Cry it Out: Who is Supposed to be Crying?

Cry it Out: The method of baby sleep training, which you are either definitely supposed to do, or definitely not supposed to do, depending on which studies and experts you believe.

If the goal of Cry it Out is supposed to be Mama Bear curled up in the fetal position, going tear-for-tear with Baby Bear, mission accomplished.

Bedtime is, and always has been, easy in our house. My little bear was going to bed (awake) without a peep, and sleeping through the night fairly early, at maybe 10 weeks. The value of my fortune was not lost on me, believe me, because sleep has always been extremely important to me, and sleeplessness was one of my greatest fears about having a baby. I also thought I sort of deserved to have a good sleeper, because of our struggles with bottle feeding and solid foods.

Let me be clear: I do not consider sleeping through the night to be 12 hours straight through. I’m not sure I would expect that of a toddler, let alone an infant, especially one who is exclusively breastfed. (Breastmilk digests in about two hours.) I think anything longer than seven or eight hours is perfectly acceptable, especially when he goes back to sleep after a feeding.

Around 3 months, I knew the Bear could sleep through the night (8 p.m. to 4 a.m.) because he usually did, so when he began to occasionally wake up in the middle of the night to eat, I decided to let him go. The first night was awful, and he cried for what felt like an inordinate amount of time, but which was probably more like 45 minutes. The next night was a little easier, and the third night was easier than that. Within a few days, he was sleeping straight through from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. every night.

At Christmastime, when he was almost 5 months, he got a nasty cold, and he was sick for more than three weeks. The pediatrician told me to feed him anytime he woke up overnight, to keep him hydrated. But a month after his recovery, he was still waking up to eat at least once a night, and sometimes twice or three times.

At our 6-month checkup, the pediatrician said it was great that bedtime was still easy, but that he really should be sleeping through the night, and so we should let him cry. That first night, he cried for two hours, after which Papa Bear basically said, “If you don’t go get him I might have to kill you both.” I broke down and fed him. Then I didn’t have the chutzpah to try again for a few days.

Read the rest of this post over at Three Little Bears!