Now who's crying rivers

We recently have had to do what so many parents have done and dreaded just as much as we did and as they all have said, and we agree, we are so happy we did...

I'm talking about "crying it out" -- boy was it brutal.  At first.

Night one - 3 hours of straight crying
Night two - 2 hours
Night three - 1.5 hours
Night four - 30 minutes
Night five - 20 minutes
Night six - 15 minutes
Night seven - whimpers
Every night after that - nothing but sweet dreams for a blissful 11 hours, on average

We went back and forth on when to start this whole process...but we kept making excuses for ourselves and Rudy; we are traveling in a week, maybe he's just teething and this will pass, we will be moving to a new place in a week, etc, etc.  But after weeks of an awful habit of night wakings that involved us rocking him back to sleep (which took anywhere from 30-90 minutes), only to lay him in his crib and he would immediately freak out crying, pick him up, sound asleep in 30 seconds, lay down, flip out screaming, pick up, sound asleep in 30 seconds...you get the idea.

A few days before we moved, we had reached our limit.

Those first couple nights were torture.  And looking back, we (or I) obviously approached it wrong.  I went with the "softer" method first...let him cry for 5 minutes and then go in and rub his back and tell him, "Shhh...goodnight" (or some variation), wait 7 minutes, go back in, and so on.  After three nights of that (and intervals as high as 20-30 minutes), I decided John was right.  Going in there every so often was only getting him more worked up each time I left that he didn't have a chance to calm down and fall asleep before I was heading back in.

I believe we were at my parents on night five...my dad is still talking about how he can't believe we would let him cry like that.  20 minutes was nothing by then!  We had developed some pretty thick skin compared to night one (which involved me crying right along with Rudy).  We spent those 20 minutes enjoying dinner and hardly batted an eye (maybe that's why Dad acted as if we were heartless).

But as every parent who has told me about their experience with it (I asked around a lot before we started this and researched the topic online and in my books -- surprised?), we are so happy with the results.  I feel like a new person getting full nights of sleep again.

Now if we could just figure out how to lay him down for naps without him being asleep already...
And hold a bottle on his own...

...but one bad-habit breaking challenge at a time.  He still has 24 more weeks as an only child, after all.  Might as well let him have some continued spoiling until then.