Rating: 
Summary: not for the faint of heart...
Review: i'll be brief. this method works. but if you are unwilling to follow the basic tenets of the program, you are doomed. you can't give in one night thinking you'll start fresh tomorrow. it doesn't work like that. if you aren't willing to follow the instructions as written for two weeks, then you probably shouldn't try this method at all. it will just be a confusing and stressful time for your family.i took less than a week to get my 7 month old daughter sleeping nine hours straight per night. and now at 9 mos. she's sleeping ll hours per night. the only reason that i don't give 5 stars is that dr. ferber doesn't spend enough time on napping. naps are a whole different ballgame for my little one. dr. ferber simply doesn't make enough of a distinction between nighttime and daytime sleeping.
Rating:
Summary: We didn't want to go this route, but it worked!
Review: We reluctantly decided to try the Ferber method, after reading the other "No-Cry" books, following the plans, and ending up with a 10-month old who woke up frequently during the night, and would only sleep if rocked or brought into mom and dad's bed. Our son started sleeping through the night just before he turned 3 months old, but then began having frequent night wakings at around 5 months. We first turned to the "No Cry Sleep Solution," which didn't work for us. Finally, after our 9 month appt. with our pediatrician, he recommended we try Ferber. The thought of letting our son cry without picking him up made me sick, but we realized that he did need to learn to fall asleep on his own. Night one was difficult - there were 50 minutes total of crying before he fell asleep, and he woke up for two hours in the middle of the night. It is hard to go in to check on the baby and walk out while he's crying. But at least the frequent checks lets him know you're still there. My husband was calling Dr. Ferber every name you can imagine. Night two, he fell asleep in 5 minutes, and would occasionally wake up in the night, but fell back to sleep in a couple of minutes. Night three, we had a two-hour session in the middle of the night again, but as of night four, we're sleeping through the night! Some occasional waking, which doesn't require us to go into his room, and sometimes it may take as long as 10 minutes for him to fall asleep, but usually its only about 2. It's been a week and a half since we started this, and we're already a new household! There will be a new version of this book coming out soon...wish I could have waited. Updated studies would be interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: Take what you can and leave the rest behind
Review: There seem to be two camps on the "CIO" theory -- Dr. Ferber and Dr. Sears. I think you have to take some pieces of each. Dr. Ferber seems to have helped many people, but I found his ways to be too "black and white" and just too cold for me. But I did use some of his advice and was able to get my son to sleep through in just a week (without crying it out).
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Good Information
Review: We never "Ferberized" our daughter, and she never spent even one night "crying it out." Nonetheless, I recommend this book for the good information it has about children's sleep patterns and sleep problems. For example, our daughter has experienced night terrors several times. Ferber's book had the best information about what these are and how to deal with them. You can get good information from Ferber without following his methods for getting your child to sleep through the night.
Rating: 
Summary: I was totally against this method...but, it really worked!!!
Review: Okay, Dr. Ferber, I stand corrected! I thought you were some kind of nut when I first read this book. But after my 20-month old son FINALLY slept through the night after only 2 days of sleep training -- I'm a believer!!!!! Not only is my son sleeping straight through for 10 hours, he goes to bed happily every night. No more fussing. No more, "Mama, Mama", at 3 AM. This sleep-deprieved mom (and new convert) is very grateful for the advice!
Rating: 
Summary: Old, outdated information
Review: This book is 18 years old and the scientific data upon which it was based is now outdated. The recommendation to let your baby lay in his crib and cry to sleep because it's the only way to get him to sleep no longer applies. There are many other options to better sleep for babies and parents. Our generation has learned so much in the past 18 years and it's wise to take advantage of new research and information, and it's much easier on both parents and baby too. I liked a new book (2002) called The No-Cry Sleep Solution, Gentle Ways To Help Your Baby Sleep.
Rating:
Summary: It Works
Review: Well, it worked for our six-month old son. We tried Pantley's No Cry book first, and were getting more frustrated than we started. (Sometimes my over-tired son cried in my arms, and her saying that there is no reason to let a baby cry made me feel like a bad mom.) It probably took two weeks to get the sleep problems totally sorted out, but we had been operating on hourly wakings and no naps for six weeks, so two weeks to get to twelve hours a night, plus two two-hour naps was sheer heaven.
We heard so many people tell us things like, "I/we couldn't do that it just seemed so cruel." There is so much more to this book than just letting him cry for progressively longer periods. If you were to do only that you really would be being heartless. By the time we were "letting him cry" the crying lasted, on average, for under a minute, but never longer than nine minutes.
We actually can vary his routine now (two months later), and we could go on a trip without throwing him off his schedule. Every baby is an individual, so parents just have to use their best judgement for their children, but I have been recommending this to other moms I meet that are still waking frequently to comfort or feed their babies after four months. Good luck.
Rating:
Summary: Worked for us!
Review: I had read the "no-cry" book everyone is talking about, but our problem was getting our 15 mo. old daughter down at night, not necessarily night waking. I loved rocking her, but it would often take two hours before she fell asleep, and then she sometimes woke up as I placed her in the crib. The crying is hard to deal with, but I know that I am still a compassionate, loving mother and my little girl still delights at seeing me every morning. After 4 nights, she was falling asleep with only about 10 minutes of intermittent crying. Don't think Ferber is some sort of sleep-Nazi. He advises tailoring the plan to your needs--if you can only wait one minute before going in to check on your child, that's okay. I think a lot of people who are critical of this method haven't really read the book. When we have more kids, I will start putting them down awake from the get-go.
Rating:
Summary: Cry-it-out, throw up, then cry some more
Review: Ok so I tried Mr. Ferber for 3 weeks with my 19 mo. old, and it's brought me nothing but vomiting and hysterical crying when I say "Nigh-night." He says it's ok for them to throw up (but really, I am the one who has to clean it up!) He also says to use the 5/10/15 and so on with the cry-it-out sessions. My daughter would calm down when I went into the room, but as soon as I left, she cried hysterically - worse than before I went in there. Finally it usually ended up with me laying her down after almost an hour of crying and her passing out right when I laid her down. Her eyes would be all puffy, nose bright red, tear streaks on her cheeks... so I've decided this book is for the birds - at least for my child. If after 3 weeks there is no improvement, I must move onto a different solution. She is crying for a reason, and if she needs my comfort then I'm going to be there for her. I've currently ordered a book about the no-cry-solution to sleep problems and it's ratings have been great, so I'm willing to give that a try. I've tried Ferber, now I think I'll give my husband the book to start the grill the next time we cookout!
Rating:
Summary: It may work, but at what cost?
Review: Dr Ferber is a sleep specialist and explains human sleep accurately and completely. What is missing from this book is compassion. Certainly, any baby left in the crib to cry to sleep will eventually "get it" that no one is coming back. However, I question what this does to the parent/child bond and to the baby's view of the world. Furthermore, many of my support group friends who Ferberized took several weeks of torment until their baby was sleeping better, and many of the mothers cried through the process. And then they seem to regress quite often and have to do the crying-it-out process again and again. I found just as much accurate sleep information, and a more compassionate plan in another book called The No-Cry Sleep Solution. I had just as much success as my friends, but did it without the pain of the crying.
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