We're terrible parents and we hate ourselves
We're going to implement the cry it out method starting tonight. This may or may not be a good idea. We are torn between heartbreak and anger over the current sleeping situation and the only thing holding us together is paralyzing anxiety. Something’s got to give.

Evan is a sweet boy. There is no denying that and we love him with all of our heart and then some, but the boy needs to sleep and he needs to sleep by himself in his crib all night long without waking. Period. Actually, we would love to co-sleep if he just would stop waking every hour on the hour with paint peeling screeches and clawing fingers. Those little baby fingernails are like razors and get a couple up the nose and that’s a frightful wake-up. So tonight we're going start to do the one thing we said we would never do and hope that it takes and it will be worth it and in the end he will still love us.

Basically, the cry it out method is putting your child in the crib and leaving the room. Let the child scream himself to exhaustion and eventually fall asleep. Repeat. The end result is the child reasons that the parents won't cater to his every whimper, scream or belch, therefore he must just lie down for a nice nap and start afresh in the morning.

Orrrrrrrrr

The child's will is broken and his sense of abandonment so consuming that his only survival technique is to shut down and go to sleep. Either way the parents are now free to do the things parents do when kids are asleep, which so far seems to be talking about the kid with each other, with family members, with friends, and with strangers on the street.

I know we have a lot to do with creating the situation we're in right now. After Evan came out of Special Care nursery, we didn't ever want to let go of him. We were very, very concerned about SIDS, and the fact the boy always wanted to sleep on his stomach compounded the issue. He was a very colicky baby and the only way he would get any rest is if I let him sleep on top of me. So all the way from when he came home through to the World Series he slept on my chest. Trust me, I didn't mind. Don't forget, we love having him close. Too clingy are we? Maybe, but don't be too judgmental. We're now correcting some of our early mistakes.

I know we're going out on a limb here, airing our laundry like this, but it feels right to talk about it. We've never been the ones to put a shiny veneer on our lives so why start now. I'm making these posts about our experience with cry it out because I know we aren't the only ones that feel like terrible people for resorting to this method. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody in our position will come across this and gain a little comfort. So, this isn't a request for submissions from parents who never had a problem with their child sleeping. Congrats, but keep it to yourself. But if you have empathy for what we're going through, a story, an anecdote, or tip please get in touch with us. Also, please pass our site on to people who would be interested. I would love for these posts to get some serious airtime. We need the support and would love to support others.