Cry It Out

Now, I know I was on here before letting you all know about the pains and horrors of the Cry It Out Method. The thing is, we hit rock bottom this past week. Maeve had gotten to the point that she only wanted to sleep with Mommy and if we were going to try anything else, she was going to scream until we gave in. At one in the morning, it is VERY easy to give in. I wasn't sleeping more than three hours a night and neither was Kenyon. So Kenyon and I had had enough. We came up with a plan. Here it was:

7:00- Bedtime routine which includes, bath, changing, lotion/massage, read a book, play music, nurse, wake up (because she falls asleep while nursing), and place in bed.
Ten minutes later- check in on her, pat her, wipe her tears and walk out 30 seconds later.
20 minutes later- same thing
30 minutes later- repeat.
Continue this for every 30 minutes for as long as she screamed.

We were sticking with our plan no matter what! So as a team, we began. And everything went as planned. She started screaming the second I put her down. I walked out of the room praying that this would work. I went downstairs where Kenyon watched the clock and we did our budget. Ten minutes later (with her still screaming bloody murder) Kenyon went up and did exactly as I said. He left her screaming even more. My heart was breaking. Twenty minutes later, I began to cry. It was awful hearing her scream and hiccup and sob. Now Kenyon had TWO crying babies! But he was good. He went up and repeated. He came back down telling me she was fading. I was like, what? She is???? So we watched her as she stopped crying and just laid there. She was quiet but hiccuping. That is when we realized she had fallen asleep. 36 minutes but she was ASLEEP!

She did wake up again twice during the night but we did not go in this time. She only fussed for about 3-4 minutes each time. But she soothed herself back to sleep with her lovey (a doll with a blanket attached). At 3, she woke up again and I decided to feed her since it had been 8 hours (and I was so full of milk I was going to explode). She ate and zonked right back out. She woke up at 6 am. I couldn't believe that it worked. Now, I know we have a long way to go and this is only day one. But to have 8 hours of sleep was AMAZING. It gives me hope that it CAN be done and it is what she needed. She is sleeping right now in her crib for her nap. She went down in the same way but this time it only took her 3 minutes to soothe herself to sleep. THREE MINUTES! I think this *might* be the beginning of a beautiful sleep relationship!