Batelle Sleep SchoolReviews of batelle.com

We loved batelle when we first used them for my son in 2022, but we were promised help with sleep all the way up until my son turned 5. Well, here we are not even 4 and they won’t return any of my emails and took my app log in away. I believe they got to big and lost the true sleep school they once were. We were going to do it with my second son and when we went to register him it was NOTHING like the system that we did with my first.

Their advertisement sounded great: cosleeping is fine, breastfeeding is ok, no cry it out method. However, after signing up and paying I was told I should start the program after weening my child off or the program wouldn’t be as effective. I was also told I should move my child to his own room because the program wouldn’t be as effective as co-sleeping. I tried the program and my son didn’t do well in his own room and cried nonstop so we couldn’t advance to the next steps. I was told ‘no cry it out’ but there were many days that consisted of it and they said a little crying would be necessary. I feel cheated and when I asked for my money back (since they gave a guarantee their program works or your money back) they said they would have to keep $500 of the $1500 because I didn’t finish the program. Make sure you read the fine print. The only reason they have 2 stars is because everyone was so nice.

This process just will not work for everyone. I tried so hard, went through the school process twice, and things are still terrible. She takes around an hour to fall asleep every night, still has multiple wake ups, and has more attachment issues and separation anxiety with me than ever. I felt like the process just was not personalized enough. I would express concerns and get a general answer back that didn’t really help us out at all. Anytime I used the chat I would have to re-explain my whole situation because no one ever knew what was going on. I felt alone through most of the process because of this. I followed the steps and they just are not working for us. We’ve been in this horrible sleep training nightmare for over a month now and it’s still going terribly. I follow the steps, I use the tools, but it does not work for us. It was extremely expensive and an extreme letdown. When I read that my child would be sleeping through the night within weeks, bedtime would take 5 minutes, I really thought this was going to change our lives. Unfortunately it’s seemed to make things worse and now we’re just out $1500 and have an even worse sleeper.

Be careful with this company. They claim to allow you to pay monthly. For some reason (after I'd paid 7 monthly payments), they cancelled the monthly payments and charged the final balance in one month - straight after Christmas. It's going to be a tough month for my family! Just be prepared to pay their fee in one go if you do sign up.

We signed up to sleep school with our 15 month old who was waking repeatedly overnight, would only feed back to sleep and often ended up sleeping on me after midnight, meaning I had even more disturbed sleep. Sleep school initially started well - lots of information, clear guidance, a responsive team - and although it was really hard and there were lots of tears, we did make some progress. No more night feeds and staying in her cot for 12 hours. However, even at step 6/7, we ended up with more wakes than ever, and she was not settling quickly for the majority of them as she was not being fed. I accepted this as part of the process. But gradually things began to unravel. Despite being clear from the start that one of my key goals was to be able to stop contact napping, and being told at the start that my goals were achievable, I was then told that sleep school didn’t offer the advertised 24/7 support for naps and that this was not part of sleep school. We also started being given conflicting information from different employees, and they were not reading notes about our family or my messages properly, which was confusing and frustrating. I felt totally misled and I lost trust in the company despite them offering some more personalised support. We left sleep school after a week and received a full refund. Whilst it gave me the push to night wean my daughter, and we are maintaining our boundary around her staying in the cot till morning and using the settling techniques, we have reverted back to earlier stages as she was getting way too distressed (head banging). We are still dealing with some tears, long bedtimes, and numerous wakes. I don’t believe she feels particularly safe in the cot despite following their guidance, but like another reviewer I just don’t know what to do now that we’ve stripped our usual sleep cues and are left with theirs. It became clear to me quite quickly that they don’t expect all children to be sleeping through within 2 weeks, but they hope that for those that aren’t they will be able to get you to stay with extra 1:1 guidance. I’m now waiting to start with a 1:1 sleep consultant for a third of the price.

I am updating this again. It is a month since starting and we are basically back to square one. It’s been a month of hellish long bedtimes, waking at 2/3am and basically not going back to sleep, relentless tweaking of his now tyrannical schedule and not being able to do anything during the day other than manage his naps, relentless tweaking of the method such that we’ve basically abandoned it altogether as per the staff’s recommendation. While the staff are exceptionally patient and kind, if this incredibly complex method doesn’t quite work out, it is awful. I feel trapped because I don’t want to just stop and mess with my poor kid’s head but nothing has changed in this miserable month except that both our sleep is worse and as far as I can tell the method has consolidated that bad sleep. I spend all my time day and night doing the method or adhering to the schedule, and napping with him during the day so that I can catch up on sleep. I know this works like magic for some people but if it doesn’t, it’s absolutely miserable. I want to give them a five star review because the staff are absolutely wonderful, kind and generous people who go above and beyond to support their clients while you are in the program. However, in the last three weeks, I have gone from 10 min bedtimes to upwards of 30 min, often nearer an hour each night of my baby crying before sleep, often until he makes himself sick. We still have multiple night wakes (albeit minor) and since sleep school he will not sleep beyond 5am. I have slept less in the last three weeks than at any point since he was born and it has been awful as I am a solo parent and about to return to work. I have followed the method diligently, but when it hasn't worked effectively, the general line is that it is because my energy is off, or that his day schedule needs tweaking which may be so, but have seen no shift from said tweaks so far. Their CEO even said to me on our last call “we can’t make your baby sleep”, which ok I get, but also felt a little galling given that it is a sleep school and given the claim on the website. My baby hates going into his crib and he appears to dislike the mantra. I was so desperate for this to work after months of intense sleep deprivation, and hoped it would set me and my baby up for my return to work next month, but it has instead made my evenings and mornings even more difficult and exhausting than they have ever been. Batelle really is an astonishingly good, solid, and honest company and they have offered me a full refund. However, I am in this horrible bind right now where we have been using the method for almost three weeks and it is not working, but I am not sure how to 'disentangle' myself from it. I do not want to confuse my baby when he's already gone through such a big change and is about to go through another. So, while I want to commend the astounding skill, kindness and generosity of the staff - I have been incredibly moved by their commitment to the program, their own families and the families they work with and how much extraordinary time and effort they gave me - I feel hard pressed to fully recommend the program, as it is so distressing to have put in so much work and for things to be so much harder than they were before, and then be left in the dark about what to do next. Updating this to say that my baby now wakes at 4am and chooses not to go back to sleep and nothing in Batelle’s tool box makes the slightest bit of difference. My nights - and subsequently my days - are far worse now than they have ever been. The various recommendations from Batelle have been to cosleep with him again, put him back in the sling to rock him to sleep and to bottle feed him… in other words, all the things I just spent weeks so carefully trying to wean him from.

We had a horrible experience when we attempted to sleep train by then 8 month old. It was very traumatizing on me and baby because surprisingly there was ALOT of crying for 2 months. Even though it’s marketed as “gentle” I feel it’s a little misleading because proximity for some babies is harder on them. They don’t understand why you are just sitting there saying a mantra over and over while they are screaming crying and you can’t pick them up. There was a guarantee where they’d fall asleep within 5 mins after 2 weeks which is a huge false promise. After 2 months we still struggled and it was not at all what I imagined. The other part that was hard was using their product “The Hug”. It’s a sleep sack attached to the mattress so baby has limited mobility from standing up. I was told by Emily on our first call that the hug was optional but the entire program is built around using it and you’d be the odd one out if you didn’t. Plus they have to take the mattress out and leave it on the floor for part of the training so you need The Hug to keep baby from crawling away. She hated it though. After sending several emails out of exhaustion and frustration to the team, they arranged a call with me and Miss Megan. She was very defensive on the phone and assumed I was doing something wrong even though I never missed a zoom call and studied the material because it was important to me to have this be a success for our family. The rest of the team was pleasant to work with! I did feel they genuinely cared which is why I’m giving it 2 stars. I just don’t believe the program should make such promises and call it gentle when there is so much crying. I didn’t anticipate that. Around 10 months we sleep trained again with another program and it was a success with A LOT less crying. Hope this helps someone.