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Letting them cry themselves to sleep really works?!

Sleepy Kitten

Sleepy Kitten

There is a lot of advice that comes and goes. Some is easy to do while others sounds like the worst thing ever.

Like when we were told to lay Lily down and just let herself cry herself to sleep. If we did this, she’d eventually allow us to put her to bed, while awake, and she’d just lie down and go to sleep.

First off, that’s to good to believe. We’ve spent a year rocking her to sleep and taking anywhere from 30 minuets to 2 hours fighting with her to get to sleep. Now you’re telling me we can just put her down, walk away and all will be good?

It’s true and I’m not sure how we did it to be honest, but it’s working!

We have a bedtime routine that starts with feeding and the goes to holding her until she falls asleep. Then we’d bring her upstairs, lie her down, and she’d usually wake right up. Then I’d rock her until she was out.

One night, we were tired of trying to get her to sleep so we just walked out of the room. We were giving her 5 minutes of crying before we went back in; that is if we could hold out that long. A minute or two later, she stopped crying, accepted it and then went to bed.

Now we’ve been doing this for naps and bedtime over the past week and it’s worked remarkably well. Most times she’ll cry as we leave the room but soon accepts it and lies down.

Sometimes she’ll talk to herself for a while and we’ve caught her laughing a time or two, but each time she eventually puts herself to sleep.

Then tonight, after she ate, she wasn’t in the mood to be held, so I just took her to her room, kissed her goodnight and walked out. She didn’t cry as she knew what time it was. We were amazed.

I never thought that I could lie Lily down and just let her cry herself to sleep, but we did and it worked. I don’t think it’ll work every time, but she’s gotten really good at it and given us some of our evenings back!


1 Response

  1. gml4 says:

    Congratulations.

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