Back to reality

So, we've been back from our couples-only retreat for 2 days now, but we've only gone back to work today and I'm exhausted. I should be well-rested and ready to take on the world, but I'm not because Ryan's teeth are coming in and they are not being nice at all.

Actually, I can't blame it all on his teeth because I can't be certain that's the only reason he's been waking again during the night. He started teething really bad around the time we took his bumper pads off his crib. The first night without the pads Ryan woke up. He pushed himself into the corner of the crib and, I think, he got stuck and bumped his head. He's gotten up every night since then and I'm about to lose my mind.

Sunday night he woke up and he wouldn't fall back to sleep. Well, that's not entirely true because he fell asleep twice after we picked him up, but as soon as we put him down he screamed. This went on for an hour until we took him into our bed where he promptly fell asleep on my husband's chest. Last night he did the same thing, but this time there was no way he was coming into our bed. We let him cry until he woke up Sophia, at which time we got him, gave him a bottle and after two attempts, we finally got him to lay down without him screaming.

Why won't this kid consistently sleep through the night? He was sleeping through the night. He did so for weeks in a row. But just in the last week, he's started waking again (it started before we left for our mini-vacation).

Last night I rubbed his gums with Orajel and gave him some Motrin, but he still woke up. Maybe I should put back on the bumper pads?

I'm afraid he's going to get into the routine of waking up at night again and I don't know how to stop it. I can't let him scream himself to sleep (not because I don't want to, but because I can't have Sophia wake up too. If she gets up in the middle of the night, she tends to stay awake) so I'm out of ideas. The only way we can get him to fall back to sleep is by giving him a bottle and rocking him.

I'm desperate at this point. We've been tossing around the idea of letting Sophia sleep on the couch or someplace else so we can let Ryan cry it out at night, but I think that will only serve to mess up her sleeping schedule.

What is a mother to do? Any suggestions would be helpful. I will try anything and I promise I'll let you know if it worked or not.