Sleep Training Part III – A Momentary Lapse of Reason

I’ve been talking about how I’m not really into sleep training, and I think it’s more important to be responsive to your baby than to establish a strict routine or let baby cry it out. And in my last post, I mentioned that I’m confident that Little M will eventually sleep through the night without having to resort to crying it out.

And I am.

But it’s easy to doubt myself, which is what I did the other night.


After listening to his pediatrician at his six-month well visit, a little bug got into my brain. What if he really did need to be sleep trained? What if it would only take one night? That week (and every week is different), Little M was not going down to sleep well at night. He would wake up every 30 minutes if I wasn’t in bed with him. But I needed to get stuff done. We were going away at the end of the week, and I had work and packing to do. And since he doesn’t nap well during the day, my evenings are usually my only time to get things done.

So after his third wakeup the other night, I was pissed. I really needed to get stuff done. I should have put him in the wrap and continued what I was doing, but I didn’t. I was exhausted. And pissed. I don’t know why the sleep issue pisses me off so much sometimes. I cracked. I decided to let him cry, just to see what happened, and also because I had some work to finish by a certain deadline. And I couldn’t take his squirming in my arms and pushing against my belly and raking my chest with his fingernails. I was irritated.

He cried. And screamed.

And then he would periodically stop. I would breathe a sigh of relief, thinking he was asleep. And then—boom—five or ten minutes later he would start again.

When he finally was silent, I crept in the room to check on him, thinking he would be sound asleep.

He wasn’t. He was on his hands and knees, looking forlornly at the wall. Usually, when he sees me, he gets this excited panting and his arms and legs reach for me. But when he saw me, he didn’t move. When I pick him up, he usually leans his head on my chest or shoulder and snuggles into my neck. I picked him up. He sat like a sack of potatoes staring off into space.

He was detached.

My heart sank. What had I done?

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating over and over. I felt like dirt. Like the dirtiest, filthiest, terriblest mommy dirt. It was awful.

This is what became solidified in my brain that day:

#1: Responding to your baby’s cries keeps baby attached to you.

It makes baby excited to see you and helps baby trust that his needs will be met. Sometimes, the best parts of my days are when Little M sees me, his face lights up, and he crawls madly to come and get me. If I were to lose that—if he were to stop caring whether I was there or not—I would be crushed. Not to mention what it would mean for his sense of trust in his mom (and the world).

#2: I don’t want to cosleep forever.

It would be ideal if Little M could sleep by himself by the time he’s one year old. I would like to sleep in my own bed again. So I don’t want Little M to be afraid of sleep or of his crib. I want him to feel safe. If he wakes up and is scared, I want him to know that I will be there as soon as he calls for me. I don’t want him to fear the crib every time I set him down because I let him cry in there too often, sad and afraid.

#3: Maybe I’m in the minority, but from my experience, it doesn’t seem that babies establish much consistency with anything, much less sleep, before they are 12 months old.

I keep a relatively consistent bedtime routine that involves nursing, rocking, and singing, always in the same room, but sometimes Little M doesn’t fall asleep with nursing so we need to do something else. Things change. There was one glorious night when he was maybe three months old that I set him down, patted his back, and he went right to sleep.

If I had done that three nights in a row, would he have been “sleep trained?” You can bet I tried. But the next night, he needed to be nursed to sleep. And the next night it was rocking that sent him off into dreamland.

**And I just added this to say that when I just put Little M to bed, I nursed and rocked him and laid him in the crib asleep. He woke up within 15 minutes, crying. All it took to get him back to sleep was a quick pat on the back. Patterns change. Sleep does get better over time. Why do we have to push it to happen in the first few months of life?

So if everything changes every day anyway, how can ANY one thing work? One argument against using the cry it out method is that babies are not learning to self-soothe; they are just being conditioned not to cry when the need something. If no one responds anyway, why should they waste their breath? The fact that the cry it out method can work after just three nights seems like proof for that argument. Because normally, a baby will change his or her pattern every few days, weeks, or even every single day, even if that baby’s parents retains the utmost consistency with the bedtime routine.

If consistent responsive parenting, soothing hands, and loving arms still don’t help baby go to sleep alone every night, does it seem normal that baby will go to sleep with no fuss consistently after crying it out? It just seems to me that that’s not normal. Babies’ patterns change. They should change. Babies are continually going through developmental milestones, cutting teeth, getting sick, going on vacation… or they just have good days and bad days. It would seem strange to me if my six month old was consistent with sleep night after night.

Maybe it’s just me. Most of my friends—who cosleep, nurse their babies to sleep, and soothe them when they wake in the middle of the night—had kids who didn’t sleep through the night until they were at least one and a half years old. But the magazines and pediatricians—and lots of websites—make it seem like that’s not normal. When your baby wakes up a few times a night after the “magical” four-month deadline (when they are supposed to be able to physiologically be able to sleep through the night), you start questioning your parenting skills.

Stay tuned for the final post in the Sleep series on Monday! This post dissects the studies to determine if multiple night wakings and soothing baby back to sleep really are detrimental. 

Read the other posts in the Sleep series:  
Sleep Training Part I - What's the Problem?
Sleep Training Part II - Then and Now 
Sleep Training Part III - A Momentary Lapse of Reason 
Sleep Training Part IV - The Data behind the Philosophy