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We sleep trained right around 3-4 months.
- I read 12 hours by 12 weeks (don't worry I didn't start it till 12/13 weeks either! Super short read, you can finish it in a few days). I mostly read that to figure out how to get rid of night feeds since my ped said he didn't need to eat overnight anymore. Basically it talks about never giving in earlier than the previous night and just stretching the amount of time between feedings as much as possible. And how their daytime schedule can impact nighttime. I didn't agree with everything it said, so I followed it loosely to a degree I was comfortable with. But of course toi have to follow the main ideas for it to even be worth it.
- we relied on the paci a lot. During training once I would hear him, say at midnight, I'd go in with my pillow and a blanket and lay next to his crib and replace the paci over and over. That's how we'd extend to the next feed. But the key is to do it before they are really awake and crying. Once we surpassed the previous nights feed time I'd just make a gut decision about when to give in and feed. But then the NEXT night I couldn't do earlier than that.
- we decreased his bottle little by little each night until it was nothing left for that feed and hopefully by then he could sleep without waking for that feed (and it worked!). So in short it was a combination of increasing time between feeds and decreasing feed amount.
- once we get to one last wakeup around 5am, that's when my ped said to CIO. There are many ways to do this, you can do what makes you comfortable. For us, checks didn't help at all. Made it worse. So I finally buckled down and just let him cry. I turned the sound off of the monitor so I could faintly hear him through the apartment but it wasn't blaring in my ears. And I just tried to sleep. I'm sure some would say I was being mean, BUT even if you do checks it's supposed to be after a certain length (10, 15 mins) of sustained crying. He NEVER cried for more than 5 mins. He'd then take a break and start up again a couple mins later. So I never felt he was truly in distress and of course if I did I would go in.
The first night he cried on and off like that from 5am to 7am. But he did fall asleep here and there.
Next night it was like 5:30 to 6:30ish
Third night he slept till 6am!!! 7pm to 6am! That's when I felt it was ok to go in and put on his mobile and he would lay there happily for another hour. (The book also talks about being very consistent with the time that you want To be morning. So we said 7am. So we still to this day at 17 months don't go in until 7am. And let me tell you, he will not make a sound until 7am! I think his internal clock knows when it's ok, haha).
Eventually the latest we got him to sleep was 6:30 and we were very happy with that. It was VERY consistent for a long time. Now that he's a toddler and we are in a nap transition period it is more variable but still no earlier than 6am except for a weird day here or there. And still we won't go in until 7 and he happily plays by himself.

Anyway I am typing this quickly before I have to go out and start mom duties (I got to sleep in today ) so I may have missed some things but feel free to ask me anything.

I think mrs bee has a really good post on it! On the blog about sleep training Charlie. It was super informative!

we also sleep trained for going to bed only, around 4 months, using a modified Ferber method. I, too, thought my LO was a tension increased but it turned out that the sleep training worked, with much less crying than I'd anticipated. He was down to one wake up on his own by then, so I can't speak for sleep training motn. If I had trained motn, though, I would have done something like picking a time range that you will feed baby, and CIO if baby wakes before that pre-designated time.

We trained DS @ 4 months, but to tell you the truth, I don't remember all the details of how we did it. Luckily he adjusted quickly and we never had to let him cry for more than 7 or 8 minutes.

@Hoots: yes, I definitely think it's worth a try! I really, seriously thought my LO was a textbook tension increaser. I thought he would cry hard for hours! But the first night was 40 minutes. And he was fine by night 3. But I will admit that those 40 minutes were so hard! I also think the checks probably prolonged the crying, but we couldn't stomach the extinction method....