Please let it be a growth spurt

Last night was .. tough, to put it nicely. We couldn't get Laila to go to sleep until after 2am, and she wasn't just awake, she was crying. Then she continued to wake up every hour after that to feed until 8am, at which point she slept until 10. Ugh. Talk about painful. She was doing more every-hour feedings today as well, on and off. My mom and a family friend Barbara came and visited today and made Enzio and me dinner- yum! While they were here Laila cried for about an hour and a half straight, only calming down for a minute or two at a time. Finally I fed her again and she went to sleep and has been asleep ever since (that was almost three hours ago). I don't know if she is just going through a growth spurt (fingers crossed) or if this is going to be her new thing. My mom and Barbara (who is a retired nurse) were telling me that it is totally normal for babies to cry like this. They said that she might be crying for a whole host of reasons; she might just need to expel excess energy or it might be her way of shutting out everything around her. They were also saying that it might be that she doesn't know how to fall asleep on her own yet. Something about how there is a stage between being awake and being asleep and a lot of babies have trouble with it and have to, say, cry themselves to sleep. Only problem is that Laila isn't going to sleep until I nurse her! Before yesterday I could rock her to sleep but when I was rocking her last night and today as she cried - nothing. She'd calm for a minute and look like she was getting ready to sleep and then she'd start crying again. So ... I'm really, really hoping that it is all just a short phase she is going through due to a growth spurt. I hate it when she cries and I can't calm her down - it makes me feel so awful... like I'm totally useless.