self settling?

What is this mystical 'self settling' all the baby sleep guide books talk about? I'm starting to think that it's code for 'cry it out'.

DS can't seem to day sleep for longer that 45min at a time (4 x 45 a day). He's generally pretty easy to get to sleep (short nap routine & dummy), but staying asleep is something else. Problem is he's often waking up tired and using Sleep/Eat/Play his feeds end up way to close together. He's also feeding a lot at night, from 2am he'd feed 2 hourly if I gave in (which I think is me nursing him back to sleep, but oddly enough he doesn't get BF to sleep at other times), instead I'm now getting up to put his dummy back in repeatedly. Time for a change!

My DS cries without his dummy when he first goes to sleep. And after his 45 min he's AWAKE, there's no such thing as self settling going on there and if I just leave him to it he starts crying and works himself up into a right tizz.

I've got 2 baby books, baby whisperer & save our sleep. They both talk about allowing baby to 'self settle'. What does that mean? How do you 'teach' a baby to self settle? Does it just mean CIO?

I found Save our sleep a very good book but I know that not one method works with every child or in fact with one child at different times different things will work.
Self settling means that when your child stirs that they can put themselve back to sleep without any interventions from anyone else.
Some people choose to let their children cry so that they find their own way of settling. Other will add the settling process and then slowly wean themselves out of the process.
To me it sounds like your wee boy is still needing his dummy to settle which is fine if you don't mind going in and giving it to him. THrough the day you probably would need to go in a little before he'd normally wake and then pop it back in his mouth. You'd need to do this till he has mastered putting it in himself.

The ideal is to get them to drowsy and then pop them down just before they go into full on sleep. That way they are soothed & hence don't cry but don't form sleep associations. Some babies do it well, others don't. If you stick with one method, it should eventually work but it may take time. I personally think crying to sleep is different from self-settling. On occassion if a baby is very tired and grumpy they may need to have a little grump but that is a totally different cry from the "Mum where are you" cry.