Since we took away the Wee One’s sleeping chair, her nighttime sleep has gradually gotten worse. At first, she went from sleeping right through the night to getting up once around 4 a.m. Then, a week or so ago, she started to get up twice, once at 1 a.m., and again at 4. Then, the night before last, she was having a lot of trouble around 8:30 p.m., and I was still awake, so I thought, oh, I’ll just pop in and settle her down with some nursing, and maybe the extra milk will save me the 1 a.m. wakeup call. But no, she still got up at 1, and then at 4.
Last night, the same thing happened — fussiness around 9, I was still up, so I gave her a little milk. Then, around 11:30 p.m., I heard crying again.
And there it was, staring me smack in the face…the cry-it-out.
I don’t think there is anything more controversial when it comes to child care than the cry-it-out idea. Some parents think it’s completely inhumane not to respond to your kid when they are crying. But I definitely feel that rushing to your baby’s bedside every time they fuss causes them to become unable to comfort themselves, and possibly interrupts perfectly good sleep if they were only fussing a little because they were at a light part of their sleep cycle.
So where do you draw the line? How long do you let a “fuss” go on, before responding? How much crying is too much? It’s one of the toughest things to decide as a parent, and it’s pretty hard to stick to any particular rules. Some nights, a little crying is too much for me to handle. Other nights, I’m exhausted, I know she’s safe and not really hungry, and it’s better for us both to just let things be.
With the Captain, I didn’t have the heart to do the cry-it-out thing for months. I belonged to two different mommy-and-baby groups, and I was still getting up three or four times in the night with him at 8 months old, when everyone else’s kid was sleeping right through. I could afford to be somewhat indulgent because he was our first, meaning I was free to nap twice a day at the same times he was sleeping, but eventually, with weening looming, we decided enough was enough. He cried for an hour the first night, while and I sat in the next room, practically weeping ourselves. The second night, it was 10 minutes of fussing, and ever since then, he’s put himself to sleep happily and slept through. I cursed myself for not trying it months earlier.
With Gal Smiley, we never really had to make that call. She found her fingers to suck on very early on, and was always great at putting herself to sleep. She only ever got up once in the night after she was two months old. We did have trouble getting rid of that one nighttime wake-up — eventually, after she was weened, we did try to cry-it-out, but she had an amazing power to cry at 3 a.m. for two hours at a time, until I eventually broke, so that never really worked out. Instead, we just lived with the wake-up — taking turns going in to briefly comfort her — until she phased it out herself, at around a year and a half old.
Now with the Wee One, I’m not sure how we’ll be handling things. Getting good sleep at night is very important to me now, since I have to take care of the other two all day, and it’s a high energy job. I definitely cannot afford to be getting up four times a night. Plus, we know from just a few weeks past that she is quite able to sleep through until at least 4 — I think that is the hardest part, the frustration of the backslide from good sleep into bad. And with the other two roaming around during the day, I also can’t afford to be spending hours putting her down for each nap. She has to be more versatile, she has to be more independent, and she has to do it soon.
So last night, we decided to let her cry a bit at the 11:30 mark, and she made it through herself after about 15 minutes of crying. Then I got up to feed her as usual around 1, but after that, she slept through until 6:30. Progress! I’m still torn, but I think that we’ll be making a new “no feedings before 1 a.m.” rule around here. We’ll worry about eliminating those later feedings once she is a bit older, maybe around 6 months, I think.
Hopefully we all get some better rest out of the deal.
TurtleHead 
Do you think letting a baby cry it out affects their development as they grow older? Or is it really just about training them to sleep so that you can get some rest yourself? (not an unimportant thing in itself)
Like I said in my post, this is quite a touchy subject among parents, so you’ll find any number of differing opinions. My own thoughts, however, are that high quality sleep in children is the most important thing for their brain development. It helps them learn, it helps them grow, and also, it helps them stay calm and focused in their awake life — when you see a kid having a major tantrum in public, I would wager 10 to 1 that the kid is tired.
I think that “high quality” sleep involves regular napping and being able to sleep for a long period of time at night. Long sleeps allow the baby to get both deep sleep and REM sleep, and to wake up refreshed. So the cry-it-out thing, while painful, usually results in better sleep after just a couple of days, and the long-term payoff is excellent — a happier household, a happier baby, and better brain development.
But it is really hard to live through, especially the first time. And again, this is all just my opinion (mostly formed from the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Baby, which I recommend to all parents everywhere). I don’t think that there are any studies or anything that support one way or the other, so each parent needs to make their own decision and find their own right way to do things.
And I forgot to mention, that I don’t think that there are any long-term attachment issues or anything like that — I don’t think our kids are extra clingy or extra sensitive or anything like that due to the cry-it-out. But you never know :).
I’m definitely in the cry-it-out camp. We’ve had pretty good success with it (and we’ve had to apply it more than once for various changes that we’ve instituted); it has rarely lasted for more than 10 minutes or so past the first 3 nights or so. The one thing I always try to remember is no matter how much he cries before going to sleep, in the morning it all seems to be completely forgotten — he is just as happy as if he’d gone right to sleep.
More importantly I think the net gain is decidedly positive. You and your child both make a small sacrifice at the start (the child cries and is unhappy, and you suffer as she cries), but once the worst is over, everyone’s much better off because you all sleep better. And you’ve already pointed how important that is (both for you and your child).
As someone with training in Early Childhood Education, Brainslie is utterly opposed to cry-it-out. However, she did alter her opinion last Saturday when faced with a tired and weepy DramaPrince. Me, I’m not so sure. Not allowing the cats to cry-it-out as kittens has made them whinny and obnoxious as adult cats but I’m not sure if that’s a good analogy.