Gimmee your ear!This was our approach to sleep training our twins. We didn't want to do a total cry it out thing. But we also weren't ready to just follow their lead and not sleep all night.
Tied up in their sleep training was the fact that they were still snacking in the night at 6 months. So what we did was get up with them when they cried, but walk them around until an appointed hour for the feeding, every other night pushing it out a half hour later. So the first night they would feed at 3:30 but then the next night if they got up before 4 we walked around with them until they nursed at 4. The next night ditto, til 4. The next night we walked around with them till 4:30, the next night ditto, till 4:30.
They did actually sleep longer and longer when they realized they weren't going to get food before that. The following night was 5 am. Once they got to 5 am, I then used the tactic of reducing the minutes of the feeding. If they were both nursing about 10 minutes the first night, every night I reduced the amount of time they could nurse by one minute. I think once we got down 2, or maybe 3?, minutes they ended up dropping the nighttime feeding. But they did wake up early - between 5:30 and 6 am -- and did for a long time after. But they were sleeping through the night. It seems like a really involved process. But I couldn't bear to hear them cry and so that was our (exhausting in the short run, but worked in the long run) solution.
Key point... work out your plan for the night with your partner BEFORE going to bed. Waking up to screaming babies when you're exhausted doesn't set the stage for terribly kindhearted conversations. So much better to know exactly what you're doing and then there's nothing to argue about.
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