Crying It Out

It seems I've taken about a 2 month break from blogging. How did time go so fast!! I'll talk a little more about that later, but for now-I hope to be a little more consistent-once a week blog at least.

Being in the 'mom world' now I hear a lot of things about how each mom and baby are doing. It's not surprising that one of the biggest things spoken about is sleep. If they're sleeping well, through the night, longer than 5 or 6 hours without waking, how tired mom is, etc. My little guy has had his ups and downs with sleep. He started sleeping through the night around 11 weeks (just in time for me to go back to work-good boy!). We've followed Baby Wise sleep training and it's worked wonders. He's of course had wakings when he was having a growth spurt and occasionally he will wake early-but this momma is one rested momma.

Before you jump to conclusions that I'm so lucky, or have such a great boy who sleeps well-I'll tell you that isn't the case. It's taken A LOT of work on our part. A lot of training was involved. We let him cry it out when necessary. He, like any other baby, wakes out of habit, cries if he wants to get out and play,  & cries because he wants to see mom. For me, I had to decide what reason for waking was acceptable. Sleep is important for him, and very important for me. If I'm going to be a rested, happy, not-frustrated mom I need my sleep. Good sleep for him is a cycle. If he sleeps well-he'll eat well-which will help him sleep well. He needs to learn good sleep habits now, which will help him for the rest of his life-at least until he's a teenager and will sleep 24 hours without stirring.

I find it interesting that most mom's-especially with a baby past 4 months-fit into 2 categories. CIO and WILL NOT CIO. I can usually bet which category they're in based on their first few words. I'm not saying CIO is always necessary or will work for every baby. I know for my baby the first 10 weeks it wasn't right for him. Any amount of crying just made him hysterical. However it got to the point where CIO was necessary and it helped him immensely. I wouldn't go back!

I see posts on forums like "I can't take it anymore, so tired" or "baby just won't sleep! I have to rock him all night". But they will not even consider sleep training, CIO, putting them in their crib, not feeding them at every peep, etc. To me that's saying something like "I want it fixed, but it needs to be magical with no uncomfortable work on my part."  They just do not seem like they're willing to do what it may take, to just try it out for a few weeks. I completely agree that I do not know these situations and truly believe that you must walk a mile in their shoes to understand-but I can't help but wonder, would CIO work? If they were willing to try it, and it worked-where would they stand then? It's fine if someone doesn't feel comfortable with sleep training, but it does get frustrating that they complain a lot about it, but aren't willing to try a few different things to fix it.

I don't want to be misunderstood-I feel for these women. I do know that waking 6 times a night is completely uncomfortable, and they don't like it one bit (neither did I!)! I'm sure they wouldn't choose this-however it just seems to me when you're not trying some very supported tactics-you're not trying as hard as you could.

There is also some good research on the subject, I'm not going to post it because I feel my rant has gone on long enough, but feel free to visit this link for information: http://www.mybabysleepguide.com/search/label/cry%20it%20out

I really don't mean to offend anyone. Every mom and baby is different. CIO is not for everyone, but I think it could be worth a shot.