A true dilemma

I haven't looked up the official definition of 'dilemma', but I'm pretty sure that what we go through at night with Ainsworth is a true dilemma... on the one hand we don't believe leaving him to cry is right and really want to pick him up and cuddle him when he's crying, and on the other, when we know there is nothing wrong and all he wants is to be rocked off to sleep because he can't get himself back off, what should we do?

We've tried 'pick-up, put-down', we've tried rocking him off to sleep, we've tried leaving him, we've recorded every wake-up and looked for patterns, we've screwed ourselves up in emotional knots trying to do the right thing, but still he wakes frequently and sometimes takes up to an hour and a half to resettle - which is very frustrating at 2am.

Then last week, after 80 minutes of trying to settle him, we left him to cry. It was horrid, but it seemed like there was nothing else to do. Does the saying 'cruel to be kind' ring true here? I don't know. What I do know is that after leaving him a few times (and it takes about 45 minutes from mega-screams to whinging to sleep) he does seem to be getting better at settling himself back to sleep. He did it twice the other night and only cried for 10 minutes last night after I left him.

I always go through to him when he cries, but I'm trying to be perfunctory - change his nappy, offer water, brief cuddle - and not stay very long so he gets the message that waking at night is not on. I do hope he's not made less secure as a result of being left alone at night. I do hope he knows we love him and are there for him when he really needs us. But it must be very confusing for him and I wish I knew what the right thing to do was... but then I guess a lot of parenting is like that.