Hello to all you lovely people out there and a Happy New Year to you all! My work as a baby whisperer has been extremely busy this past month.  I'm sure there's been a few new years resolutions to get the babies sleeping better. I've been helping families all over Sydney to get their babies and children, to learn how to sleep well in their cots and beds. I had a feeling January was going to be big but not quite this big!

I'm starting my first blog of the year off with a story very close to home. I know it will resonate with a lot of you mums out there. It's written by my sister, Lesley who lives in the Yorkshire Dales in the UK. She has two children, Freya aged 17 months and Tilly aged 6 months. It is a very emotional story and I have to admit it made me shed a tear or two as did my mum when I read it to her.

Here it is from Lesley ...

The delicious little Tilly Belle was a complete angel up until three and a bit months old and then it went a bit wrong. She was being breastfed (as was my first daughter Freya who I breastfed until she was eight months old) and there were no problems. She was almost even sleeping through the night, but on average I was getting up maybe once or twice - what a result!

And then she decided to wake me every one and a half to two hours through the night and the duration of the day feeds were getting shorter too. I had started giving her a bottle of formula at night to see if that made a difference, and it did a little but not enough. Tilly was also a very windy/colicky baby, and would often wake up screaming.

Emergency action needed - I obviously called the baby whisperer extraordinaire my sister for advice hoping I'd get a freebie!

One of the first things she suggested was to keep a feeding/sleeping diary to see if there was a pattern. The second thing was to change her onto a different type of milk formula (I went for one that was recommended for colicky babies). Thirdly we changed her feeding bottle/teats. I still carried on using infacol. I started giving her more formula feeds (a bit reluctantly) but it soon became apparent from the diary that this was really making a difference. She was going much longer in between feeds, and became a much happier and easier baby to manage.

I also decided to wean her early, this is a UK term and means to move onto solids (from 4 months) with a little baby rice/porridge. In hindsight I wish I had stopped breastfeeding sooner as I clearly had a hungry baby on my hands. I think perhaps being the ripe old age of 40 and having a 17month old to run around after probably took its toll on me! I wanted to do the natural option, and for all the beneficial reasons - however I was a formula fed baby and have been fortunate enough to have good health so far, so I really shouldn't have been so stubborn! So maybe the moral of this story is do the right thing for your baby regardless of what you might want to do....

Tilly is now 6 months old and I have recently stopped her night feeds. We are currently doing some sleeping training as recommended by my sister and so far so good.....

Thank you for all your help and advice sis you've been fantastic! Highly recommended. :)

I've just spoken to my sister tonight ...

Tilly slept all through the night for the very first time - YAY and Double YAY -  from 7pm till 7:30 am this morning. My sister is ecstatic and Tilly is very pleased with herself too. And best of all it's only taken a week. Awesome work sis, love you heaps and you are such an amazing mum. Thank you for writing this. I ummed and ahhhed about writing this blog for her but I felt it was her story so she had to do it and I'm so glad she has.