Pinky Mckay

Hi ladies,

My DH and I are so desperate at the moment with our DD sleep. It's getting worse and worse and I'm now at the point where I'm worried it's going to end our marriage.
I have called Pinky this morning in a last ditch effort to try and get us some help to help our to darling sleep and save our marriage. The sleep depravation is making us crazy and I just don't know what to do.
Has anyone had a private consultation with Pinky? Did it work?
Please don't tell me to buy anymore books - I have I library full of sleep books and nothing works.
I'm at the end of the line and feeling like I'm drowning.:(

Oh you poor thing :hug:. Sorry I haven't dealt with Pinky Mckay, I just wanted to pop in and wish you all the best with her. I hope she can help you get through this difficult time :hug:.

I went through terrible sleep deprivation when my DS#2 hit 4 months of age, it does TERRIBLE things to you and can definitely make relationships rocky. I hope you find some solutions and relief soon :hug:.

We had Pinky come to our house to help with lactation when I had low supply. I was probably bordering on PND and was a mess at the time too... she is amazing!! I felt like I could take it all back on and get through it (which we did) after seeing her. I think you've made a great decision to see her- all the best :D

Thanks Ren. My only concern is that my little girl is an angel during the day, no sleep issues at all, she will have 2 sleeps with no argument. Its overnight that she turns into a beast, can Pinky help us with night waking??

Pinky will help you become aware of what's going on for your DD and 'solutions' will come from there :) Sleep books are great...for the royalties they generate more than any success stories! Pinky has a far better track record ;)

I've got Pinky's books and I love her philosophies. She makes sense to me more than any other author on children and their needs. She is baby led and this may seem a bit odd to your partner if he is used to what I think of as out-dated modes of helping babies to sleep (controlled crying etc). Rest assured she will be gentle and understanding :)

Neither of us want to do controlled crying. But we NEED solutions and quickly or sooner rather than later one of will say something we can't take back - we are just soooo exhausted.

CC is not really a 'solution', it's an instrument with an outcome, and it's not really a solution to the original 'problem'. So you're on the right track to avoid it :)
It sounds like you're under pressure from expectations (yours, your partner's, family comments etc) and these may be at odds with your instincts. I don't doubt that Pinky can help you find a 'flow' that resonates with you and your baby:)

best of luck with it all krisp
i've read all of pinky's books and i would love to have her coming over to my place to help me with my ds at the moment!
you'll have to let us know how it goes. i'm sure she'll be able to help you relax and give you some ideas about the problem.
i'm going to pm you :)

Best of luck with it all... I too have thought about getting something like that.

Please let us know how it goes!

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can Pinky help us with night waking??

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I'm sure she can help you feel better and find a solution that works for your family. Most of what she did to help us just put on us track- obviously she doesn't solve the issues while in your home for a couple of hours. She'll ask you the right questions, reassure you and give you a plan. You're in good hands.

Kris -- I really feel for you as I am in the exact same situation and I have called Pinky and spoken with her on the phone.

I am not sure how old your bub is? My DS is 11mo and when I called her she basically told I had to suck it and see, in the nicest possible way, of course. I love Pinky and have a heap of her books and have gone to her sleep seminars before. Obviously while I love her, her books and seminar didn't 'solve' our problems.

The reason that she said this to me was that at his age there is little/nothing that will 'fix' this 'problem' unless I do CC (which I am now getting temped to do because as you know, it is VERY stressful!! But I am holding off and happily the wait lists are prohibitive anyway!). Her point is very valid -- he is at an age where it is all about teething and sep anx. Not that this was what I wanted to hear AT ALL. I begged her to come and help me -- after all I will pay her money!!! -- but she said that there is nothing she can do and I should try and survive until he is around 15 mo when things should change of their own accord.

Now I realise that this seems like HELL but I often think of it in my more lucid states (usually about now -- 330-4 on days when my parents are helping me!) and realise that I appreciate this honesty. She offers you feel good encouragement and that is GOLD. But she will not give you a fix if she can't. I won't lie and say I feel great about it. I have a number of bellybelly posts to show otherwise! But I feel good in the way that I am not an evil failure and that this seems normal.

I agree with the post that mentions our expectations. It is hard to overcome and we probably won't ... but be aware that we put pressure on ourselves.

In regards to the relationship issue-- as I have gone through the same (and now out the other side) try to talk when you can adn make that possible and try to NOT talk when you are overtired. I have started taking vitamins and it has helped my energy levels. Be gentle to each other and when you can't, just take a break from one another! Consider that you are both entitled to speak to a 3rd party about how you feel.

Oh good luck! I found Pinky positive and of course your situation is different to mine. Contact her she will be honest.

best to you

xxxx

I had a strong feeling her remedy would be to deal with it! :lol: But she's so lovely and supportive that she will make you feel like you can deal with it again and remind you why you are doing the best for your baby.

How are you going? Have you seen her yet?

Kris I just wanted to say that I've been where you are when my DS was the same age. My marriage was suffering, my relationship with my DD was suffering, my job was suffering and pretty much my whole life was falling apart. And still DS woke up, sometimes hourly, night after night after night.

It was horrible and I'm so sorry you are there right now.

I just wanted to say that I spent about 10 months of his life I guess trying everything I knew - trying to make this kid sleep. Everything except CIO, including a private sleep consultant (who told me to CIO I showed her the door)....after nearly going crazy thinking and stressing about it, I decided to stop investing all that energy into making him sleep, and started redirecting it into working out ways to help us cope as a family until he did sleep.

That was such a turning point for us. Just redirecting all the energy I spent devising sleep strategies, into devising coping strategies.

Toby is almost two and he still wakes up at least once a night, sometimes twice. Thank god it's not hourly anymore - they do outgrow that :hug: He was doing that between 7 and 10 months. I was totally at the end of my rope. :hug: But I worked out ways to cope with it until things got better because somewhere in my insane fog I knew it couldn't go on forever - so I set my sights somewhere out in the distance and worked out ways to hang on until we got there. This also really helped me to reduce the stress I felt and the resentment I felt towards him every time I'd hear that cry in the dark :(

Good luck hun so many of us have been there and it truly, truly sucks :(

Tobily-- tell us how you coped!!! I for one am desperate to hear!

nox- talk to me!! tell me what pinky said would happen at 15 months??? does that mean i only have 5 more months of no sleep?
i can deal with that

I think it helps to conceptualise our babies as people with very valid issues at every stage of their childhoods (actually all their lives, as we know as individuals ourselves!). What's important to them is to know we are there and tending to their needs, because they can't. Whatever the reason for 'bad' sleep (which I can't subscribe to, they don't operate on our timeframe so there' no 'bad' for them), they can't tell us except to wake and cry and ask for us. That's all they have, these honest little critters. They don't exist to throw a spanner in the works.
I think co-sleeping removes a lot of the stress from night wakings, and if you're against this idea, then it won't be helpful. However, it could be a resort?
Tobily - I'm guessing that part of your strategy was to become more focused on him in the daily family routine?
Whatever measures you take, you'd do better to take a 'bite me' attitude towards any outside attitudes that disapprove. You know your baby best :)

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Tobily - I'm guessing that part of your strategy was to become more focused on him in the daily family routine?

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Definitely! I guess it was a matter of us working out ways that we could readjust what was happening in our household on a day to day basis, in the knowledge that he was going to wake up, repeatedly, and we were going to be getting less sleep than we needed. Once we accepted that, it became a matter of moving past that whole "will he sleep tonight or won't he?" and into a phase of "he's not going to sleep all night, I will be getting up multiple times and I'm not going to fantasize that he'll sleep through. So this is how we will cope".

That just seemed to work so much better than going to bed with high hopes that he'd sleep, getting woken up, and then completely losing the plot in the middle of the night because we had no coping mechanism in place :(. It just started to make sense to prepare for the scenario ahead of time.

I can tell you what we did but it's a matter of being able to sit down and look at your own situation, your own resources, and come to some solution that works for you as a family unit.

For us, this was the nuts and bolts:

When he was really, really bad we coslept - even though both of us hated it and never did it with DD. I'm not ideologically opposed to it...my objection is pretty base - neither DH or I sleep well with babies in the bed :lol: We need a kingsize that would help :lol:

When I had really bad nights, DH would do the early mornings. So if he woke at any time after say 4am, DH would deal with it. So I'd at least get to sleep from 4-7ish.

When we had a run of really bad nights, I would express and DH would get up and feed him EBM. I would still wake up on those nights - I was so programmed to wake up when he cried - but I still felt better for not having to get out of bed and wake up fully.

I stopped stressing about housework, and even cooking meals at some points. As long as everyone had something in their tums that was enough.

I swallowed my pride and called my mother to come and give us a break occasionally. We have no family here, she is 2 hours away.

I grabbed sleep whenever I could especially on weekends when DH was home all day and could take care of both kids - sometimes I'd sleep for 5 hours in the middle of the day to catch up. Just had to.

I have a very helpful hubby and I am very grateful for that. I never would have coped otherwise. So many cold winter nights he slept on the floor so I could put Toby in bed with me and we could get some sleep.....

I guess none of that isn't advice you've heard before - it's all pretty standard stuff - but that's what helped us get through and what helps you will probably be different...but it's worth trying to tackle it from different angle.

Hope everyone gets some zzzzz's soon :redface:

Rainforest -- Piky told me that 10-15 mo is one of the hardest parts. It is because teeth are coming thru thick nad fast as well as the molars which are hell. Also the whole wanting to talk and walk thing keeps them more stressed/alert especially if you are blessed with an extra alert and sensitive soul as I am. Her view is to do what you can to cope. Try to get some early nights as you can and stock up on vitamins. She suggests giving naps to bubs as you can -- don't worry about processes etc -- if he sleeps if you go in the car, go in the car, feed to sleep whenever you need, etc. Some of this just doesn't work for me so I found that hard to take. She was all for the fact that I have engaged a babysitter to help when I have to work from home and she puts him to nap. Not quite a promise, but she did say that things will most likely settle down for themselves without her help. I really hope it's true!!!! I have just over 3 more months -- so fingers crossed!! haha

It is true that being more focused helps. But also due acknowledgment to the fact that no matter how attached you are, these things will still stress you out and make you frustrated if not angry. I wore my baby exclusively and believed he should 'never tough the ground', I co-slept for a long time and still do and am dedicated to him and extremely aware of him. Yet still, I am at some stages, well and truly over it. I find that to allow myself not NOT feel bad for feeling bad has helped.

Tobily-- thank you for the tips. You are right, I am trying most of that and I think that as you say, the acceptance that this is part of life and will soon pass will help us out a lot. We are talking about it even now -- although we shoudl be tryiong to catch up on some sleep!!!

thanks for that nox, and you too tobily
makes me feel a lot better about where we're at, at the moment.
we co-sleep everynight and feed to sleep a lot.
i guess i start to feel bad about it all when i hear about friends' babies who sleep from 7pm-7am everynight.

We've tried co-cleeping but all Paisley does is curl her fingers in my hair and pull it. She thinks it's party time and won't sleep. I still haven't heard from Pinky - I spoke to her Husband 4 or 5 days ago and he said he would get to her to return my call that same night. I guess she must be very busy, perhaps too busy to help us. I'm at the point now where I'm thinking of going to the Mother-Baby-Unit at Masada Private Hospital to see if they can help. I understand that she is going through a time of development as she's just about to crawl and I know that baby's sleep when they are ready. I suppose my main fear is that I will get sick again from being run down from only getting 4 or 5 hours sleep a night (and broken at that!). It's been 5 years this year since my breast cancer and I don't want to ever go back to that dark place. I'm so confused as to what to do...

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thanks for that nox, and you too tobily
makes me feel a lot better about where we're at, at the moment.
we co-sleep everynight and feed to sleep a lot.
i guess i start to feel bad about it all when i hear about friends' babies who sleep from 7pm-7am everynight.

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Don't feel bad about the 7 to 7. I was talking to a mum of 7 and she used to always be told off by a friend of hers whose baby "slept 7 till 7". She found out that the 7 to 7 meant that bubs was in the room all that time regardless of whether it was a asleep or not. If the bubs cried, they just left it as it was meant to be sleeping :( Often what we hear is not reality.

I always had the attitude that I wouldn't be getting sleep with a baby! We can live off supermarket food for a bit, we don't need to vacuum every day, we just need to get along. That worked for about a year, then I got narky with DS not sleeping because he COULD and did every 7-8 weeks or so just once, he just wouldn't all the time!

We took DS to the homeopath and he slept through - I mean went from being up for hours a few times a night and getting in total maybe 6 hours sleep a night to sleeping for 11 hours straight with no wake-ups - from the third tablet we gave him. That was about at 15m but I can't see such a sudden transformation happening without those tablets.

OK so he's still not the world's best sleeper, but the wake-ups are unusual rather than normal now. He may wake up as we're going to bed, he may wake up at 6.30 - who knows?

Kris-- I really hear you about your desperation now. You have to do what works for you. That is the most important. As you know there are wait lists and you need a referral. Why not go to your gp for the refferal and take that opportunity to chat about options and make sure there is no medical problem like ear infections. While you wait call Pinky again and look into homeopathy or an osteopath. Read up on other strategies to cope for your own sake--- hire a sitter for a few hours in the day so you can sleep etc.
Also whilebi have friends who have done Masada, have a look at o'connell centre abdcqueen Elizabeth. I also found that at your local maternal health centre there are usually a sleep specialist. I usedine and she was considerate of my wishes and supportive. The nurse can also help you find solutions to cope.
I am reading books online or checking out from the library. Sometimes these simple actions help us feel more in control of our lives and enable us to see our situation in a different light. You are doing well and it will pass.
Please take care.

Having been reminded about homeopathy I'm going to think about that! Also that totally reminded me about my osteo who was helpful in ds's early days.
try to find some time for yourself. It really really helps.