I guess for me it wasn't that I wanted them to self settle all the time, however I had to do something to get them out of the waking 1-2 hourly for a b'feed routine. After doing 1-2 hourly for 4 mths something had to give for me. I know some people deal better with sleep deprivation and we all have our limits for what we can deal with but for me I was at the point of losing the plot completely. (Both slept through the night from 6 weeks and then regressed!) After doing some sleep training after going to a sleep school, (settling without feeding) we were lucky that both our kids responded to this within 1 night. We literally had 1 difficult night and then a longer stretch the following night that got progressively longer. We have awesome sleepers now, both run to bed at nap time and night time and we haven't had any issues since then really.

I guess my story is a bit different in that our focus was on self settling sometimes so that we would at least get a 4 hour block without being woken up. I think because sleep deprivation is quite horrific for some people and can affect them in ways some of us don't understand that that is the reason why there is that focus.

I personally know people who spent a year in a fog of no sleep, which led to depression after they literally tried everything and yes the focus was on self settling because this mama was at her wits end and it was affecting all her relationships and her relationship and enjoyment with her children. I totally understand the "I'd rather be sleep deprived than go through the stress of trying to teach him to self settle" which I swore by until they hit around 9 mths and I physically couldn't do it anymore. We all do what we have to do to get through - for some that might mean a focus on sleep training earlier than others, doesn't make it wrong or right, makes it RIGHT for us and our children and circumstances.

I agree that a focus from others of - "Is he/she a good baby and sleep through" Is nonsense and just puts more pressure on us as mamas.