I HATED "no cry sleep solution." There was WAAAAAY too much crying involved in any vague attempt along those lines & it made me really angry that this person was presuming those methods would work. Now, I'm still sleep-deprived, so I may be over-reacting
We established a strict schedule, using a different method, it really really really did take two of us.
First, we sorted out how much sleep DS really needed, by letting him set the schedule 100% for a week. This turned out to be 10/30 hours. 30 hours was not an acceptable day length for us, so we decided to fit things into a 24 hr day. We figured out how much sleep was enough for us... 8 hrs, PLUS a nap. It was evident that this would be more sleep than he needed, so we got vicious. By damaging 2 sleep cycles per day, we could add almost as much sleep time as we needed, and by forcing him onto a 24 hr cycle, we made much of the sleep that remained non-optimal, which stretched his requirement a little more.
Ok, that was sorting out the plan. Now the execution. We got him very very very tired. He also fights sleep, so it was pretty easy to keep him awake until he was exhausted. Getting him to sleep in that condition was not easy, but it WAS possible. We got him to sleep. Then we woke him up. Well before he was ready, and deliberately in the middle of a sleep cycle. Rinse and repeat. He cried on waking, but he was a kid who cried on waking anyway, this was just worse, and it was much more manageable crying than anything like an attempt to let him cry to sleep (which is what no-cry really is, despite the title). For months, the last sleep cycle of each night and each nap was interrupted by an evil parent. Sometimes this meant he slept only 4-5 hours in a night, if he'd not been amenable to going to sleep the night before. We were incredibly strict, and we always interrupted the sleep cycle.
Now, I think this was incredibly vicious, but we felt it was necessary, because we were not coping well, and all the "gentle" methods were putting us in the hospital with crying-induced asthma attacks. The amount of crying per wake-up was rarely over 30 minutes, which did not make him really sick.
He's now on a fairly reliable schedule, and we no longer interrupt sleep cycles; at 2.5, he seems to be requiring more sleep than he used to. Apparently this is fairly normal at this age, though not much talked about. We now get 10/24 hrs pretty comfortably. He still cannot fall asleep by himself, no matter how tired he is, nor will he sleep in strollers or cars or swings or whatever. But at least us parents are now mostly functional most of the time. (though still tired.) He still naps, because we can't get all the sleep he needs to happen at night, which is annoying, because I can't really sleep effectively while he's napping, and I can't get enough sleep overnight. But at least we're surviving.
I would not use our method unless you really really need to establish a routine, and a longer sleep time. I think it's quite cruel. But it did work.
-Mich
