It is important to help your baby learn to sleep by itself. The last thing you want to have is a 4 year old who won't go to sleep unless mummy or daddy is patting him to sleep. Trust me on this one. With my first son I religiously fed him to sleep each day and night. Breastfeeding became his cue to sleep. He would not go to sleep unless he was being held or fed. When he woke during the night he needed to be fed or cuddled back to sleep. Ideally he should have been able to drift back to sleep on his own. This was a rod I created for my own back. I had to retrain my son to learn to sleep by himself and settle himself back to sleep during the night. Needless to say it took weeks of gently encouraging him to sleep by himself in his cot. I'm not a fan of controlled crying so we did it more gently, without leaving him to scream alone for hours. These days he goes to bed without much fuss.

With our second child we encouraged him to sleep in his capsule, pram or cot without us patting or feeding him to sleep. If he was unsettled we patted him, sang or 'shhhh' to him until he was settled and then left the room. Now, at nearly 2 years old he happily goes to his cot at sleep time and slowly drifts off to sleep. Rarely does he fight going to bed.

The bottom line is that you have to decide how you want to raise your children. I have followed a sleep routine that wasn't meeting my family's or my needs (with our eldest) and needed to make changes. Now the sleep routine that we have with our children works well for our family. Consider the experts opinions to work out an approach to sleep that works for you.