A review by tani
Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy by Kim West

4.0

It's a bit of cheating to say that I read this. I read the basic sleep training technique, and then the sections that were most relevant to my particular baby. I'm not sure I agree that this is more gentle than cry it out, as my particular baby does not take terribly kindly to parents who sit there and try to soothe her with shushes, rather than just picking her up now damnit, and there were still a lot of tears. We also didn't follow this exactly, as a certain baby still isn't really good about sitting her own self down and going to sleep. There's only so much crying and snot you can take before you just lay the silly baby down.

But we did use the basic outlines of this method, and it gave us enough structure to work from that our baby is now napping in her crib, and going to sleep within 10 minutes of being laid down at bedtime. I'll call that a victory. If we followed it more persistently, we could probably get her to stop needing the 2-3 times that we rock her back to sleep nightly. But honestly, she's an independent baby who doesn't much hold with being rocked to sleep, so it's kind of nice to be able to do it during the night at least. Will I regret that decision in the future? Maybe. But in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy those baby cuddles while they last.