Ferber: Advocates crying to sleep with parent soothing on a time schedule. Put your baby in the crib. Come back to pat and say soothing words at 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, etc. Increase the times every night. Hopefully your baby will stop crying and go to sleep. Lots of scientific discussion about sleep.

Weissbluth: Advocates crying to sleep without parent soothing. Open-ended time - no limit. You are "leaving him alone to forget the expectation to be picked up." Has a section on children over 7 years old.

Mindell: Advocates crying to sleep with parent soothing, on a schedule similar to Ferber but with more frequent checks on the baby.

Pantley: Advocates using gentle techniques to avoid crying. Focus on understanding why baby is waking and fixing problems with routines, new associations, and gradual changes in patterns. Supportive of breastfeeding and co-sleeping as well as crib sleeping and bottle feeding.

345 of 357 found the following review helpful:


A Practical (and effective!)Guide for sleep-deprived parents  Oct 31, 2003 By kimberly beck
As a mom of three, including a very high needs infant and then twins, I know sleep deprivation! As a Childbirth Educator and Doula, I have a fairly extensive knowledge of typical infant sleep cycles and behavior. But as any sleep deprived parent can attest, you can be so overwhelmed, exhausted, and desperate for sleep that you are tempted to try anything and need some support and guidance. The two most common suggestions parents are given are to let the baby "cry it out" or to "just deal with it and know this too will eventually pass", neither of which validates the feelings of these desperate parents or gives them practical ideas for trying to meet both their needs and those of their baby, and often, makes them feel worse either because they can't stand to let their baby cry nor feel they can continue to go on being exhausted and sleep deprived, they want and need help NOW.

This book is that help. I bought the No-Cry Sleep Solution when my twin son and daughter were about 9 months old. I was exclusively breastfeeding them and attachment parenting them and did not want to stop that parenting style, but was desperate for sleep. Elizabeth's book was informative, easy to read, easy to follow, and most importantly comprehensive. She does not advocate for any one method of helping babies and parents to sleep, but rather gives weary, exhausted, and overwhelmed parents useful information about what reasonable expectations for sleep are, emphasizes safety, and then gives them easy to use tools they can use to identify sleep issues and many techniques they can choose from to try to bring more sleep to everyone, regardless of sleep arrangements or feeding style! I especially like her sleep logs and analysis tools. Within a few weeks of reading her book we were all sleeping better and I was less stressed as I was able to understand the reasons behind the waking and address them without tears for me or my babies! And yes, we are now all sleeping all night!
I highly recommend this book if you are looking for ways to gently and lovingly help your baby (and yourself) learn to sleep better!

728 of 771 found the following review helpful:


I LOVE the no-crying approach!  Apr 07, 2002 By Becky
FINALLY, a book that makes sense to sleep-deprived people! I always thought there were only three options when it came to sleeping with a baby in the house: 1) You just get lucky and have a natural-born sleeper; 2) You can let them cry it out; or 3) You can just deal with the constant night waking.

Thanks to Elizabeth Pantley, I realized there is a gentle, loving way to teach my daughter to sleep without a single tear! After a few nights of following our sleep plan, my daughter started sleeping through the night. This was accomplished without ONE single tear!!!!

Unlike in other books, there is no strict format to follow. You can adapt the ideas to fit your child and at your own pace. No more feeling guilty for not just letting her cry it out and being tired all the time. No more guilt about not following the very rigid programs in some other "sleep books."

Thanks for all the sweet dreams, Elizabeth!

504 of 534 found the following review helpful:


not good for seriously exhausted parents.  Jan 27, 2005 By first-time mom
At 3 months, my son was sleeping 7pm-4am, waking up to feed, then back down until 7-8am. Then the holidays hit, and everything fell apart. Suddenly he was waking up no less than 12-15 times between 10pm-6am. After 10 days of getting less than 4 hours of (interrupted) sleep each night, my husband and I determined we needed to take action to help the poor kid get back on track. We bought three books - Ferber, "Healthy Sleep Habits" and this one.

Of course we wanted to follow the no-cry solution. Who wants to put their child (and themselves) through the misery of cry it out? I truly believed that cry it out was the wrong thing to do and was positive this plan would work. My husband and I committed to the program and agreed we'd follow it "as long as it takes."

It took all of our energy to read the book cover-to-cover, put together a sleep log and then lay out our sleep plan. The author instructs you to have "patience" and to celebrate even the smallest improvements. What she doesn't really acknowledge is that, when serious sleep deprivation has you at each others' throats, weeping hysterically at the drop of a hat and feeling resentful towards your poor innocent baby, "patience" is something nearly impossible to come by.

After 4 weeks of working with our sleep plan - following the guidelines 'round-the-clock - our son was still waking up 6-8 times a night and napping poorly during the day. This was an improvement over waking a dozen times a night, but still he had huge dark circles under his eyes, startled easily, cried at nothing. He was miserable. We all were.

Despite the 300 other reviews here that say basically "if you really love your baby, you won't let him cry it out" ... I LOVE MY BABY. And we finally decided to let him cry it out. And now? Now I have a happy, well-rested baby. And we have our sanity back.

This book has some good ideas. I'm sure that if my son were waking up only 2-4 times a night, I would have been able to stick with the plan as long as necessary to make it work. But when my child was waking up every 45-60 minutes all night long, night after night, I finally decided that - for our entire family's sake - we required a more radical, doctor-approved intervention.

My point in writing this review is not to defend my actions. It's to offer a different viewpoint amongst the crowd and to bear witness for other exhausted parents ... if this doesn't work for you, YOU ARE NOT A BAD OR SELFISH PARENT. Choose the method that fits your situation and follow it to the letter. And congratulations for wanting to help your baby get the restorative sleep he or she desperately needs.

85 of 86 found the following review helpful:


changed my life immediately  Mar 28, 2003 By H. Hood "-Heather"
I just wanted to report that this book changed my life immediately.
This is a very practical, sensitive book written by a mom who wanted to find a sleep solution that didn't involve varying degrees and timing of crying. I couldn't bare my baby's crying and was getting up 4-5 times a night for 3.5 months. When it occurred to me that I couldn't go back to work like this, desperate, I read web sites and then this book. In 24 hours (yes, one day!) my baby learned to sleep 5-6 hours and then again 2-4 hours. I am dreaming again and have less back pain too.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK for expecting and new parents (and grandparents nagging at you to let the little ones 'cry it out'). Here are a few highlights:

1. keeping babies up later so they get worn out won't lead to longer sleep... it will mean shorter stints since they get tensed up and can't relax well enough to go deep
2. calm down your home at night (sadly and for a little while at least, no more happy baby time for us with visitors and block meetings, baby brigade, etc.)
3. infant babies need 2-3 at least one hour naps per day (my baby slept periodically 30 minutes whenever)
4. babies need very regular schedules (oops, every day was different at our house as I was playing and erranding alot for this break without being at my office)
5. they need absolute darkness to sleep at night (we nixed the night light and noticed our neighbor's porch light came right into the nursery)
6. they don't necessarily need to feed if they awaken and can be patted to sleep (no wonder my kid's in the 90th percentile for weight)

Anyhow, we follow the tricks in the book exactly, all of them but putting a 'lovey' in my bra (good grief), and the method immediately worked for us. Of course it won't work for everyone and all babies are unique. But, if you're going crazy like I was, I recommend it.

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