Day 48: Crying it out AKA the hardest hour of my life (excluding labour)

This may seem abrupt, since just yesterday I was saying I wouldn't do it, but I have decided to try crying it out, though I still feel somewhat conflicted about the decision.

I made the decision after a bit of an epiphany yesterday: Mari keeps herself up even when she's tired so she can interact with me, as long as I'm in the room. I was trying to get her down for a third nap and she kept yawning and closing her eyes but as soon as her eyelids met, she'd yank them open again and start trying to grope my face, stare at me, make noise and do everything she could think of to try to keep me playing with her. I spent nearly an hour trying to put her to sleep and despite her obvious fatigue she ended up skipping that nap entirely. She barely napped yesterday and was a mess overall. She woke up quite a lot in the middle of the night too.

Another realization is that when Mari wants to cry, she can cry for ages even in our arms. She cried for the best part of an hour yesterday morning in my arms, and for another half hour or so at night, in Jon's arms, until she actually threw up. So not only is she upset anyway, she's not learning to self-soothe, and her crying is particularly stressful to us, seeing as she's screaming in our ears. That's not helpful to anybody.

So I decided to start with her morning nap today. She woke up at 6:30, and I started her naptime routine around 7:45 (I'd meant to start 15 minutes sooner but Jon took the morning shift because I was so tired from the multiple night wakings). I fed her, pottied her and read her one of her shortest books, since she was starting to rub her eyes. Then I sang her usual lullaby and rocked her. But this time I set a 20-minute time limit for rocking/soothing. This is considerably longer than the "several minutes" recommended in Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, but Mari is a baby who has always had difficulty with transitions. I really hoped she'd fall asleep within those 20 minutes so I wouldn't have to employ CIO after all. But she kept waking herself up to fuss and try to get me to interact with her. She seemed unhappy in my arms, unhappy when I set her down and unhappy when I picked her back up.

The 20 minutes passed, it was 8:20, and time was up. I set her down and closed the door. I'd decided I'd leave her for up to an hour, as the book recommends. It was the hardest hour of my life excluding labour.

At first, she just talked to herself for a bit, and I hoped she'd manage to put herself to sleep quickly, since she was so obviously tired. But the talking quickly turned into fussing, which turned into crying. It was incredibly hard not to go pick her up.

Mari proved her persistence again. She was still crying at about 9:18 and I decided I'd just go to the bathroom before I went to pick her up. Then, while I was there, she was quiet for a few minutes. I hoped she'd finally fallen asleep, but then the sobbing started up again. So I went into her room. I found her on her belly, head down. She didn't even seem to notice me come in, she was so exhausted. She sobbed a little more, so I went over and gently stroked her hair and said "shh." I'm still not sure if she noticed my presence. Within two minutes, she was out cold. She slept for an hour and 45 minutes without my having to go in and put her back to sleep.

She didn't seem mad at me when she woke up or anything. For her afternoon nap, she went down with very little fussing, maybe because she finally wasn't overtired anymore. So maybe there's merit to this after all. But I don't know if I can take an hour like this again. I think for at least the next week I will employ this strategy only in the morning, and only if she doesn't fall asleep within 20 minutes of soothing. Maybe after a week I'll also use the same strategy for the afternoon nap and cut rocking/soothing time to 15 minutes. And a week after that I'll also use it for the late afternoon nap (if a third nap is necessary) and cut rocking/soothing time to 10 minutes, where it will stay. Hopefully she'll learn to put herself to sleep more quickly and with less crying.