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Notes -
6.5 month-old baby is not sleeping well. He wakes up frequently, wants his mother.
For the first few months, almost all his sleep was either co-sleeping (common in Europe, but it never felt safe to me), or in the presence of an awake parent (holding, carrier, stroller, car). For a while, we had some success putting him down after he fell asleep and him staying asleep for a few hours, but it would often take a long time to get him into a deep-enough sleep that he would staying sleeping upon being put down.
I eventually strongly suggested sleep training. I read stuff online, Emily Oster and others, and figured we should give the Ferber method a try.
My wife didn't like it; I found it difficult too, and actually I caved on night 3, even though it was kind of working at other times. But I regret caving and think we should have continued.
But our state-issued parenting advisor recommended a gentler method which I can't see working; it rewards his crying with attention; lo and behold, he cries every time he wakes up alone.
Now my wife and I are at odds; It's been 2 weeks of this with little-to-no improvement. She is getting less sleep than I am.
3 older women in my life whose opinions I respect (mother, aunt, landlady) all say we just need to do sleep training properly and stick to it.
The modern Zeitgeist says that sleep training is cruel, even if the studies don't. My wife's friends and family are on her side too. My wife was worrying that the 3 nights we did of Ferber method have ruined our son completely (on all 3 days after he was in a great mood all day...).
For some, doing "the pause" from birth (when newborn wakes, set a timer and excruciatingly force yourself to wait 4-5 actual minutes before responding; we had to use the timer because when we "felt like" we'd waited 5 minutes it would actually be 1-2) results in babies learning to sleep through the night pretty naturally, often by 2-4 months old. As described in the book Bringing Up Bebe (an interesting discussion of the author's experience of cultural parenting differences between France and the USA).
That's what happened for us--and then came the 4 month sleep regression. First time that happened, we'd just recently stopped sleeping in shifts and it didn't occur to us to go back to sleeping in shifts (we should have). We got to the point of waiting up to 15 minutes before going in--so, basically Ferber--and that was enough.
Reading over your comment, I would suggest you start by putting him down awake. At his age he may be having the "Fell asleep in my bedroom, woke up on the lawn" reaction. (By which I mean "Fell asleep in a parent's arms, woke up in the crib" can cause the same kind of reaction in a baby that the foregoing would cause in an adult--"What happened? Where am I? This has got to be bad!")
! does she know that?
We already do this. If it's me doing it, he just screams; if she does it, it's mostly working now, as long as she stays beside him. But when he wakes in the night, he expects someone to be there.
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