Cry-It-Out

I just got off the phone with one of my best friends. This is the person I would call back in the days when I was still trying to get Peter to sleep through "crying-it-out." Halfway across the country, she would listen to me sob out loud as I listened to my son sob out loud. She held my hand through it, so to speak, and I am grateful to this day.

Why did I call this particular friend, aside from the fact that she's generally a supportive, non-judgmental person? Because I knew that she had "cried-it-out" with her own son.

Well, our latest phone conversation centered on the sleep of her new daughter. "She's crying for a full fifteen minutes, but she's not asleep by the end of it," my friend said.

"Yeah, well, Peter never fell asleep at the end of fifteen minutes."

"Really?" my friend asked. "The most my son ever cried was twenty minutes. And after a week of that, he generally didn't cry at all."

"You're kidding!" I exclaimed.

"No. How long did Peter cry?"

"He would cry for over two hours, and still not fall asleep," I said. "Don't you remember me calling you in tears?"

In those tearful conversations, somehow I didn't convey how long and unfruitful my child's crying was. Somehow my friend didn't convey that crying-it-out with her son was a relatively short affair.

Yet another illustration that most make-my-infant-sleep books don't acknowledge what a difference temperament makes! Some day I'll share more about my decision to throw out the solitary-sleep training and just nurse the little boob tick.