bad pacifier habit

[MGardner]

I think we have gotten into a bad habit. My DS is 5 months old. He does mostly 4 hour EASY although goes to daycare 3 days a week and they do not follow my schedule as he only takes 30 minute naps there (has 4+ naps those days - but still eats every 4 hours). Every night is different, some good nights he wakes once sometimes twice. I only feed him once during the night. Here is a typical schedule:
7am wake/BF
8am cereal feed
9-10:30 nap
10:45/11am BF
12:00-2:00 nap
3pm BF
4-5 nap
5p cereal feed
7p BF and bed
So around 11p he'll wake for first time. We let him fuss for about 5minutes until it turns into a cry. We go in, and quickly and quietly put in his pacifier and he immediately falls back to sleep. 1am wakes again, we do the same thing he goes right back to sleep. 3am same thing. On one of these wakings the pacifier thing ends up not working and he'll cry again. This is when I feed him. But then at 5am he'll wake again and we do the pacifier again. He'll finally wake up for the day aroudn 6:30-7am. Now every night is different times but I would say that it's about 4 times we go in and put the pacifier in. I know it only takes a second but he used to sleep better than this and only wake for feedings so it feels like we are enabling the process by putting in the pacifier. I jsut don't know how to stop it. Last night I waited and he just continued to cry - for 10 minutes. So I went in, put the pacifier in and he was right back to sleep. How do I break this? What should I do?

[Kimberly®]

Try feeding at 11, when a dreamfeed would usually be, then he should sleep longer. One night feed at this age is normal so feed him when he next wakes up. at his age anymore then 8 hours without food is a strech, your better feeding at 11 as I think he is actually hungry and thats why he wakes so often. Try to avoid the paci if you can, day and night, and see if this improves at all.

Don't leave him to CIO as it will only make things worse in the long run. If he cries go right to him.

[MGardner]

I had a feeling you were going to say feed first wake and I am definitely going to try that tonight. I was doing that until recently and the only reason I started not doing that is because then I ended up feeding him twice during the night and I thought that may be the reason he wasn't eating so much during the day. On another forum I post how he does not eat much during the day, sustains 4 hours between feedings but only takes about 2-3oz each feed during the day. I felt that by eating so much at night he could more easily resist eating during the day. But maybe tonight I'll try to only feed him the first wake and not again until 6:30-7am. Don't know how he'll feel about that, as far as other wake ups that occur after a feeding it's very hard not to use the pacifier. If he sees us in the room he either cries more OR smiles and tries to play with us. If we pick him up he always cries harder so PUPD has never worked for us, we know we are in trouble if we pick him up during a non-hunger wake up (i.e. one that occurs only 1-2 hours after a feed). The pacifier is good becuase we do it in a way that he doesn't even see us. But it's definitely becoming a crutch. I just don't know how to stop!