Day 9: Crying It Out Big Girl Style

I hate the idea of crying it out. Sure, it SEEMS like a good plan, and Shawn is FINE with it, but as a mother it breaks my heart to listen to my daughter cry and not go help her. We had several bouts of crying it out when Madalyn got old enough to realize that there were things going on after she went to bed. It really hurt me to do it... and this only got worse when she started with the gagging herself and throwing up every night.

We had to take the crib rail down in her bed because our monkey daughter learned to crawl up the sides with her little feet. I caught her several times trying to escape (at 16 months! I didnt think we would face that until 2 at least!) I know she isnt old enough to really "get" staying in her bed, but I would rather deal with that then have her get a concussion from falling off the top of the crib.

So down came the rail, and now we have a huge dilemma. Madalyn wants to sleep with Mommy. Not as much Daddy, because supposedly she sleeps though the night when I am at work. So when Mommy is home she gets her 2 - 3 hours of sleep when we are up and about, then she has an internal alarm that goes off when we go to bed. No, we arent waking her up by being noisy, because we sneak into bed to keep from waking her up! She must sense us back there... who knows. Just as we will settle into bed we will here the pitter patter of little feet and then "mama? mama?" as she comes into the room.

I gave in the other night. I actually brought her back to bed and laid with her (yes I curled up in her crib size bed!) but she just wanted to play. For 2 hours! So VERY early Monday morning at 1 am I gave up and brought her into bed. She was asleep within 3 minutes! So LAST night the same thing happened, and I was dead set against her coming to bed with us. So we both tried to get her back to bed... with no luck. Everytime we would leave she would pop up her head and cry. So then... we just had to put the baby gate up. She of course came to the gate and cried and screamed... and we just had to let her cry it out.

It was awful... for about 15 minutes! Then she finally gave up, crawled into bed, pulled her Tinkerbell blankie around her, and went to sleep. She slept through the night until Shawn got up at 5 for work. (Yes 5! He has to work at 6:30!) He took the gate down, and she got up around 5:30 ish and same into the room. My rule (okay, my new rule) is that she is welcome after 5:30 AM because if she had her way that would be the daily wake up time. She slept with me in bed until 8 am when she woke up. I keep a baby book by the bed, so I can hand it to her in the morning and keep her busy. She "read" her A B C book for about half an hour.... (WOOO HOOOO SLEEPING IN!)

So we shall see how it goes... bed times are so difficult. I hate them. I wish we could go from playtime to asleep without all the drama in between. I feel like I am hurting her when I leave her at bedtime!