Will we ever sleep again....

It has been 9 months now since my husband and I have slept through the night. No wait... I take that back, there was a brief period when E was around 4 months old that we got one week to sleep 8 hours a night! We have been racking our brain with what could be wrong. His diet, his napping patterns, his bedtime, him being in the same room... the list goes on. We asked the doctor and we were told that he is going through an insecure stage and a bad-habit of feeding in the middle of the night. We tried water instead of formula for a couple of nights and he was not impressed and screamed until we caved with the formula again. We tried co-sleeping, which seemed to work when he was younger and couldn't sleep, but now we just get kicked in the stomach all night by a restless baby. The rocking chair always worked beautifully, but now he struggles with even that- waking up the second you move him from rocking to his bed. It has been so aggravating (and exhausting) as my husband and I have managed about 4-5 hours of sleep a night for the past couple of months. The "cry it out" method has been recommended to us, but I am not comfortable with letting him cry for however long it takes for him to give up and fall asleep. I just think that is cruel. For his nap times all I have to do is lay him in the bed with his bottle and he goes to sleep. Sometimes he whines a little before falling a sleep, but rarely will he ever really cry... just falls asleep. So why can't he do this at bedtime? And why can't he sleep all night (or just most of the night)? Well, this week I have really been scouring over the Internet to try and find some advice from pediatricians, experts, and other parents going through the same thing. I have found some interesting information that I think we will try... but no definite answers, of course. Every baby is different and what works with some doesn't work for all. One really useful site I found was Ask Moxie. There is an article on the cry it out method that talks about some babies release tension by crying while others increase energy by crying. That would explain why letting your baby cry at bedtime works for some and not others. It made me think if E is a release tension crier, then maybe letting him cry for 5-10 minutes when we put him down to bed will help him virus hurt him. I guess this will be the first step in trying to figure out his sleep habits, or lack there of. I don't think this is a cure, as it is not usually difficult to get him to fall sleep, its the 'staying' asleep part that we struggle with... but maybe the "releasing tension" part (if this is the type of crier he is) will also help him sleep better. I do think that him being in the same room as us is also part of the problem, so we will also be sleeping out of his room for a few nights to see what happens. We will be trying these two things this holiday weekend to see what, if anything, changes. I do know that at 9 months, babies usually go through developmental and physical changes that will affect their sleep patterns, known as "Sleep Regressions". So, I know that we will have stages of changing patterns. But I hope that figuring out why my little guy wakes up 3, 4, 5 times a night (sometimes staying up for 2 hours at a time) will be the tool to getting through the stages a little easier. Wish us luck.