This article gets a lot of negative comments but makes interesting reading. The expert in question suggests that rather than rushing to soothe your baby during the night it is better to leave then to soothe themselves back to sleep. It doesn’t appear to be advocating the technique of controlled crying simply saying that babies should be given the chance to settle themselves. On the whole I agree with the advice.
My daughter will wake frequently during the night although rarely crying and will generally settle back down to sleep as she has from an early age. Whilst we have never left her to cry for long periods of time, we do usually find after a few minutes she will go back to sleep. There is a difference, however between leaving a distressed baby crying and leaving a shouting baby crying. Penny will often shout because she doesn’t want to sleep and we do ignore this. At the first sign of distress, however, we always go to her.
It seems many of those who leave a negative comment are missing the point of the article which is to suggest that those babies that are left to settle themselves, ultimately learn to sleep through the night more quickly. Perhaps we have been lucky with Penny but having slept through from two and months old she would now only need attention at night if she is unwell. It will be interesting to see if the new baby is the same.