When Linda Fitzgerald went to her doctor exhausted, she recommended a 'supernanny'
DR NASEEMA Moorad's life was "horrendous" after the birth of her second child, Riana. "She was waking on the hour, every hour. I didn't sleep for 18 months."
A GP in Ballyfermot, she would go to work "like a zombie. I don't know how I didn't kill a patient!" (Although, she adds hastily, she always double-checked her work to make sure she didn't.)
"We tried everything, even medication, nothing worked on this child. I gave her valium syrup and she sat up in the cot looking at me."
Moorad says she did not have the time nor the energy to instil a routine. The only way to stop Riana crying was to bring her into their bed.
"Once she got into our bed, she would sleep but we couldn't. We played musical beds, it was like a mad house."
In desperation, Moorad e-mailed supernanny Jo Frost in London. "I was fully prepared to pay her to come over."
But then she heard about Nuala Reddy being available in Dublin and immediately called her in to their Ballinteer home.
"She did it on the first night and made me feel like a total eejit," laughs Moorad. The second night, Riana did not even cry.
It wasn't that Reddy told Moorad anything she did not know. "I knew what to do, I just couldn't do it," she says.
The fact that Reddy also showed her husband, Aslam Rawat, and their eldest child, Aliyah (10) that picking up Riana was not the answer, helped enormously too. "I needed someone to give me the strength to stand up to those two."
It's "nine weeks and counting" since Reddy's visit and Riana is sleeping through the night. She does try the odd trick, but Moorad is sticking to the routine and it works.
"It was the best money I have ever spent in my life. Better than any handbag or designer shoes, I get much more pleasure from it."
And she doesn't hesitate in recommending Reddy to her patients who have similar problems.
One of those is Linda Fitzgerald, who went to Moorad nearly two months ago to see if she could get anything to keep her awake at work. She and her partner, Davie Jennings, were locked into exhausting battles every night with their 10-month-old daughter Leah.
She had been sleeping well at five months, before they moved house from Lucan to Ballinteer, via a month in granny's house. Now it would take Fitzgerald an hour each night to put Leah to bed, staying with her until she was asleep and then sneaking out of the room trying not to wake her.
"She would start waking from 11 onwards. We would go in and out to her, every half hour, until about three in the morning when we'd be worn out and put her in our bed."
However, as Jennings has to get up at 5am to go to work in Moyvalley Golf Course in Kildare, Leah took that as the start of the day. Her mother would be utterly exhausted when it was her turn some hours later to leave for her job as a help desk supervisor in the city centre.
"It was affecting everything," says Fitzgerald and they were blaming themselves.
"It was depressing we were so wrecked. We would dread the next night."
Until Moorad told her about Nuala Reddy, she did not know such help existed. But, after the doctor's recommendation, she was confident it would work.
However, that first night she was terrified of meeting Reddy, thinking she would lay into them. "I was expecting a much older lady with a brief case and glasses; someone more intimidating."
She trusted her from the moment she saw her. "The second she walked in, she picked up on Leah being tired at six o'clock." She said it was already time to put her to bed. It took 40 minutes to settle Leah that first night. She woke again in the early hours of the morning and cried for half an hour.
"I went up to reassure her three or four times. Nuala sat there timing us, saying 'you can go up now'.
"It's easy to talk about," says Fitzgerald, "but it was tough at the time. There is no way I could have done it on my own."
Sorting out Leah's sleep has transformed the couple's lives. "Before that, we couldn't go out. We couldn't leave her with anybody. After the first week, we got a babysitter and went out. We got that part of our lives back."