Sleep schools in Adelaide

I'm asking for a work colleague who has a 6mth old (or there abouts, not 100% sure about the exact age). Her child doesn't sleep well at all from what she says around the staffroom table. Child wakes approximately every hour o/night, if not already awake. Night times are roughly wake, feed, stay awake for hour (crying/screaming) feed and then sleep for an hour or so. They co-sleep and play musical sleep locations - lounge chair/bed/etc during the night. Her DF is supportive and helpful but it sounds like they're getting to the end of their tether together. They also have a 2 1/2 yr old who doesn't seem to have the sleep issues. Apparently the 2nd child (can't remember if it's a boy or girl:redface: ) is like this all day as well (in the not much sleep). Controlled crying won't work for her as child is happy to cry/scream at night. Apparently child has been like this for quite some time.

She says they've tried pretty much everything and now are thinking there might actually be something wrong with child and are also thinking about sleep school being a possibility. They're working in survival mode atm.

Does anyone know anything about the sleep school options in Adelaide (South Aust.) and what they're like. I'd like to offer her some helpful info for her. I can see she's getting quite stressed about it (she only works 3days a week). I think she's going to see her GP about getting her child checked out.

(I have also mentioned the option of amber beads in case it's teething related)

The only one I know of is Torrens House.

SIL went there last week and only stayed for 6 hours (out of the four days she was booked in for) as she didn't agree with their methods, her DS is 5 months old and they wanted her to feed him every hour so that he filled up on calories during the day so he would sleep all night.

But I am sure there are others who can give more information :)

Same here. I was telling our midwife about the absolute pain of She Who Will Not Sleep (DD#2) compared to the new baby that just sleeps and she was surprised we didn't get referred there.

Mind you I don't think anything short of a good shot of vodka or chloroform would get that child to sleep, let alone a sleep school. She's still not a good sleeper and there's very little we can do about it besides the sanity saving trick of taking her for a walk at 4pm so she sleeps and isn't the grouchy faced grump from hell until 9pm.

Thanks ladies,

Got in this morning and colleague had a break through last night, she wrapped her DD (checked what gender her child was:p) and put her down and DD cried for about 5 min then went off to sleep for 6 hours (was in slight shock about it), DD was up every hour after that but the solid block of sleep was impressive for her DD. Now she's just hoping it happens again tonight.

(We did toss around the idea of brandy on the dummy to try and get her to sleep yesterday - jokingly of course) Hopefully all goes well and her DD sleeps nicely for her parents for some time now (will update after Thursday as that's her next work day after today)

Liz, I know that Child & Youth Health have a day-stay service at some of their clinic locations (I think one of them is Marion too). Mums & bubs can head down for a full day of support with routines, settling techniques etc I believe. I've not used it, and it may not be everyone's cup of tea in relation to the methods they try but she might benefit from seeing her local CYH nurse and getting a referral?

DD and I did use the day service at CYH, and I found it useful - mind you, I think I lucked out with the mw who we saw for the day - wasn't old fashioned in her ideas, and came up with strategies that I was comfortable with. Which I was very glad about because if that hadn't worked, we were looking into Torrens House. I think there is an age cut off though so might be best to look into it soon, and I think you go through CYh for it.

As an aside, CIO would not work on DD either, the mw I saw at the day clinic said some babies just find it harder to settle and unwind. We ended up with 2 strategies for day and night that worked. daytime was a walk, to begin with she would cry for the 1st 5mins and then be asleep for the lenght of the walk (so we had 2 long walks everyday) but as time went on, I could pretty much do a quick lap of the block and that was enough. At night, we changed our routine and rather than feeding to sleep (DD sounds exactly like your colleagues) we put her in her cot awake and ssshed and patted, if she got upset we picked her up to calm her down and then put her back in the cot - took an hour to begin with, but 20minutes later on.

quick update - had another good night on Tuesday, but not quite so good last night but her DD is sleeping much better for her at least. Will let her know about the CYH thing if she needs it next week. thanks for all the help.