Oliver has just turned 1 year old and ever since he was born has only slept through the night (from 11pm to 6am) a handful of times. Having tried most sleep training methods and being told when he is on solids he will be fine, when he is 8 months he will be fine, when he starts nursery he will be fine and yet at 11 months we were still getting woken up on average 3 times a night with Oliver only settling if we took him in a drink of water and he was waking earlier and ealier every morning; with my return to work pending I reached the point of desperation and called Linda…….
Linda asked me several questions on the phone and to my surprise rather than putting him straight into a sleep training program, she told me she thought he had Silent Reflux. From birth he was very hicuppy, even in the womb, he found it difficult to latch on and feed well, we thought he was just a fussy feeder, and he was quite windy as a small baby. We visited a cranial osteopath we were told he had a tight digestive system and he slept with his neck stretched out, which Linda said was another sign of possible silent reflux..
Linda suggested that we pay a visit to the GP and discuss reflux. The GP agreed that Oliver could have reflux, and prescribed Oliver Infant Gaviscon. Linda also pointed out that certain foods could aggravate reflux so we should remove certain foods that coud trigger reflux such as cheese, tomatoes, jars or pouches of baby foods with ascorbic acid in them, citrus fruits, apple, and chocolate and keep a food & sleep diary.
It took 4 days for the Infant Gaviscon to take effect and we started to see improvements in Oliver’s sleeping habits; however we still needed to deal with his water habit and early waking. .
When he was about 4/5 months old, to get rid of the night time milk feeds we had watered down his formula to the point where he was only having water however we now had the problem where he was only settling once he had been given water – Linda explained that Oliver's need of water or a feed when he woke had probably become a habit, but was also probably due to the fact that the water was now helping to ease the discomfort Oliver was feling due to silent reflux.
I have always tried to keep Oliver in a fairly good routine, but gradually as well as waking up all lnight he had started to wake up earlier and earler in the morning.
Oliver liked to have a long sleep in the morning and he was still sleeping for sometimes 2 hours and then an hour after lunch.
He was still having the dream feed as I didn’t want to remove this until we he was at least consistently sleeping from 11pm – 6am.
To deal with early morning waking Linda suggested that we start to slowly cut back his morning sleep to 15 minutes (and it should be on the go) and a maximum of 2 hours after lunch. This took quite a few days considering he was sometimes still sleeping for 2 hours in the morning however he eventually got used to it and is now waking himself in the morning after 20 minutes (I am waking him after 15 minutes when I can) and sleeping for at least 2 hours in his cot after lunch ( I am having to wake him quite often). Linda also suggested we started using the ‘magic light’ to help Oliver understand when it was time to get up in the morning. Oliver was not to get up before 6.30am when the magic light would come on … Oliver now waits happily until his magic light comes on, babbling or even sleeping right through to 7am!
The next steps were to remove the dream-feed, to wean him off the Gaviscon and to re-introduce the foods we had eliminated. To remove the dream feed we reduced his bottle down to 3oz of milk for 3 nights and then were to remove it completely. This took longer than expected partly due to Oliver protesting wildly and me not being 100% ready to deal with his protests and partly due to the fact that it coincided with a heat wave which Oliver doesn’t cope well with. I had also started giving Oliver some water as I felt he was thirsty due to the heat. Linda advised that he didn’t need the water (and that we would go back to where we started with his water habit) and that it would be better to continue to give him the dream feed until we were 100% ready to remove it. We tried again a week later – the 1st night he murmured a couple of times but slept through, we then had a couple of nights where he was unsettled but we persevered and another week later he has now been sleeping through for the last few nights 7 – 7! J
In parallel we have been reducing the Gaviscon by taking away the one at lunchtime and monitoring him, then the one which coincided with his dream feed and then halving the one at breakfast before removing completely. We are still giving the one at tea-time while we start to re-introduce one eliminated food every 3 days and monitoring how he reacts.
We still have a little bit of work to do in terms of completely weaning him off Gaviscon and re-introducing the foods we had eliminated, however given where we were, we have made tremendous progress in terms of diagnosing Oliver’s silent reflux, removing the dream feed and the ultimate goal having him sleep through the night! I am now back at work and feel that I can now feasibly cope with a job which a couple of months ago would have been inconceivable.
It has been a challenging journey however with Linda’s guidance being there at the end of the phone to keep us on the straight and narrow we have been able to all get a good night’s sleep – thank you Linda!