[asark]

> Kids should not be afraid and cry themselves to sleep.

> But if you just leave them alone in their bed they will.

Worked for us 3x. Did it soon after they no longer physically needed to eat in the night, which is a lot earlier than you'd think. Did it around 3 months IIRC. Two or three bad nights with each one (listening to the crying is no fun and I get why people cave) and pretty much smooth sailing from there on.

We did do some prep by deliberately delaying our responses to their crying, especially at night time, weeks earlier, and stretching out that delay as weeks went on, to break the "I cry, they show up seconds later, spazzing out and showering me with attention" expectation. We might have had to prep by pushing them to one nighttime feeding too, but they'd done that on their own by then anyway—then again, delaying responses helps with that since you're not rushing in there every time they whimper, so that may have been why that part happened "naturally".

[CalRobert]

Huh, I thought the person you're responding to explicitly advised the opposite? I.e. - don't cry it out?

We live in a flat with poor soundproofing and out of a desire not to make our neighbours miserable (especially the nurse who really needs a good night's sleep after a long shift..) we've tried to minimize night crying. She sleeps pretty well now.

[asark]

Oof, you're right, I totally misread that.

We were fortunate enough to be in detached housing. If we'd still not been consistently getting full nights of sleep until almost a year after our first one was born (as in the post I initially responded to, I gather) we definitely wouldn't have had two more. Yikes. Our total months of disrupted sleep for all three combined isn't that long.