re: "Crying it out" with an infant - OT Parents, how was your first experience?

Damn, after reading this thread I realized how lucky we have it with our 13 month old. We never did any sleep training and weren't very consistent with where he slept or how he went to sleep.

For the first 4 months or so, he slept in our room, some nights in the bed with us some nights in a little pack and play next to the bed. After that we started putting him in his crib in his room, we'd pick him up and rock him back to sleep on the few nights he'd wake up screaming. For the past 6 months or so he's been putting himself to sleep around 8 and sleeping through the night.


Also, I'm not sure where I stand on the "crying it out" method. There's more and more studies that point to the harm this method causes to children. And I'm not sure the validity of these studies either fwiw, but they point to psychological and emotional damage.