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We were getting up every 20mins-1.5....I couldn't handle it anymore. I was crying so much. Pretty much hated my life and every night regretted having her, which made me cry more. DH and I were fighting from exhaustion. DH finally made me let her CIO. And it worked, I thought for sure that it wouldn't on her.

@grizz: I don't think you're going to like it, haha. We did extinction method. However, if I did it over again I would do it slightly different than how I did. BUT, I sleep trained early on, whereas C is a bit older and might benefit, or need, the real full on method. I think it's just a mama judgement call. What you're comfortable with.

So, basically, you do bedtime routine, put them in bed, and leave them there until morning. Which sounds pretty harsh.

If I did it again, I would do something like:

Bedtime routine - bed.
Any wake up before 12pm, let cry.
Wake up around 12 - 1am, feed.
Any wake up between 1 - 4, let cry.
Wake up around 4 - 5pm, feed.
Wake up between 5 - 7, let cry.

Obviously adjust it to C's "hungry" times. It's definitely not a method for everyone, but it worked really well for us! (Most of the time, we still have bad nights, but we have more good than bad).

If you're interested I'll tell you more!

I was up every 90 minutes for two months straight, plus she wouldn't sleep alone so I was going to bed at 7:00. I was exhausted and cranky during the day because I was spending every second of my life attached to her.

We decided what our "bottom line" was. In our case, I needed her to put herself to sleep so that I could have some alone time in the evenings. That HAD to happen or else my mental health and my marriage were going to suffer.
We did our bedtime routine, I nursed her, out her in the co sleeper and walked out. My husband went in and laid next to her. He occasionally sushed/patted, but after 45 minutes she put herself to sleep. She never became very upset, mostly just whined and fussed. We had both agreed that if she got too upset he'd pick her up, but he never had to.
I spent most of the first night in the shower, so I didn't hear her.

Second night I was in there with her. Took 20 minutes. The third night (I think) she just stayed asleep after I nursed her and while I transferred her to the cosleeper.

After doing this for a week, we decided to try changing it so that nursing wasnt the last thing before bed. We nursed first, then went on with the rest of the routine about 10 minutes. She fussed but never was extremely upset he first night for maybe 15 minutes, tops
So now we can put her in the crib awake, and she puts herself to sleep without assistance. It started working at naps, too.
She sleeps from 7 to 10 by herself, then comes to bed with us. She is usually up one or two times between 10 and 5, and then snoozes, waking more frequently and nursing until 7:30 or 8.

So it's not perfect, but it's tolerable. I know that if we wanted her to sleep through the night we would need to move her to another room and we aren't ready for that yet.

I read a quote on a sleep site: "everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face." Before I had her, I was against any CIO. On the other side, I'm a little frustrated with myself and all the stuff I read about it being "traumatic." Granted, we did it a little differently, and it worked really well. It was a good time for her (6 months). But it was NOT traumatic. And to even compare it to actual trauma is just offensive. I wish I hadn't felt so guilty about doing it at first, because there was no reason to feel guilty. It was a great decision for us. She is better rested, and able to put herself to sleep. I'm better rested and more able to play with her and be patient during the day. My husband and I get to eat dinner, watch a movie, cuddle, whatever. It's changed our whole lifestyle and made parenting feel so much more manageablE.

@Silva: yes. I think no one WANtS to sleep train, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and sometimes it is the best thing you can do

@grizz: I did CIO this week for B's 12-1 feed. It may be a fluke, but it only took us one night. That one night was hard; he cried a full hour and I cried along with him. I was so upset I couldn't even go back to bed that night. However, the past 3 nights he has slept from 7-5:30 without any wakings. I feed him at 5:30 and then he goes back to bed for an hour or two.

@.twist.: What if he refuses to oh back to bed in his crib after the 5 am feeding? Do you let him cry until 7?

It sucked, but it was a good decision in the end. We figured out that LO would get more mad at 3-5 minute checks, so we would let her go 10-20 minutes. 10 if she was fighting mad, 20 if she was just whining. Except for once or twice, she was asleep working 10 minutes. I cried the entire time.

@grizz: I totally agree. DH and I couldn't keep fighting over what to do to get her to sleep. R is a MUCH happier baby now that she STTN. She was just tired and cranky all the time. Plus then we got her sleep trained, I felt ok leaving her at home with my parents while DH and I could go out on a date. Which was MUCH needed.
We decided that anytime she woke up before 2, we let her cry. After 2 I would go in and feed her, and immediately put her back in the crib. We were having to hold her till she fell asleep and then hold her another 10-20 mins before transferring to the crib. Within in 3 night she was doing great. STTN some nights, otherwise sleeping till 4 or 5 to eat. Then back to sleep. Then teething hit, and the 4 or 5 kept getting earlier and earlier, and next thing we were back to 2 or 3 wake ups a night.
At her 6 month appointment, the pedi said to let her CIO. She didn't need to eat anymore over night, especially since we knew she could do it. Three nights later she has been STTN since.
If you do CIO, give your DH the monitor. Once he wakes up, have him turn the monitor off, and then just keep checking till he goes back to sleep. Once he is asleep, turn the monitor back on. This worked for us. DH could handle it better then me.

@grizz: I'm sorry it's tough. I really think you have to just do what's best for your baby. I finally realized dr. Sears doesn't have my kid or my life. And so what works for him isn't going to work for me. I am a better mama to my kid because I sleep trained her. I play more, I'm not crying all the time, my marriage is more stable.

Come up with a plan that you are comfortable with. Ours wasn't from a book, we just decided what felt okay to us. Like I said, we were most focused on getting her to fall asleep alone at night. It did help reduce other night waking so but that wasn't our initial goal. We decided to do it in phases, a sort of weaning down. Plan the "what ifs" so in the moment you aren't making panicked decisions. And be gentle with yourself! That sweet baby is so well attached, and knows you love him. He might get frustrated because he has to make some changes, but new things are always tough.

@grizz: Any improvement will help significantly. Our LO still has some bad nights, but more often than not its one or two wake ups and I feel so much better.

This is kind of off topic (or more about me, but maybe it will help you come to peace with whatever decision you make). In prenatal yoga class one day, my teacher described labor as a time when you are forced to truly "meet yourself." I went into it totally against pain meds, and believed I would feel guilty if I did have some. After 50 hours of back labor (posterior baby) I had this moment where I was like "what am I doing? I'm avoiding intervention because I'm worried what my mom and my BFF and all these other people who didn't have pain meds are going to think about me." It sucked to realize that I was clinging to this plan because I wanted to hold true to some "identity" I had for myself. In that moment I realized that what I needed was rest, a break, and probably some medical assistance. After the interventions we chose, things progressed very quickly. It was absolutely the right choice for me and for my baby (who ended up needing to come out quickly, anyway).
Deciding to sleep train was a similarly hard choice for me. I did have some concerns about it being "traumatic" or whatever- although I cognitively had read all the studies and knew that she was old enough to handle it, and that we were doing a method that was less intense. But there was definitely a part of me (and I am ashamed to admit this) that was worried about "what people would think." Getting over that felt great. Because now I know I made the right choice for me, my family, and my baby. And to me, knowing that I can make instinctual choices for our individual situation rather than following some arbitrarily defined list of "attachment parenting" makes me feel like I am really in touch (and hey, what do you know, attached!) to my kid.

I'm happy to chat if you need help coming up with a plan. I feel like I read ALL the sleep things on the internet for a while. If our "method" is intriguing to you, I think its called "parent attended cry it out" or something like that in some places. We loaded up our iPods and just stayed with her. My friend said there is a similar method where you move further and further away from them. Basically we were just "trading down" sleep associations, which is something they talk about on Isis.

I really didn't want to but at 11.5 months her wake ups were unbearable. She would wake 4-5 times and be up for hours at a time. We were both cranky. She didn't know how to put herself to sleep, so we gave in. We got a solid routine, put her down. She cried for 20 mins the 1st night, 8 the second, and 3 the third and that was that. She sttn from night one. It was worth it for both of us.

He had back to back to back ear infections and his sleep went to crap. We swore we'd never sleep train but at 9.5 months, he was getting up every hour or two and then stopped going back in his crib after wakeups. We haven't slept more than 2 hours at a time in ages. We finally did a sleep consult and came up with a plan. It is a modified CIO with soothing because straight CIO didn't work for ours. He screamed forever. But this worked last night (our first night). It took him 1 1/2 hours to fall asleep but then he slept through the night for the first time since he was 3 1/2 months old.

@grizz: Our pedi gave us a kick in the butt about E's sleep too. As a result, we let him fuss at his 1am wake-up...two nights later, he slept straight through it. I feed him around 3 or 4 AM, because our ped said it was reasonable for him to sleep 7 to 8 hours in a row. If he had cried, I would have run in there, but he surprised me by only fussing. Of course I didn't get any more sleep, because I stared at the monitor! But, I would not have had the strength to do it had we not moved him to his own room. As much as I hated to do it, at 6 1/2 months, it was time for him to sleep longer than the 5 hours, then up and down continually through the rest of the night we had been doing. I handle sleep deprivation pretty well, but DH does not.
I sincerely hope you have the same luck. We have not been as good with naps, but we (and our pedi) are less concerned with daytime sleep as long as our night sleep lengthens and improves. It's a process. I've already done a lot of things I never thought I'd do, on both sides of the proverbial fence... I finally felt like it was okay to try when my friend, who is a crunchy mama and a pediatrician, did CIO with her youngest. Like @silva:, thankfully, making the decision was the hardest part.

I was super against doing sleep training with my LO (I just felt it wasn't right for him or me), but it became necessary, so we started at 6 months. It was brutal for me, but went okay for a few weeks. Then he regressed due to teething. We ended up going back to cosleeping and re-starting sleep training at 7 months. Again, it went okay for a couple weeks and then he started regressing again for no apparent reason. After that I was done. I just realized it wasn't right for us, two months was enough! I wish it had worked though..

Someone gave me good advice before we started and I was considering doing it - don't do it unless you are 100% committed to it. Otherwise, you won't be able to get through it and be completely consistent.

Good luck!!