Oscar had started to become so reliant on the dummy that he had started waking almost hourly overnight. As soon as he was in a light sleep phase he'd realise the dummy had fallen from his mouth and would startle awake crying out for mum to return it. But even when mum would return it, he would still take awhile to settle back to sleep.
He had also started to get much fussier during the day, and would take a long time to settle for naps and bedtime. It was clear to mum that he wasn't getting the sleep he needed, and the sleep deprivation was making mum feel absolutely exhausted.
I worked with mum to set out a gentle transition plan to help wean Oscar from the dummy, and help him to get comfortable with falling asleep independently in the cot so that when he woke (not for a feed) he would happily drift back to sleep. Here's what mum had to say after we wrapped:
We contacted Melissa during a tough time when our son was going through his 4 month sleep regression and we had no idea why our little boy was waking constantly in the night, not settling back to sleep and becoming very fussy all of a sudden. It had been almost 3 weeks of 2 hours of sleep for us each night. The sleep deprivation was terrible!
Melissa advised on our a specific plan to meet Oscar’s individual needs at the time as well as asked us (the parents) what our goals would be to help with Oscar’s sleep.
We wanted to remove the use of a dummy as he had become very dependent on having this to fall asleep, and wanted to learn how to settle Oscar to sleep with minimal or no assistance.
We went from a baby who was waking every 2 hours overnight and needing to be rocked off to sleep for 30 minutes or needing a dummy, to now placing our son down into the cot and using just touch or gentle shushing to fall asleep within minutes! Sometimes he just needs a “shush” and he’s out like a light! And resettling has become a lot easier too!
The biggest help from Melissa’s support was for us as the parents to gain confidence in how to help Oscar fall asleep, read his sleep ques, stick to a routine and overall now we go into bedtime and nap time looking forward to it instead of dreading that time with our son!
At the end of our 2 week journey with Melissa she also gave us a very detailed and helpful plan moving forward as Oscar was to get older, including information about starting solids and feeding, which we found to be an overall holistic approach!
Thank you so much Melissa, we could not thank you enough and highly recommend any parent(s) out there who needs some guidance on helping your child to sleep to reach out to Baby Sleep Code as you won’t regret getting your sleep back once you put the hard work into it!!!
