Oooh, I just know I’m going to get tomatoes thrown at me for this post, but this is another one of those posts I feel that it’s important to write.  If only so that other moms in similar situations won’t feel like they’re alone.

Well, there’s nothing for it but to just rip the Band-Aid off, so here goes: I am referring to letting your baby cry it out.

First, I’ll start with some back story.  Since he was about 1.5 weeks old, he’s always been a fantastic nighttime sleeper (I credit the miraculous swing for that).  Daytime sleeping, however?  Not his cup of tea.

Difficult to get him to sleep in the first place (despite heavy eyes and fussing, he’d always assure me a nap wasn’t necessary), and he’d inevitably wake up every 15-30 minutes, and take another 20 minutes of shushing, rocking, swaying, bouncing, and walking around to get him back down.

What should have been a three hour nap (he’s always needed a one hour nap in the morning, and a three hour nap in the afternoon, I’m so lucky!) would stretch into five hours of exhausting soothing on my part, exhausted wailing on his part.  Wes would come home and find me with a sore back and frayed nerves.

He wasn’t getting much rest (how can you get any good sleep when you’re awake every 30 minutes?) and I was starting to feel like I was going to lose it.  I dreaded every afternoon nap, especially when I started to feel like he was just manipulating me.  I’d walk into his room when I heard him screaming, and the minute he saw my face he’d stop screaming and give me big, goofy smiles.

That was when I decided to do some research.  I started asking a bunch of moms I know what they would do, and the answer was nearly unanimous: Let him cry it out.

Now, crying it out has such a bad reputation on the Internet.  This post, which I read while I was researching crying it out, was particularly condemning.  For every article or post I saw that warned against the method, however, I saw hundreds of other posts from parents saying that with a loving approach it was great.

I weighed the pros and cons, and decided to try it for a week, starting when he was four months old and using the original Ferber method, not just locking Aidan in a room and letting him cry for as long as it took.  When I knew Aidan was tired, I would make sure his diaper was fresh, make sure his belly was full, and then rock and cuddle him until he was nearly asleep.

Then, I put him in his crib, tucked him in with his blanket, and closed the door.  He’d immediately start crying, so I went in after one minute and shushed and held his hands, then left the room again.  He’d start crying again, so I went in after two minutes.  Wash, rinse, repeat at increasing one minute intervals until he was asleep.

After about a week of this, he started putting himself to sleep, and self-soothing himself back to sleep during his daytime naps.  He stopped waking up every 15-30 minutes, and waking up from his naps happier and better rested.  The amount of time he spent crying before each nap decreased, to the point we’re at today, where he grumbles for about a minute before falling right to sleep.

I’m certain that crying it out isn’t best for every parent and baby, but I just thought I’d throw this out so that if you want to try it you won’t feel like your child will become a sociopath because of it.  I asked a bunch of moms, and of the ones who did it, none of their kids seemed to me to be less secure, less empathetic, or more aloof.

So there we go.  Let the tomato throwing commence.