Whitey, am back! OK, gradual retreat. We got this programme from a sleep clinic for DS1 (he was that bad). They told us to do each step for 3 nights, each time DS1 woke in the night (that was the hard part), and for naps too. In reality I did it at bedtime, and probably night wakings until about 3 am, and not really for naps. It still worked for DS1, beautifully. He slept through as soon as he started going in his cot awake. For DS2 I have been doing this for bedtime, 1/2 naps a day (the other nap(s) he'll have in the buggy) and after night feeds (so he wakes, I feed him (but not to sleep), then I follow the step that we are at). It has worked in terms of him learning to self settle, but hasn't got him sleeping longer at night (although he is taking much longer naps). We're only 6 days in.
Step 1: Rock, rather than feed, to sleep. Place in cot asleep.
Step 2: Hold (no rocking) to sleep. Place in cot asleep.
Step 3: Place in cot awake, stroke, pat, shush etc until asleep (we use "sleepy words" i.e. "time to sleep, DS2, snuggle down now", repeated over and over...)
Step 3: Place in cot awake, put a hand on your baby until he is asleep (don't stroke).
Step 4: Place in cot awake, sit on a chair next to the cot until asleep.
Step 5: Move chair about a meter away from the cot.
After this you keep moving the chair away, by about a meter each time, until eventually you are at (and then outside) the door.
With each of these steps you are meant to stay in the position you were in when your child fell asleep for 15 minutes, to make sure that they are in a really deep sleep, before you leave the room.
We were also told that it was important to make sure DS1 had had enough daytime sleep, as settling would be much more problematic if he was overtired. So at 6 months the sleep clinic recommended a nap of up to 1 hour in the morning (9/9.30 ish), an up to 2 hour nap after lunch (12.30 / 1ish) and a 30 minute cat nap, if needed, between 4 and 5. Then bedtime was to be 7pm. If following the programme for naps was going to mean no naps / very late naps, then the clinic said that it was better just to let him nap by whatever means necessary until he was in roughly this sort of routine, and getting close to enough daytime sleep.
With DS2 I just went straight to step 3 - i.e. in cot awake, as he had been self settling until a few weeks before (unlike DS1 who had never fallen asleep other than by being fed in his life). Obviously the programme assumes that you are currently feeding to sleep. I've also worked through it a little quicker - some parts we've only done for 2 nights / days.
The biggest fuss I have ever experienced with this was with DS1, who screamed for about 1.5 hours the first night we tried to rock, rather than feed, him to sleep. But I managed to bear it because I was cuddling him all of this time. Other than this my DSs have both pretty much taken it in their stride - DS2 has been fairly unphased by it and tonight fell asleep with me just sitting next to the cot without so much as a whimper. I couldn't do cc and would have given up if either of them had become too upset, but really it's been surprising how calm they have stayed, there has usually been a minute or two of objecting then nothing worse than some tossing and turning trying to get to sleep.