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Today’s guest post is from Jo Tantum, one of the UK’s leading baby sleep specialists. Jo has a maternity nurse background and over 24 years of experience of getting little ones to sleep without distress. Jo is a regular speaker at the Baby Show Live and a guest expert on Channel 5’s Live with Gabby. Together with her best-selling book Baby Secrets available on www.babysecretsltd.com and Prima Baby Magazine column she has helped thousands of parents worldwide.

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Babies need sleep, so that their developing brains can process everything they have learnt during the day. Getting your baby to sleep through the night is every first time parents biggest concern. So here is my special ‘Seven Secrets’ guide to getting it right:-

Follow a bedtime ritual consistently every night. Babies and toddlers relish routine and ritual, they like to know what’s coming next which provides certainty.

Treat every hour between 7pm & 7am as night time which means darkness, calm and quiet voices. Take your baby into the nursery and add a few drops of calming Sleepytime Room Aroma into a bowl of warm water. Ensuring bath water is tepid use Sleepytime Hair & Body Wash to gently cleanse your baby. Follow this by wrapping your baby in a super soft Cuddledry towel, gently pat dry and enjoy bonding whilst massaging baby with Sleepytime Organic Massage Oil. Dress your baby in a soft comfortable grow and a sleeping bag dependant on temperature. After a nice story give your baby the last feed of the day in his nursery. Wind, lay him down, pat gently, say night night quietly and come out of the room. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t you just love it when you turn up in the school playground for pick up and your child’s teacher makes a bee-line for you? “Uh oh – in trouble again” is usually the first thing that crosses my mind – me in trouble that is, not my daughter. But it’s not 1979 anymore and the chances of being called in to see the head are greatly reduced, thank goodness. And so what is the problem? the usual suspects are a bumped head, a bloody nose, scraped knees/hand or simply all of the above. This time Sarah’s injury is self-explanatory – scrapes all over her face, one bit fat split lip with blood pouring out of both mouth and nose as she cries – a heavy disagreement with the playground tarmac. She looked like she’d done several rounds with Mr Tyson.

But that’s just all part of being 4 right? Was I cruel to say “you’re fine, just give it a rub” (makes split lips worse by the way). But 2 weeks later and she is all back to her normal mischievous self – but yesterday I noticed the tell tale signs of a dead tooth – oh NO! she’s going to be one of those kids with the yucky brown tooth that looks like her parents feed her nothing but toffee, sweets and cake all the time. well..errrr .ok…. but poor thing. she’s so looking forward to dressing up in her pretty bridesmaid dress later this year, and she’s going to look like Nanny McPhee.

One other thing about Sarah while I’m talking about her:- I asked her what she had learnt about that day, to which she replied “Jesus”. Not in an eye-roll-with-a-heavy-sigh sort of way – just that she had actually been learning about Jesus. So I asked her what exactly she’d learnt. “He’s dead” she announced. Of course. And how did he die? I asked, thinking about 3 days held on a cross by some nasty nails was not a nice thought for a 4 year old…. “He was killed in a road accident” she announced – “he was squashed by a caravan”.

Now, there’s a novel way of bringing the bible up to date I thought…. and living in the west country might account for imagination with a higher than average number of caravans she sees, but I have never seen anyone looking like Jesus run out in front of one…. or maybe there was that one time in Glastonbury..

so now you know.