Oh No, Say It Ain’t So! You Did Not CIO!?!

It’s true. I did the unthinkable. I let my child cry it out.

And here is the thing. It was the best thing I’ve ever done for my family. And I’m not even going to pretend it wasn’t.

As you and EVERYONE on Twitter know, Everly’s sleeping was a DISASTER! We were averaging 6 wake ups per night, about 1-1.5 hours between between. We were averaging 2 hours to get her to sleep. We were averaging 3 marital fights per day related to the sleep situation (and deprivation we were both facing). We were averaging 5 mommy meltdowns per week, complete with tears, hysterics and self doubt.

We were on the fast track to a very unhappy family life. The not sleeping was making me do things I never thought I would do. It was making me forget how to function like a normal human being, and it was creating 12 kinds of anxiety in me that I didn’t know existed. I couldn’t listen to reason, I couldn’t accept help, and even when provided the opportunity, I couldn’t sleep. I was sick with anxiety, and caffeine dependence, and with the feeling of failure. Everly looked like an addict, she was not functioning well. My husband started to dread coming home from work. He and I weren’t talking. He’d come home, I’d pass her off, I’d make dinner, we’d eat in silence, trying to entertain her while she cried from exhaustion. Then he’d disappear to put her to bed for 2 hours while I tended to all the house stuff I could not get done any other time. Then, after the 3rd or 4th wake up of the night, he’d go sleep on the couch so he could work the next day, and Everly and I would lie in the bed. What a great way to maintain a marriage already strained by the sheer fact that we produced a human, let alone a not sleeping one.

Beyond the not sleeping at night? Everly was not sleeping during the day. Sure she’d catch a 20 minute snooze while nursing here and there, or pass out in the car on our daily errands. She’d sleep in the stroller for 30 minute increments, after being walked for close to an hour, or pass out on my chest from sheer exhaustion. But napping, that was not happening.

For 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, my husband and I were living and breathing baby sleep. I would sit up at night, while she did sleep and dread going to bed. My heart would race, and I would watch the minutes tick by on the clock. I knew that the moment I got into a deep sleep, Everly would wake up. I dreaded the nights. I dreaded bed time. I just wanted to stay awake all the time because it was better than being woken up. There was no reprieved, there was no break for me, there was nothing but tending to my over tired baby all day long. ALL. THE. TIME. ALWAYS.

I think for awhile there, I was literally crazy. I had no idea sleep deprivation could be like that. I was getting no breaks in the day because I was walking or driving her to sleep, or laying down with a bewb in her mouth so she’d nap. And I was losing my mind. I love that little girl, but I was seriously questioning my ability to continue being her mother. Seriously people, I was crazy. I cried, a lot. Daily is an understatement. I said things I seriously regret, I thought things about myself and my baby that no one should ever have to. And I strongly considered, on many occasions, sneaking out the back door when the hubs came home from work, and never looking back. And I know I’m going to hear a lot about how this is PPD. But it isn’t. It was sleep deprivation.

We knew we had to do something. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was not the way I was meant to live. The isn’t what a family looked like. I could not be this terrible of a mother, could I?

I read 6 books, 57 websites and asked every person I ever saw about their approach to sleep, and I tried to formulate a plan. We tried about 12 different techniques, bought 15 different kinds of ‘sleep aid’, whether it play music or smell like me, I was willing to try it. Nothing was working. People kept telling me that she needed to just cry. I kept telling them she was just a baby, and that that was not fair. I kept telling them I couldn’t do that to my darling. My little darling who was torturing me.

The books weren’t helping. 164 pages about routines, early bedtimes and other bullshit. Mostly they tell you how your kid SHOULD be sleeping, without ever fucking telling you how to get them there in the first place. Hint: If I could get my kid to do those things, I wouldn’t need your piece of shit book! The books tell you they need to learn how to soothe themselves, without crying and without you helping. Those ideas are incongruent. I get that some children can figure this out on their own, they must. And that’s who those books are written for – people who need confirmation that what they are doing is working. However, this was not working for Everly. No matter what we’d try, she wouldn’t go to sleep, or stay asleep.

I bought a book that talked about Sleep Training. Gentle Cry It Out techniques designed predominantly to help lessen your guilt over letting your kid scream in the other room while you sit down to a full bottle glass of Merlot and a pot of macaroni and cheese. And I started to realize I was going to have to just get drastic if I, if WE were going to survive.

And guess what? We did it and it WORKED! We moved her out of our room on a Friday night. We did her bedtime routine, we turned on the newly purchased white noise machine (as an aside, non sleeping babies are fucking EXPENSIVE), and we set ourselves up for a long and torturous night of letting our baby cry herself to near death, passing out only from the exhaustion, and of course the fact she knows we abandoned her. (I’ll get back to this point in a bit here).

Night one, it took her 7 minutes to fall asleep. 7 FUCKING MINUTES of whining and rolling about, until she got on her tummy and promptly passed out. 7 MINUTES people. By my calculations, that is at LEAST 1 hour and 53 minutes less than usual. Shit, I cannot fall asleep in 7 minutes. Throughout the first night, she woke only 2 times. I had told myself I would leave her 10 minutes, and if she didn’t go back to sleep I would go nurse her. The first time? It was 3 minutes and the second? Less than 2.

Angels started to motherfucking sing. Light shone down from above. My husband and I had a bottle of wine, and a CONVERSATION that had nothing to do with sleep. I laid down, alone in my room, and I WENT TO SLEEP.

The second night was by far the worst we’ve had. It took her 20 minutes to get to sleep, and she woke up every hour. My confidence was shaken, and I was IMMEDIATELY back to the anxious pile of disaster I had been. I cried. No, that’s a lie. I didn’t cry, I had a full on meltdown to the point where my husband put me in the shower. What a waste of time.

But we persevered, and on the 3rd night? She went down WITHOUT TEARS AT ALL.

Cue the motherfucking angels.

Since then, we’ve had mostly easy nights, with the odd night where she will cry a few minutes before settling. Often, if there is company over, she’ll protest, but then, what kid doesn’t? I adopted the same strategy for napping, and within 2 days, she was going down for 2 naps a day, over an hour each.

Wait, what? Everly? Sleeping?

Yes, the kid was SLEEPING. I was sleeping. And the hubs was collecting his pile of sobbing wife bits off the floor on a much less frequent basis.

Now? She’s asleep by 8:30pm, up at 8:00am (give or take) and having a nap at 11:00am and 3:00pm. Can you believe it? The naps are still hit or miss sometimes, but they aren’t usually tearful, just, well avoided completely by her. If she isn’t going to go to sleep, she isn’t. I’m not cruel, but I do give her the chance.

So many things have changed since she started to sleep. I can breathe. I can do laundry and clean the kitchen. I can make dinner. I can make baby food. I can have moments to myself. I don’t feel like such a failure at life anymore. I am happier in general. And I am a 500% better mother to my daughter. And she is thriving. Her development has sky rocketed since she started to sleep. She NEEDED to sleep to grow, and she was being stunted by her inability to figure that out.

I could and probably will write another whole post about how things have changed since then, but for now, I want to move on.

So let’s for a minute drop some of the BULLSHIT that goes on about letting your baby cry. Because let me tell you, now that we’ve done it, and now that I can reason again, I have a few not so nice things to say to some people out there.

Do you know what is worse than a baby crying? A baby who has a mother who hates herself because she’s so fucking sleep deprived she can no longer reason. I loathed myself. If I could have left myself in an ally somewhere, I so would have. I was a wreck. I was weeping and crying all day. I looked like shit, I felt fucking worse, and I hated being the person I had become. I was embarrassed. I was withdrawing from the people I know and love, because I did not want them to know how bad I was at being a mother. I was cancelling plans because I was afraid to drive. I wasn’t able to communicate with Everly effectively. I was just going through the motions, counting the moments until my hubs got home, and seriously questioning why I ever thought I was capable of motherhood. And that, that is worse than her crying.

Also, she does not seem to appear to be emotionally scarred by the experience. AT. ALL. Sure, she cries, she sucks her fingers and it breaks my heart EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. But you know what keeps me going? When I go in to get her in the morning, she is wide eyed, bright smiled and happy to see me. And she’s happy ALL DAY long. And she’s learning and developing, because she is sleeping. So am I willing to give up a little bit of her comfort at night, in order to help her excel at life in general. It’s only fair. And I am not cruel and selfish about sleep, it breaks my heart to hear her little cry but, it broke my heart worse to resent her so much.

Not letting her cry it out was selfish on my part. Too many fucking people told me how evil it was. How my child wouldn’t learn to sleep, but would just give up and assume no one loved her. I was told that expecting a baby to sleep was too much, that she was a little person and that I had to just let her figure this out no matter what it took, or how long. But she wasn’t figuring it out. I mean, I guess I was supposed to give her a few years, but I never would have made it that long without a trip to the nut house. People told me that letting her cry was the same as abusing her, and that she would have attachment issues if I didn’t soother her to sleep.

You know what causes attachment issues fuckers? A mother who hates herself, hates her husband and resent her child. Not a child who sheds some tears to learn a new skill.

One thing I will say, is that I had to hit rock bottom before this was a viable option for us. I exercised every last suggestion I got, before I resigned to crying. My inbox, my Twitter feed, my voice mail was full of suggestions, and I gave each and every last one of them a good college try. I continued to deny that crying it out was a possibility for my baby. I refused to let it happen. I would not fail as a mother, I would not let my child cry. I WOULD NOT DO IT.

And then? I got so mad, so resentful, so full of hate and anger at myself and at the world, that I had no choice. It was that anger that helped me through the tears. I listened to her cry, I watched her on the baby monitor to ensure she was not hurt, and I thought to myself “how does it feel to be this overwhelmed baby?”. Because I had lost that much of myself, that I almost didn’t care that she was upset. And that sounds horrible, and I probably shouldn’t admit that, but part of me was so angry and resentful, I didn’t even know if I cared anymore. And guess what? That’s another reason why letting her cry was the best thing I ever could have done. Because only an awful, evil, spit filled horrible person looks at their baby crying, and allows part of herself to think “you deserve it”. And that is by far the lowest I’ve sunk on the mommyhood spectrum.

We tried a lot of things. And Everly was 6 months old before we got to this point. And it had to be done. We started trying to let her cry when we were in the room, but that only upset her more. So we just cold turkey did it, and she jumped right on board.

The bottom line is that she needed help. I’m smart enough to know that not one moment of her sleep issues were caused by her consciously trying to make me insane. No, that was just a byproduct. She just had no idea what she was supposed to do, or how to do it, and as her mother, I needed to teach her.

I suppose I’m going to hear how I should have let her sleep in my bed until she was 7, to avoid letting her cry, or some other crunchy bullshit. And you’re entitled to your opinion. You’re fucking wrong, but you’re entitled to it. At the end of the day, allowing her to cry it out has done nothing negative to her personality or demeanor. It has had an overwhelmingly positive effect on our lives together, and my only regret is that I wish I had let myself believe it might work sooner. And I wish I could let go of the guilt I still hold about it.

So to all you struggling mothers out there, who have been told how cruel cry it out is, and have so much guilt around the idea that you won’t consider it, don’t. It certainly isn’t for everyone, and I am in no way advocating letting your child scream hysterically while she vomits and hyperventilates, just so you can catch some Z’s. What I am saying is that it’s not as bad as you think, and when and if you’re ready to consider it, know that you’re a good parent for helping your child learn to sleep. I didn’t love it, I still don’t like when it takes her a few moments to settle down, but I love that I can see the light and love my child again.

It worked for us. It might not work for you. It might not work for another baby (if we ever have one). But it worked for us now and I honestly believe if we hadn’t done it? I’d be divorced and Everly would be living with my husband. And I would be somewhere, a shell of my former self, living a life of regrets and hate.

So to all you anti-CIO advocates, take that.

Tagged as: CIO, Mommy Crazy, Mommy Guilt, Mommy Rant, Sleepless Infant