We had our first consultation via Skype with Lucy when DS was approaching 13 months old. He had started out as a great sleeper but from about 7 months he was very unsettled at night. We reckoned we had the bones of a good routine going but were aware that we provided DS multiple sleep aides, mainly from falling asleep being held drinking a bottle. These small things that worked seamlessly for the first 7 months actually prevented us all from getting a nights sleep as he got older. We found ourselves getting up to DS anywhere up to 8/10 a night and it usually resulted in musical beds with the baby sleeping in the big bed from around 2am. We hadn’t taught him how to self settle.What we needed was someone who is an expert in the field of paediatric sleep to take an overview of what we were doing, identify the problems and provide easy to follow solutions. As Lucy is not an advocate of leaving babies to cry it out she seemed to be the perfect choice to help our family reclaim a decent nights sleep. Lucy gave us some very clear and simple guidelines to follow which we did and by night 3 we had a baby who self settled in his own cot and slept for 11 hours with minimal intervention ( 1 or 2 soother runs).Over the next few weeks DS had a cold, started in crèche and had vaccinations. All of these things were a big upheavel to him yet we managed to keep on track and ensure DS got the required sleep, in his own cot. We found we were comforting him for a few minutes a couple of times per night, some nights, during this upheaval. 4 weeks post initial consultation we now have a baby who some nights reaches out to be put into his cot and sleeps for 11 hours straight, with the odd whimper during the night which is calmed swiftly.Lucy’s expertise assisted my family to get back on the path of healthy sleep routines, we are all benefiting greatly.
Maybe now we can consider trying for baby number 2!