Freya is a 6-month-old girl who was waking 2-3 times a night for a quick feed before going back to sleep, she was having short cat naps over the day and appeared to have a dummy sleep association and possibly a slight feed before sleep association due to the recent timing of her bottles and naps.

Freya had difficulties with weight gain over her life but this was resolved when mum's milk supply increased, and more recently when mum had made the move to formula full time. Freya is not drinking a lot of formula which could be due to her adjusting to taking bigger amounts in one go, or being a bit too lazy for her variable flow teat. Mum kept an eye on the goal which was for her to drink at least 600ml in 24 hours, but ideally, she would have this between 7am and 7pm so we could drop her night bottle.

Freya had been a cat napper for some time now, Mum learnt the importance of blacking out her room to help with this and also possibly trying some white noise for naps only.

These two things helped a little with the short naps.

A routine for Freya was implemented, this was quite fluid as she was learning to self-soothe and also to consolidate her sleeps. Some days she needed an extra 10-20 minutes on the walk to school at 2.30pm, if her lunch nap was only 45 minutes, then she needed more than 20-30 minute at 4.30pm to catch up.

Mum aimed to have her awake by 10/10.15am so she would then take her lunch nap between 12-1pm and not delay the school pick up. Mum stuck to the feed times, but allowed a 45-60-minute window to offer the bottle, this way Freya was able to finish it, but also have enough time to develop true hunger before her next bottle.

We also moved those bottles away from her naps.

Freya was only awake for a short amount of time first thing in the morning, so we used gentle distraction such as a walk outside to keep her awake at least 2 hours, which then kept us on track for the day.

We ditched Freya’s dummy for sleeping cold turkey, mum taught Freya to self-soothe for all naps using one of our gentle techniques in our guide's.

We spoke about helping her practice rolling to create some muscle memory and once she was rolling more frequently it was time to ditch her blankets so her cot was nice and safe.

Because Freya was 6 months, I suggested mum give her two attempts at solids each day, after lunch and at dinner time. If she showed no interest in lunch solids after a couple of weeks, then I suggested Mum only give her half a bottle, then her solids, then finish her bottle.

This way the bottle isn’t putting her off eating any solids.

This worked well and mum gradually increased her solids, and ensured she quickly made her way through the first foods, so she tried a range of fruits and vegetables and quickly moved onto meats.

We dropped Freya down to one bottle a night, using the self-soothing-approach outlined in our guides.

What do our clients have to say?

"We had the pleasure of having Cherene as our sleep consultant. She was amazing! We went from rocking our baby to sleep every single sleep, having him in our bed from 3am every morning to putting him in the cot wide awake and him falling asleep within 5 minutes. He now does 12 solid hours at night. And a 2 hour afternoon nap. He’s learnt to self soothe. Cherene took the time out to really listen to what I wanted to achieve and made a plan. She made it easy to talk to her, and lean on her when I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing. I would pay triple for these results. Cannot thank you enough!" ~ Bhavishna Patel

“I just want to say a HUGE THANK YOU I can’t believe how Avas sleep habits have changed so much. She has gone from being rocked or fed to sleep, waking every 2 hours, co sleeping and now she can self soothe and sleeping in her own cot with around 1-2 wake ups during the night – Best money spent ever! Thank you for the support you have given us, it has been amazing especially for a first time mum that knew nothing! Ava is also starting day care soon and I just hope she gets enough day sleep !! If things go pear shape can I email you again?? and Im happy to pay also! Thank YOU!” – Annie