Melanie M.
I just wanted to write and say thank you. I have a nearly three year old daughter who has never slept all night. When she was a baby I read Robin Grille’s book ‘Parenting for a Peaceful World’. When she was 11 months old she was rarely sleeping for more than an hour at a time, day and night. We’d tried a day sleep school, but I hated their methods. Most people were telling us to let her cry it out. I emailed Robin asking for suggestions. He recommended your book ‘Sleeping Like a Baby’ which I’ve read many times now. When my daughter was 18 months I had a phone appointment with you. You were wonderful, you made me feel so good about myself and how I was doing as a parent. You made me feel proud and confident. You’d suggested I try many things, which I did, but nothing helped. One thing you asked was what was waking her so frequently. I started thinking about this and it occurred to me that she snored, her nose constantly ran, she sometimes appeared to stop breathing in her sleep and sometimes choked on her own mucus and vomited- and all this was getting worse.
During the day my daughter is a happy, clever, wonderful kid. She rarely appears ill, although her nose constantly runs. I realised she was breathing through her mouth all day, but when she went to sleep she tried to breath through her nose- and that really didn’t work for her.
Over the next 6 months I took her to numerous GPs, but their response was usually the same. Her frequent waking was behavioral, use controlled crying, go back to sleep school and so on. I’m a single parent and I was left with the distinct impression on several occasions that I’d been written off as a single mum who wasn’t coping. By the time my daughter turned 2 I was seriously sleep deprived, and I was concerned that she was also becoming very overtired.
She had her first sleep over with my Mum, who was horrified by the noises she made during her sleep, and how difficult her breathing was. Back we went to the GP, this time with Mum along as a witness. This time we were given a referral to a peadiatrician. It took several months to get in to see the peadiatrician, however when we saw the pead he quickly identified that she had a problem. He’s tried a few things, and we are now waiting for an appointment to see an ENT as the paed is certain her adenoids will need to be removed.
She’s still waking fairly frequently overnight, but she’s improving, and I’m no longer being told to leave her to cry it out.
Since that appointment over a year ago now I’ve received your email newsletters, and I’ve also got you as a friend on facebook. The information you provide has been so helpful in affirming my commitment not to use any CIO methods with her. Plus I’ve never forgotten how you made me feel I could trust myself as her parent to know what is best for her.
She’s a wonderful kid, she’s happy, compassionate (for a toddler anyway), confident and clever.
So thank you so much for your support, and for providing so much information.
Best wishes,