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Yes, the point is for them to learn to self-soothe back to sleep and sleep without the parent having to go in and soothe/feed/rock/etc. My daughter did this on her own from 2-3 months of age, did 1 night waking where I fed her from 3-6 months and then at 6 months, we had to do a bit of minor CIO to get her to drop her night feeding. Now, she happily sleeps from 6:15pm until 8/8:30am without waking. She is capable of soothing herself back to sleep.

Now, she was giving cues that she didn't really need her one night feeding anymore. She had been eating less and less of it. She was playing around with the bottle instead of eating, etc. That's when I decided to go for it. If she had seemed like she still needed that feeding, I would have let her keep it. I think in her case, it was just a habit.

We let DD fuss and soothe herself back to sleep starting around 3 months only because I would spend a long time putting her to sleep only to have her wake 30-40 minutes later. I know she was not hungry and had a dry diaper, so she wa just tired and had trouble transitioning into the next sleep cycle. I didn't just stop with night feedings cause she still seemed to need it. She's just shy of 9 months now and still wakes at 5a for a night nursing session after going to bed at 730p and is up for the day at around 730a. Technically she is old enough to probably not need the night session and if I wean her, she can probably just eat more during the day to make up the loss but I'm having trouble letting it go. We are moving in a few weeks so I want to wait until we settle to wean. I'd hate to wean then move - too much change.

If you feel your LO is ready for some sleep training, go for it but don't deny night waking if she is genuinely hungry. DD has a pretty good nursing session at night so I know she's not just playing around. It also took a bit of training for her to put herself back to sleep after the night waking.

Our daughter hasn't been waking in the night for food since 3.5 months. She does wake crying multiple times in the night though for her binky. As soon as we get up and put her pacifier back in (and turn her sleep sheep back on), she falls right back asleep. It's annoying to say the least, since there's nothing technically wrong when she wakes up. She just wants to suck on her binky, and she doesn't yet know how to find it and put it back in herself. For this reason, we're planning on sleep training soon. I just haven't bitten the bullet yet...

@googly-eyes: 6 weeks is still young, and you definitely wouldn't do it to eliminate night feedings since most will still need to eat. I started working on better sleep habits around the 8-9 week mark by introducing a routine and working at putting her in the crib for naps.

We did CIO because she had a hard time falling asleep on her own.

@zippylef: how long did it take to wean night feedings through CIO? LO went from 1 wakeup to 2 wakeups (midnight, 5:30am) recently at 6 months and i'm dying here!

I think it is for different reasons at different times, and is not for all babies or for all mamas.

I did it at 5 months old after more than a month of LO waking up every 2 hours (or less) all night long. And this was after him sleeping very, very long stretches at 2 and 3 months old. They call it the 4 month sleep regression and I thought we would just 'out grow it'. But he really did need to learn to fall asleep on his own. There are other ways to teach babies to fall asleep on their own, and I tried other things and researched so much, but in the end it was like a lightswitch-fix when I did CIO.

When I did it, I was worried about how to know in the night when he was hungry vs not, but once we did the CIO for bedtime he went back to sleeping the normal long stretches and waking up just a couple times a night to eat.

Fast-forward to 6 months, and now he's started waking up every hour all night all over again. I'm quite sure it's not teething or a growth spurt, so I'm giving him one more night an d then it is a CIO bedtime again.

At 8 months, my friend just used CIO at night-wakings to teach her baby to sleep through the night. (IT's her 2nd and she said she was comfortable doing it at that early of an age this time, but waited til 10 months or so with her older daughter).

It is such a personal choice.

As a parent, I want to always help my child do what he cannot do, but not do for him what he can do for himself. I know he can fall asleep on his own again.

We didn't do it with either girl, though we probably easily could have with M. I always think of it as something parents do when the parents are at wits end and need more sleep. I think some babies must need it to sort things out. It's not one size fits all though. We would have broken our first daughter's spirit if we did it.

@caffeinated: For us, it was only a couple of days. C is very easy when it comes to sleep, so it only took about 10 minutes for her to settle herself again.

@googly-eyes: Oh your LO is still very young. I think a 4 hour night stretch at 6 weeks is pretty awesome! It will probably naturally start stretching out on its own if she's already doing so well. DDs night stretches was around 4-5 hours at that age and started stretching to 5-6, then 7-8. We are at a 9-10 hour stretch, nurse then another 2 hours right now at 9 months. It will get better. =)

@googly-eyes: I just wanted to say that it sounds like your LO is doing great. At 6 weeks, my LO was doing 4-6 hr stretches but it wasn't a linear progression like others have mentioned. Now my LO is a fantastic sleeper but it took a lot of work with developing good routines and respecting his sleep schedule!

We were fortunate to not have to do any sleep training to get LO to fall asleep on his own at bedtime. We started a consistent bedtime routine at 3 weeks. At 4 weeks when he started breastfeeding I would nurse him until he was completely asleep and gently put him down. After a week or two I would start passing him off to daddy who would gently put LO down. Then we just started being less and less gentle and eventually he was wide awake going into his crib. It was a nice and easy transition but my LO has always been resistant to rocking and he never, ever slept in the swing (despite my best efforts to get him to nap during the day)!

I also wanted to say that CIO is never something a parent WANTS to do. No one ever likes hearing their baby cry. Sleep training is about teaching healthy sleep habits so that your LO can get the rest she needs...and yes, it may take a bit of crying. But what's worse?...rocking and bouncing a baby for 2 hours while she's crying in your arms or letting them cry for 20-30 minutes in the safety of their crib so they learn how to fall asleep on their own?

@googly-eyes: 4 hrs. for 6 weeks I think is pretty normal/good! I think around the 8-10 week mark you will probably see a noticeable stretch in sleep, little by little. I want to say by 10 weeks my LO was able to do a 5 hr. stretch, and by 12 weeks a 6 hr. stretch. Hopefully each week will get better and better!

Like others said, it's really about the self-soothing, not necessarily about eliminating night-wakings. We did a very mild form of CIO around 3 months, but she was a pretty good sleeper than so we didn't really have to sleep-train. Then at about 5.5 months she had a sleep regression, which is when we actually did CIO and sleep-training. We were still giving her a dream-feed at the time (she was on formula by then) and I knew she did not need to eat in the middle of the night. After about 1.5 weeks of sleep training, she slept like an angel, and any mama who has successfully sleep-trained will tell you it is glorious!

I have heard that Happiest Baby on the Block is a good book for sleep training w/o using CIO, but I have not read the book myself. I used Weissbluth's Happy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child book.

@skibobrown: See, there is nothing wrong with not being ready. C... she's just very independent on her own. It's her personality. I felt in my gut that she was ready to be STTN on her own.

@caffeinated: I kind of judge it on how she's crying. I can tell the difference at this point. She does not fuss for a dirty diaper. It doesn't bother her. The only thing she gets really worked up over is food. Normally, if she cries for more than 10-15 minutes steadily, she's hungry. We still have the odd night where I get up and feed her. It just happened like 3 days ago, I fed her at 5am. If I can tell she's calming down after 10 minutes, I leave her. OR, if she wakes up fussy and then cries, I leave her. If she needs something, she wakes up wailing.