Need Sleep Consultant for 1 year old
My one year old daughter is having difficulty sleeping through the night and I would like to engage a sleep consultant. Most of the posts I found are a few years old and a lot recommend Meg Zweiback. I checked Meg's website and she is not available at this time. Does anyone have any other recommendations? We live in Oakland and would like someone who works in the East Bay. Please help!
Nov 29, 2016
Parent Replies
My oldest was a challenging sleeper, going to bed staying asleep. I read all the books. Finally, we went to Meg Zweilback and for me it wasn't a great match. What I did find to be very helpful was an online program called the babysleepsite (Nicole Johnson) There is a very detailed survey about your child, their routines, their personality. They then come up with a sleep plan based on that information. You have follow up e-mails. It helped. It didn't turn him into a magic sleeper (by the way at 5 he is a pretty great sleeper now, so there is hope) but it did help with the going to bed and some night wakings I also felt like it was personalized and doable.
Best of luck getting sleep
I am sorry you are struggling! We had a tough time with sleep too - after a particularly bad run of wake-ups every 45 minutes for several months, we called Marsha Podd, http://www.gotosleepbaby.com/ to help us. We lived in SF at the time, but she is based in Marin and is fine to travel. It cost a bundle to have her come to our house, but literally the night she came our 11 month old slept through the night for the first time in his life. He still had regressions of course, but after that the worst regressions were waking up once or twice, and he mostly slept through the night. Now at 4 we take his sleeping through the night for granted. Good luck!
We had great success with a long-distance sleep consultant named Eileen Henry based in Boulder, CO. Her website is www.compassionatesleepsolutions.com and phone is 303.953.0203. I highly recommend her. We had multiple phone consultations and completed ample questionnaires, including recording our baby's cries so she could help us identify the types of crying (distress vs self-soothing). We were reluctant to sleep train but also desperate since our second child would only sleep on my chest for naps and through the night. Needless to say, this became untenable quite quickly once he was beyond newborn size. We purchased a package and worked with Eileen over the better part of a year as our son reached various milestones that impacted his sleep patterns, and each time the shift back to a healthy sleeping pattern happened more quickly.
Eileen's approach does involve some crying, but works within the parents' abilities to withstand it rather than enforcing rules about it--though following her advice of waiting 20 minutes (and training yourself to meditate and visualize during that agonizing time) does bring faster results. You are also able to pick up the child and touch them if you feel the need to, but she encourages experimenting with minimal touch like placing a hand on the chest. I liked her dual approach of bringing together brain science for the baby and focusing on the emotional wellness of the parents going through the process--for the benefit of all involved. She's practical and funny and true to her business name, compassionate, and also clear and responsive.
The earlier the better for sleep training, so I'm not sure what it'd look like with a one year old. All I can say is that within a few days our son was sleeping through the night and continues to sleep a blessed 11 hours straight and goes down without a fuss 99% of the time, now at age 2. How I wish we had done this with our first-born, whom we rocked, bounced, massaged to sleep...and she still needs us to help her transition to sleep at age 5. Lesson learned!
Worth every penny. If I could give a sleep consultation package to every expectant friend, I would!