> the most extreme version of which involves leaving a baby on their own to "cry it out", in an effort to encourage their babies to sleep for longer stretches so their parents can get some much-needed rest.
I'm not a parent but that sounds pretty sensible to me. Odd of the BBC to call it "extreme".
Next night, 10, 15, 20, 30, 30, 30...
next night, 15, 20, 30, 30, 30....
At some point it went up to like 30 mins for first check, then an hour for subsequent checks. I think if we'd gotten to that point we'd consider trying something else cause that's a lot of crying.
But in practice we never had to really adhere to most of the structure because iirc it was like:
Night 1: 5, 10, 15, asleep. Night 2: 10, 15, asleep. Night 3: asleep. Night 4: 15, asleep.
Then he was sleep trained and has slept like a rock with 0-30 seconds of fussing (usually 0) (and ~never crying) since.
The big thing he says for going to sleep is to set up the desired sleep associations (eg, alone in the crib in a dark quiet room if that’s what you choose) and then ensure the child falls asleep in that situation and it doesn’t change while they sleep. So for instance, don’t let them fall asleep on your lap then move them to the crib, because when the next normal sleep cycle ends and they partially wake up, they will discover something is different and get upset.