Sarah30

My little one has never slept through the night (she's now 18 months). The best we have had is her sleeping until 5.30am on 3 occasions. For the first 6 weeks she would cry and cry the whole time if I wan Sent holding her. She had tongue tie and feeding was a nightmare so I suspect this was why - so for the first 8 weeks I held her all the time and she slept lying on my chest whilst I half sat up in bed. After she had the tongue snip and learnt to feed properly things got better and she started to sleep in a cot. At one point she was sleeping 10pm to 4am. Then she started teething at about 4 months..... Things went crazy and she was awake every few hours - I resorted to co-sleeping and feeding her to sleep. At 6 months I was exhausted and with going back to work looming at 8.5months, we paid not a small amount of money for a sleep consultant. She was helpful and certainly helped me to stop feeding to sleep. However progress with sleeping through was very difficult. Then we went away for Christmas and what little progress we had made went out the window! Then in January I went back to work..... This led to a whole load of seperation anxiety and the last thing I felt I could do was let her cry at night. We tried to still keep her in her cot but with hourly or 2 hourly waking I couldn't manage and so she ended back in the bed with me. For a while we got to the point where she was going to sleep in her bed and sleeping mostly until about 3-4am, then she'd come into the bed and sleep fairly well until about 6am - and I was surviving! However, the teething has now returned with avengance and so we are back to waking every hour - last night she was awake and crying for 4 hours...... So overall I would say some of what the sleep consultant said was useful but probably not worth the money for us - although you'll do anything when you're desperately sleep deprived! Lots of people tell me to just let her cry it out but we have tried that and my little one really does have the ability to cry for hours! Even my in-laws were shocked one weekend when she screamed for 3 hours straight. So I can't really offer any advice save to say that you are not alone! I don't think there are any magic answers but if you find one let me know!

My midwife told me to go to the breast feeding cafe at peckham library - can't remember the lady's name but she was lovely. We were referred on the Thursday and had the snip on the Monday. Fantastic service and 2 weeks afterwards, my little one was feeding properly for the first time. Absolutely no regrets - just wish I hadn't left it 4 weeks before going to the BF cafe!

Hi - I went to the breast feeding cafe in peckham library on Thursdays at 10am. They were really helpful - turned out my little one had tongue tie and we were refered to kings on the Thursday and the procedure was carried out on the Monday - 2 weeks later all the feeding issues were solved! Anyway Caroline at the cafe was lovely & very helpful. Also I seem to recall there were mums with toddlers there too.