Crying It Out

Dear Lucy,
I am writing you a letter of apology.  Why?  Because your father and I decided to make you "cry it out" when you were 4 months old.  I'm sorry.  If you have any kind of mental repercussions from this, if this scars you in any way, if you are damaged by this and think we didn't love you enough - I'm sorry.  We had your best interest at heart.

If it makes you feel any better, this was a miserable process for your father and me.  We sat downstairs listening to you scream every night and debated taking the easy way out.  All I needed to do was go to your room, rock you to sleep for 20 minutes, and then quietly sneak out.  It sounds so tempting and easy.  But that is the path for quitters.  So we sat there, turned the volume on the tv up (miraculously your brother never woke up either - he was in this with us), and tried to make distracting chit chat until the monitor stopped flashing red.  Then we did it again at midnight when you woke back up.  You will one day learn that as a parent the most heart-wrenching sound in the world is your child crying.  Especially when you know you can make that crying stop but don't because you know what's best.

I know that when you are a teenager and reading through the blog books (b/c basically this is your family history in pretty print) you will come across the part where we mention we made you "cry it out" and you will scream in protest -"Mom!  How could you? I was a baby! How could you just make me scream and cry?!"  And that is when I will calmly direct you to this letter and explain the following in very clear terms:  You need to say thank you.  A huge thank you.  Because of this process you can now fall asleep on your own.  Because of this we created healthy sleep habits.  Because of this you do not sleep in our bed every night.  Because of this, you will graduate from college and have a hugely successful career and marriage (I actually can't back this up but figure it's worth a shot.)

So just know, Sweet Lucy, that your father and I hated 'crying it out' as much as you did.  But it is because of this process that one month from now I will be raving about your ability to fall asleep on your own.  And when you become a mother someday, you will understand the benefits of this process, for yourself as much as for your sweet little one.  Or one month from now you will be able to look up blog posts about how your father and I started drinking heavily.  Either way we all win :)

We love you,
Mom & Dad