It`s 2am and if you are the parent of a baby who does not sleep well you may well be pacing up and down in your baby`s room trying to get your little one off to sleep.

Cold, tired and craving the comfort of your bed, you may be rocking or feeding the wailing child, singing, or just sitting by the cot holding a little hand - anything to get him or her to drift off again.

Anna Cormack from Manchester knows what sheer exhaustion feels like. She has three children - Johnny, the youngest, is 15 months old and wakes up at least two to three times in the night for breast feeds. Cormack feeds him to sleep and has not had a full night`s rest since he was born. Her partner frequently works at night, so night-time parenting falls to her.

"When it`s really bad I probably only get two-three hours` sleep in the night," she says. "What every parent would tell you is that it`s the cumulative effect. You can do one night, even two, but it`s constant. Night after night it has an effect on you."

More than half of a group of 7,500 parents who took part in a survey released last week by The Children`s Sleep Charity and Netmums said their child woke at least once a night, and 35% said they were regularly sleep-deprived and exhausted - and this included parents whose children were no longer babies.

Cormack says she copes well but would like to have more energy and creativity, and better memory.

"I often can`t be bothered to go out to groups [or] see friends because I am too tired. Also it makes me obsessed with Johnny having his naps at home so I can nap too, which makes me quite house bound," she says.

This is the kind of experience that might make some parents these days consider hiring a sleep consultant. There weren`t many of them around 10 or 15 years ago but the number has rapidly increased in the UK in the last five years, says Julie Cleasby, European Regional Director for the Association of Professional Sleep Consultants.

Cormack was put in touch by the BBC radio programme You and Yours with Katie Palmer, a former nanny and mother-of-three who co-runs Infant Sleep Consultants with two other women.

Like many other sleep consultancies, the company offers a range of packages, from telephone and online support, to home visits and overnight stays. The last of these would be easily affordable by someone like the chef, Jamie Oliver, who recently hired a night nurse for his newborn River Rocket, but might be a stretch for many parents.

Palmer says it`s very common to come across a child like Johnny who won`t go back to sleep after waking at night without being breast-fed.

"When we say we sleep through the night, none of us actually sleep through the night," she says. "We all naturally wake several times a night, it`s kind of a caveman instinct where you would wake to check for predators."

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