On infant sleep training: crying foul

Olive was sleeping 10 hours straight by nine weeks old. I remember this because that was when I finished up with maternity leave and went back to work. When I shared this good news with a co-worker—a seasoned mother with several grown children—she laughed and said “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

I was sure the co-worker must be wrong—maybe other babies can’t sleep through the night, but I obviously got a good one who caught on to the whole sleep thing right away.

Ha ha ha.

As you experienced mothers know, my co-worker was right. Olive was only three months old when she caught her first cold and began waking at night. Add on several more colds, teething, traveling and growth spurts, and you’re looking at a baby—and a mom—who has spent the majority of year one waking up at night.

I was hesitant to admit this to anyone at first because it seemed so abnormal. I never heard other mothers complaining about how their babies didn’t sleep; on the contrary, I heard many bragging about what good sleepers they had. One friend of mine told me she had to check on her little girl after 13 hours of sleeping to make sure baby was still alive.

I was also hesitant to admit my child had trouble sleeping all night because I feared I would get the cry-it-out method shoved down my throat. Yes, I know (you think) that babies should be sleeping by this age and yes, I know (you think) babies won’t even remember crying themselves to sleep and I know (you think) it hurts the mother more than the baby, but still—it wasn’t something I wanted to do.

(Note: My definition of crying it out is hard crying for more than 15 minutes. Olive often cries when I put her in her crib, but it is more of a whiney cry that lasts just a few minutes--and I'm okay with that.)

Yet I really did want my baby—and, okay, let’s be honest, I wanted me—to sleep through the night. And after many nights of interrupted sleep, I began to wonder if the CIO moms were right. Maybe a few nights of torture would solve all our sleep problems.

So when Olive was only a few months old, I decided it was time to let her cry it out. After nearly an hour of listening to the desperate cries coming from that little baby’s mouth, I picked up my sweaty, crying baby and offered her my breast. She nursed ferociously, seeking to satiate her hunger and her trauma. I vowed never to let her cry it out again.

I went back to waking, nursing, rocking and soothing, sometimes several times a night. Though at times it got to be exhausting, I was actually surprised at how well my body and mind handled the lack of sleep. But it eventually caught up to me—and in my desperate, sleep-deprived state, I resorted, once again, to letting then-nine-month-old Olive cry it out. 

She cried for about 35 minutes that first night and just a few minutes the next night. And then—just like everyone promised—she slept through the night!

That lasted a few nights before she started waking up again.

Is this how it worked? Do you have to repeat CIO over and over and over again? Surely there was a more effective—and humane—way to help Olive stay asleep.

In Olive’s early months, I was really consistent with the Baby Whisperer’s method of feeding Olive after she woke up, engaging in an activity and then letting her sleep. But somewhere along the foggy, sleepless road, I reverted to nursing Olive to sleep, creating what I knew was a sleep prop. I determined that my first step to better sleep was breaking this “suck-to-sleep” habit.

About a month ago, I began making sure Olive was awake when I put her in her crib. At first, she fussed when I put her in there and would roll all over the place, cry to be held and stick her limbs through the crib bars. I patted her, rubbed her back, sang to her and occasionally held her in the dark to get her to calm down. Sometimes it took nearly an hour of this to get Olive to finally close her eyes, but we’ve got it down to about 10 minutes now.

I also remembered the name of the book my crunchy co-worker (we’re talking home-birth-nursing-‘til-age-four-eating-her-placenta crunchy) said she used to sleep train her children: The No-Cry Sleep Solution. I ordered it on Amazon and promptly dug in.

First good sign: foreward by Dr. William Sears. As I read on, author Elizabeth Pantley immediately resounded with me. She discussed how there are two basic schools of thought when it comes to babies and sleep: “cry it out” or “live with it.” She, like me, didn’t want either of those options and resolved to find a kinder, gentler way, “a road somewhere between nighttime neglect and daytime exhaustion that would be nurturing for my baby and for me.”

The book didn’t offer any revolutionary ideas, but combined common-sense solutions with tracking of sleep patterns. The best advice I’ve acted on in the book is creating and sticking to an exact bedtime routine that involves dim lights, quiet activities and soft sounds at least a half-hour before bedtime; continuing with my efforts to put Olive in her crib awake; giving Olive daylight playtime in her crib to create a positive association; using key words as a sleep cue and introducing a "lovey." Perhaps most importantly, I’m having my husband take over most night wakings, where he tries to coax her back to sleep instead of having me nurse her.

The results? We’ve only been at it a couple of weeks, but are making progress. Olive was waking up around 2 a.m. each morning for a snack, but those wakings have now been pushed to 4 or 5 a.m., with a few nights of no waking at all. Her overall length of sleep has expanded as well, from about 10.5 hours to 11.5 hours. And that hour does make a big difference! Additionally, Olive is napping about 30 minutes longer during her daytime nap.

I feel optimistic that Olive will soon be sleeping through the whole night consistently and am so glad I didn’t have to resort to repeated CIO. I feel that I am giving her positive, long-term tools to help her have a restful night’s sleep.

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