*Disclaimer: this post includes a monologue that may make your heart ache, read at your own discretion*
Last night marked the beginning of the end.
That is, the end of Rob waking and crying every 2-3 hours at night instead of sleeping.
I did it. I let him cry it out.
Now let me say, I have been trying everything possible to get him to sleep longer than 3 hours at night instead of letting him cry. We tried feeding him every time he woke and around 14 weeks, he wasn't really even eating very much at night. We tried rocking him back to sleep. We tried walking with him with a pacifier in his mouth. We tried putting him in the swing to sleep at night. We tried letting him cry for 10 minutes and then rocking/soothing him. We tried to cluster feed or tank him up at 6:00pm, 8:00pm and 10:00pm. We tried just feeding him 3 hours apart at 7:00pm and 10:00pm or later.
He is on a routine of sleep/eat/play and I feed him every 3 hours during the day.
-End rationalization and explanations-
Nothing worked. He would fall asleep peacefully, only to awaken 2-3 hours later crying.
10:30pm. 1 am. 3 am. 5:30am. 8:00am
And he wasn't even that hungry. Sure, he would eat and sip some milk but not ravenous. And by 8:00am he would only take an ounce or so of milk because he wasn't hungry at all!
I talked it over with Jordan, called a friend who went through the same thing and decided to let Rob cry it out.
Wednesday night: night #1. I was so anxious but I knew we had to train him to sleep now or it would only become more difficult the older, more alert and more developed he became. He woke up around 1am but I was able to fall back asleep so it must not have been for too long. He woke up again at 3:45am and cried, off and on, until 5:45am. As I type this, I am cringing. It was so amazingly sad, horrible, difficult, tear-inducing to see him cry on the monitor. I went down to check on him, not like he could really go anywhere but I had to go down. He was still swaddled, crying but he had his eyes closed. I ran back upstairs into bed and asked Jordan to hold me or I wasn't going to be able to do it. I silently cried into the comforter with Jordan's arms wrapped around me. Once the crying stopped, for good, I was able to go back to sleep around 6am. He then awoke at 8am with a huge smile on his face. I thought for sure one of the following would happen: 1)forever hate me 2) never smile again 3) never want to go to sleep ever again. Glad to report none of those were true! He happily drank 5 ounces of milk and smiled at me and Lily for the longest time. I made sure to give him extra love this morning to attempt to compensate for last night.
The CIO process usually takes 3 days. So here is to a better night #2 tonight!
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4 comments:
I waited until 12 months to do this (mostly because Steve works a lot and needs his sleep). It only took 1 night and on the second night, he cried for about 5 minutes around 4am. Now he's teething again and we're back to waking up and crying for a long time at 4am...
Someday we'll get a full night's sleep... probably not for at least 10 years.
how funny to hear you telling this tale. I did the same thing in 1967 with my first Hatch baby Frankie...I cried almost more than him but it worked to let him cry. He had me trained...lol! The motherhood saga contnues...
good for you! it's not the method for everyone, but it works. we did it too and always had great little sleepers. i enjoy my sleep way too much to be waking up every 2.5 hours.
the fondest memory I have of my father which is really only a story is this: I came home to a house with 3 families in it. So everytime I cried someone ran to pick me up. By easter my father had had enough. When I cried, he picked me up from out of someone's arms, took me into a bedroom and gently lay me down in the middle of the bed. He sat there in a chair beside me and let me cry it out....while all the relatives hovered behind the closed door, worrying and fretting. But I got over my control in one sitting. Thankfully I never really had your problem but as I told you, I weighted the stomachs earlier than moms do today.
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