P.W.Y. - Surrey When we started formula milk at 6.5 months, we discovered that O was allergic to cow's milk protein so he has been prescribed hydrolysed formula milk. He has also vomited when given cooked whole milk and yoghurt so we have been advised not to give him any dairy.

Specific issue: Our overall objective is to help O to learn to self settle and therefore, to sleep through the night without our intervention. We would also like to transition him to his own room if possible.

He has co-slept with me from birth and has never been a good sleeper. This is largely because I have been feeding him to sleep at night and taking him out in the pram during the day for his naps, so we have never helped him to learn to settle on his own.

Where we have tried, his crying escalates within seconds and he is hysterical for a long time. He has been exclusively breast fed until 6.5 months and we are now transitioning him onto formula as I have had to go back to work. Currently, he is having a formula feed at 10.30am and breast feeds at 6/6.30am, 3pm, 6/6.30pm, 9pm (one side) and 12midnight (one side). In terms of solids, he is on 3 meals per day with meat for both lunch and dinner. We were told by our health visitor to ramp up the solids quickly but ever since starting solids he has been constipated so we think some of the night time waking is due to his tummy hurting.

He has been waking anything from 5-10 times per night, but in the last 3 weeks, things have improved a lot so on average, it is 3-6 times per night.

Day 1 (Post home visit) - It was so great to have you here and we really, really appreciate all your insight and experience, care and help. You're brilliant at what you do. Thank you for taking precious time away from your family to help us, especially on a weekend. We're both feeling optimistic and can't wait to have a rested O so that we can finally catch up too!.

Day 2 - Morning. Something short of a miracle happened last night! After falling asleep, O woke at 21.40 for 6 mins (I didn't go in as he was winding up and down so I figured it better to leave him), then he didn't stir until 05.00! (he didn't feed at all in the night!). I can't thank you enough for getting us here. You're amazing x x

Day 3 - Tonight another personal best for O. It took 2 minutes for him to go to sleep!

Nichola - Nottingham We have exclusively breastfed our baby since birth and she is now one week away from being 6 months old. She has always fallen asleep at the end of a feed and we never really questioned this. We have now realised that she cannot actually fall asleep without being on the breast and that she uses me as a comforter to get her to sleep.

Now that her appetite is increasing as she is ready for weaning, she doesn't always fall asleep at the end of a feed and so getting her to sleep at night has become increasingly difficult. For the past two weeks it has been taking us three hours to get her to sleep. She is now invariably asleep by 8.30/ 9 pm. Previously she would be asleep by 6pm and would be breastfed to sleep.
 
We are looking for advice on how to get our daughter to be able to fall asleep on her own and how to ensure that she understands that her cot is for sleeping in so that she goes to sleep at night and naps during the day in it.

Please accept my apologies for taking so long to provide feedback. I feel terrible particularly because I have such glowing praise for your company! As you know, we had two telephone consultations. In a nutshell I can say, hand on heart, that the Sleep Nanny changed our life. We honestly feel as though we are living an entirely different reality from how things were just two short months ago.
 
The amazing part is that, having spent a good six weeks of our demand fed/ breastfed six and a half month old daughter eating every two hours day and night and taking 3 - 3.5 hours every night to get to sleep, I don't think we could see a way out. The sleep problems had also spilled over into weaning problems as our daughter was uninterested in solids due to taking milk every two hours.
 
The Sleep Nanny gave us advice which we felt comfortable in following in order to teach our daughter to fall asleep by herself. The routine felt like a good path to follow and as had been suggested that on the first night it would probably take our daughter between 40 and 50 minutes to fall asleep. It took bang on 45 minutes!!!!
 
It took our daughter about a week and a half to settle into this new routine. We now simply put her into her cot, awake, she no longer cries and she goes to sleep by herself. It's amazing.
 
The Sleep Nanny gave us a sleep, nap and feed routine. Beforehand we were more guided by what we thought our daughter wanted/needed. She now eats and drinks well and has two naps in her cot during the day (unheard of previously!!!).
 
I honestly can't thank you enough. I could go on and on. Kind regards and thank you. Nichola

Zoe - Kent Our son has never been easy to settle to sleep, so when he was tiny we rocked, fed, walked, bounced etc etc, but mostly fed to sleep. He would always sleep well once asleep though, until 4 months, when teeth and sleep regression started. At this point he was waking more often, and would be almost impossible to settle back into his cot in the night, so we started co-sleeping from 5am then 4am, then 3, then from his first wake up! This was fine, but he would wake 2hrly for resettling, which was easy as I could just breast feed him, but also meant that because he was in our bed, I was concerned about his noises waking my husband, and so never tried to settle him without breast,  the wake ups gradually became more frequent, until at 7.5mths, he was waking every 45mins. 

When he wakes at night he is almost impossible to comfort. He doesn't want to be held, or put down, or rocked or sung to. He has become more difficult to get to sleep as he has got older and I have really struggled for the past month to get him off to sleep, but have kept with it, not resorting to breast or pram or car journeys. The overall objective is to stop the night wakefulness. If he needs a feed that's fine, I appreciate that with BF its impossible to monitor what they have so if he wakes for a feed, that's fine, I just want him to go back to sleep and not be so furious! Ideally we would also like to be able to get our son to self settle, to stop this sleep regression with future developmental changes, and to make sleep times less of a battle!

I just wanted to express my thanks to your straightforward and sensible advice. Despite asking several health visitors and my GP for sleep advice I was no further forward, but following our conversation, within 2 weeks our son's sleep had significantly improved and within 1 month it was normal for him to sleep though the night without waking. I tell everyone I know who has baby sleep problems about you, and can only recommend your advice. It really was the best money I have ever spent getting sleep advice - I will be contacting you again for further advice if I have any more problems with this baby or the next one!! Thank you

Susannah - London Within the last 2 weeks, our son has started to wake up every 45 mins or so from 1am onwards during the night and has been unable to resettle. We have had to get up and reinsert his dummy. As a result, we went dummy cold turkey three days ago and it has been a disaster. He is unable to self settle and we now find ourselves rocking/ jigging him to sleep. He wakes up again at 11 and we dream feed him, he goes straight back to sleep. But he wakes a three and it is impossible to get him back to sleep.

He goes into meltdown for about two hours; he is clearly very cross and there is little we can do to comfort him. After three days of this, our happy, sunny boy is overtired and very sombre with few smiles. He seems stressed.  We are not totally against leaving him to grumble but not if it becomes a full crying fit and we would want to intervene before that stage. We do not want to do controlled crying. Daytime naps have always been problematic; he won't settle in his cot at all without his dummy (and even with it was tricky) and will only really sleep properly on someone of in a sling/ pushchair. When he does go down in his cot, he wakes up after 45 mins even though he is still tired and will fall back to sleep if held.

I just wanted to send an email - some two months after we used your service - to say a huge thank you! We originally came to you to try and get help weaning our baby off the dummy and to establish a better sleep pattern. The Sleep nanny was wonderful; kind and patient with excellent advice. When our baby took longer than normal to adapt to life without the dummy, she encouraged us to keep going. It took three weeks in total but it worked. And since then our baby has been an excellent sleeper. Shortly afterwards he started sleeping consistently through the night. Recently, he has been ill and has had jet lag to deal with which has thrown his sleep patterns off again, remembering what the sleep nanny said, I just re-employed the system we were given and he has reverted to going through the night again! I am so very, very grateful to you! A friend referred me to the service and I have since told everyone I meet about it.
Thanks once again, Susannah

Joanna - Hitchin G is 10 & half months old and has never slept through the night. As a newborn he was very resistant of night time sleeps, we reacted by rocking, driving, cuddling, feeding him to sleep. At night, at worst he wakes 3 times and I usually breastfeed him back to sleep or fall asleep in our bed then put him back in his cot. We've used several methods to try to get him to sleep longer (pick up/put down, crying it out, totally ignoring him) but nothing has worked and I think we've made the whole thing worse.

He has been at nursery for 5 weeks since I returned to work, which he enjoys but has picked up several bugs which have made his night time sleeps even worse. He is very clingy with me, he cries if I'm not nearby but that has improved since he started crawling a few weeks ago. The overall objective is to help G to sleep for a longer uninterrupted stretch at night.

Dear Sleep Nannies, I would like to say a big thank you for the advice and support we've had over the last three weeks. I was sceptical that anything could change my son's night waking but 3 weeks on, he has made amazing progress. For the first time in 11 months he slept from 7pm until 6.30am after previously waking 2 to 3 times a night. Please pass on my gratitude to the sleep nanny for her wise words!  Many thanks Joanna

Elena - London He wakes to feed around every 2 hours at night. Generally he needs to be asleep to go back down during the night. He can now settle himself at the beginning of the night and can be put down awake-this works when he's not ill most of the time. He is allowed to babble and cry a little on this first settle but when he gets upset we go to him and pick him up to comfort him. Sometimes he will then go down again awake but others he needs to be asleep. His big problem on waking at night is that he scratches his face a lot (he has eczema and we use hydrocortisone) we also put gloves on him.

He itches his face/head during the day when he's hungry or tired but not when he's content. He also 'needs' to feed.  He's now on three meals a day - meat for lunch and dinner. He eats well, when he's not ill or teething, but doesn't much like drinking water. He doesn't have bottles or formula milk and is breastfed on demand. He seems to feed less during the day now and tanks up at night, aaagh. He is teething off and on but they haven't come through yet.  We would like him to sleep through the night without needing to feed so frequently. We'd like him to be able to settle himself even when he is scratching.

Dear Sleep Nanny - Thank you most of all for getting all of us to catch up on our sleep and have grown up evenings. It's such a lovely change for the better

Miranda - Devon I need to know how to stop my daughter from breastfeeding through the night & co-sleeping as well as being able to encourage a better eating practice throughout the day.

"This time last week my 21 month old daughter E was still greedily breastfeeding at all hours of the day and night and sleeping tucked up beside me in our bed. Consequently I had not had a full night's sleep for almost two years and my health was really suffering to the point where the doctor said I seriously must consider finishing feeding her. After such a long time the end of this relationship was inevitably going to be fairly traumatic for both of us and I really knew I needed professional help and support. Having consulted the Sleep Nanny last year over sleeping issues I did not hesitate to get in touch with her again. I can only say that one week on we have managed to achieve the unthinkable - E has calmly accepted the end of nursing and is sleeping through the night (with just a few waking) but definitely understanding that this is her new bed and getting used to it, even enjoying it. I never imagined she would ever fall asleep without nursing but she now asks for a "cuddle" instead.

What the Sleep Nanny has helped me to achieve is truly amazing - she has given me so much support and guidance and always has manageable advice to hand. She has given me the confidence to start a new chapter with my daughter and rather than feeling exhausted and demoralised by trying and giving up, not to mention emotional and hormonal, I am getting my energy back and feeling very positive. The Sleep Nanny really works miracles and I recommend her so highly to anyone going through weaning a toddler"

Carly - Kent My daughter has never really slept well despite us implementing a regular routine from 6 weeks old. We have a regular bedtime routine, starting with a bath at 6pm, followed by a little massage, clean nappy, pyjamas and breast feed and then put down to bed by 7pm. Initially she goes to sleep, but will wake anything from 10mins to an hour later and is usually settled with a dummy, which takes a few goes. She then seems to wake a couple of times before her 10:30pm bottle feed (until recently this wasn't the case) but will then sleep till around 2am. This is her longest stretch of sleep. She will then be awake on and off or completely awake till 3;30-4am - I don't think she is hungry. Often she just wants to play - even though its completely dark and we never talk to her at night and don't pick her up except to be fed. I give her a breastfeed at 3 or 4 am when I think she's hungry, but she will then not go back to sleep till 5 or 6am.

I then get her up at 6;30-7am to start the day as she is on a 3 hour feeding routine, roughly during the day with breastfeeds at 7am, 10am, 1pm (bottle of formula, 6oz), 4pm then around 6:30pm before bed, and night feeds as outlined above. She is even worse at napping during the day - the most we get out of her is 45mins. Sometimes it takes me an hour to get her to sleep for only 20mins. She goes down in her cot for naps, same as nighttime. I try to get her sleepy before I go upstairs with her, by giving her a cuddle and playing quietly with a soft toy or singing and rocking. But when I put her down she instantly wakes up. I leave her with a kiss and try and let her settle herself and whinge, but when she cries I go in and give her a dummy and if this doesn't work. I ssh pat her to sleep - like the baby whisperer. This is how I try and settle her at night too.

"I thought I should send a quick e-mail to let you know how much our sleep nanny has helped me with my daughter's sleep problems. By the time she was three months old I was exhausted and stressed. She was waking up to 8 times during the night and it would take me anything from twenty minutes to over an hour to get her to sleep each time she woke. I was using the 'baby whisperer' technique of shh-patting her to sleep as she couldn't seem to get to sleep on her own. Even with my husbands help it was really getting me down. Also she would not get very much sleep during the day. She was quite resistant to naps and would kick and scream as I tried to settle her for a daytime sleep which was both frustrating and upsetting for me. It would often take me over an hour to get her to nap for just ten or twenty minutes.

On numerous visits to my health visitor, I was told I was 'doing all the right things' and to 'just persevere - it will get better'. As a new mum, I found this lack of advice alarming! My main reason for seeking help was that I knew the lack of sleep was not good for my young daughter and I wasn't enjoying motherhood as I should because I was so tired and fighting a losing battle everyday trying to get her to sleep.

The sleep nanny instructed me on adjusting her daytime routine and gave me tips to help her with her naps. She also gave me a new technique to settle her to sleep at night, which didn't involve me assisting her so much to get to sleep, and so allowing her to learn to self-settle. She also advised us on how to remove her dummy - we had used one reluctantly on the advice of our health visitor, but it resulted in us spending most of our time running up and downstairs to put her dummy back in, as she often woke when it fell out. After removing the dummy, within a few days she had managed to soothe herself by sucking her fingers - no need for parental assistance! The result is that she now has three naps a day - two 45 minute naps and a one hour nap and there is no kicking and screaming involved. When she is put down in her cot or pram for her nap she normally gets herself to sleep within 5 minutes, which is amazing considering how bad she was before.

It generally only takes a few minutes now to get her back to sleep - so much easier than before! We  are confident now that she is getting enough sleep, unlike before, which makes her a much happier baby during the day. I can now enjoy motherhood as I should!

Its worth mentioning that she is 4 months old now and in our last conversation the sleep nanny gave me some useful advice about tweaking her routine as she gets older and some great tips for weaning. If I have any problems I wont hesitate to call for advice!

Many thanks to sleepnannies for all their help"

Suzanne - London My daughter is resisting going to sleep during the day by screaming/throwing tantrums. Her eating has been erratic since chickenpox 4 weeks ago, and she seems to refuse/only have small amounts of food that I feed her off a spoon. She therefore eats mainly finger food, but only eats 'well' at one of her daily meals. I really want to know if she has got into a bad habit of waking up and only being soothed by milk, or if she is genuinely hungry and so I need to try and get her to eat more/be more structured during the day.

"My 13 month old daughter had always been a good sleeper - until a series of illnesses resulted in a pattern of nightly waking and screaming, which seemed to be only resolved by giving her a bottle of milk. And after 6 weeks it seemed to be getting even worse, as she began to refuse to sleep in her cot during the day. Being 7 months pregnant and with my husband spending more time abroad than at home, I decided I had no time to lose but to get some immediate, professional advice to break the cycle; and boy am I glad I did!

My Sleep Nanny, was just wonderful. She listened carefully to exactly what had been going on and gave me a clear path to follow based on my own situation. She explained the reasoning behind all her suggestions, and gave so much more advice than simply a one-stop 'sleep solution', such as lots of tips on food to give her / avoid, and how best to handle mealtimes. It was basically like speaking to a good friend about it all, but who just happens to be an expert in children and sleep!

Within 2 nights, my daughter was sleeping through the night again, happily going to her cot for daytime naps and was eating properly at mealtimes. I have no doubt that not only did the advice work, but that the confidence it immediately gave me by having a clear direction was also picked up on by my daughter; as she said; "she knew you meant business!". I am just so glad that I contacted Sleep Nannies when I did rather than try and muddle through on my own getting even more exhausted and stressed - I cannot recommend them enough. Thank you !"

Maria - Nottingham  We need help getting our 4 1/2 month old baby girl to sleep through the night. Around 2 months she got to the stage where she was waking only once in the night and having a small feed then back off to sleep until 7am. One night this changed and since then she wakes every night between 3 & 6 times a night. I am absolutely exhausted and i feel that she is not as happy as she should be. She has a dummy and it seems that when she comes into a light sleep she's awake and sometimes the dummy will soothe her back to sleep other times it wont. Her feeding is all over the place. The last 3 weeks she is taking probably only 1 full bottle a day the rest she'll leave usually around a quarter even a third. This is out of only a 7 oz bottle. Its like she gets bored of it, is nosey and cant concentrate on it or keeps being sick and doesn't want anymore. Because of this i think she must be hungry in the night so we're back up to 6 oz in the night. She goes down perfectly at 7pm and sends herself to sleep which is why we cant understand why she cant send herself back to sleep in the night. We have tried leaving her to cry and it just gets more and more stressful for her, to the point where she is sobbing, screaming uncontrollably. Its absolutely painful!

"We have been following your advice and are now on our 4th consecutive night of sleeping through and have knocked the 10pm feed on the head. I found your service extremely helpful. The advice was very well communicated and always worked given time.  I cant thank you enough for your help, you really helped us especially on the initial call when i was close to despair. You made me feel very comfortable and not like i had failed by having to ask for help. It was reassuring to be told exactly what to expect when we put our new routine in place and your predictions of what to expect were pretty spot on. It helped us get through the really bad nights knowing it was all getting us closer to achieving our goal. I would have no problem in recommending you. Thank you once again for your help"

Hannah - France Our daughter goes to bed at 7pm and will generally sleep well until about 10.45pm when we give her, her last feed of the day. The problems start after that. She used to sleep until about 4am, and on rare occasions would sleep through until 6am. But recently she's started waking at all hours of the night and we're experiencing great difficulty in getting her back to sleep for any length of time. My fear is that we're starting to create bad sleep habits. She already uses a dummy, and last night the only way of getting her back to sleep was to rock her in my arms. I really don't want to start doing controlled crying. I just don't know what to do anymore.

"Thank you a million for the practical, kind and effective advice our sleep nanny, gave us in our telephone calls. She gave us the confidence to start as well as continue her approach to help our 6 and a half month old daughter give up the dummy at night time and sleep through the night. We saw an almost immediate improvement and within a week she had slept through for the first time ever and 3 weeks later is still doing so. It involved no more crying than before and our baby is even more smiley and happy than before. Our best investment in a long time!"

Kim  - Lincs Our 20 months old and is still waking through between 1 and 3 times a night.  I have tried leaving him to cry but he made himself so distressed after 40 minutes I gave in...  When J wakes, the only way to get him back to sleep is to take him out of his cot and usually feed him.  He eats well in the day so am sure this is just a habit rather than need.  I have tried watering his milk down gradually but get to a certain level and he realises what I have done and pushes it away and wants milk.  J rarely has a problem going to bed and I am very consistent with his routine of - up to the bath around 6.20 - 6.30pm. Into his room after his bath where we put his night clothes on, I then sit with him with his bottle of milk. Once he has drank this, I sit with him for around 5 mins - he either falls to sleep on me, if not, I am able to (most of the time) put him in his cot awake and he will get himself off to sleep.  The waking can occur anytime between 12.30pm and 5pm and is really inconsistent.  Around a week ago, I had a thought that maybe J had an allergy to cows milk so put him onto goats milk which I thought was working, as that one week he slept brilliantly - was waking once around 11pm having a bottle of milk then sleeping until 7am. One night he even slept from 7pm to 7am.  He has however reverted back to the waking.  My overall objective is to get advice on how to get J to start sleeping through the night consistently.

"Hello, I had a consultation with the sleep nanny last Monday at 11am and she asked for some feedback. I followed the technique she gave for J. I was so apprehensive the first night but it took just 45 minutes to get J to sleep. The second night took 10 minutes and the third night I just went into his room and put his dummy in his mouth and he lay back down himself and went straight off to sleep. Since then I have had 3 nights of J sleeping through - the first time ever!! Last night a small whinge and again, I went in once for 30 seconds came out and he went off to sleep. Thank you so much for the advice it appears to have worked and I cannot recommend Sleep Nannies enough. Kim"

Rebecca - London Our little boy, W, is coming up to 11 months old. We did have him going to bed between 7-8pm and sleeping through some nights. But recently it has fallen apart and W is standing up in his cot wailing for up to 2 hours this past week. He has been teething and has some hay fever. However, we have probably been too soft with timings, cuddles and letting him into our bed because we're tired...

"We just want to say a big, big thank you to our sleep nanny for her help with W's sleeping. She was meticulous going through all the details of his diet, routine and sleep habits (or is that our sleep habits?!) and gave us a really solid plan to follow. We re-jigged feeding and bottle times on her advice, bit our lips (and paced back and forth following her comforting method) for four nights and then on the fifth he slept through!

He has also continued to pretty much sleep through throughout our recent holiday with about 6 changes of bed and some pretty bad teething bouts.  Our sleep nanny was also a lot of fun to talk to over the phone, taking it in turns with both me and my partner Simon to chat roles. Her advice and knowledge is down to earth, empathetic and practical. We could count on one hand the number of nights W had slept through in his first 10 months. Tonight we put a happy, zonked out little boy to bed who we hope will bounce awake ideally about 7.30am!  We will be very happy to recommend you further. Best wishes Rebecca M"

Annie - London - My 11 month old daughter has always slept quite well from an early age. She has always happily gone to bed at 7pm and maybe woken once in the night for her dummy. She would always wake at 7am. I am now having lots of problems. She is not settling at 7pm anymore. Wakes up screaming in her cot about 3 times a night. She is also waking at 5am and wont settle back to sleep. I understand this is due to separation anxiety as I have gone back to work and we have a nanny looking after her. I am extremely worried as she has never had problems before and I am exhausted! I am not sure what to do because the Nanny only started 2 weeks ago so I don't know if I should implement sleep training or whether I should be reassuring my daughter at night whilst she gets used to the nanny. She has also recently learnt to stand up in her cot so stands screaming until I go to her. It is really upsetting seeing her like this. She is also screaming when I put her down at nap times (9am and 1pm). This was never a problem in the past. I really need some help to sort this problem out as I believe she is now using me as an aid to get back to sleep which I know is wrong.

"I was recommended sleep nannies by a friend and was slightly sceptical at first - however after the second night of putting the advice into practice my 11 month old daughter L was sleeping from 7pm until 6am. Last night she did 7pm - 7am and I really couldn't ask for more. It was great and so reassuring hearing the sleep training advice from a professional. It really helped at 4am when I was so confused how to get her to sleep. It definitely has been the best £80 I have spend since having my daughter!! I have recommended sleep nannies to my sister and friends who are having problems with their babies sleeping. I just wish I had contacted them earlier."

Sam - Kent Our ultimate objective is to get N to sleep through the night in his own cot. Currently he goes to sleep in his cot at about 6.30pm with me sitting beside him (tried "controlled" crying, but he screams for over an hour, like his foot has been cut off!) He then wakes at about 11pm and I feed him then and put him back in the cot. At about 12 he will wake again and from that point on just will not settle. He can't be hungry but is not happy unless I breastfeed him (screams if I give a bottle, try to put him back in the cot etc) - if I wake him up properly (put on the lights etc) I can then sometimes get him back to sleep without breastfeeding and get him back in the cot but he will then wake again, generally within the hour, and we have to go through the whole process again. If I take him into bed with me he will drift off after feeding but still wakes regularly and screams unless I attach him again. He has never once slept through the night and this current behaviour has been going on for about three weeks now. He does have sleeps during the day but length of them is somewhat erratic. He doesn't take a dummy - has never been interested.

"Hi, Just to let you know that your advice is working very well. My husband was away last week, when we started with the advice, so was very impressed on arriving home yesterday to wake up this morning after a virtually undisturbed night of sleep (N only woke once, at 4, for 5 minutes then slept through until 6.30)"

Rachael - Northants - We have a 12 months old daughter. She has never slept through night. Recently worsened, waking 3 to 6 times a night. Still being breastfed, which she relies on to comfort her to sleep. Have attempted a form of 'controlled crying', quite successful after a couple of traumatic weeks but then went away where she was ill and has been terrible for past 6 weeks. Moved house 2 weeks ago, probably not helped! My husband keen to do 'controlled crying' again but not sure I feel strong enough as so tired. Also have 3 year old daughter who has always slept well (from about 5 months), still sleeps so well and worried about her sleep being disturbed with O's crying. Feel we missed the summer months last year as O had bad colic for the first 3 months after she was born and dont want to feel so exhausted that we cant enjoy it this year........... Our aim is to help O find a way to get herself to sleep without our intervention and to be able to get herself off to sleep again when she wakes in the night.

"Last night (7th night) O went down happily around 7.30pm and didn't wake until after 6am! She has responded really well- much better than any other technique we have used with her. I say we, but it has been my husband who dealt with her during the first few nights-what a star! The first time in 1 long year and 17 nights! I really never thought we would get there and especially not so quickly in the great scheme of things. I am sure we will have our good and bad nights but I can now see there is light at the end of the night. I will hopefully now have the energy to enjoy my 2 beautiful girls"

Sherrie - Buckinghamshire - We are contacting you because our son still wakes at night between 2-6 times, not sure why maybe for dummy but I think for comfort. He has always resisted sleep in a way but has 3 naps a day. 1 at 9ish for an hour, 1 at 1 ish for an hour then a catnap around 4 for 30 mins with a 7 ish bedtime. We have always been consistent with bedtime routine and he goes down pretty well now mostly drowsy but awake - we used to rock him but we have managed to stop that now. I follow the Baby Whisperer techniques but these are not working for my strong willed boy. It is getting me down getting up and down in the night never knowing what the night will bring. I want him to be an independent sleeper, he can do himself because we have some good night but more bad ones. He has a dummy but can re-plug in the day not sure he has sussed that at night - could this be the problem? I am at my wits end and this is a desperate call to be honest as I am sure we are doing everything right and he is just one of those babies that does not sleep well - hopefully not and you can help.

"At 7 months my baby boy was still waking several times a night and he was not hungry. We had tried mostly everything and could not work out why he was doing it. I just couldn't keep doing it so out of desperation I contacted sleep nannies with some scepticism. I was called by a lovely lady, an experienced mum of 2 and over 20 years of experience with babies. I explained our situation and our day to day routine and she immediately picked out what she thought could be contributing to the problem. So after a chat about how we were going to tackle it we started that night! A week on and I would say he is definitely learning the skill of putting himself back to sleep. We know what were doing and how to be consistent. The sleep nanny was very easy to talk to and reassured us that we were doing nothing wrong a few things just needed tweaking. I am confident things can only get better.  I would call again if another problem arose in the future it was definitely worth the money. Thanks."

Laura - Kent - Our overall objective is to get B to sleep better at night/eventually through the night. To do this, I know we need to improve daytime sleep too, although we have been following the "Baby whisperer" technique/routine since day one, as it worked well for our daughter, now 3. Daytime naps are going well, he is easy to put down and will sleep anything from 45 mins to 2 hours. However, at night he wakes fairly frequently. A typical night is bed at 7, dream feed at 10.30, wake at 1.30, feed at 3 and then awake at 6 to start his day. He is currently being fed every 3 hours, but we think/know he could go longer, as he is just snacking now. He is currently being swaddled and is a tummy sleeper but I know he is fighting to get his hands out. However, I'm so exhausted that I cannot contemplate retraining him to sleep with his hands out (putting him down for his nap is about the only thing that is working).

"I put him down at 7, said goodnight, left the room and all was silent. 20 mins later we went up and he was peacefully sucking his fingers, very  still. By 7.30, he was fast asleep!!!! He then woke 45 mins later, but after two rounds he went back to  sleep. Then he woke 45 mins after THAT and roared for about 15 mins, but  again, settled by 9.30. In all he woke nine times overnight. I fed him at 10.30 and 3.45 but the other times, he put himself back to sleep without us intervening at all"

Clare - Surrey - Our baby is now 6 months old. We have not had a single nights unbroken sleep. She wakes at least 3 times a night, but recently 6 or more times a night. I never know if she is hungry or not and I try not to feed her every time she wakes up, trying to space out feeds. During the day she is on a 4 hour schedule. She has just started solids. Recently we have had a number of nights where she wakes up and is awake for up to 2 hours (sometimes 3!) and we can't get her to sleep. We try not to pick her. Inevitably, however I will end up feeding her back to sleep. She is a healthy weight for her age (on the 75th percentile). Daytime naps are also a problem - that is napping in her cot. She will happily drift off if I am in a coffee shop or of course walking/ driving.

" I just wanted to drop you an email to let you know how things are going. We have been taking it slow but so far things are going very well. I have just put A down for a nap. She gave me a big smile but then looked a little distressed as I walked out the room. After 15 minutes of nothing I went up to check... thinking she must be playing as I've heard nothing...and she is fast asleep. Wonderful"

Mrs E - Berkshire - My 14 month old son wakes up in the night and I cannot get him to go back to sleep in his cot. Consequently in order to get him to sleep (and get some myself) I have been taking him into the spare room with me, where he sleeps without a problem. I really need to break this habit as he is able to a nap in the day on his own and also sleep in his cot initially when I put him to bed.

"Thanks for everything, the best money I have ever spent !! D was diagnosed with reflux and suffered from severe colic as a young baby. In 14 months, we had only one night where we had a full night's sleep and 4 nights where he had slept till 11pm till 5 am. To say that my husband and I were absolutely exhausted would have been an understatement. We had both totally lost our sense of humour and were very irritable with each other where previously we had been very close and communicative. We had been putting D to bed at 7pm and he would wake up at 11pm, 3am and 5am, not for anything else but comfort. Each time it would take about half an hour to an hour to settle him. In the end in order to get some sleep, I had been taking D into the spare room with me from 3am every night for a couple of months as it was the only way that he would stay sleeping till 6am.

I decided it was time to get some help. I scanned numerous web sites and read all the parents comments. I read this site with a huge amount of scepticism. How could someone who didn't know us or our strong willed 14 month old baby help in two 30 minute phone calls when I had been trying for over a year to crack this problem myself?

 I had read every sleep guide you could get your hands on, with advice ranging from keeping your baby in your bed till they are five to letting them scream till they fall asleep. The first night we put D down for the first time without his dummy he fell asleep in 36 minutes, we even managed to settle him in the night in less than 10 minutes and he stayed in his cot all night, something he hadn't done in months! By the fourth night he had slept in his cot for the whole night without waking at all

For anyone reading this thinking about speaking to Sleep Nannies.. just do it. The only regret we have is not doing it sooner. Thank you"