From the day he was born, Luke was never a good sleeper. He wouldn’t sleep in a stroller, swing, sling or carrier and needed to be rocked, shushed and swaddled in a dark room, sometimes for nearly and hour. There were times when I had to let him fall asleep on me just to get a solid nap. So, we developed bad habits and found we needed to teach Luke to sleep on his own, or else we would have a sleepless toddler! At 6 1/2 months he was 20lbs, teething and crawling. We could no longer stand and rock him, nor did he want us to. He fought naps and bedtime, and even went from waking just once or twice a night to every 2 hrs! We were not fans of “crying it out”, but it became a last resort. After 5 days of screaming and very little progress, we consulted Jillian. We first met Jillian when we were interviewing babysitters. We instantly were impressed with her warmth, friendly demeanor, positive energy, humor, and incredible knowledge of baby sleep cycles and needs. We not only wanted to hire her, but befriend her! She responded immediately upon evaluating our needs, current schedule and issues with a specialized schedule and plan that was suitable to our “high needs” baby and comfortable and feasible for us to follow through. We began to see results within just two days! He stopped waking 30 mins after bedtime and learned to fall asleep on his own. In less than two weeks, we no longer needed to rock him until our backs ached or deal with the emotional stress of him fighting and crying in our arms, or, alone in the crib. I learned to recognize his tired signs and the length of his wake times throughout the day, and I gained confidence that he could not only soothe himself to sleep, but we can teach him new, good habits. Even when travel, teething and sickness means the inevitable night wakings, Jillian has given us the tools, and helped us teach Luke the skills, to get back on schedule. No more endless rocking and sleep fighting! We owe this all to Jillian and her Best Rest Baby program. While I read every popular book on infant sleep, it was her customized plan and schedule and her enthusiastic support that not only kept me going when I wanted to give up, but actually made the process more fun – because she made me see how I was doing something wonderful for my baby and my family…giving the gift of sleep.
