Why Cry-It-Out Wasn’t an Option (But Neither Was Doing Nothing)
📸 credit: David Veksler
We all know that the cry-it-out method is not for our babies. We know the science behind what letting them cry and “learn to self-soothe” does to their brains, to our bonds, and to their sense of security. No doubt, we aren’t about the CIO method around here.
But as a mama of many, I also know that just bed-sharing and letting baby nurse all night long doesn’t always turn out well either. (If that’s working beautifully for you, I give you full permission to shut this and move on to something else—this is for the mamas who are struggling and running on fumes.)
Because here’s the thing: While I don’t want to let my baby cry it out, I also know that waking every single hour is not good for ANYONE. Even if it’s just to relatch and drift back to sleep, waking that often means we’re never getting to the deep REM stage of sleep that’s so important for true rest.
Why I Knew We Had to Try Something Different
This baby—my seventh—is unlike any of my others. He falls asleep easily at the breast, but he wakes 1000 times easier than any baby I’ve known. If I breathe too heavy, he’s awake. Every time I unlatch or try to lay him down, he immediately wakes and refuses to be soothed back to sleep.
For months, I resisted making any changes for multiple reasons.
In the moment, it’s easier to just let him nurse so we can all get some sleep.
I felt the pressure to keep him quiet, so he wasn’t keeping everyone else (especially my husband, who wakes early for work) awake.
But as much as I wanted to keep the peace, the exhaustion was catching up with me. I finally hit that point where I knew—we couldn’t keep doing this.
The Middle Ground We Tried
I knew I wasn’t going to do cry-it-out, but I also knew that what we had been doing wasn’t working.
So here’s what we did:
I nursed him fully on one side, then switched to the other. He fell asleep.
I unlatched and, as expected, he immediately woke up.
I laid him down beside me and told him, “Milk went night-night, and it’s time for us to go night-night too.”
He fussed, as I knew he would. But I didn’t just leave him to cry—I soothed him in every way possible. I patted his back, shushed, sang, rubbed his belly, and let him roll around as he needed to.
When he was still unsettled, Dad picked him up and swayed with him at the bedside, shushing and patting his back.
He continued crying off and on for about 20 minutes, but the difference was—we were WITH him.
This is something I always come back to in parenting: It’s not our job to make sure our kids never cry. It’s our job to be there for them when they do.
In life, our kids are going to have moments of frustration, disappointment, and discomfort. Our role isn’t to shield them from every hard moment—it’s to hold them through it. In this case, I knew he wasn’t hungry, he wasn’t wet, he wasn’t in pain. He was upset because he wanted to nurse, but I also knew that nursing all night was actually preventing him from getting the deep sleep he needed.
This was me saying, “I know you want this, but I also know this isn’t actually helping you. And I love you too much to keep doing something that’s making us both so exhausted.”
So… Did It Work?
That night, he fell asleep around 9:30 PM, and instead of waking every hour, he woke at 12:30, 3:30, 4:30, 6:30, and 8:30 for the day. That’s still a lot, but it was WAY better than before. And honestly? That’s progress.
When I woke up, I felt cautiously excited. I’ve tried things before that seemed to work for a few nights only to go back to chaos, so I’m not calling this a miracle cure. But what I do know is that it felt like a step in the right direction.
A Humbling Reminder After 7 Babies
You’d think after raising six other babies, I’d have it all figured out by now. Nope. Nine months in with this little guy, and we’re still stumbling through, trying to figure things out.
So, new mamas, if you ever feel like you don’t know what you’re doing—you’re not alone. We’re all just out here experimenting, adjusting, and figuring out what works for this particular baby, in this particular season.
If you’re in the trenches of sleepless nights, just know—there is space for a middle ground. You don’t have to let them cry alone, and you don’t have to suffer through exhaustion just to prove you’re responsive.
We can hold them, soothe them, and still create gentle, loving boundaries that allow everyone to thrive.