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My DD would escalate and I just couldn't do it. She's mainly been pretty good at going to sleep but has had a few rough phases where I tried CIO for a day or two and quickly gave up. It just wasn't good for any of us. The last time, when she was about 11 months old, I randomly discovered that if I put her in the crib sitting up, with her bedtime book, she'll "read" for 5 minutes and then put herself to sleep. But if I try to lay her down, she'll scream for hours. Reading herself to sleep is a heck of a lot more pleasant than CIO was so that's what we do every night now!

Depends on what you mean by "worked". I had unrealistic expectations of sleep training in that I thought it would teach them to STTN. It didn't.

Sleep training succeeded at teaching my LO to fall asleep on her own AND connect her sleep cycles. So she went to bed by herself and when we did CIO in the MOTN, she dropped from 2 wakings per night to 1.

However - that last one waking was a stubborn B and would not have anything to do with sleep training. She was waking up not because she needed mommy or couldn't fall asleep or needed her paci - but because she was hungry. We did two sleep consultations and tried EVERYTHING! Upping her milk during the day, CIO for that feeding, gentle weaning, dream feed, you name it. Kid needed to just grow out of it, which she did around 10 months.

They both cried longer than I was comfortable with letting them cry and it made them super clingy for the next several days

my DD just wouldn't fall asleep (CIO). it went on way too long. I was not going to do extinction, and I couldn't listen to it anymore so I threw in the towel. She started STTN on her own around 12 months.

We had trouble doing naps and overnight separately. Once I realized that we needed to nap and night train at the same time, it worked.

I was weak! Actually it worked, he only cried max 8 min but it still killed me and I pulled the plug on it the third night. I am really weak and too attached to my child.

I had this exact same thread before I did CIO so if you'd like to see more responses, here is that thread: http://boards.hellobee.com/topic/if-youyour-lo-was-a-cio-drop-out

Ultimately we DID try CIO (well, a lightly modified ferber version) about a month after I made that post.

What happened was that we could tell our LO was just about ready to roll over in her swaddle and when she did, it was game over in terms of decent sleep. Our ped had recommended we do swaddle weaning and sleep training at the same time, just rip off that bandaid. So we tried it the first night (the week of that post) and she cried until the 5 min check and then until the 10 min check then she had pooped. So then I had to change her and put her back down and she cried for 5 min and check and then around 5 more minutes she vomited everywhere and I freaked out and rescued her. So only about 25 min total of crying and I gave up, basically. But it was a particularly rough go of it I think due to the poop and then vomit.

So we gave up and 3 days later she DID roll in her swaddle. We did the merlin suit the next day and that worked for us for about a month then her sleep went to shit anyways so we decided to try again and moved her from her merlin suit to sleep sack. That time it took her a total of 2 hours to fall asleep. 45 minutes of that 2 hours was crying (the rest was just rolling around the crib). No pooping or vomiting although for the first week or two she did tend to spit up a bit when she was crying (she's a reflux baby so that is not that terribly unusual) and it wasn't really on her clothes so we'd just move her away from the wet spot during the next check.

So attempt 1 was a fail. Attempt 2 was a success. I think a big part of our failure was just that I gave up pretty fast. But also she seemed less upset (even when crying) the 2nd time than the 1st. I feel like going from swaddled to total freedom + sleep training was just an awful lot for her. I think that the second time her having been used to the merlin which is sort of a half step between swaddling and sleep sack made the transition a bit less harsh.

We didn't want our girls to go through that kind of stress. Our first daughter was a terrible sleeper, so we tried it, but she would escalate to the point of vomiting and self-injury. It just doesn't work for every kid... And once we figured out how to help our older daughter without CIO, we used those same techniques on younger daughter and didn't need CIO!