The time I tried to do Cry It Out
This is something I have NEVER openly shared in my business, but I think it is time to.
Back when I was in the absolute depths of sleep deprivation with my 2nd son, I tried Cry It Out!
Let me provide some context to the situation – my son was a super settled newborn, I thought I had hit the parenting jackpot that he was such a dream, then UTI at 8 weeks including 3 days at hospital followed by the 4 month regression everything turned SOUTH! Like really SOUTH – hourly waking, catnapping, false starts, early rising. You name it he did it!
Pair that with parenting a toddler and my husband was working in Sydney (1.5hr commute each way) and travelled away every few weeks so I was mostly solo parenting and not getting a lot of sleep. Sufficed to say I was surviving not thriving!
I had decided to study to become a Sleep Consultant to help our sleep issues and was in the initial stages of my course and one of the reading texts was around CIO (If I had my time over, I would choose a different course to study but that’s a story for another day).
Reading the book, it seemed to make sense my sleep deprived brain and felt desperate for more sleep and if this was the fix maybe it was ok! I honestly felt at such a loss that I decided to give it a go (he was about 7/8 months by this stage) and the book basically talked about if all physical needs are taken care of there isn’t a reason the baby shouldn’t be able to sleep – but the big gap here is treating babies like humans who also have emotional needs! But in my desperation I couldn’t see that!
Anyway….. It was awful! As I lay in bed listening to my baby cry I just felt so lost – I felt like I couldn’t help him either way – my efforts to resettle seemed at a loss because he’d wake again soon after but then ignoring it felt so wrong too.
He did go back to sleep after basically crying himself back off, but then the pattern of waking was exactly the same as what it was when I would feed him or resettle. He struggled, I struggled, and I knew it just wasn’t right!
It was one night, and I went back to supporting the resettles because it hurt my heart to know he needed me and I chose not to go. I went down a path of a gentle approach and sleep improved – we had a rough trot with some bad sickness and he cut all 8 front teeth in the between 8-9 months but when that all subsided he was sleeping through the night and apart from some sickness and regressions it’s pretty much been that way since just before he was 1 – oh and he was properly walking at 11 months too.
In my time studying both sleep, gentle & conscious parenting and with my experience with clients I never recommend cry it out. If a baby has a physical or emotional need they need support and sometimes that need isn’t obvious from the outside.
What I know to be true after working with hundreds of clients is that we meet little peoples physical and emotional needs AND get good sleep foundations!! You don’t need to choose between crying it out or waiting it out.
If I can assure you of anything, I know how hard this feels right now because I have been there too!! I have felt so desperate, alone, frustrated, exhausted and I wish I knew then what I know now and one of the things I love most about my job is being the support for mums that I wish I had.
If you feel the same, please know don’t feel you have to walk it alone, I can support you through the journey of getting sleep.
If you need any help, please get it touch on Instagram or shoot me an email.
Happy sleeping,
Lauren x