the dreaded "sleep thru night" thread

I've been reading a lot of newsgroup archives on this issue on google and
it seems like a pretty hot topic. My son started sleeping thru the night
at 3 months. We let him cry it out and in 30 minutes he was down.

We moved and this threw his schedule off. My wife wasn't able to let him
cry it out again.

Now he's nearly 6 months and his schedule is horribly off. He's cranky
some days, fine other days. Some days it's a 4hr nap, some days it's no
nap. Nights are a mess. He's usually up every 15minutes and pacifcying
himself on my wife and then he finally goes to bed for a few hours. He
wakes up does the nuzzling bit for about 2hrs and then sleeps again for
a few more hours.

We tried letting him cry it out but this time it's different. He's a lot
tougher than before. We did 1hr, and it was killing me. His voice is
so much louder than before and if I even open the door quitely he picks
up on it and cries louder.

He's on a set schedule again (rice cereal in the am, going for a walk in the
afternoon, solids in the evening, bath in the evening at pretty much set
times) but we just can't get him to sleep unless my wife is next to him let
him nuzzle on her breast on and off thru the night.

We tried the "baby whisperer" method of picking him up, calming him
down and putting him back down but that has not worked so far since it
takes over 20minutes to calm him down.

Right now for 2nights in a row we went over 2hrs of letting him cry and
nothing. No progress. He's just hysterical.

What do we do? What's the longest length someone will let them "cry it
out"?

He's not teething. He's not gassy (he's well burped thru the day). He's
probably not even that hungry because the wife says he's just pacifying
himself thru the night on her breast.

He's never cared much for using a pacifier either and when we've tried
to pull the "switcheroo" (moving him from breast to pacifier) it never
seems to work.

So, question is...how long has anyone let there baby CIO? The 1st time
around at 3 months, 30-40minutes was painful but it worked. This time
around it is so much harder.

Also, I know a lot of people are opposed to the CIO method but I can't
function at work on the 3-5hrs of sleep I get and my son is always
happiest when he gets a really long sleep at night.

Any suggestions? We just went in and got him again and he cried for 2hrs.