Three Cheers for Crying!

Yawn. Its Monday.

I have been relatively fortunate that Katherine slept through the night at a pretty early age, 7 or 8 weeks I think. But as babies grow their sleep patterns change. In the past month she as has not been sleeping through the night and has been waking 1-2 times a night. We have developed a nasty habit of picking her up and rocking her back to sleep and, in many cases, giving up and putting her in bed with us. Bad Parents!!!! Yes, I know we shouldn't do that but when you have to get up at 5:30am to go to work and its 3:30am, you just need to sleep. But I completely hit the wall last week and though I have always said that I am not big on the whole cry-it-out (CIO)thing, I decided that it was time to nip this whole thing in the bud. I could not continue to be a walking Zombie. It was okay when I was still on maternity leave and she was younger......but she is older now and knows how to sleep through....she's just in a rut.

So, cry it out she did last Thursday night. I did what is called the Babywise method I suppose, checking on her without picking her up, starting with 5 minutes, then 10, then 15 and so on. It took and hour and my husband sweat bullets the whole time but she finally did go back to sleep. It's now been three nights and with the exception of this morning at 5am, she has slept completely through 10-12 hours! Hallelujah!!! Now, lest I get too smug and carried away with this victory, I am quite well aware that we may have to do this a few more times to get this whole routine set in stone. But I'm game. I know CIO is not for everyone and there are many people who are staunchly against it as a form of cruelty, but the more I do this mothering thing the more I believe in "you gotta do what works for you." It seems to be working.