Every so often, for about the past 6 months, my son will wake up around midnight/1am and just be awake. He cries and cries until somebody goes in and then he's perfectly content to lay down in his crib and hold his daddy's hand but he doesn't go to sleep, he just lies there. For HOURS. Picking him up to rock him doesn't help. Leaving him alone just makes him angry and then he goes back to yelling/crying. Sometimes we bring him into our bed just so my husband can be more comfortable and again, he's happy to snuggle with me but he doesn't go to sleep. He's usually awake until about 4am, and then drops off again. This happens about once a month, and I guess I'm wondering the best way to deal with it. I sympathize - sometimes I can't sleep either! - and think we just need to suck it up and resign ourselves to the occasional bad night until he grows out of it. My husband suggested this morning (last night was the most recent bad one) that next time maybe we just need to let him cry himself to sleep but we tried that last time and he cried (inconsistently) for 90 minutes before we took pity on him (also I pointed out that if we were all going to be awake ANYWAY, maybe there was no point in having him also heartbroken). It is, however, easy for me to say because I'm not the one that goes in there - I get to stay in bed while my husband ends up on the floor with his arm stuck through the slats of the crib.

Anybody have any thoughts/advice/suggestions?