Video transcript
Rochelle (mother of 4): If I don’t have to attend to them during the night – they might wake up – but if they are putting themselves back to sleep and I don’t need to settle them, that’s what I call sleeping through.
Melissa (mother of Rohan): I think also, too, you know, you’re talking to other mums out there and you’re hearing about what they’re doing, and what’s making their babies sleep through the night. So you end up trialling everyone else’s programs – none of which really works because that’s what works for them but none of it works for you. So you tend to be chasing that dream of what someone else has achieved, rather than trying to work out what you and your family needs and being ok with… Sometimes you are going to wake twice in the night and that’s just what you’ve gotta through, and that’s great, and you’ll eventually get there in the end.
Karren (mother of Matilda): And reality is they don’t sleep through the night anyway, like, and then when you ask people, ‘Well, what time do they sleep?’ ‘Oh, they sleep from midnight ‘til five.’ That’s sleeping through the night to some people but, to you, it might be, you know, you think, ‘That’s not sleeping through the night.’
Annalisa (mother of Deuchar): They change all the time, so when you think you’ve actually got something sorted and you’re kind of getting a bit of a routine and then they go through another developmental phase and then it’s all different again. So, I know, Deuchar, I had him sleeping through the night, and then at four months he wasn’t putting on enough weight, so then I had to increase the feeds, so I had to wake him at 10.30 pm to feed him. Then he was waking in the middle of the night again and then at 4.00, so I was like that for another two months and I was just a wreck. But now he’s eight months and he’s sleeping through the night.
Jenny (mother of Olivia and Ava): The thing for me was that the first six months was very easy, so that’s why, for me, you know, it was easy to be calm and controlled and all the rest of it because, really, I mean she was a dream baby. But then at six months, it was like this switch went off and all of a sudden she was waking in the night and eventually I actually brought her into our bed. My first born became more of a pram baby, a car baby in terms of sleep. We would actually, um, walk her to sleep. Second time round though, I’ve got a cot baby, I call her a cot baby. She needs her cot to go to sleep. I’ve found it works really well. I’ve just put my schedule around her and she’s been fantastic in a cot, real text book baby. You put her down and she goes to sleep. Because I was determined this time not to have to walk for an hour, you know, to put my child to sleep.
Belinda (mother of 4): Babies change constantly, they like different things, you just have to be aware of your own baby. They may hate the wrap, they may start to hate the wrap and all of a sudden you’re thinking, ‘Ah, this was my saving grace and now they don’t want it.’ So you’ve gotta try different things and once you find out what they love, then just keep doing that.
Melissa (mother of Allande): I need to go on to sleep when the child sleeps and I think that’s very important, where I don’t you know, when the child sleeps that’s not the time to clean the house or not the time to get dinner ready. You know, it’s just like, and it’s just having to let go of all that perfection.
Rochelle: Some kids aren’t great sleepers, some adults aren’t great sleepers and you don’t want to blame yourself for your child not doing what other kids are doing because every child’s different.