This was a hard one for me. I wanted to constantly be there for my daughter but I was exhausted because she was literally waking up every hour all night long. We were both exhausted and cranky with dark circles under our eyes. I did some reading and the thing that got me to let her cry a little was the fact that children need sleep in order to grow both physically and for their brains to grow. With sleep they are happier. I tried an inbetween method. Sort of like the one suggested of going in every 5 minutes and keeping the room dark and just putting your hand on the tummy to gently rub and assure. It took only 2 nights and she could put herself to sleep easily after that. We also started a schedule at night. I would nurse only at midnight and 4 am. Otherwise if she woke up we would wait 5 minutes (often she would put herself back to sleep during this period) then my husband would go in with a sippie cup (she refused a bottle) with pumped milk diluted with water. Each night we diluted it more and more until it was just water. She realized that it wasn’t worth waking up for dad and water. Then she only woke up at midnight and 4am which was like a Godsend for the amount of sleep I was finally able to get. Teething she had trouble sleeping but that is to be expected. Once she started sleeping better she was a much MUCH happier baby! The dark circles went away, too. I believe it was worth it for her development and that’s what sold me on helping her to learn how to put herself to sleep. That is the trick as everyone wakes up all night long and we have to know how to put ourselves back to sleep. For my daughter I was her crutch as she needed to be nursing to go back to sleep. She now sleeps wonderfully. Good luck. Julia