I have a 12-month-old of my own. I never planned on attachment parenting, certainly didn't do it with my older 2 kids (ages 4 and 5), and honestly didn't really agree with alot of the philosophies of attachment parenting, and yet with my youngest, we ended up doing some of them.

She used to sleep really well on her own, then she got 5 teeth in 3 weeks at 8 months old, which threw everything out of whack and brought her back to our bed so we could just get some sleep, and she's still there now. She also absolutely refuses to take a bottle, so still nurses to sleep the majority of the time. I'm not happy about it, but it's working for us and for her, and my 4-year-old has just gotten over some major sleep issues, so at this point, I'll do just about anything to get some sleep.

Doing childcare makes the most sense for us right now for a variety of reasons, but I've realized pretty fast that it's not my dream job and it's not going to be a permanent until-retirement kind of thing. Aside from the logistics and the finances and everything else about going back to work, the main thing that's made me stick to this and try to make it work is wondering how the hell my youngest would survive daycare. Having dealt with transitioning my two 1-year-old dcks, who go to sleep just fine, I know that I would have NO idea how to deal with a kid who's never cried it out before.

Anyways, personally, I think my daughter would not do well in a daycare setting at all with how she's sleeping now. It sounds like the mom is just hoping to avoid having to deal with the transition period, which I would guess is going to be longer and harder than with a baby who's already used to going to sleep on his own. If she's not willing to start letting him cry it out ahead of time, I'd be really nervous about letting him start. There's no way my daughter would let anyone else put her to sleep, and I never even intended to parent her this way. I won't even think about possibly looking at going back to work until her sleep issues are sorted out.