Shhh! Don't mention CIO!

It's time to face facts. Despite my best efforts and a freezer full of homemade vegetable puree ice cubes, I'm really not Earth mother material. Yes, I know, in theory I should have my baby strapped to me at all times and respond to her every need. Well, I tried. She took to the baby sling like a cat to water. I even tried co-sleeping a couple of times, only to conclude that she'd much rather be in her own bed. Well, luv, the feeling's mutual!

Own bed or not, this is one stubborn madam (wonder where she gets that from?) who won't go down without a fight. Over the course of time, we evolved a complex bedtime ritual which involved bathing, massage, bottle, story, songs, rocking, patting, night lights and dummies. Give lots of cues, the books said. Well - durr! The only thing missing here was a big neon flashing sign saying "Hey! It's bedtime stupid!"

The problem, of course, was that we had introduced more props than a film set. Abigail had never learned to settle herself, so it was impossible for her to get to sleep without going through this ridiculous drawn out process. What's more, she usually woke up soon afterwards and then we had the nightmare of re-settling her. Over recent weeks this culminated in us having to resettle her up to 10 times before midnight, on top of dealing with ridiculously short daytime naps and night waking.

I realised that I was spending more and more time going through the ritual, in order to get less and less sleep out of her. Frankly we were all feeling a bit miserable about the whole thing, until one day, I hit a wall. I went through the usual routine and she just wouldn't settle. The more I tried with the rocking, patting and shusshing, the worse she got. It was at this point that I realised I had run out of options. The only thing left was to put her in the cot, close the door and walk away.

This is absolutely the hardest thing I've had to do as a parent (although hey, we're only six months in, so I guess I ain't seen nothing yet!). Still, leaving your child to cry goes against every basic instinct you have. Every scream pierces your heart. It's definitely not an easy route to take, but having said this, I'm glad we did it because it's starting to pay off. The first couple of days were rough with a capital R. We had an hour of crying on the first night, but after just a few days we've got down to a couple of minutes crying followed by a bit of babbling as she put herself to sleep.

The difference in her sleep is quite incredible, though. Even though I feel like an evil Mother when I put her down and she's crying, she does sleep so much better when she's settled herself. Her daytime naps can last as long as 2 1/2 hours now, compared with a maximum of 45 minutes previously. And at night, once she's gone down at 7pm, we don't hear from her until the morning.

Of course, I realise that crying it out (CIO) is not for everyone. In baby circles these days it's very much frowned upon. CIO is supposed to cause irreperable damage to your baby. Yes - thanks to your selfishness, they will grow up mentally retarded, emotionally stunted, sullen and unresponsive. Well, maybe, but I knew that if I didn't do something about my family's collective sleep deprivation right now, we'd all end up like that!

Here's the thing though - nobody really talks about CIO. As I said, current popular thinking is CIO is the root of all evil and to be avoided at all costs. So the strange thing is, once I started to admit to a few people that we were sleep training Abigail with CIO, the dam of silence collapsed. Suddenly we had a flood of comments from friends with kids: "It's the only way!"; "It worked for us"; "You have to do it - be cruel to be kind!" So despite popular thinking, it seems CIO is one of the best kept secrets of parenting. There are, of course, some caveats:

• You have to wait until your baby is ready. This very much depends on the baby, but certainly it's not something I'd think of trying before 4 months old. I knew we'd reached the right point when everything else started to fail and I could see I was hindering, not helping her sleep.
• You have to be committed to the process. It's not fair to your baby to flit in and out of different settling techniques. Prepare for a lot of screaming initially. No wonder really, since you just changed the rules, big style!
  
• I only put her down to sleep once I'm sure any other possible causes of crying can be ruled out (e.g. changed nappy, fed, winded).
  
• If the cry changes from a protest cry (variable loud shrieking with pauses inbetween) to an emotional cry (constant wah wah wah with sobbing) you should go and comfort your baby and investigate other causes.
• If she was ill, I would not try to use CIO.
  

Two books I found very useful on the subject of sleep and settling techniques, including CIO (pictures c/o Amazon):

Month 5: Food, Sleep and Orange Therapy

I can't believe that over five whole months have passed since Abigail was born. Where did it go? The last major milestone was rolling and now things have moved on again. At 20 weeks she had her first taste of solids: carrot puree. At 20 weeks + 2 days I abandoned carrot because it's too damn orange! Now she's progressed to a varied diet including sweet potato, apple, baby rice, mashed potato and sponge cake. Admittedly, sponge cake doesn't feature in Annabel Karmel's baby weaning book, but what can you do if your baby grabs it from the plate?! This morning, Abigail made a lunge for my toast, so I gave her some baby porridge, which she wolfed down.

All this extra food has given Abigail lots of energy, which she is using to spring around in her Jumperoo. She's also started rolling over and over and over and is really pushing up from the floor. She is able to push up onto her knees and shunt forward a few inches, but she normally ends up rolling over onto her back as she can't quite get the co-ordination right for crawling. In literally the last 2 days she has gone from not being able to sit up, to being able to sit unaided. I'm amazed at the strength in her back and abdominal muscles, but then she always liked doing little sit-ups! When sitting, Abigail can even turn a little bit from side to side, but if she stretches too far, eventually she wobbles and falls over. It looks like crawling is not far off, so it could be time for me to baby-proof the house.

Sleep is the biggest source of most new parents' woes, and sadly I'm still tearing my hair out on this one. Abigail's gone through various phases, including a wonderful patch where she slept from 7pm to 7am solid. Unfortunately, at the moment, this is a distant memory. The little monster is very unsettled in the evening; we're normally up and down from 8pm to midnight trying to re-settle her. She's also taken to waking in the night - maybe once on a good night, but it could be up to three times. In her defence, she's had a cold complete with snotty nose and tickly cough for the last week. She's also had a touch of diarrhoea, which the various professionals have ruled is probably a virus rather than the result of her weaning.

I've always had a short fuse at the best of times, and I must say that the sleep deprivation has done nothing to improve this, as my poor hubby will testify. Last night, after a good screaming fit from young Abigail and a throwaway comment from Dom that the stuff coming out of the steriliser smelt of sewage, I flipped and threw the entire contents of the steam steriliser across the kitchen, followed by a couple of mandarin oranges for good luck. Well, what else can you do with all those Chinese New Year oranges anyway?! So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that when Abigail gets over her cold and dicky stomach, her sleep will improve. Of course, by then we will no doubt be into teething - and by default, more sleepless nights. Oh happy days!