Hi there, welcome to BW, I don't think we've 'met' before
Why shouldn't you use PUPD unless you have an established EASY routine in place? These two posts seem to contradict each other. One says I'm doing great, the other says I'm doing it wrong / stop it.
I'd like to see if I can help with this confusion.
In the BW books (I'm not sure if you have read them/one/which) Tracy describes sleep training with young babies and using shush/pat, with this method you pick baby up if he cries and continue to shush/pat in arms until he is totally calm and relaxed (this may take quite some time) then put him down in the cot and continue to shush/pat, if he cries again you pick him up again and continue to shush/pat in arms until he is totally calm and relaxed. It sounds to me like this is what you are doing although I do not know for sure, but from your description of waiting for him to stop crying and then your wife suggesting holding him a minute longer after the crying stops, well it sounds like the shush/pat method to me (even if you have adapted the shush by using song). so you will see this method involves picking up and putting down, this could in effect be called 'pick up put down' and Tracy does refer to it this way in her book. This is the method we would suggest is always used first. There are adaptations which are generally accepted on the forums such as singing or a key phrase if/when shushing starts to bother an older baby or for some people rubbing or stroking if patting is disturbing LO or if they have reflux which it can aggravate, or indeed if parents arrive at the forums having already established another method of soothing such as hand holding or stroking LO's head, we usually accept this as an adaptation and work from there to gently wean rather than totally stopping the head stroking in favour of patting. So then, this method is refered to as PUPD in the books, BUT here on the forums we like to make a distinction between shush/pat and PUPD so we call one shush/pat and the other PUPD.
However there is a difference between the type of picking up used in shush/pat and the method we refer to as PU/PD. If you read the links given above on PU/PD (there is one for shush/pat too, within that PUPD link) you will be able to see in more detail. In short the PUPD method involves timed put downs. A baby is put down after a maximum of 5 mins hold even if he has not stopped crying, he is immediately picked up again. For a slightly older baby you put down right after saying the key phrase, so this is a *short* amount of time to hold for. For slightly older again they are not picked up at all but just put down repeatedly if they sit or stand on their own, if they become frantic you pick up for a moment and put back down.
It think you will see the two methods are quite different and why we do not advise PUPD (second version above) for young babies or for babies where shush/pat has not been attempted for a good period of time.
From your posts, from your description of your LOs tears I really don't think you would be comfortable to use a true PUPD as set out in the books or in the FAQs and I believe that like us you would agree to using a gentler method for a reasonable amount of time before moving to a 'last resort' method.
I hope this helps to clarify the confusion - really both the posts above are correct despite appearing to be totally contradictory. It may help to refer to your chosen method as shush/pat from here on in as it just helps the community to be clear about which method you are using.
Whilst I'm here... I know a few others have asked for the EAS times. I can't stress to you how important those are. Tracy Hogg set out the first 2 days of sleep training as observation days, to see what your LO does how often he feeds, when he sleeps and so on, this is for good reason. A baby who is too tired or not tired enough will cry a whole lot more about being put for nap than one who is just about ready for a nice sleep. This is another reason we would strongly advise against beginning PUPD (which can be quite a hard method on baby and parents) without the routine being looked at first, it just isn't fair on anyone involved to have all that crying and picking up and putting down at the wrong time of day when baby just isn't ready to sleep.
Despite you feeling that shush/pat has been somewhat brutal, it does sound like you are making good progress. I urge you to let the community look at your times.
hth
