It's tough being in charge

2 hours ago our baby boy fell asleep. In his crib. On his own. After 18 minutes of crying.

This is Day 8 of CIO (Crying it out) and I can not wait for the day that he does not have to cry any more to fall asleep. So far it was 50, 35, 30, 20, 25, 30, 19,18 minutes from day 1 thru 8. We are seeing improvement, but not much, and certainly not very quickly.

I have told many people that from day 1 Erik and I could tell we have an active child. At his 1 week doctor visit our pediatrician straight up said "I can tell you have a 'high-energy' baby here." He also told us that we had a lot on our plate and that Ben might need a lot of attention to keep entertained and occupied. We he was right!

CIO was not my preferred method of sleep training. We rocked Ben to sleep every night until 8 nights ago. The problem was that maybe one night a week we would actually get him in bed at a decent time without him waking up again to be rocked. The other six nights of the week consisted of either: Erik or I rocking him to sleep for about 2 hours, until he was really 'out' to be placed in his crib... OR one of us rocking him to sleep, transferring him to the crib successfully, only for him to awaken at his 45 minute sleep cycle and cry until we got him (never let that be more than a minute) and rocked him back to sleep.

Benjamin got to the point where he would just fight sleep (and me sometimes, with arms flailing, pulling hair, biting my chin, etc) and the entire night would be gone without Erik and I even having a chance to chat. So once the two-hour rocking bouts became battles we decided CIO might be what we need to do. And even though he is crying some to fall asleep, this process seems to be working and he is taking LESS time overall to fall asleep. YAY!

But geez, you should watch this kid cry! The first couple nights I cried because it was hard to handle. Benjamin flings his body around like a two year old having a tantrum! He bounces side to side like a pin ball. He rolls back and forth kicking his legs and swinging his arms. He doesn't really cry even... He just screams! And since we dealt with reflux, I know it's no kind of painful scream/cry; it's purely a protest scream. He gets SO mad. Seriously, if he wouldn't get mad - if he was just sad for a few minutes, he would be out in a matter of minutes!

Hopefully he will learn soon. We hate to hear him cry. We know he's unhappy and that makes us unhappy. But I know we made the right choice for our family, and I know we were going to get to the point where we had to let him know who is the boss, and that the boss says when bedtime is. It's just so hard to do sometimes! Hoping tomorrow night or the next is only 5 minutes! Or 2,1, or 0 would be nice too!

(Everyone who knows about Ben's reflux, please take note, we did not even think about attempting CIO until we knew it was under control with medication.)