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LO is 3.5 months old and I'm currently sleep-training (tonight is night #3). I chose to sleep-train for a few reasons:
1) LO would sleep 3-4 hours and then after her first night feed, continue to wake every 1-2 hours all night long.
2) I knew we had developed poor sleeping habits because we would rock her until she fell asleep and then place her in her crib and this often took up to 30 minutes to do. The second we put her down, she would wake up and then we'd have to start all over again.
3) Her fussiness during the day added to my lack of sleep was driving me crazy.

The only con I've experienced thus far is just listening to her cry. But I KNOW she's okay - just frustrated. The pros? Well, the first night was hard as she woke many times throughout the night and couldn't understand why we weren't coming to get her. She slept 7.5 fragmented hours of sleep. But last night was awesome - almost 14 hours of sleep (9-hour stretch, feed, 3.5 hours). The pro is that she's getting sleep.

I feel that LO should be getting good sleep at night and that she needed to learn how to help herself.

I think the mistake I made was not starting as I meant to go on, which made sleep training a requirement. We did lots of things to help our LO sleep in the early weeks, like bouncing, rocking, feeding and putting him into his crib deeply asleep. It basically meant that he relied on us to intervene in order for him to get to sleep. So, when he got too big to do all of that comfortably, we had no choice but to train him. The older they are the longer the process as you've got to break those bad habits that are ingrained in them. It took us over 2 weeks to get our son to bed at night with no crying. Naps are a different story.

@Red: LOL...You're so funny. Yes, goodness all around!

This is a new concept for me, when my little girl was a newborn I had to wake her up to nurse, she never had problems going to sleep unless her colic was acting up.
This is definately something I want to hear about though, because next time I might not be so lucky!

you can definitely choose not to nap train, or postpone nap training because babies can separate day and night sleep.

i decided to nap train because i just couldn't bear to see charlie so exhausted during the day. he wasn't happy and wasn't into playing. he was sooo much happier when he was better rested. nap training was so hard for me, i almost quit every day! but so many parents told me that i was doing it for him, and not to him. i was giving him the gift of sleep. and sleep is so important at this age. a lot (most?) behavioral problems can actually be attributed to sleep deprivation in young children.

so while we were prisoners to his nap schedule for a couple of months, it was worth it for us. charlie eventually took naps in his stroller, and it didn't affect his nap/night training. he naps in his stroller all the time now on the weekends when we're out and about.

i've even heard that some moms stroller nap train! they create a stroller nap routine and move their stroller around the 45 minute mark (one sleep cycle) so their lo sleeps more than 45 minutes. i never tried it (charlie easily sleeps over 2 hours in his stroller), but i think it could definitely work!

@heatherloveskenny - i tried to avoid cio and tried the no cry sleep solution, but it did not work for us. i turned to cio as a last resort when i was utterly exhausted (and so was charlie!).

for awhile charlie was waking up every hour and needed to be rocked for 30 minutes back to sleep only to start the cycle again in 30 minutes. that was bad enough but at least i was getting 30 min of sleep at a time. then he started being wide awake for hours in the middle of the night.

i tried the no cry sleep solution for 2 weeks, and maybe i should have stuck it out longer. but i didn't see any results, and i was too exhausted to go on. that's when we had no choice but to sleep train.

@Maysprout: I'm no expert and really have no idea what I'm talking about but I wouldn't worry too much. I say this only because my good friend has a "good" baby - very easy going and a happy camper with no fixed schedule. And all is good. My LO is exceptionally (like, seriously abnormally) fussy and I had to do something to control her fussy behaviour. I do think that my LO could benefit from a strict schedule, which is why I'm choosing to train her.

@Andrea: I'm curious as to how your LO sleeps during the night compare to her naps? We are struggling as to if we should sleep train him at night and/or naps... sleeping training for nighttime is so much easier.. whereas during the day, I worry that when I go back to work and my MIL takes over, she will ruin all that progress.. so I am reluctant to nap train b/c I don't want him to waste his tears! But I also worry if he is not nap trained, would he bring those bad habits to nightime?

@Andrea: thanks! yeah i think for now we are only going to stick with our night training... he's been a wonderful baby in terms of night time sleep anyway... as of naps, we do have a nap routine... but my MIL prefers soothing him till he is REALLY sleepy and then putting him down.. whereas I sometimes just put him in his crib before he even gets sleepy... and half of the time he is able to fall asleep on his own. I guess my MIL just wants to play it safe and doesn't want him to shed any tears!

@momentspassslow: Eli just turned 13 weeks and he sleeps from 6 pm - 5 30am usually... there was this one time he woke up at 4 30 (my in law didn't swaddle him tight enough so he got out of it) and even after we fed him he still didn't want to go back! Since by then he already had 10 hours of sleep.. I didn't let him cry because i know he will cry for a whole hour... it really depends on if you think he has had enough of night time sleep... like the other night he woke up at 2am and didn't want to go back, we just let him cry. took about 20 minutes or so..

also, I think you can try moving his bedtime earlier... most babies his age can sleep earlier and wake up later now

@reggie: Thanks for your response! I have been thinking of moving it a bit earlier. The two reasons we haven't are (1) I'm afraid he will then wake up earlier and (2) my husband doesn't get home from work until at least 6 and he wants to spend some time with him - I know it's probably not a good reason but he wants to see his son, so it's hard!

@momentspassslow: We started sleep-training LO Friday night and her natural bedtime is 6:30pm (bed routine begins at 6pm)...When we noticed this pattern, we realized that the hubs would NEVER see LO as she wakes up after hubs leave for work and hubs gets home from work between 6:30-7pm. We decided that for now, her sleep is too important and that within time and getting used to this new sleep thing, we will be able to move her bedtime a little bit later.