by Becky Hopkins

Created on: January 29, 2008

Before the birth of my daughter and well into the first few months of her life I was absolutely against the idea of allowing her to cry herself to sleep. It seemed a cruel, heartless way to have baby go off to sleep and I was not prepared to inflict such a fate on my child.

For almost four months my husband and I struggled to find the best way to get Ellie to sleep. Most days and nights were wrought with stress as we would rock/pat/feed our stubborn little girl to sleep, then face the task of putting her in her cot. Most times she would wake the moment we put her down and scream. I was often left exhausted and in tears as time after time she would wake and it would take hours for her to finally be asleep as well as in bed.

I looked into 'gentle' options, which would work once or twice before we were back at square one. I decided to tentatively look into allowing her to cry herself to sleep, not feeling at all confident that I would actually go through with it. I searched forums and found many other mothers in the same predicament who were giving it a go with great results. I thought it through and decided that in the long run, if this worked, it would be better for us all in the end.

I finally got up the courage to start while my husband was on holidays and, honestly, those first few times absolutely ripped my heart out as I listened to her crying for me. I just wanted to go into her, hold her close and rock her but I had to decide to either totally commit to this method or give in. Slowly the crying became a grizzle and the time she spent awake in bed got shorter.

Every day we have seen improvements. Now when we put her in bed we rarely hear a peep, when we do it's a moment of grizzling. I was skeptical that allowing my precious baby to cry, all alone in her bed, until she fell asleep would work however I was out of ideas and reaching the end of my patience.

There is only one thing I would change; I would have started this much earlier if only I had known! It seems horrible and at first is heartbreaking but in the end it makes for a happier bub, mum and dad.

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