CIO sucks. Anyone not know the famous acronym? Cry-it-out.... where you let your baby cry until they fall asleep. Nap time for the past month or so has been really hard. Owen wants me to nurse him to sleep and when I don't he gets ANGRY. He thrashes and scratches and cries and arches his back - all while I try to hold him and love him. It was getting to the point where it'd take an hour to get him to sleep. And no, it's not that he's not tired because he's obviously tired. I was getting angry, he was getting angry, it just wasn't working.

So, I started thinking about cry-it-out. Several people we know have done CIO at night. Mike wasn't on board with that idea and I respect that. But, I had to do something for naps or I was going to pull all my hair out.

I read (skimmed) the sleep-easy solution and decided to give it a try on Wednesday. The first nap we attempted resulted in about 40 minutes of crying/grumping/unhappiness. But, there have also been several successful naps where he's grumped/whined for about 5-15 minutes, fallen asleep and slept for 1-1.5 hours. Last night (Friday), I wanted to give up. He was SO unhappy and it was making me feel really sad for him. I ended up getting him up after 30 minutes of crying/grumping because it was getting late into the evening and we were risking messing up his bedtime. Today (Saturday) has been a little better. The attempt at nap #1 resulted in 10 minutes of mild grumping and then sleep for 1.5 hours. When I put him down for his second nap, he cried/grumped for about 20 minutes and then fell asleep and has been asleep for just over an hour. He rarely takes an afternoon nap longer than 45 minutes so this is a very good development.

I'm sure you can see how I'm contradicting myself ... CIO sucks, but it might work, but it sucks, but I think it might be working, I hate, it's not so bad. I told myself I'd give it a week and see what happens. Right this minute, I feel like it was a good decision.

Not sure if we'll ever apply it to bedtime, though.