Still trying to figure out your baby's sleep patterns?
Check this out, courtesy of Askdrsears.com.

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/T070200.asp

QUOTE:
NIGHTTIME PARENTING LESSON #3:
Encouraging a baby to sleep too deeply, too soon, may not be in the best survival or developmental interest of the baby. This is why new parents, vulnerable to sleep trainers' claims of getting their baby to sleep through the night, should not feel pressured to get their baby to sleep too long, too deeply, too soon.
UNQUOTE

I like this story! Finally, expert advice that makes sense!
We let our youngest fall asleep on our shoulders forever, and he's been a great sleeper for more than two years now; back in the olden days, we let our families convince us to make my eldest "cry it out," & it was so rough on all of us. He still has problems sleeping - and he's 18!
I think that by leaving our eldest in his crib to cry, it made him feel abandoned & he still has that subconscious fear or worry. But our preschooler knows we're there to comfort him at any time of the night or day,so he feels protected and comforted enough to sleep soundly.
I know that's not very scientific & probably completely wrong, but it's what I've concluded by watching my own kids and nephews.

See, and we did the CIO method and it worked like a charm. Jack sleeps great. I don't think he feels abandoned at all.
Like everyone always says, every kid is different! I don't think any one method is good for all kids. Parents have to gauge what works best for their own child.

I did a little of both. I just listened to the way my son was crying and went in based on whether it was a I'm genuinly upset or a I want you in here cry. Although, I went in every time he cried up until about 8 months old. I still go in sometimes, but he really doesn't cry very often. When he does, a paci usually fixes it.

I don't think I could handle letting my child CIO very much. I am sucker for a crying baby. We did it a little when we knew he just wanted to be held, but I had to be on the other side of the house where I couldn't hear him very well.

Yeah, I think we took the CIO thing a bit too far with my eldest. I was very young and didn't know what I was doing.
I also think it has a lot to do with your kid's personality. Parents just really need to consider that - and their own parenting styles - before deciding how they'll get their children to sleep alone & through the night.

We are in the middle of trying CIO right now. My husband and I were both pretty against it, but nothing else is working. I feel awful listening to him cry! It makes me want to cry, too.

Before trying CIO, we tried a book called The No Cry Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. It's a pretty good book with a lot of good ideas, but we still couldn't stop his night wakenings. Will has stopped nursing at night, so I know he's not waking up because he's hungry anymore. He just doesn't want to sleep on his own. Every night when he wakes up crying I'd been putting him in bed with us and he goes right back to sleep. The No Cry Solution says to lay the baby asleep drowsy, but awake. If the baby cries, pick him up and rock or nurse or do whatever you normally would till he is drowsy again then lay him down awake again. That just didn't work with Will....we'd be doing that all night. To break a baby of the habit of sleeping in your bed, the book suggests putting him in his crib with the crib right next to (touching) your bed and then slowly moving the crib further away from your bed and the into the baby's own room. Well we spent about a month on Step 1 of that process and never made any progress. He won't sleep in his crib even with it touching our bed.

At Will's 6-month appointment, our pediatrician suggested the Ferber method. So, we've been trying our own version of that. We check on him more often then the intervals suggested on the handout our Ped gave us. We're also still using many of the ideas in The No Cry Solution. We follow the book till we lay him down. Then, when he cries we let him.

So, far I think it may be working. Wednesday night he cried 1 1/2 hours when we put him down. Then when he woke up at 2:00 AM he cried for 2 hours. Last night he cried for 25 minutes when we put him down. Then he woke up around 11:00 PM and cried for around 2 minutes and went right back to sleep. I put him down for a nap earlier today and he went to sleep with no crying. So, we'll see what he does tonight. I'm afraid that because he's so well rested again he'll be ready for another marathon cry session.

It's so hard to lay him down awake, because he'd gotten in the habit of nursing to sleep at night and for naps. I'm sure he didn't mean to, but my Ped made me feel like an idiot for having trouble with this, like it's all my fault Will started having trouble sleeping. A lot of times when Will is tired he feeds with his eyes shut, so I have trouble telling if he is awake or not until it's too late and he is asleep.... I know I need to put him down awake so he learns to fall asleep without nursing, but I don't want to accidentally cut his feeding short.

oops... that turned into another long post.

I started giving Ronald his night bottle before his bath, that way he was full, but he stopped using it to go to sleep. I still rock him every night until he gets drowsy, but then I let him go the rest of the way on his own. I didn't stop rocking him completly to sleep until 10 or 11 months old. It helped him stay asleep.

I've tried having Will's bath be the last thing we do before bed, instead of nursing. But the bath just hypes him up too much. He loves to kick and splash.

That sounds a lot like what we did with out preschooler, Ronaldsmom - and he's usually a pretty good sleeper these days (meaning that we don't have much trouble getting him to go to bed at night & he very rarely wakes us up before morning). I think it was a very nice, gradual transition for both of us.
And since I stay home, I really didn't care if it took a while to get him to sleep through the night.I figured, why rush? And now I'm glad I did, because he's a much better sleeper than his older brother and isn't afraid to go to sleep, like my sister's youngest son is.

I got into the habit of nursing Jack to sleep too and then he couldn't go to sleep without nursing. Ugh. So I had to break that habit as well.
When I first put him in his crib awake he freaked b/c he didn't know where he was. It dawned on me that he never saw his crib awake. I always carefully placed him in there asleep. So I knew I needed to make him familiar with the crib and get him to know it was a place for sleeping.

We followed "Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child" (I think that's the name) by Marc Weissbluth. And it worked for us. It basically tells you to let them CIO. And it took us a week. His crying became less and less. Finally (and I never thought the day would arrive), he didn't cry at all. And he's been going to sleep peacefully on his own ever since. We did it when he was 8 months old. I thought I did it too late and could have had him sleeping by himself sooner. But oh well. That's what happens when you're a first time parent! LOL. Live and learn.

Maybe I got lucky, because my LO has always been a pretty good sleeper. When it gets to be around 7:15 he starts rubbing his eyes and comes over to me and lays his head on me, letting me know he is ready for bed. It is very sweet.

I will say that there were a few nights around Will's age that I let Ronald cry it out. Since then he has not kept us up unless he was sick. The crying patterns Ronald did sound similar to what Will is doing now.

Sorry I can't be of more help SarahMay, we just played around with our routine until we found one that worked for all of us. Then every few months as he gets older I have to change the routine. LOL! I have found as soon as I get used to one thing, my LO seems to have already moved on to the next thing. So it goes with babies... Ronald moves and grows faster than I can keep up sometimes...

I do hope you find some resolution and finally get some sleep. Sooner than Later.

P.S. We also have a CD player hooked up with some soothing classical music in it that plays for about an hour. I turn it on every night when I lay Ronald down to bed. On the rare occassion he does wake up, I can usually turn on the music and that does the trick within a few minutes. Here's hoping any of this can help you!

I like to rock my LO, so that's what I do most nights. I can put him to bed and pat him and he will go to sleep,too. Sometimes, if neither seems to be working, I will rock while watching an episode of Law & Order and it will put him out like a light. It is my fallback plan. I've tried it with other programs, but L&O is the only one that he goes to sleep to. It is the funniest thing. As soon as he hears the theme song, he takes on his I'm-going-to-sleep posture. I'll do this at nap-time, too. LOL

I have nothing good to say about bedtime!! j/k - really, just about the time we get on a great routine and my girls hop off to bed, something happens like an illness or thunderstorm or a bad dream and it begins all over again with fighting bedtime. I think when they get a bit older and their minds (imagination) starts working then they have more things they fear and it takes being a master debater and wizard to prove to them they are safe. And for Gods sake, I've learned don't EVER let them get overtired, because for some reason there is this cruel joke that being overly tired does not create sleepyness!!!!!!

Oh yeah, that's right, grndhogmom! Never let them get overtired.
Mine still naps about two hours a day, right after lunch (eat at noon, nap thirty minutes later), and then we make sure to do something pretty active between nap-time and the start of our big bed time routine(which is ALWAYS dinner/bath/story-time/quiet time/teeth-brushing/ bed - & it starts around 6:30).
And I think it was Ronaldsmom who said she plays soothing music at bedtime, and that reminded me of something else we do.
Our street is pretty noisy (dang-gum teenagers with their blasting car stereos!!!!), so we use a sound machine (set on "rain") for both nap-time and bed-time. It helps a lot!

And my son usually sleeps from 8 pm to 6:30 am these days. This might change when the time changes this weekend, though... ugh!