For about a month, Paul had been waking up intermittently all night long. He wanted to nurse, he wanted the pleasure of my company, he wanted install himself onto Daddy's side of the bed and for Daddy to bug off. (Hence his new nickname, Oedipus) To solve this new problem, Alex and I did what countless parents before and after us will do. We moved Paul's bedtime to the same time as Finn. I read him a bedtime story, nursed him and laid him down in his crib for sleep and left the room. The first night he cried on and off for an hour. The second night... not quite as long. By the end of the week, Paul was falling right asleep and sleeping until around 6 or 7 a.m. (sometimes he wakes briefly around 4 a.m. to nurse, but typically falls back to sleep right after).
We had done the same thing with Finn, with the same results. BUT... with Finn we didn't do it until she was nearly one. Prior to becoming a parent, and during Finn's first year, I had a notion that I would NEVER let my child cry it out. I thought it was mean and that it would shatter my child's sense of security in her world. Alex and I tried everything to get Finn to sleep. We would even stand next to her crib and pat her back or hold her hand and say "SHHH, SHHH" (The so-called shush-pat technique). It should be called the sore back technique since it involved long periods hunched over the crib and then sneaking away quietly when Finn finally fell asleep. Invariably, she'd wake up when we stopped patting and it would be back to the drawing board.
Suffice to say, around age one, when I returned to work, we all needed some sleep. We decided to let her cry herself to sleep and it eventually worked. (It took longer because we would often undermine the technique by going in the room to settle her down, and because she was older and it took her longer to get the hang of things.)
Anyhow, I'm a firm believer that parents should do what works best for them and their children. But I also believe that children need to learn to fall asleep by themselves and they will not be psychologically harmed by crying. In fact, we say no to kids all the time (ie... no you cannot eat sugar from the bowl). In that case, any parent (I hope) would hold firm even in the face of intense protest crying. I think falling asleep is the same thing. Paul wakes up in the morning, babbling to himself and gives me a big smile when he sees me. No harm done and everyone gets some sleep!
Dave Memory: The other day Finn said "Don't bug me". This is a classic Dave-ism. Right up there with "older than dirt" and "like kissing your sister".
