Can I respectfully submit that the talk of Ferberizing babies does have
atleast a little bit to do with breastfeeding?  Ferber is saying that a four
month old (or was it a three month old?) does not *need* to be fed at night,
yet this doesn't account for the digestiblity of breastmilk, growth spurts
and subsequent supply/demand adjustments, the warmth/comfort of mother's
breast in addition to her milk, that are part of nighttime feedings.  He
doesn't say what the breastfeeding mother should do in the night when she had
previously been feeding her baby and now she is withholding herself/her milk
from him?  Certainly, her body will adjust to the missed feeding(s), but
isn't she at increased risk for plugged ducts/mastitis if she stops
nightfeedings "cold turkey" rather than the normal, gradual reduction in
feedings that happens as baby matures?

Ferber himself would be the first to say that the "techniques" do not work
for every baby, and in the synopsis that I read in a very mainstream
parenting magazine, he doesn't recommend this sleep training until five to
six months old.  This could be wrong, from the excerpts that Pam in Zimbabwe,
it does seem that he feels that even younger babies can be trained... scary
to me.
  I asked mothers in our meeting "The Family and The Breastfed Baby", as we
went around the room and introduced ourselves, to tell when their baby began
to "sleep through the night".  It just underscored for all of us what I have
come to think about most things with babies:  there is a *very* wide range of
normal.  I usually add that my first baby slept "through" from about six
weeks old, didn't nurse to sleep from about four months old but nursed and
went to bed awake.  I then had baby #2... and believe me, if there was
*something* that I did to create baby #1's sleep habits, I *certainly* would
have done it again.  But baby#2 had a personality of his own, and HE showed
me HIS way.  I think that we can "tweak" our baby's personalities/habits a
little bit at a time, with respect given to their capabilities and their
feelings, to help the baby blend into the family, but to try to *change* a
baby in a few nights doesn't respect the baby, IMHO, and *can* wreak havoc
with their breastfeeing relationship.
  I also want to mention a Ferber failure that struck me as particularly
awful, both for mother and baby.  My neighbor "ferber-ized" her then seven
month old and at the time thought that it was the greatest thing since sliced
bread - he was her fourth baby.  Fast forward about six months, and she tells
me what an awful sleeper he is, nurses often at night and now sleeps with
them.   BUT she had come to find out that baby had an esophogeal (sp?)
anomaly which made lying down to sleep very uncomfortable for him, in
addition to waking up in the night from the discomfort.  She had Ferberized a
baby who was basically screaming to her *I am not feeling well*!!!  It
apparently was not a real "pain" cry, but a whining/annoying cry that she
interpreted wrongly as an "I don't feel like sleeping" cry.
  As Maya Angelou said:  "We all do the best that we can and when we know
better, we do better."  [rough paraphrase]

Lisa Jones, LLLL in Wellington Florida