Why I will never ever ever do cry it out.
Tonight something magical happened, but before I get to it, a little history. Almost every night (sometimes multiple times a night) for the past 11 months I have put my son to sleep by rocking/bouncing/holding him.
My strategy for getting him to go to sleep is pretty much this:
- Turn on the spinny musical projector thing (not that he likes it, he used to, but now it’s more just a signal that it’s sleepy time. He actually gets upset when I turn it on, because he knows what it means and he doesn’t want to go to sleep)
- Hold him (I always start with him facing me with his head on my chest, sometimes he will fall asleep that way immediately, usually he will just squirm into some other random position and get comfy. This can include facing away from me. I try to be very cooperative and guess what he wants. The quicker he gets comfy, the quicker he goes to sleep)
- Move (usually I do half-squats semi-rapidly in time with the music. By the end my legs are BURNING. Usually about the time I can take no more he is asleep and I can switch to a sway/gentle-bounce combo)
This whole process takes about 5 minutes. Once he is out, I let “rock-a-bye baby” play three times through and I’m done. I take him to the living room and give him to his mommy to sleep while I get ready for bed, or I go sit in my recliner and rock while I read a book and relax (this used to be a very important step. If I didn’t do this for at least 30 minutes, as soon as I tried to lay him down on the bed he would wake up screaming).
Yes, this sounds insanely easy and almost pleasant. It didn’t always work out so well. I perused numerous “sleep” books (several of which are on my bookshelf) looking for “a better way”. What was I looking for? Well, if I think about it logically, I was looking for an “out”. I was looking for something that would make me feel ok about leaving my child to scream himself to sleep. I knew that the best way for my child to go to sleep was in my arms. What I also knew was that I was tired and bored. I spent a lot of time thinking about the fact that I could be doing “something else” and that I was tired and would too like to go to sleep. I was very frustrated and sometimes angry. Sometimes enough so that I would have to hand him to Julie while I went and calmed down.
I wanted to just be able to take him to his room, lay him in his crib and have him magically close his eyes and go to sleep for the night. Then I could go to my room and do whatever I wanted. Basically, when it comes down to it, I didn’t want to have a baby.
I mean, sure, I “wanted a baby”, right? I mean, “having a baby” is fun, right? Babies are cute and do cute things and make you smile. Except when it’s two in the morning and they are screaming for no discernible reason and you want to be asleep but instead you’re bouncing him and going “shhhh shhh shhhhh” and feel like crying yourself. That’s when you find out what you’re made of.
Just like I’d love to walk out back and pick money off of my money tree, and slice a piece of fat free, calorie free, guilt-free bacon off of my talking-flying pig, I wanted to just walk the baby into the nursery with no real prep-time whatsoever, plop him down on his mattress and watch his little eyes magically slide shut with ner but a lullaby.
Sorry Charlie, doesn’t work that way.
Once I realized that I was starting to resent Zeke for “impeding on my freedom/time/happiness/whatever” I really started thinking things over. Why was I getting mad at him? Is this really his fault? Why is he crying? Why can’t he sleep? Can he do anything wrong? What am I doing wrong?
What I realized is that I was “fighting it”. I hadn’t truly embraced being a father. Sad but true. You’d think that with God giving me NINE MONTHS to prepare, I’d have really committed to it. You’d think that 5 months into actually having him in the world I’d be caught hook-line-and-sinker. Nope, I was still balking. When’s he going to go to sleep on his own? Why do I have to do this? Why can’t he just sleep and stay asleep? Wah wah wah. I need I need I need, I want I want I want. Who’s the baby here anyways???
He is a little human being that I created. God gave him to me to raise. He is my most important priority and job and responsibility in the whole world. He is God’s and does not belong to me. Would I give him to someone else? No. Why? Because I love him. And yet God loves him a gagillion times more than I do and HE gave him to me. I’d better not screw this up. Of all the bad things I could do, that would be the absolute worst. It’s time to encase my feet in concrete and throw myself into the deep-end of this ocean called “Fatherhood”.
Suddenly all the anger, resentment, and whiny-ness melted away. I realized there was NOTHING more important I could be doing than rocking my son to sleep at night. No matter how much time it took. No matter how much sleep I lost. No matter how tired I was. That was my job. So I did it, and I became happy. I learned some tricks too. I got GOOD at it.
What I discovered was this:
- Babies need a schedule (step 1. Read a book, step 2. take a bath, step 3. go to bed).
- This schedule in no way revolves around the made up construct we call “a clock”. It’s possible that at 9pm sharp, little Timmy will get tired and be easily put to bed each night for a month, but that’s just sheer crazy dumb luck. Depending on naps, level of activity, feedings, visitors, trips, etc. it’s more likely that sometime between 7pm and 1am little Timmy will finally be primed for sleeping. What matters is the order in which you do things leading up to (signalling) impending long-term night-time sleep. Maybe ~around~ 9pm you can get him to sleep, but he’s not an alarm clock that can really be “set”.
- Everything will change. He used to like his projector; now, not so much. He used to like laying cradled in my arms while I patted his back, now he screams if I put him that way, except for tonight when he didn’t… Roll with the punches.
- It won’t last forever. Enjoy it while you can. Every now and then something amazing will happen
Which brings me to tonight. Two amazing things happened tonight.
First I put him facing me with his head on my chest as usual. He starts fussing (he was really really tired. I waited too long to start trying to put him to sleep) and ends up With his head thrown back and his hands up in the air (he’s trying to escape). I counter attack by doing some squats while turning my entire body (up-left/down-middle/up-right). This immediately begins to soothe him but he stays in that position with my hand behind his head to hold it up. He then starts blowing raspberries at me while he is falling asleep. The sleepier he gets the funnier sounding they get until I’m choking back outright laughter trying not to wake him up. From the other room it sounds like sobs and my wife comes rushing in to see what’s wrong (which of course wakes him up). Mister Buddy: 1, Daddy: 0.
Next he settled with his feet in my left hand, and his head nuzzled into my shoulder with his face turned up towards me. I thought he was asleep. I leaned down and gave him a little kiss on his cheek. He smiled a big toothy grin. It was adorable. I kissed him again. This time he giggled. I kissed him again, now he laughed. His eyes still shut he reaches up and places his little hand on my chin/cheek as if to say, “Daddy, you’re so silly. I love you.” before he fell asleep completely.
Those two little things made me think back down the path that led me here. All the hard work and wondering if I was doing the right thing, and being the only one I know not letting my baby scream himself to sleep. Now here I am with a wonderful bonding experience with my son, him laughing himself to sleep (in under 10 minutes almost every night). I wouldn’t trade it for any other way. It’s harder, but most of the right things in life are.
One last note on cry-it-out (and co-sleeping/breast-feeding in general actually). My new argument against cry-it-out is “look at what a wonderful bonding opportunity you are missing”. One of my old arguments (which I still think is true) against it is, 10,000 years ago, when my great-great-etc-grandpa was living in a cave/ditch/hut/tree/whatever with wild predators lurking about. Would he EVER have just put his son/daughter down on the ground to scream themselves to sleep? NO WAY. The baby would have gotten eaten or something. That dude CLUNG to his baby through the whole night to make sure nothing bad happened. That’s how we were made. Babies were meant to sleep in their parents arms, or at least directly next to their parents. If not, breasts would be detachable, and kids would come with ninja-skills and wolverine claws. Seriously, rocking to sleep and co-sleeping are the absolute most-natural way there is. They just make sense.
