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Testimonials

Let’s cut to the chase. Sheyne is absolutely wonderfully fantastic. Without Sheyne, I don’t know where I’d be.

I think in the beginning of my darling daughter’s life, sleep did occur occasionally. Although, the problem was that when I put her down in the bassinet asleep, after ten minutes (surprise surprise) she’d be crying so I found myself not being able to do anything because my time was taken up simply holding her so that she would get some sleep. As time went on however her sleep got worse. After going through the usual pain of breastfeeding, finally I could manage to do semi-painless breastfeeds. Then when Isabella was 2 months, I starting having really bad feeding problems again, it was excruciatingly painful so my doctor referred me to a Lactation Consultant. I was emotionally quite unfit and being up every couple of hours was a little tough. It was established we both had thrush. Great. Isabella also had dreadful pooey nappies, it was like major splatters every time. The LC was extremely helpful with this and gave me a list of foods that I was eating that was causing this – nearly everything it seemed. Ugh. And being vegetarian at the time, this meant I had to cut out lots of vego foods that one would normally substitute for meat (eventually I started eating meat!! Things you do for your baby.) Anyway when I came home I found a dramatic improvement after I cut out certain foods. This, however, is where I believe my real problems started with Isabella’s sleep. I almost stopped eating. Which meant Isabella was getting very little nutrition and fat from my milk and certainly wasn’t enough to keep her asleep, that combined with the habit I had already formed of holding her made for a recipe of sleepless baby, therefore sleepless mummy & daddy. Isabella was already a seemingly hypo kind of kid, this was not helping.

People would always comment on how alert Isabella was, didn’t matter what time of the day (or night) it was. Sleep seemed overrated for her. Sleep is for sissies. An hour during the day was fantastic but rare. She was on the boob every two hours to almost constantly. As I was pretty desperate for Isabella to get some sleep, I even did some pretty bad no no’s. Sometimes my sister would come up and stay the night and Isabella would sleep on her sitting on the lounge chair. I later started sleeping Isabella on her side. Then I moved her on to her tummy because I found she would sleep a few minutes longer. Initially I was a little cautious but reasoned with myself that some sleep is better than none and since she doesn’t get into any form of deep sleep whatsoever, it became the norm. At 3 months people would ask me if she was sleeping through the night. I wanted to scream at them, “she’s not even sleeping through the day by herself, let alone through the night!” Bull all I could say was “no, not yet”. And they’d say, oh, she will soon. Certain things people would say to me, I would hang on to. Hoping at a certain age she would suddenly start sleeping longer. When she starts crawling. Nope. When you start her on solids. Nope. I started Isabella on the occasional solids when she was 4 months. Didn’t make a scrap of difference. Because sleep was so scarce, I felt a little pressured to start her on solids this early, however my LC advised this is way too young so I immediately stopped.

Around 4 months Isabella started sleeping in our bed cos I found that she would stay asleep after a feed. That little venture soon wore off, although she often did continue sleeping in our bed. Throughout the day and night, it was becoming quite normal for Isabella to be feeding anywhere between every half hour to 1.5 hours...at least she wasn’t crying and upset and she had her eyes closed when she was on there. Was this normal? Is this what other babies are like? How on earth do other parents get on especially when they’ve got other kids? I would ask mature people, ‘how did you get anything done’ and of course no one can remember that far back.

Amongst other ideas, we found that by holding her in our arms and bouncing her to sleep on the exercise ball, (up down up down up down up down up down) that she would go to sleep. Still when we put her down within a couple of minutes she would be awake and the time it was taking to even PUT her to sleep was getting longer and longer. It would take more than double the time of what she would actually sleep. There were many a nights when sleep simply didn’t exist. I remember one night existed of bouncing on the ball, boobing her up, taking her for a walk, all until the sun came up – AND SHE STILL WASN’T ASLEEP. This is chaotic. One becomes a hermit. Emotions get really strained. No sleep. This is torture. For all three of us. That overwhelming dreadful tired feeling just doesn’t go away.

What are we going to do? I read a book from the library that a friend suggested. ‘It’s not control crying’ she said, ‘it’s not bad like that’. She told me about this book when Isabella was 3 months old, saying that she (my baby) totally knew what she was doing and basically manipulating me. Huh? Is that possible for a pint size little being (she too had a baby at the time)? I read the book and read the book so many times, no, it’s not called control crying, it’s called ‘control comforting’. Riiiiight. All in the one basket in my opinion. I was so afraid of going down the line of control crying or going to a sleep centre. I’d read many negative (although some positive) reports about CC, but I felt at a loss as to what to do.

One morning, a friend told me that The Australian Baby Whisperer was going to be on the Sunrise television program in about a half an hour. I was sooooo watching her! I saw her and she seemed so confident and knowledgeable. I checked out her website and read the article she had written called, “The trouble with crying”. Wow, I thought, that is really quite balanced. That’s what I want. I understand that sometimes some crying does occur. From then on, her website became one of my ‘computer favourites’. I read nearly all of the testimonials and some of the critical cases, I remember thinking, ‘that’s what’s happening with us’, yes, yes yes. Oh my goodness. I read through forum chat after forum chat. But I was so lost and so sleep deprived, I just wanted someone like this lady to tell me what to do. So I took a punt and sent an email. Isabella was 6 months old at the time and sleep just kept going downhill and she was getting older, I thought it was suppose to get better as they get older – nope! My husband was working all the while through this and he was sooo tired all the time. It was nothing for us to be up and down 20 times throughout the night. She would go between the cot and our bed. I remember when I was watching Sheyne on the morning show, thinking there is absolutely no chance I’ll ever talk with this lady.

BUT THEY REPLIED TO MY EMAIL AND I GOT A CALL less than 2 weeks later from Tamara saying ‘would you like to have a talk with Sheyne’. Yes, this is in capital letters cos the feeling is so overwhelming, even now typing this, my heart skips a beat in my chest. I cannot believe it. I rang my hubby straightaway and mum. We are going to be talking with Sheyne in a week’s time. From the moment Sheyne’s voice came through the phone, she was just, I don’t know how to describe her, one testimonial said, she is like a breath of fresh air. Well, it’s soooo true. And she doesn’t make you feel stupid for what’s been happening. Then she invited us to attend a workshop. Oh my goodness. There is hope. I had such faith this lady was going to help us. We were going down to Sydney, rain, hail or shine. Yeehaa.

The flight down and the sleeps were nothing short of a sleep deprived nightmare. But at the workshop, to meet Sheyne was fantastic. She is such a funny, warm, considerate person. We were fortunate enough to be the first ones from the workshop to have Sheyne’s help. So the week of coming home we started the Positive Routine Management from Sheyne.

Ok, you ready for this. The very first sleep that we put Isabella down – SHE DIDN’T EVEN CRY. That’s right, no crying. I walked out of her room, Sheyne was on the phone and I said, she’s not crying, she said, ‘she’ll be asleep’. It was just out of this world. This is too easy. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist with things that I work with, and I was so nervous, wanting to make sure I did everything exactly right, that for her second day sleep, I had to ask my husband to takeover because I had major butterflies in my tummy and had to go to the toilet. Unfortunately though, this caused a little bit of extra crying with Isabella because something in her routine was changing, it was me that was supposed to have done it. Lesson learnt. (I still got butterflies for several weeks but fortunately they did go away.) When the big night time sleep came around, I put Isabella down, walked out of her room, she cried for approximately 1 minute then went to sleep! I was so tired and finally my husband and I went to bed a few hours later. But I didn’t sleep. I lay there, desperate to hear my daughter cry. Can you believe it? I am wanting to hear her cry to know that she is still alive. And she only peeped once throughout the whole night. Once for a couple of minutes. This Sheyne lady is beyond words. Every single sleep for the next week or so, I’d ring my mum up and update her on how Isabella is going. No crying on this sleep, no crying on that sleep.

But you know, the beauty with Sheyne is, it’s not just the sleep that she helps with. That’s just one area. She teaches us to ‘listen’ to our baby’s cry. She also tells us how to communicate with our little ones. She has a book that is basically a manual in rearing your precious one.

As tough as things were with Isabella, I am glad we went through it because it truly makes you appreciate how good things can really be. It’s just too easy.
People say to me, oh, it’s not like there’s a manual. Allow me to let them know otherwise. You know, I’m usually a very private person and don’t tell people about what’s happening in my life but since Sheyne, I simply love to tell people!

There is only one true genuine Baby Whisperer and that is the divine Miss Sheyne!