A fool and their money are easily parted as they say. I could be a case in point for this one, especially when it came to trying to “fix” T’s sleep. I have a library of baby sleep books, we tried anything that claimed it helped babies sleep: baby massage, cranial massage, baby swim, smelly baby bath lotion, numerous cot mobiles, teddies, blankies, taggies, comforters .Well-meaning friends and family gave me advice about how some major milestone would trigger T into sleeping. S o I waited with hope that as T would reach a new one (solids, crawling, wobbling, walking) that that he would just suddenly start sleeping through the night. When this did not happen, the well meaners then tried to perk me up with tales of so and so down the road didn’t sleep until they were 5, or my absolutely favourite, sure he is a boy, and don’t you know boys don’t sleep.  He had never, not once, slept through. I  used to dread  night-time .Come 1am when T would wake it would take me almost 3 hours to rock/ stroke /shush him back asleep. I used to feel physically sick with exhaustion.  It was like the worst dose of jet lag, and it was every day. I felt like being a mother was some kind of endurance test, rather than the sheer joy and privilege that it actually is. So after 18 sleep deprived I stumbled across Lucy’s website. What initially put me off trying this was that I thought it would actually be hard. As utterly exhausted as I was, was I ready for something as gruelling as getting a professional to put me and T through our paces. I knew that me rocking T back to sleep was not the right way to do things but he was my little man, I hated the thoughts of seeing him upset and me not being able to comfort him in the way he was used to. However, on the other side, I wasn’t actually able to function. I wasn’t coping. My marriage was suffering because we were both so exhausted we rowed constantly. I wasn’t seeing any of my friends because I couldn’t face a night out because of what awaited me when I came home. So I contacted Lucy. I cannot describe the sheer relief I felt after the first consultation. Lucy explained why I was having the problems with T and gave me a plan to fix it.  The sleep training itself was shockingly easy. We had maybe 3 bad nights, and when I say bad, I mean when T woke in the middle of the night, it took us only 40 minutes to get him back. By the 5^th day of training Tom was sleeping through the night. We were literally in disbelief at how well T took to it. And I really have to stress, there were no tears shed. At best, he gave out a bit. We did hit some stumbling blocks along the way, mainly with his 2^nd day time naps, they were the hardest to get right but having Lucy on board meant that she could advise and tweak what we were doing. Hand on heart, we would never have figured out what was causing the problem in the first place and we also would not have known how to deal with the few curve balls that T threw us when we tried to get him to nap right during the day. We couldn’t have done it without Lucy and for that we will be forever indebted to her.

A well meaner who had heard that I got a “sleep doctor” said to me, you know, he would have grown out of it eventually. I just smiled, yes he probably would have grown out of it, but at what cost, my marriage, my sanity, my ability to function. I am a happy mammy now; I am no longer subjected to what was a form or war torture and my son is a happy fella going off exploring the world like every toddler should. Yes a fool and their money are easily parted indeed.