What is a normal Night?

Its been tough putting Emma to sleep. A lot of the issues are from us jumping at her waking, as my wife put it, 'it breaks my heart to hear her cry.' She would say that she couldn't be heartless and now even today, or tonight as I'm writing this, we are suffering.

Experts and other parents have said that wee just need them to cry it out, but its just not that simple when it's your first. We should have listened and now we have a little girl that's almost 17 months old that still doesn't sleep through the night, but a hand full of times a month. We developed a bad habit in our child, we own that, but we are struggling to have normal nights.

What is a normal night? To us, its a crying baby at 1am, then again at 6am. I've started staying awake until she wakes up the 1st time so that my wife can get a good nights rest. Then she wakes up at 5 and Emma wakes at 5:30-ish.

I suppose it's better than it had been. When used to wake at 11pm then again last 1am and stay awake until 3am-ish. I'm thankful we have moved from that, but we just can't seem to find that sweet spot that'll get her full nights rest going forward. With another one on the way, we can't keep this up and something has to change. Can anyone offer some helpful advise? We are thinking it's teething, and are giving her some Tylenol, but she is still waking.

HELP!