holiday day 2

 i am  sitting on the floor with a bundle of sleeping baby on my lap.  last night was an ugly sleepless night again as i try to retrain b in his sleep routine.   i am trying a new policy i call the Pat Pat Policy.  Meaning,  I go in and cuddle him and settle him down,  pat him a few times and then leave.  i think it may be disastrously misguided.  Last night he woke at midnight, 2, 3, 4 and 4.40.  At midnight it took him 46 minutes to get back to sleep.  At 2, 3 and 4 he only took 1 minute or so - but he could not settle untill I went in for the cuddle.  After his cuddle at 4.40 he cried solidly for an hour till 5.50.  That is understandable for him as he cannot eat enough to last himself through the night, so always screams till rescued early in the morning. 
I am not sure what to do.  The wake times are more or less regular to the minute every night - he has what is known as a night waking habit.  So much so that I often wake before him.   That's very familiar from the days before I started weaning him at night.  What has changed is that he is finding it much more difficult to get back to sleep, and he is crying for hugely long periods without self-settling - in fact the crying seems to make him so hysterical that he cannot calm down without help.  On the other hand, if I try to stay with him until he sleeps, he often misbehaves and refuses even to lie down in my arms, let alone in the cot.  He used to have this problem but soothing him to sleep if he woke in the night did not cause problems, provided he could cry himself to sleep when going down for the night:  it was as if he had to learn how to self soothe but could apply the skill during the night.  Now this has come unstuck. 
Should I leave him and not go in for a cuddle - let him cry it out?  Or camp on  his bedroom floor and soothe him every time he wakes until morning?  Or keep on with the Pat Pat Policy?