A CIO Diary

Vickster - 8 Mar 16

So, crying it out – our last resort and final hope of grabbing this night time waking malarkey by the balls.

This is how it went:

Night One

Husband to Me: So I don’t really get it, what do we have to do?

Me to Hubby: When she wakes up, we let her cry

H: Oh

Me: You have to go in and give her a cuddle every few minutes. As in YOU have to do it. I can’t because she’ll expect to get fed

H: (Silence)

Me: Ok?

H: (Big sigh) Yeah whatever (rolls over and goes to sleep)

(Two hours later, baby is screaming)

Me: Wake up wake up, you’re on!

H: (mumbling as he throws back the covers. A minute later baby stops crying. Hubby re-enters the bedroom)

H: See! Easy when you know how (snuggles down and starts to snore. I count on my fingers: five, four, three, two, one. Baby’s screams resonate in surround sound via the monitor and her room)

H: (sitting bolt upright) Huh?

Me: No wait (as he struggles to get out of bed). We have to leave her for five minutes

(Both fluff pillows and sit rigidly for what feels like an hour. I check the timer on my phone)

Me: You can go in now

(Baby stops screaming. Hubby comes back to bed, ignores me. Five seconds later screaming starts again)

Me: Ten minutes this time

(Repeat above two steps for the next 2 hours. Hubby and I cease talking after 30mins. Baby finally quietens)

H: (yanking covers off me) I’m not doing this again

Me: (pulling covers back and jabbing him with my knee). Fine, you were crap. I’ll do it tomorrow, reckon it’ll take me half the time

(fade to black)

Night two – exactly the same except hubby pretends to sleep as I go in

Night three – she sleeps through

Yup that’s right, you read it correctly. Three nights in and she slept through. Yesssss, we’d cracked it!! After just three nights, which is what I’d heard it took but I couldn’t quite believe it had actually happened for us. Amazing, how could anyone dis Crying It Out when it was so clearly the solution to any sleeping woes?

Hold the party poppers though, this post was titled deliberately. All it took was an innocent pre settling-in nursery playdate and by night four she was up again, numerous times, full of fever and chocked with cold (DO NOT get me started on virgin nursery germs).

So that’s where we’ve been since Friday. Bizarrely the last two nights she’s only woken up once and it’s taken just a quick feed (between coughs) before she’s gone back down again and I can cope with that. It’s also brought on a bit of an epiphany.

After I’d fed her last night she fell asleep on my chest. Poorly, exhausted and needing her bed but at the same time happy, warm and super comfortable with me, it hit me that I’m not going to have this for much longer. Those brief snatched pitch black cuddles when your baby is yours and only yours and you can smell rather than see them and they just feel like home. I think I’d lost sight of all that (understandably in my sleep deprived delirium).

So when she’s over this cold and her appetite is back and she actually manages to make it through a day at nursery, we’ll see where we land. It’s good to know we have CIO as a proven back up (if only to give us one decent nights sleep) but it would be nice to not need it again. In the meantime I’m going to revel in being the one she needs and the one she wants at night and making the most of those midnight cuddles. Right now, in my post mother’s day gooey haze, I feel very blessed to have them.   

Vickster

Bemused mum of two with no idea how I get from one day to the next. A writer (until mat leave ends), a wife and a very lucky girl.

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