Crying it out?

So DH and I got in an argument. It all started because Handsome wouldn't go to sleep. I bathed him, lotioned him, clothed him, lullabied him, fed him, and put him to bed. During the whole process he was rubbing his eyes and resting his head on my shoulder. He was obviously tired.

Usually he goes to sleep easily, but last night was one of those that didn't go so easily. As soon as I put him down on the mattress he started wailing. After a few wails though, it waned to a whimper as he turned over and started crawling to the side of the crib. Occasionally he will fall asleep after this initial crying so I left him in his room and went to my room to fold the clothes. I was away long enough to hang up between 5 and 10 shirts. It couldn't have been more than 2-5 minutes.

I went back, picked him up and calmed him down. Once he was calm, and had his head down, I put him back in his crib. He started crying again so I left him once more to give him a chance to calm himself down again. Of course he didn't stop crying, so once again after about 10 shirts I went to pick him up. This time I rocked and hummed until he actually fell asleep.

I was about to lay him down when I hear DH on the phone downstairs. His voice carries like no other so of course it woke Handsome up and he started wailing again. BOO!!! I put Handsome down to go downstairs and tell DH to go to the basement. I was frazzled, so I yelled at DH, so things went downhill.

I gave Handsome another chance to fall asleep on his own and went to fold a few more shirts. DH got off the phone and came upstairs, got Handsome out of bed, and asked me why I would force Handsome to go to bed if he wasn't tired. Grrr. Handsome WAS tired! DH was afraid he was sick and so he thought letting Handsome cry would just make things worse. I finally convinced DH that Handsome was tired so DH went and laid down with Handsome until he fell asleep and put him in his crib.

After DH came downstairs we talked about it. He was upset because I yelled and I was upset that he woke up Handsome after I finally got him to sleep. We decided that neither one of us wants Handsome to do the crying it out method, but a few minutes will help him learn how to fall asleep on his own. We decided that our max was 5 minutes - depending on the type of cry that we heard. Don't know how hard and fast this rule is, but at least we came to some sort of agreement.

Even though I wasn't happy that DH went to pick up Handsome when I thought I had the situation under control, I was happy to see how much DH cared about Handsome. He looked really hurt and worried that Handsome was crying.

Hopefully Handsome goes back to sleeping well again. I'm kind of afraid of how he will sleep when we travel to Texas for Christmas. I don't know how he's going to do sleeping in a different house. He's never slept anywhere other than at our house.