Success Story: Small changes leading to big improvements
Eva was 16 months old when her parents decided the time was right to make changes to their family’s sleep. Eva was waking multiple times during the night and previous methods of settling her were no longer helping. With the help of our 10-18 month Sleep Success course, Eva (and Mum, Laura!) are now enjoying much more restful nights and settled sleep.
“In the space of a couple of weeks we’d gone from being up for hours with a very unsettled baby to having a baby that slept through the night! We are now all well rested, much happier (and patient) and able to enjoy our time during the day much more as we are not totally exhausted!”
Eva had always woken frequently through the night and was now waking more often, for longer periods and struggling to return to sleep when her parents tried to settle her.
“By 16 months we had thought we’d have had at least a couple of full night’s sleep but, if anything, our little girl Eva’s sleep was getting worse. We were both totally exhausted, as was Eva, and our patience was nearly non-existent, particularly with each other”
“We had been cuddling to sleep for both naps and bedtime and therefore, during the night, each time Eva woke we would get her out of her cot and cuddle her back to sleep. A couple of months back she started to wake for hours, she didn’t want to be cuddled but equally would not be happy if we tried to put her back in her cot awake. We were totally clueless as to what to do to improve this situation and all get the rest we so desperately needed.”
After 16 months of broken sleep, tiredness was taking its toll, so Laura started to look for guidance on how to get their sleep on track. After following our free advice for a while, Laura decided that the Sleep Success course was the next step for them. Both Eva’s parents worked through the course as a team and started to feel more confident that they could help Eva sleep better.
“I’d been stalking the Just Chill Mama Instagram page for months and during a moment of desperation at 2am purchased the course. Over the next couple of weeks my husband and I both completed the course. I wanted us to be on the same page. The course just made sense and that made it easier to have confidence that we may get some improvement on the sleep front.”
After digesting the content in the course, Eva’s parents made some decisions about what changes they wanted to make and formed their sleep plan. Every baby and family is different and will stop night feeds at a time that is right for them. Laura felt the time was right to see if Eva was ready to drop her last night feed.
“We were still feeding Eva one bottle during the night so decided before we started implementing anything we would try and remove this. This went well and confirmed that she wasn’t waking because she was hungry, she is a good eater so I presumed this would be the case but was a bit too frightened to give up the bottle in case she was then just awake all night (as opposed to just four hours!). However, it turns out we had probably been unnecessary giving her that bottle for months and months.”
The next stage of Eva’s sleep plan involved changing what time Eva started her day and making tweaks to her daily routine.
“The first thing I implemented was a set wake up time. Usually, as we’d been awake so much during the night, I’d let her sleep until whenever she woke naturally. This could sometimes be as late as 9am but meant that we could also catch up on sleep (when we were not getting up for work).”
“I made Eva’s evening meal earlier too so she had long enough for her food to properly digest before she went to bed. We originally had given her a bath and brought her downstairs whilst we ate our dinner however decided that the bath would be the start of her bedtime routine and she would go to bed immediately after this.”
These small changes made a big difference to Laura and Eva’s days together.
“This is now my favourite time of the day; Eva has always loved a bath and she is always very cute (and mischievous) after and this is such a lovely way to end our day together. There is zero stress - just lovely precious family moments.”
Laura and her husband then felt ready to make changes to how they approached Eva’s bedtime and nighttime sleep. Up until this point, Laura hadn’t tried to make changes to how Eva fell asleep and felt a bit nervous about trying a new approach.
“I hadn’t tried anything before doing this course. I am not very good at seeing Eva cry and presumed there would be some element of upset when implementing. I’m not sure why but even after purchasing the course I kept putting it off, I suppose I was expecting a bit of a fight.”
After seeing how well Eva had responded to changes in her daytime routine, they decided it was time to put the rest of their sleep plan in place.
“The night we started it was a bit of an impulse decision, I had given Eva her bottle and thought “well, I’ll just pop her in her cot and see how she gets on”. After a tiny whimper, to my surprise, she settled. Within the space of 10 minutes, she was fast asleep. That night we only had to go in to settle her twice. I couldn’t believe how simple it had been, surely it was a fluke and things would go backwards on night two? But no, night two was very similar and by night three we had our first sleep through in 16 months, neither of us could believe it! In the space of a couple of weeks we’d gone from being up for hours with a very unsettled baby to having a baby that slept through the night!”
After a couple of weeks, Eva was enjoying her new bedtime routine and settling to sleep consistently well. And her parents were finding themselves able to enjoy spending time in the evening together, knowing they had a restful night ahead of them.
“We now put Eva down to bed at 7.15 pm and then have our whole evening to ourselves. I had previously been going to bed at 9 pm having no idea what the night ahead would hold and hoping to get a couple of hours sleep before she woke. We often now have to wake her up in the morning!”
“Eva is our rainbow baby following a molar pregnancy and therefore it feels amazing to now be able to enjoy motherhood in the way I had always hoped I would.”
If you, or anyone you know, needs information & support to help you through a molar pregnancy then Mummy’s Star is a helpful resource.
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