Crying It Out

In preparation for Quynh's move to the toddler (!) room at the end of August, her teacher strongly suggested that we get her to sleep through the night now, so she'll be rested enough during the days to drop her morning nap. (A day in the life of a toddler is full of play dough, circle time, climbing, running, jumping, and there is no opportunity for morning nap.) So to prevent her from being the toddler who routinely falls asleep in her lunch, we decided we had better get her (and me!) some solid nighttime sleep.

But how? Quynh's teacher basically told us to shit or get off the pot with the whole co-sleeping thing. She suggested we either (1) put Quynh in her crib at night and leave here there and not go in at all when she cries or (2) buy bed rails and let her sleep with us all night long. Neither option really appealed to me, but I certainly want her in her own crib. So I decided to review the more gentle options for achieving that goal.

I went back to the books I had poured over when Tai was tiny. First I read about one extreme, written by the woman who thinks babies should never ever cry, and that progress toward better sleeping should be measured every 10 days to look for slow but steady progress. Ugh. The book included photos of her 5 kids all snuggling together on a giant bed in the "sleeping room." This woman might be a little nuts.

Then I read about the other extreme, where you plop your baby in the crib, close the door, and don't go back in until the morning, no matter what. The book actually says there is no limit on how long to let them cry and if they vomit from crying too hard just go in, clean it up, and then leave again.

Seriously? These are my two options?

Then I found the book that claims to be the "middle of the road" approach. Sounds perfect for me. I pride myself on my wishy-washy-middle-of-the-road-ness. I cracked open this book at 9:15pm on Saturday, but by 9:30 I was falling asleep and had not yet read the details of this sleep training method. I decided I'd read it on Sunday and we'd start our new plan (whatever it was to be) Sunday night.

I hit the pillow and feel deeply asleep. So deeply, in fact, that Minh told me the next day that I missed Quynh crying and fussing for an entire hour. He was still up watching TV in the living room and took my staying in the bedroom to mean that I'd decided we were going to let her cry it out. But I was really just too tired to wake. Yay for parent-to-parent communication.

She woke 3 more times that night, which I heard. At 2:30, 3:30, and 5:30am she woke and cried for 5 minutes each time. Then went back to sleep. Sweet.

Sunday I realized that we had accidentally started a cry-it-out program. Not what I intended, but I figured that we'd better stick with what we started. So last night we did it again. Not sure if we slept through any crying early in the night, but she did wake at 2:30 and cried for 5 minutes. Then at 4:30 she screamed for 10 minutes and I *almost* went to her. But then she found a nuk (she has about 6 of them in her crib) and settled back down. At 6am she squawked and I ran in to her, scooped her up and nursed her in the glider for about 15 solid minutes. All the while she was staring up at me with those huge dark eyes as if to say, "Where were you last night?"

The books, and Quynh's teacher, claim that this method works fast -- in a few days -- so I'm really hoping that tonight is the last rough night where I have to lay in bed, listen to her scream, and watch her on the video monitor to make sure she's OK. I'm excited at the prospect of "fixing" her sleeping habits, but I do worry about what she thinks when she's crying so hard and no one comes to comfort her. I find that part very sad.

Wish us luck tonight.