Success story here with a six-month old. He's sleeping 7pm to 7am, only waking a couple of times a week for a night feed at around 2am which I am more than happy to give.
Before, he was waking up four times a night for a feed and it was killing me.
What we did - and some of it isn't BW so please don't flame!
1. Closed his door. I'd kept it open until we went to bed, and I think the light and noise disturbed him.
2. Worked on his daytime naps and getting him down before he got overtired, so he does 2 x 2 hour naps. He already could self-settle.
3. Dropped the dreamfeed. I tried it for three months and while it worked when he was 8 weeks old, by five months, he was waking for it and the df didn't seem to reduce the nightwakings.
4. TIME! He's growing older and moving around more, so he's more physically tired and his naps naturally extended, helping his night time sleep.
5. We began solids and now he has three solid meals a day, followed by breastfeeds.
6. A slightly earlier bedtime. We aim for 6.45pm-7pm rather than 7.15-7.30pmish and it seems to help.
7. Ignored his 10pm calling when he would wake for the dreamfeed.
I'd tried both sshh-pat and PU/PD for weeks on end and neither of them worked. Both seemed to stimulate my textbook/touchy son too much.
So after doing some reading we DID do our own form of controlled crying, just went in every five minutes to check him for two nights.
The first night, he called for ten minutes, the second night for three minutes, and then the next night he suddenly stopped waking at ALL and not just at 10pm, but for the rest of the night for the first time in his life. And it's been that way for two weeks now, with a few 2am feeds.
Again, I know the last is not BW but it worked. I have a feeling that he wasn't "crying" as such. He wasn't yelling his heart out, as my husband pointed out, I simply was rushing in too soon. When I listened, I realised what I thought was "crying" was really just fussing and mantra crying, and ignoring it really helped.