Check and console — also called controlled comforting or graduated extinction — is the approach most people picture when they hear "sleep training", and it is the one most often described inaccurately. You are not leaving your baby alone until morning. You are settling them into the cot awake, stepping out, and coming back on a rhythm that stretches a little each night.

Who it suits

Healthy babies from around 6 months corrected age who are gaining weight well and no longer need night feeds for growth. If your baby was premature, Cocoon uses corrected age for this. Talk to your GP or child health nurse first if there are feeding, growth or health worries, or if you are unsure whether night feeds can be dropped.

It tends to suit families who want a clear structure and can hold a consistent line for a couple of weeks. It suits nobody who feels sick doing it — an approach you resent at 2am is not one you will do consistently, and consistency is the whole mechanism.

The nights

Cocoon walks the intervals for you, but the shape is:

  • Night 1 — check at roughly 3, 5, then 10 minutes, holding 10 for the rest of the night.
  • Night 2 — roughly 5, 10, 12.
  • Night 3 — roughly 10, 12, 15.
  • Night 4 and on — the ladder keeps growing a little, then holds. It never runs away from you.

Time the intervals from when the crying starts, not from when you left. If your baby settles and re-wakes, start the ladder again from the first rung.

What a check looks like

Short, dim and boring. Fifteen to thirty seconds. A calm phrase you use every time, a hand on the chest if that helps, then out. No lifting, no feeding, no lights, no conversation. The visit is there to tell your baby you are still here, not to do the settling for them — if a check reliably winds your baby up rather than down, lengthen the intervals or switch to an approach where you stay in the room.

Is it working?

Cocoon compares the nights you log against the week before you started, so you can see settling time, night wakings and the longest unbroken stretch move together. Look at the week, not the night: an ordinary run has one clearly worse night in it, usually around night three, and it does not mean the approach has failed.

Stop and reassess if two weeks of consistency has produced nothing, if your baby is unwell, or if a developmental leap, teething or a house move has landed in the middle of it. Pausing and coming back later is a perfectly good outcome.