Cry it out

Oh boy, was last night a toughie. Since we got back from Florida, where Alia slept like a dream for 12 straight hours almost every night, she's been getting up every night with the exception of one...a step backwards.

I've talked to a lot of people about this, and all of them, including my pediatrician, my obstetrician, and friends with multiple kids come back with the same three words: Cry It Out.

Well, being a big fat softie, I can hardly fathom this. My pediatrician asked if we're still feeding her in the night...guilty as charged. Usually Alia was sleeping through the 11PM feeding and waking up sometime around 1AM or 2AM, and I justified in my mind that it had been 7 hours since she ate last, so of course she's starving, right?

Well, actually since her Florida sleep-a-thon, she's proven that she no longer needs to eat throughout the night. But still...when we returned from Florida, she got her 4 month vaccinations and ran a mild fever for several days, so I felt that it wasn't fair to withhold her bottle at night while she was already sick. And then after the fever, well, she started teething! And God knows the little girl was in pain, and the bottle did seem to calm her and allow her to get back to sleep. Yeah, you get my point. From the outside looking in, I can see that there's always going to be a reason.

So last night, when Alia cried for her bottle at 11PM, I decided I'd change her diaper and put her back down. And at most, I'd give her some water, which is what my pediatrician suggested as a way to bridge the gap between getting a full bottle and nothing at all. So after 15 minutes of crying, I went in, changed her, and put her back down. She cried.

Another 15 minutes passed of her crying and I picked her up and rocked her and patted her and then put her back down. She cried. For fifteen more minutes, I lied on the floor in her room out of her site and listened to her cry. Then I got the water and gave it to her while she lied in the crib...I wanted minimal disruption. She finished the water and was quiet. Exhale.

I headed back to bed. Then right as I went to sleep, the crying began. At this point I woke Ajay up to ask him if I was doing the right thing, and he reinforced that I had to at least give it a shot, because we hadn't been moving forward on our own. So finally, around 1AM, all was quiet.

Until 3:30AM... when I heard the whimpers again on the monitor. At this point, I was weakened and tired, and thought to myself that if I gave her the bottle, she'd be back to sleep in 10 minutes and then we could all sleep...but the other side of me prevailed and I recommitted to sticking with this for at least tonight. And the whimpers stopped with no intervention.

This morning, I heard Alia's happy little grunting noises around 6AM, which is a totally reasonable time for getting up...much better than the 5AM wake ups of the entire last week.

Did it work? I don't know...we'll see what happens tonight.