cio considered

I realize that I complain about our various sleep issues an awful lot. And there is no dearth of advice flowing in from very kind, concerned & well-meaning friends, some of which have advised that it may be in both mine & X's best interests to just suck it up and try CIO (cry it out). My knee-jerk response is to reject such advice flat out, without even the briefest appraisal. My entire being viscerally rejects the very notion -- I shudder to imagine listening to my baby crying for hours on end, or even just a few unattended moments. It just seems wrong to me.

But recently, faced with an increasingly complicated sleep situation & enduring a permanent state of exhaustion, I have begun to engage in a more serious examination of what it means to let your baby cry it out, why proponents believe it is a perfectly harmless practice & why many refuse to even entertain the idea whatsoever. I realize that by jotting my conclusions here, I am straying into territory where many may perceive me as being somewhat judgmental. While I risk seeming sanctimonious, I feel compelled to proceed nonetheless. This blog has always been a place where I work out my thoughts & feelings concerning various subjects (i.e. I may never have had a baby had it not been for a stupid blog post!). Or, as I have been known to say: how can I know what I think until I see what I say?

I want to qualify my remarks first, however, by stating that while I ultimately reject CIO as a viable method for my family, I enjoy particular circumstances that do not require me to consider it with any real seriousness. I do not have a demanding career that requires a great deal of time & attention, nor is my partner irritated to have our little monster share the marital bed. I am tired, yes, but it is not unbearable. It is possible that were my situation different, I might be making different decisions. I would like to believe, however, that were I to employ CIO, I would view it as a least-bad option (if I considered uninterrupted sleep absolutely necessary) & not attempt to justify it's use to myself in order to make myself feel better.

But the truth is, much of the pro-CIO literature strikes me as somewhat defensive. You get the sense in reading it that many of the parents that employ this technique are aware that what they are doing goes against their very nature & instincts, and yet they persist because they have determined that the short-term gains make it "worth it." As M is wont to point out, there is a multi-million-dollar publishing industry devoted to helping parents solve their baby's "sleep problems" (I should note here that night waking is a perfectly natural thing for an infant to do, so labeling it a "problem" is a problem in itself). But the other "problem" these books exist to solve is that of the guilt feelings that often result in parents who must employ this harsh technique. I understand that there are times in life when terrible trade-offs must be made -when you must choose between two less-than-desirable actions in order to achieve a goal (getting more sleep). But when you make a choice to abandon your child & let them cry, is it really necessary to justify your actions & attempt to convince yourself that what you are doing is perfectly okay?

And yet the justifications abound. I have noticed several primary arguments from proponents of CIO. I would break the main arguments into the following categories:

The Health Argument
The "Life is Tough" Argument
The "I cried it out & I turned out Okay" Argument
The Utilitarian Argument (AKA "It works!").

First, The Health Argument: I have heard it said that waking often at night is just as bad for the health of the baby as it is for the parent. Thus, leaving your baby to cry it out in order to train him to sleep through the night may be the better option than doing nothing to curtail their wakefulness. Besides the fact that I cannot find any good literature whatsoever to back up this claim, I cannot also accept as fact the notion that simply because a baby is not being comforted by a parent frequently at night means that the baby is sleeping soundly & utterly undisturbed. The whole purpose of CIO is to teach your baby to comfort himself upon waking at night. This does not mean he is no longer waking, he is just tossing & turning & fussing & figuring it out for himself. In addition, my baby is not suffering for his wakefulness -I am, most certainly, but whenever he sniffs or snuffles or grunts or starts to toss about, I am there at the ready with a breast to comfort him. I would even argue that he seldom fully wakes at all. I certainly see no signs during his waking hours that he is suffering on account of our frequent night nursing routine. I think were it causing him trouble it would be apparent.

I should also note that many adults (myself included) do not sleep entirely through the night undisturbed. Expecting no night wakefulness of an infant -or anyone, for that matter -is an unrealistic expectation. In my esteem, labeling night wakefulness "unhealthy" is nothing less than unhelpful.

The second primary argument that I hear all too often -The "Life is Tough" Argument - basically suggests that kids need to learn that there are disappointments in life & that they cannot always have what they want. When your baby is screaming & crying for you as you attempt to "sleep train" her, she is ultimately just trying to manipulate you & if you are a sucker & give in you are teaching your child that there are no limits on her behavior. Now, I don't know about you, but I am fairly certain that X will have plenty of bitter lessons in disappointment during his (hopefully) long lifetime. His education in the ways of the world -in all it's wonder & also, in all it's brutality & coldness -will come soon enough. I am not so sure I want his first major disappointments to come by my hand, although I am certain plenty will.

M & I often discuss how we are desirous that our home be a little utopia, insofar as we are able to make it so. Instead of mirroring the insensibility & hostility of the world outside, we hope to be a refuge from it for our children. In fact, when X does face whatever disappointments await him, that is precisely when I want to be there to comfort him. Teaching your child that the world is an awful place by behaving awfully and leaving him to cry, uncared for & unattended to, seems to me a terrible first education.

Thirdly, I hear way too many people use The "I cried it out & I turned out Okay" Argument & I always want to ask them: "Compared to who?" It takes a lot of balls to advance this argument -it assumes that the speaker thinks rather highly of themselves such that they would want to hold themselves up as an ideal to which others might wish to aspire. I for one cried it out as a very small infant (my mother thought it was something she had to do?) & I cannot with confidence make that claim. Sure, I am not a complete wreck, but I can be really impatient, I turn quickly to rage, I have had a tendency to drink rather too much at times (all of which have been shown to be outcomes in adults who were subjected to prolonged crying as infants), & I am certain I could have turned out better had I been nurtured more consistently as a child (sorry, mom).

I have also heard a lot of anecdotal evidence thrown around, i.e."I know this one kid who cried it out and 'he seems really well-adjusted,'" or "My friend cried it out and is now a grown 21 year old woman & she's 'perfectly happy.'" The thing that always strikes me first when I hear these assertions is that it is sometimes quite difficult to tell whether or not someone is in tip-top mental form. I cannot tell you how many people I have met that seemed "perfectly happy" on the surface & after getting to know them it became apparent that they were anything but.

The last argument I hear most frequently is The Utilitarian Argument. "It works." Yes, CIO is very effective at getting your child to sleep through the night. But since when is whether or not something works the barometer by which we gauge whether or not something is right or wrong?! Do the ends justify the means in all aspects of parenting? I can think of plenty of methods for gaining financial freedom that would "work," none of which are are legal or ethical, however. What is the true cost of this cheap ticket to nighttime freedom?

My gut feeling is that the cost is dear, to both the child & the parent. Parents go against their nature & instinct when they abandon their babies and leave them to cry. Most know this to be true, which is why CIO is described in such traumatic terms by many of them. In my brief study this week, I have read terrible tales of mothers & fathers crouched outside their baby's bedrooms, sweating, anxious, watching the clock & waiting for the appointed time when they can finally go to the screaming, terrified child on the other side of the door & lend them a little temporary comfort before abandoning them again & starting the whole madness over. One friend told me that she let her daughter cry it out for all of five minutes, and that she will never in all her life forget the sight of her baby's frightened, shivering, confused & hurt little body when she finally went in to her. In one post I read online, the parents agonized while their baby cried for hours, finally vomiting on the 3rd & 4th night. Their pediatrician told them that vomiting is common when babies get that upset and that they "should not project their fears & anxiety onto the baby"(because lord knows the baby has no human sensibility?! -he's a little amphibian, after all?!) and that they needed to persist in their efforts if they ever wanted to get any sleep. The stories I read are horrible -even the so-called "success stories."

What are we teaching our children when we let them cry it out, alone in the dark of their rooms? -are we teaching them that life is tough & that the world is a lonely, terrible place & it is high time they got used to it? -or are we teaching them that we don't really care for them when they need it most? - that we ultimately cannot be trusted? What happens to a mother that even temporarily shuts down her sensitivity to her baby's cries? How does she do it? -and at what cost to her connection with her infant? -I adore that little light of trust & love in X's eyes & I do not wish to ever be a party to anything that would snuff it out -even just a little bit.

Obviously, I have taken a very firm stance in opposition to CIO. It just does not seem to be a method in tune with our nature as human beings. There is a reason why even parents that find they simply must sleep train their infants do not enjoy the process & feel terribly about it. It is because it is not the best thing for the infant, the parent or the relationship between the two. Sure, "it works," but there are hidden costs and I am just not sure I want to pay that kind of price.

I suppose that it is possible that my sleeplessness is like some kind of hair-shirt I am wearing - that in order to feel like my immense sacrifice is worth it, I need to believe there is some sort of reward for me in mama-heaven --that what I am doing must be better for X since it is so costly to me in terms of lost sleep ("no pain, no gain"). By refusing to sleep train X, am I engaging in some sort of voluntary, but completely unnecessary, mortification of the body? I tend to think not. While I of course can't be 100% certain that letting your baby cry it out is harmful, it is increasingly hard for me to imagine how it cannot be. Humans are sensitive, communal, needy creatures. When my friends & loved ones suffer & cry, it behooves me to lend whatever comfort I can. Cutting myself off from signs of hurt & fear in others goes against my natural instinct, not just as a mother, but as a friend, a wife, & a citizen of planet earth.