Tough love @ 19 weeks

When Liam was roughly the age that Mallory is now, we started letting him cry it out. You don't really remember how bad it is to do it - just the happy outcome - that after a week or two, your kid is now falling asleep on his own and soothing himself back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of the night, and you and your spouse are high-fiving each other and saying, We should have done this months ago!

Then, you have your second child and repeat the process, and the pure crappiness of it all comes flooding back.

Actually, I'm being overly dramatic here. The process is going surprisingly well. I had intended to start this sometime after my exam ended; I didn't want to have to listen to hours of howling if I was trying to get some studying done - it seemed much easier to soothe Mallory to sleep and be done with it. It's not like I was waiting with bated breath for the exam to be over so we could do it - but on Friday night, I dropped her into the crib still awake just to see what would happen; and after a few minutes I just figured, well, there's no sense in turning back now - let's do it.

Friday night, she cried on and off for an hour. With Liam, we put him to bed, shut the door to his room, and that was that. With Mal, I pulled up a chair and spent the hour sitting beside her, rubbing her tummy, and promising her that all was well. (The main reason for doing this was to prevent her from flipping over onto her back and being unable to get rolled back over - which truly would have given her something to cry about.) Although there were times when she had to stop to catch her breath, for the most part she was just grumbling, not crying, and even snoozing for short stretches in between; and though the hour was more than long enough for me... it was not that bad overall.

On Saturday night, I pulled up my chair, dropped her into the crib, and started timing the hour I suspected it would take her to fall asleep. She gave me a grunt, rolled over, and fell asleep. Just like that.

Hmmm.

Last night, almost the same thing. I put her to bed, she grumbled for 4 or 5 minutes, and then she was quiet. (After the grumbling, Chad made a comment about how those 4 or 5 minutes seemed like an eternity, and I was like, Dude, you have no idea how good we have it right now!)

This afternoon, for the first time ever, I got her down for a nap in her crib instead of having to lie down with her on our bed for 1/2 hour first.

The victories just keep piling up, and I know that we are due for a setback soon (it wasn't until Liam's sixth night of CIO that he really went berserk), but for now I think the tide is turning... and although I still don't feel particularly well-rested right now... I think that day is coming again. There's light at the end of the tunnel.