Hi
PD only works on a crying baby, one who wants to go to sleep but for some reason needs help to get there, I made this mistake at first and I think it started to become a game, I stand up make a noise, mummy lays me down, I stand up again....
What I have also found is that if I stay in the room when she is happy but standing up, even with me not looking or talking to her I become a distraction, so I started to leave the room and generally she would then get upset so I would go straight back in and lay her down and remain in the room until she was not crying then go back out, which would start her off again and I would repeat this until she would no longer just play and talk to me if I stayed in the room, which I ultimately had to do for her to fall asleep. Not sure if that makes sense. This sound's strange but unless she got upset I had no chance of getting her to sleep, she would, if happy, stay awake for up to 2hrs or more, my brain would want to explode and eventually she would get so overtired she would crash out, so I had to stop her messing about until overtired, does that make sense, I know it sounds backwards.
GW works when LO's are at the stage that they can only fall asleep with you present or in physical contact with you. So say for example that DD will only fall asleep with you standing beside cot. First you have to get them to the point where you can lay them down and providing you stand beside cot they will happily nod off to sleep fairly quickly without any real fuss. Then when this is achieved lay them down and take a step or two away from cot and stay at this distance until they happily go to sleep, of course if you have to do a PD you then move back to where you were. After this you just slowly over the course of several nights get further and further from the cot until you are at the door. When they are happy with this you then have to step outside the door but don't leave completely wait until you are sure they are asleep, after this you should be back to laying her down and walking away.
I found that I had got as far as the door but couldn't quite get out of the door, so I then started a mix of walk in put down walk out. This helped further in that as soon as I left the room if she cried out I was straight back in did PD then straight back out, after a few nights of this she was confident enough to realise that I would come right back if she needed me and was happy then to just be laid down and left at bedtime.
Some people use a chair for GW positioned differently at each step when the LO is not around so they don't even really notice the chair is moving. Some people will find this a very long process as they have to take tiny steps towards getting out the door and for others you can get to and out the door with a lot less steps in between that will depend entirely on your LO.
Hope that helps, if you need anymore clarification you know where we are.
