Most babies learn to fall asleep on their own within three to seven nights of cry it out sleep training. The first night is almost always the hardest, with crying that can last 45 minutes to over an hour. By night two or three, many parents notice a significant drop in both the intensity and duration of crying, and by the end of the first week, most babies are settling themselves to sleep with little or no fussing.
What Happens Night by Night
Night one is the peak. Your baby doesn’t yet understand the new routine, and crying can feel relentless. Many parents report 30 to 60 minutes of crying on the first night, though some babies cry longer. This is the night most parents consider giving up, but it’s also the night that does the most “teaching.”
Night two often surprises parents. Crying typically drops to about half of what it was the first night. Your baby is already starting to connect the dots: lying in the crib leads to sleep, and crying doesn’t change the outcome. By nights three and four, many babies cry for only 10 to 15 minutes before drifting off. Some skip the crying altogether and just fuss or babble.
By the end of the first week, most families see a baby who goes down with minimal protest. Gentler approaches take longer. The check-and-console method, where you briefly visit at intervals, often takes up to a week. Fading methods, where you gradually reduce your presence in the room, can take up to two weeks. Full extinction (no check-ins at all) tends to produce the fastest results but involves the most intense crying upfront.
The Right Age to Start
Four months is the earliest most pediatricians recommend starting any form of cry it out. Before that age, babies have short sleep cycles, genuinely need nighttime feedings, and haven’t developed the ability to self-soothe. Some babies do better waiting until closer to six months, especially if they were born premature or are still feeding frequently at night. A general guideline is that your baby should be at least 4 months old and around 14 pounds before you begin.
Newborns should never be left to cry it out. Their crying is communication about hunger, discomfort, or a need for closeness, and responding quickly at this stage is exactly what they need.
Full Extinction vs. Graduated Check-Ins
There are two main versions of cry it out, and the one you choose affects how long the process takes and how it feels for you.
Full extinction means putting your baby down awake, saying goodnight, and not returning until morning (or until a scheduled feeding). There are no check-ins. This is the fastest method, often showing results in three to four nights, but the crying on night one can be intense and sustained.
Graduated extinction (often called the Ferber method) adds brief check-ins at increasing intervals. On night one, you wait 3 minutes before your first check, then 5 minutes, then 10 minutes between visits. Each night, those intervals get longer. By night seven, you’re waiting 20 minutes before the first check and up to 30 minutes between subsequent ones. During a check-in, you offer a few words of reassurance but don’t pick the baby up. If your baby falls asleep but wakes later in the night, you restart the check-in intervals from the beginning.
Graduated extinction typically takes a few days longer than full extinction because the check-ins can sometimes re-stimulate crying. But many parents find it more tolerable emotionally, and it reaches the same destination.
Handling Middle-of-the-Night Wakings
Bedtime is only half the equation. Most babies over 4 months still wake at least once or twice during the night, and some continue waking twice a night even at 8 months. When your baby wakes in the middle of the night, the same rules apply as bedtime: use whatever method you’ve chosen, whether that’s full extinction or timed check-ins.
If your baby still needs a nighttime feeding (your pediatrician can help you determine this), feed them calmly and with minimal stimulation, then put them back down awake. The goal isn’t to eliminate all nighttime contact. It’s to teach your baby that they can fall back asleep without being rocked, bounced, or nursed to sleep. Middle-of-the-night improvements usually lag a few days behind bedtime improvements, so don’t be discouraged if nights three and four still include a waking or two.
Does Cry It Out Cause Harm?
This is the question behind the question for most parents searching this topic. A study that followed 178 infants and their mothers over 18 months found no adverse effects on behavior, development, or the parent-child bond. Researchers assessed attachment using the “strange situation test,” a gold-standard method that measures how securely a baby is bonded to their caregiver during separation and reunion. Whether parents responded immediately to crying or let their baby cry it out made no measurable difference in attachment security at 18 months.
That finding held regardless of how often parents used the approach. Babies who were left to cry occasionally and babies who experienced it regularly showed the same developmental and attachment outcomes. The short-term stress of a few hard nights does not translate into long-term emotional damage.
Why It Sometimes Takes Longer
If you’re past the one-week mark and not seeing progress, a few common factors could be at play. Inconsistency is the biggest one. If you let your baby cry for 20 minutes on Monday but pick them up after 10 minutes on Tuesday, you’ve taught them that persistence works, and crying will actually increase. Once you commit to a method, sticking with it every night is what makes it work.
Other reasons for slow progress include starting too young (before the baby can physiologically self-soothe), an underlying issue like an ear infection or teething pain, a nap schedule that’s leaving the baby overtired or undertired at bedtime, or a sleep environment that’s too stimulating. Babies who are put down already asleep (after nursing or rocking) also tend to struggle more, because they wake up in different conditions than when they fell asleep. The goal is always to put your baby down drowsy but awake so they learn to bridge the gap on their own.
Room temperature, darkness, and a consistent pre-bed routine (bath, book, song, crib) all support faster results. The more predictable the lead-up to sleep, the less your baby has to figure out once you leave the room.