[creativemonkeys]

One thing we did early is train our first child that she should not expect us to be in the room when she sleeps. It took a few iterations of (put baby to sleep, leave room, give baby a chance to self-soothe, pop back in for a bit to let her know we're still here) until she no longer cried when we left the room.

We didn't set a timer, but we usually gave her 5-10 minutes to calm down before popping back in.

If there's one thing I've learned though is that every baby is actually different (and it's not just a saying). For example, we've been bottle-feeding the baby right before sleep (nap and evening) every day for two years now, which I understand is against the usual advice of not feeding the baby immediately before putting her to sleep, but we found that she sleeps much better throughout the night and it didn't seem to cause any issues as long as we burped her properly before laying her down in the crib. YMMV though.