I’ll admit I was nervous about asking advice from a baby sleep expert. So much so that I put it off for a whole month hoping the sleepless nights would just fix themselves. Eventually I was so tired that my desperation overrode my anxiety of being told I was a terrible parent. Thank goodness I gave this a go!
Our little boy was just the perfect angel for the first six months. He slept without any problems at all. He never cried at night, if he wanted our attention, he’d just flap a bit and we’d hear him. We had him in a baby basket in the middle of the bed for the first four months which meant we could co-sleep and be SIDS safe. I loved being able to wake up through the night and see him sleeping soundly right beside me. Even when we popped him in his basket awake, he’d stare at the ceiling and flap his little arms up and down contentedly until he fell asleep all by himself. Sigh, if only those times lasted…
When he outgrew the basket we moved him to a baby cot that we had had up against the bed edge with the side gate down, so basically it was a bed extension. This worked perfectly until he was just shy of nine months old when he was then able to crawl out to us. Now he mostly sleeps in the bed with us, which we all enjoy so much.
Everything was going swimmingly until he got to around seven months old, then, like flipping a switch sleep went out the window. He was difficult, if not impossible to put down and he would rouse every two hours or so and be hard to get back to sleep. A lot of things happened around this time, his first teeth started to come through at the bottom, followed quickly by the two up the top and then the ones at the sides! He got a spate of colds (which might have been triggered by the new teeth) and he started crawling and pulling up.
Just as he was getting over one thing, the next would start, so it was a never ending ‘something’ that distracted him from a sound sleep for different reasons. Either scooting around his crib gleefully to hone his crawling skills, having breathing difficulties due to a blocked nose, having sore gums and demanding more breastmilk… by the time he was eight months old all this had taken a massive toll on my nerves and stress levels. I needed help.
The sleep expert experience was nothing like I expected. I chose a local sleep expert thinking they would come around and inspect my room set up (and tell me off for not having it right. ‘As if you have your baby in the same room with you!’). I also expected I’d be told off for feeding him through the night instead of tough love and making him wait until morning. Actually, that’s not at all what happened.
Faith sent an introductory email and asked me to fill in a detailed questionnaire about our little one’s day-to-day life. This was mostly easy, although some of the terms I didn’t understand, blushing I had to look them up online and learned something new about parenting!
Or I found they were terms I knew under a different name.
In all it took less than 15 minutes to complete. The only question I got lazy on was about his eating. He is such an active eater and devours anything on my own plate or that happens across his path. It was too hard to explain, I couldn’t even really remember what he had eaten that day, let alone think about any kind of rhythm. I sent it in with just a closing statement about “assorted finger foods” and three meals a day.
Faith was so prompt and wonderful about her reply. She double checked with me that I wanted to keep co-sleeping, which I did. Amazingly I didn’t get a telling off about it, she just carefully explained that co-sleeping was not her area of expertise, but she could offer some information around feeding and solids balance intake, awake windows, biological nap windows and flexible routine guides. If we were ready later to move AJ into his own bed Faith could help us with the transition in a way that would suit our parenting style and values.
This plan B sounded like a great idea, and I loved that we had a Plan B if needed. It turns out Plan A worked just fine.
Faith was quickly able to identify that the one area I needed to work on was his lunch time meals. I wasn’t giving him enough protein (and yes, that was the question I skipped over and she still figured it out!).
She outlined a meal schedule I could follow and, blissfully, I was mostly on track with that already. With our little one so active it was important he get enough protein to keep up with his growth so once I did that I saw amazing results with his sleep restlessness disappearing and longer sleeps between milk feeds, even with the continued co-sleeping.
I absolutely recommend a sleep expert to any parent. I instantly felt more confident and more empowered just from getting solid advice and reassurance that everything would be okay, and it was okay. As my little one continues to grow and walk and run and climb there may be a need for a new sleep routine or arrangement down the track, and this time I won’t wait a month or even a week, I’ll get in touch with Faith straight away and get to the bottom of whatever was ailing my little boy so we could all get back on track fast.
