This is a long vent.I couldn't seen the 'vent' flair, so chose this one as the next closest approximation.
TL;DR - If you're a sleep consultant, fuck you. In my eyes, you're as shitty a 'profession' as real estate agents and recruiters.
Before I rant on like an absolute lunatic, I'll say this:
If you've hired a sleep consultant and they've worked for your kid, I'm happy for you.
This is also not a rant against sleep training, just the predatory industry that is the sleep consulting.
LO is nearly 5 months old. She was initially a stomach sleeper but we managed to get her on her back in a sleep sack! After the first 3 tough months of a newborn, things were looking up!
Then we noticed, from 3 months onwards, she's been a terrible cat napper (40 mins tops). Night sleeps were good, thank fuck, with a maximum of 1 wakeup for a feed. She usually fell right back asleep. She is capable of falling asleep from awake, granted she needs a pacifier and white noise to help her. She was a generally happy, normally developing child.
The cat napping was beginning to really do a number on my wife's mental health and in our frustrated state, at 3 months, we hired a sleep consultant who came recommended. She had her ways and we followed her processes to attempt to get LO to nap more than 40 mins. All her resettling methods would lead to more distress crying and never actually solved anything. She charged for her consult + had some follow up calls included in the package.
When her processes didn't work, out of desperation, we bought additional phone consult time. During these, hearing our frustration with her methods not working, she essentially told us to back to what we were doing before!
I find out soon after that babies shouldn't be sleep trained before 4 months! Yet this person took our case and our money anyway!
The cat naps continued, our mental health as a family unit continued to decline. Research showed us that babies can't connect sleep cycles until they're 5+ months old and I tried to convince my wife of that, but she was adamant that it could be solved ASAP. So we thought we would try another consultant, this time when LO was just over 4 months old.
The second sleep consultant - also recommended - boasted a 99% success rate with no sleep aides (ie no paci, no white noise) and no crying it out. She also had a package on her website where in the first 3 lines of the description she claims to be able to solve cat napping. I was sceptical but couldn't convince my wife otherwise.
At the initial consult, she started by swaddling LO despite us saying LO has hated traditional swaddles since birth and prefers sleep sacks. She then proceeds to let her cry it out for nearly an hour while explaining to us the different sorts of cries; claiming we didn't need to go in because LO wasn't distress crying yet.
Nearly an hour later, with distress crying having begun, we entered and did her resettling methods. It only made our baby cry worse. We exited, baby still wailing, and at 1hr15mins, the crying stopped and LO slept. FOR A WHOPPING 30 MINUTES.
Consultant was jubliant because her process 'worked'; I was not because prior to any consult, we could get baby to sleep on her own in minutes and she slept for 40 minutes!
We went in to resettle. The resettling techniques didn't work again. We ended the nap because it was eating into a wake window.
The consultant said it was a work in progress and that we should continue. In the days following, our LO has slept 4-5 hours less per day, her night sleep - which used to be fine - is now disjointed because of the change in routine and she's even eating less (probably due to lack of sleep?).
All my attempts to convince my wife to go back to how we used to do things have fallen on deaf ears in the hopes that sometime in the next few days, this training will kick in. It's almost like she's brainwashed. It fucking sucks.
Until then I'm stuck with a baby that cries for hours, is always sleepy when awake, isn't eating right and is far from the bright, happy kid we had pre-sleep training.
All because we want to solve cat napping - which solves itself with time apparently.
Thank you for reading.
EDIT: OK, this definitely got a bit bigger than I was expecting. Heaps of comments, but I'll chuck in some context/further info here because there's way too many to reply to:
We are in Australia. This means my wife is lucky enough to have 12 months mat leave. So there's no 'pressure' per say to sleep train our kid in 6 weeks before returning back to work
For those asking why we are whinging about cat naps when we generally get a whole night's sleep - you are absolutely correct! We shouldn't be whinging. To be clear, it's my wife that has an issue with it; I'm firmly of the belief that cat naps are developmental. I say 'we' because at the end of the day we are a unit.
My wife's anxiety lies in the fact that she doesn't believe LO is getting enough sleep through the cat naps + the social pressures (EG social media and family) + she feels like she can't get anything done around the house because there's no long series of sleeps. Is this PPA? Absolutely and she's getting help for it (as am I for my PPD).
For those asking what my beef is with real estate agents and recruitment agents - we are in Australia - the real estate market and recruitment market is a cess pit. Agents in those fields are bottom feeding, un-empathetic, money hungry cunts who prey on the vulnerable. Ask any Aussie you meet next and they'll probably be able to explain it better than me.
Once again, thank you all for the responses. I have read each one and shown my wife each one as well. Let's hope that once we 'finish giving these techniques a shot' (gotta try for 10 days), we can revert back to how we used to do things.