Crying-It-Out

Last week I endeavored upon the dreaded cry-it-out. Here is my story…

Background:

Zach has always been a good sleeper at night. We have, since he was born, rocked him to sleep and then placed him ever so gently in his bed. This has always worked fine. A concern I had with this method was that he wouldn’t be able to put himself to sleep thus any time he would get up in the middle of the night, we would have to go rock him. But that didn’t happen. We have a video monitor and have seen him (fairly regularly) wake up, shift around, and go right back to sleep on his own. So, no harm- no foul. I like rocking him to sleep so we just kept right on with it.

The other night, I had rocked him to sleep and went to put him in his bed but instead of curling up and nestling in he started crying. I picked him up and rocked him some more. When I went to put him down, he did it again. The third time he was quiet but started crying as I was shutting the door. I made a split second decision.

The Cry-It-Out Journey

At first I felt liberated. No, I’m the adult and I am making this decision for the best of my child. I walked away from the door and straight to the baby monitor. He was standing up and crying a very pained cry. “He’ll get over it,” I thought. This was the strongest point of my resolve through the entire process. I.e. it all went downhill from here. There were moments where I would giggle as he acted as if he were attempting to win the Emmy for Best Soap Opera Performance in the Male Lead. There were times where I would think I was damaging my child in some way… I know that is the opinion of some about this process and maybe they were right. There were times when I thought he was going down, I would have some relief and then he would pop right back up. At one point, our dog seemed so concerned I thought she might go get him and turn him over to the authorities for better care. At one point, I swear, it all the sudden dawned on Zach that maybe I just couldn’t hear him so he kicked it up a notch.

My mom successfully implemented cry-it-out with me and so I followed her method… maybe it is THE method, I don’t know but this is what I did. After 20 minutes of crying, I went in, cleaned up Zach’s snotty face and picked him up. We had a few beats of hugging and reassuring. Then I said “night night” and put him back to bed. He screamed louder than I have ever heard him scream but 5 minutes later he was fast asleep.

Looking Back

I will probably have to do this again at some point but it did seem to lead to Zach better understanding bed time. There was a great deal of satisfaction when he finally looked around and seemed to realize- “oh, I’m in my crib, NOT prison or a tar pit,” and went to sleep. I have not seen any negative effects on his attitudes, actions, or demeanor. He is still the same secure baby he has always been. It is my opinion that this is one of those things that the worst of us dirty the water for all of us. Are some people abusive with cry-it-out? Yes. Do some people hide behind it to be able to neglect their children? Yes. But as with most child care options, you can find research to support whatever side you want to support and some people hide behind that to make the rest of us feel bad about our parenting choices. We are all in this together people! If you need to cry-it-out do it! But be responsible and caring about it. If you can’t stand the thought of it- don’t do it! That is just as reasonable of a decision.

It did work great for us and I believe in the long run Zach will be more self-assured for it and I will be a wee bit saner.