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BTW I did look for that Ferber book at B&N but I could only find one book by him and it didn't seem to be the right one. The one i found though appears to have the sam basic idea that I've seen online regarding what ferber's method is. It says to do a bedtime routine that you can stick with everynight then check ont hem after 5 minutes the first check, then after 5 minutes the second check, then 10 minutes each additional check the first night. It says the 1st night usually takes about 45 minutes, the second night about an hour, then the 3rd night about 20-30minutes and the time goes lower after that... does that sound about right to you? It also says not to pick them up at all but when they wake during the night to do the same things you normally do for night wakings, like nursing or rocking them. The lady says that the bedtime thing will teach them to put themselves to sleep on their own and once they learn that the night wakings will begin to disappear.

SG, can you speak to the specifics of the ferber method? i don't recall it, since we are talking almost 12 years ago now. and i was pretty much hard core, cold turkey with the other two. not going in and patting them etc. i nursed them to sleep and then they were on their own til the AM, like i said, unless they had a cold, fever, other type of illness going on.

the key is definitely to help them learn to put themselves back to sleep. i would disagree with rocking them and nursing them during nighttime wakings, because that is then what they become dependent on. they need to learn to rely on themselves to fall back asleep, not a boob, or an audiotape playing music, a la xsteen when she was a toddler.