Crying it out Day 1
Alright parents of the world do not get on my back about this I don’t like it either. I have moved on to cry it out. My son has been getting up in the middle of the night for three months. He was sick, then was teething, then sick, then growth spurt, then teething, all resulting in me feeding him in the middle of the night. I created a very bad habit and now that he is not teething, not sick and not going through a growth spurt he still wakes up in the middle of the night to eat. He is 9 months old now and has outgrown his 10 pm bottle, to the point where I have even stayed up until 11 pm to feed him thinking 10 pm was too early and he still barely drinks an ounce. So the other night when he got up at 2 am and I tried to feed him and he didn’t even want it, I said, I’m done. I held him for a bit longer and put him back in his crib. He screamed, bloody murder, end of the world, hysterically screamed for 25 minutes. I paced the hallway outside his room. Two hours later at 4 am he woke up again and I fed him. At that point I figured he had gotten over the hump of his “scheduled” time to wake up and was probably legitimately hungry. He then slept until 7 am. It was the worst thing I have ever done to him. I was so keyed up and stressed out I didn’t go back to sleep between 2 and 4 am I just stayed up and watched TV.
I had decided that during this break I have between Christmas and New Year’s that I would handle this problem. My original plan was to decrease his bottles by two ounces gradually and finally not feed him at all. But when he didn’t even want to eat when he got up that once night I was like obviously we can go cold turkey here if you aren’t even willing to eat anything at this point. It is my hope that as we move through this over the next 4 – 5 days that he will cry less and less to the point of being able to put himself back to sleep if he does wake up.
I know he can do that he just doesn’t at that time of night. So it is unfortunately time for some tough love. I won’t let him go beyond 30 minutes. That is too long an unnecessary, my purpose is to not torture the child it is simply to change the pattern of behavior that I have created. It is tough, I can’t tell you what it is like to listen to your child scream and not go in his room and give him the comfort he wants.
I want to point out that this is what I am doing, this does not mean that it will work for you or for your child. I know my kid and he is a stubborn little guy. I am still going into his room when he wakes up initially and checking on him to make sure that there isn’t an actual problem. My son is 9 months old and is more than capable at this point of sleeping through the night. I do not condone letting infants cry it out. Nor do I think that cry it out is a method that should be used without attendance of any type or while the child is sick or teething or going through any type of growth spurt. If your child is hungry he should be fed and not allowed to starve just to give yourself an extra few hours of sleep.
The other thing I caution is that once you commit to this you have to finish it. To start and stop it is only prolonging the situation and the method. This is not something that can be interrupted or paused. It is also not something that should go on and on, if it doesn’t work than maybe you need to stop and reassess your child’s individual need.
