The no-win situation
Jerry's right... we swore we would never let Evan "cry it out." We liked the Sears' parenting philosophy that was focused on co-sleeping, breastfeeding, and responding promptly to baby's cries. The goal of this philosophy is to build trust with your baby. The cry-it-out method contradicts this philosophy, but what we're doing is no longer working.

Evan isn't doing anything wrong, we have just failed to train him. It seems that some babies sleep great without any training, and I'm in awe of those babies and parents (and maybe a little jealous), but that's not us. Evan is now 8 months old, and he wakes up every 1-3 hours all night long, and needs to either be patted or rocked or breastfed back to sleep. As a newborn he awakened frequently, but when he brought him to bed with us, things improved drastically. Now they have taken a turn for the worse. Now, instead of quietly waking up and letting us know he's hungry or whatever, he awakes by screaming. He also wakes up more often than he did as a five-month old.

The last three months have been horrible. We thought he would outgrow this night waking. At first we thought it was just teething, then a cold. Now, I hate to say it, but I think it's the co-sleeping. He's got his all-night kitchen right there next to him, so why sleep? It works for some people I know, but it isn't workin for us.

The method we'll use is putting him down, letting him cry for a few minutes, then going in and patting him and reassuring him, then leaving the room, and as Jerry says, "repeat." We'll never let him cry more than 5 minutes or so without reassuring him. Maybe 10 minutes if it comes to that. Do the same thing over and over and over again until he falls asleep. In theory, this is supposed to be hardest the first night and then get better. I've talked to parents who had babies who slept through the night by day 3 or day 5. I'll be happy if he sleeps better by the weekend. Give me a 5-hour sleep stretch and I'm buying everyone drinks.