my own child’s sleeping,and (c)other peoples’ negative comments, when I told them I was thinking of contacting a sleep consultant of ”don’t be so dramatic, all children go through these phases or she will sleep eventually” I emailed Lucy.
After chatting with Lucy and her giving us a plan to suit our lives, within 1 week, our little one was going to sleep on her own in her cot, she didn’t need a bottle to fall asleep, wasn’t waking in the first hr and was going to bed for my husband, and the nighttime bottles were a thing of the past. In the second week she was going for longer and longer stretches of sleep and by the third week she was sleeping 10/11 hours solid.
Within three weeks myself and my little girl were different people, she was starting to sleep better in the day, eat better and was generally a much happier brighter little girl. I felt like a new person.
During the process at no time did I feel I was abandoning my little girl to cry herself to sleep, I could always go in and re assure her,because there were tears and there were some nights in the beginning when I wondered was it going to work but it did, you need to stick to the plan and be consistent. It’s worth remembering that your little one has to learn this new sleeping behaviour and like everything learning something new takes time and your learning too.
I would advise anyone to get Lucy to help you if you are experiencing sleep disruptions in your house, because it is impossible to function without quality sleep,it’s not fair on you or your child, and don’t do like me and leave it so long.