How a baby sleep consultant saved my sanity and my marriage

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

One thing I prided myself on was that I never had any preconceived ideas about how I would raise my kids in advance of having them. I never, for example, made proclamations like: “I’d never let my kids watch TV! Or eat sugar! Or chicken nuggets!” And lucky I didn’t because they enjoy quite a varied diet now; varied in that we sometimes buy different brands of chicken nuggets. 

Perhaps I was unambitious but I like to think that I was wise. Who was I, with absolutely no experience, to presume that I knew better than those who had gone before me.

There was one thing I judged though. One thing that was too ridiculous to be taken seriously and that was when friends who had kids before I did would talk about sleep consultants. My brain would temporarily turn off the moment the phrase “baby sleep consultant” was uttered while my mouth, on autopilot, would try to pass myself with: “A sleep consultant? To consult on the baby’s sleep? Tell me more”. Privately I thought: ‘I won’t need a baby sleep consultant. Nobody needs a sleep consultant. I’ve heard it all now’.

The sleep consultants absolutely always had an insanely famous person on their books, just to add to the whole ridiculousness of the situation. A-list celebs made sense though. That’s who I expected to have sleep consultants because sleep consultants sounded like something you’d hear that happened in America. Except that what we were meant to do was throw our eyes to heaven and shaking our heads in unison, say: “Only in America!”. We weren’t meant to actually go out and get a sleep consultant. 

And then our baby arrived and she was a “good sleeper” so all my opinions of those that had engaged sleep consultants were compounded. They all just needed to chill out. Be more easygoing, like us (as if we were in some way responsible for how the child slept).

Now, when I say we had a good sleeper, I don't mean she slept the night as a newborn. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. Because some people will. Our parent’s generation will swear blind that their babies came home from the hospital sleeping the night. By 3 months, they were up making their own beds, feeding the dog and cooking a fry for their well-rested parents. My own parents claim that of their four children, one child, once ever, on one solitary occasion, woke during the night, once. 

Sometimes even people currently in the thick of it will state baldly to your face that their newborn sleeps the night but pay no attention to those people because if you probe even the tiniest bit they’ll say something like “No really she sleeps the night - she wakes at 11pm, 1am and 4 but other than that she sleeps the night”. Oh OK Deirdre, if we’re not counting the times the baby actually wakes then my baby sleeps the night too. 

But from six months she really was sleeping the night as well as taking two delicious naps. We thought we’d never get so lucky with a second sleeper but then came the second, an even better sleeper than the first. My mother said that she’d never in her life seen a child to fall asleep as easily as this one (and this is coming from a woman who, of course, had four children that slept the night from birth). 

But we were too smug. Quietly smug because you can’t admit out loud that you have a good sleeper. Not to people that are standing in front of you telling you through hysterical laughter - or is that tears?  - how their baby wakes on the hour every hour or that their 2 year old still wakes twice a night, every night. 

You should never be too smug even if it’s quietly smug. It’s unattractive. And the karma will come back to bite you. 

Because at two years old, the youngest learned (with much encouragement from her older sister) to jump out of her cot and that was the beginning of the end of our happy sleeping years.  We took down the sides of the cot thinking maybe she just enjoyed the challenge but no, she had tasted freedom. Now she had the freedom to roam the room and the whole apartment and roam it she did. Nothing could keep her in bed. We were fecked.

We tried everything. We tried bed early, we tried bed late. We tried running them ragged outside. We tried no TV, we tried lots of TV. We tried separate bedtimes. We tried all sleeping in our bed. We tried lying with them. My husband said that all he ever did was work or lie on the floor of the kids’ room and that them not going to sleep was the most stressful thing in his life. “And I'm a corporate lawyer!”, he added for good measure (the implication being that that is actually the most stressful job).

We had perfect routines with baths and stories and lights out and cuddles. I know they were perfect conditions for sleep because I often fell asleep in them. Routines so perfect that every night I closed the door, I'd say to myself “That’s them away now” and every night they’d make a complete eejit of me. 

The moment the door was closed, their tired little heads got a second wind and the game was on. And the game would last until 11pm most nights. Constantly up and down, in and out. They'd roll into the sitting room on their scooters. They’d do handstands on their beds, rearrange the furniture, climb to the top of their wardrobes, take every book off the shelf. We tried being strict, we tried being soft, we tried ignoring them. But it’s hard to ignore your kids when you're in an open plan apartment and it's 10pm at night and you're watching TV and they're right behind you playing with their dollhouse and completely unashamedly asking for a snack. 

Going to sleep at 8pm is meant to be the quid pro quo for looking after them all day and they weren’t keeping up their end of the bargain.

It kind of felt like they’d won. We had tried everything but they were very obviously in charge.

It went on so long that we forgot that it usen’t to be like that. We made plans to go out just to escape the bedtime battle but sometimes we’d come back too early and they'd still be up. One babysitter told me that she couldn't get our youngest to sleep but it was ok, she had texted the other girls she knew that babysat and asked for tips. I wanted to ask could I be added to this Whatsapp where they share info on how best to deal with my kids.

We floated the idea of a sleep consultant but we dragged our feet. I was too embarrassed to admit I was so bad at something that should be so simple.  I was afraid they'd tell me something really obvious like “You need to turn off the light” or “You need to wake them earlier”.  When the chaos of bedtime eventually led to us turning on eachother, I reached for the phone and begged the sleep consultant: “Help us, please”.

Most of what the sleep consultant said was kind of obvious. Wake them earlier. Take the toys out of their room. 

The key piece however and the most difficult part was that there is no talking after bedtime and no matter what they do, you pick one sentence and speak only that sentence while calmly walking them back to their bed. We went with “Sleepy sleepy time” which believe it or not, we actually gave some consideration to. (We should have considered it longer because it very quickly became unbearable for all involved and I’d wager, still haunts our kids’ dreams).

I had given the kids advance warning of our new regime but I had forgotten to tell them that I'd only be saying this one sentence after bedtime. So I put them to bed and they attempted their usual shenanigans to which I said over and over “Sleepy sleepy time!”

The 4 year old was extremely confused, verging on disturbed. She kept asking “What is going on with you? You are going crazy. Why don't you listen to my words? Mommy is very mean. You used to be nice. You are turning into a witch. What is happening to you?”

To be fair, I probably should have come out of character for a second to explain to her what was happening but I didn’t trust my own instincts and was so committed to following the expert’s plan that I stayed in character as the detached, robotic, psychopath and not one word passed my lips that wasn’t a cheery “Sleepy sleepy time!”

I felt awful. Truly, truly awful. I thought my daughter’s head was going to explode with frustration and I didn’t blame her. I could hear her lying in bed saying “I want a different mommy, this mommy is very mean”. “RIGHT?”, she added at the end, trying to find an ally in the oblivious 2 year old.

My husband was at a work event that evening and when he arrived home soon after bedtime, the kids rushed to him at the front door, seeking a saviour from their mother who had clearly been possessed.

But my husband knew the plan. He had been on the initial call with the sleep consultant and we had discussed it in detail. And also, because this is the Black Mirror world we are living in, he had been watching the whole thing unfold on his phone from the live camera in their room. So when they ran to him desperately, squealing “DADDY DADDY!!!”, he took one step inside the door, took a deep breath in and said: “Sleepy sleepy time!”. The scream from our daughter was like something from a horror movie. She clearly thought she was in an alternate universe.

But very quickly, the plan started to work. Miracle of miracles, they stayed in their beds. We got our evenings back. I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I read a book! I started a 12-step skincare regime just for something to do.  I noticed how casually and easily and pleasantly I was able to speak to my husband in our own home for the first time in months and months and months. It’s the greatest gift I've ever given myself. Worth more than all the microwavable chicken nuggets and ipads combined.