Hi Sleep! I remember you...

Asher (my son) is four months old. His sleeping habits up until this point have been less the ideal. I spent countless hours rocking, singing, nursing, and walking him back to sleep every night. It was exhausting.I for some reason have an overwhelming fear that I will kill my child by starving him to death and it will happen instantly if I don't feed him when he cried. The fear mostly comes from my inability to recognize his hunger cues and all the things I read say not to wait until he is crying to feed him, that means its to late, I am to feed him when he is showing early signs of hunger with his hunger cues. So naturally I fed him every 2 hours. And when the dr said he could now sleep through the night without being woken to eat my obsession with making sure he ate enough meant feed him whenever he wakes on his own crying at night. This, in time, was going to kill me. One night I got the notion to pray. Don't get me wrong I pray a lot over Asher. But this time it was for sleep. Which for some reason I had never thought to do. He was whining and moaning in his crib, eyes closed but obviously about to wake up. Hitting himself with his crazy flying hands, flinging his feet in the air. My normal instinct would have said ok pick him up before he wakes up screaming and rock him back to sleep. if he wakes up. feed him. But this time as I was praying I got an overwhelming sense of peace about the idea of simply Putting the pacifier in his mouth in the darkness and waiting patiently for him to "work it out". Never before have I felt ok with not feeding him or comforting him in my arms. I felt like such a bad mother not picking him up. Within 10 minutes he was back to sleep. I did this 3 more times that night until finally feeding him at 5 am. Since that night he has been able to put himself back to sleep instead if waking all the way up crying. He just moans and wiggles,and I just wait clinging to the monitor until I hear that sweet sound of baby sleepy breaths. Don't get me wrong, we have bad nights still. We aren't perfect. But I think that was one of gods first lessons in parenting. I have learned that as a parent my job is to teach my child. No matter how much it hurts or makes me feel like a failure. Right down to teaching my son how to fall back asleep. Teaching isn't all fun, the rewards seem distant and futile. But all of my worrying proved to be for nothing. Asher is still alive and on good nights sleeps 6 or 7 hours straight. I don't even notice the moans and wiggles most of the time anymore. the monitor volume level is at half strength now.
Our next step? Crying it out. He cannot initially put himself to sleep at bed time or nap time. I still nurse or rock him to sleep. I'm dreading it but I know god will hold my hand and give me the tools to teach my child a valuable skill. I often forget that god is in control and I need to let go of my worrying ways. It amazes me and forever will that god is in everything we do, even down to our desperate cries for sleep. He hears them and he helps. Not just for a moment but he wants to help solve the whole problem. We just need to stop being so full of pride thinking we got this thing down. Cuz come on, it's parenting, no one has it down.