The time I let my baby cry..

T has this weird habit of sucking the fingers on his left hand and holding another person's eye while trying to sleep. The sucking has been going on forever and I don't know what to do about it, just hoping it will go away with time or maybe not.
The thing about playing with my eye or his dad's while sleeping started sometime back when he kept unwell on and off for quite a while. That's when he moved back to our bed from his cot.
That coupled with my own insecurities got us used to co sleeping. There seemed nothing wrong with it. We loved snuggling up in bed together and going of to sleep hand on eye.

Something was wrong though, the habit took deep routes. He became extremely dependent and never fell asleep on his own. He had to be put to sleep on our bed and then moved to his cot. Of course he was back in our bed sometime early morning. So yesterday we decided to train him to sleep on his own in his cot.

It started well, he very happily went to his cot and snuggled up with a stuffed toy. All was well till he realised he was not going to get an eye to hold. All hell broke loose. We lay on our beds and tried to calm him with rhymes and even patted him. But he just wouldn't budge.
P couldn't bear the crying after a while and wanted to give in "just for tonight" I shoved him out of the room and took over. After numerous repetitions of his favourite rhymes and when the fatigue set in, he finally gave up. I did pat him a little though. It was heart breaking and I am so scared of going through this again tonight and God knows till when. I just hope I'm doing the right thing. I couldn't sleep for a quite a while after all this. I was quite shaken up and felt worse for being alone in this. I wish P had stayed and not made me the bad parent.

I just hope and wish and pray with all my heart that T forgets this and it does not have any lasting impression on him. I just want him to be independent and he seems smart enough to understand most things. This seems like the right time to discipline him. Though I feel like such a monster of a mother.