Crying it out

This blog is about to get, as André put it, "grittier". If you're not interested in grit, well then stick to the posts with pictures. I still have to put up the Christmas/New Year pictures and Cayman pictures - the posts are written or half-written... sigh - so there are plenty more feel-good posts to come. But I'm typing along and avoiding the main issue here, which is sleep.

Actually, to be more precise, the issue is not sleeping. To date, Thomas has been an ok sleeper, but not a great sleeper. We've made progress with our various "gentle" methods, but 4 weeks of travel in the last 5 weeks did not help us establish any real routines. And I start work on Monday. (Yes, I promise another angst-y post on that any day now.) So we need to sleep - and Thomas needs to sleep. And even the gentlest of sleep books agrees that any one of the various "cry it out" methods is the fastest.

Fastest, however, is not easiest. We let Thomas cry two or three times in Cayman because he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open - and each time he fell asleep pretty quickly. Somehow I hoped he had already learned how to sleep and he would just naturally sleep when we got home. He didn't. Sunday night, our first night back, we did our routine & put him to bed and he cried for about 20 minutes. Hard but not awful. Monday night, similar thing. I thought we were golden. And then came last night.

For the record, we are using the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth as our guide. And also for the record, I have read or skimmed at least 4 other sleep books. My friend Louise gave us the Weissbluth book before Thomas was born & I actually read a bunch of it. Of course, I stopped at the 3 month mark because I assumed we'd have it all figured out by then. Our baby was going to be a good sleeper, no doubt because we were going to be perfect parents. Ha!

So last night was night 3 of Weissbluth (which sounds so much better than "cry it out"). He warns parents that night 3 can be a "revolution" where the child figures out what is going on and really begins to protest. Thomas screamed for HOURS. For 3+ hours, to be precise - with a few quieter moments in the middle. We were trying to do the gentler method, so we were going in to him about every 20 minutes to pat his back. Every time he would reach his little arms up and practically beg to be picked up. We resisted. Then, when we left, he would scream even louder. It was excruciating.

After more than 3 hours, he fell asleep - for 45 minutes. Then he woke up and screamed for another hour and a half. This time we left him alone. He fell asleep again for a short while and, when he woke again at about 1 am (I think - time had really lost its meaning by this point), we gave in and let him come into our bed.

And if that weren't enough, we're doing this at naptime, too. So we put him down this morning and he screamed for an hour - then André soothed him to sleep and he managed to get 20 minutes in. Now we're in the middle of another screaming nap (though he did drop off for 20 minutes near the beginning).

This is the worst thing I've ever done. I've read and read and read and I have to believe that this is ok for him. I've talked to so many of my friends who've done this with their children and have kids who sleep well and are not traumatized that I have to believe that this is the best solution in the long run. I know people whose children won't go to bed at ages 4 and even 8. I don't want that for Thomas; I don't want him to have trouble sleeping on his own for years and years. And I know that most of the adults I know cried it out at some point in their infancy. Even more, I know that it works - the flat out truth is that for most kids, crying it out leads to sleeping through the night.

But I don't know if this is the right way to teach Thomas to sleep. I worry that this is just parental laziness: after all, we could have kept on with our slow way of teaching him; we're really doing this because we are tired, not because he is tired. He was learning; and he wasn't crying like this. And as much as I want reassurance, I get a little freaked out sometimes when other moms who've done this are enthusiastic - it makes me think of fraternity hazing rituals: I went through this awful thing and survived so now I want you to go through it, too.

And I don't know how much longer I can listen to him cry. André keeps trying to get me to leave the house and go to a café to work, but I can't do it. I know I need to prepare for next week and I know André's right, but I just can't abandon my baby. If he's going to cry and cry and cry because of a decision we made, I feel like I owe it to him to be here. But I'm just sitting here crying and writing this so I don't even know if staying here is the right solution. André claims that I must have inherited some sort of Catholic guilt complex; he threatens to peruse my family tree for Catholic ancestors. My Protestant Irish ancestors would turn over in their graves!

I should probably add that even after hours of screaming last night, he was still a happy little guy this morning - not clingy or scared or anything. And even after his first "nap" this morning he was still playful and happy. So I have zero evidence that he's being negatively affected by this - except the crying when he's supposed to be sleeping.

Ok, enough, I'm going to go try to plan a French class. 10 more minutes and I can pick him up.