Help 4 month old with sleep and dummy issues!

[Jilly84]

Hi ladies, desperately need some help please.

My 4 month old started having a dummy at around 6 weeks old. Only for 1-2 hours a day e.g. To help with naps, or when out and about if he became unsettled.

He's never been a great sleeper and as a result we've (I've!) developed some bad (?) habits like nursing him to sleep and letting him fall asleep on me a lot.

One thing we did find that helped a lot when he woke in the time was giving him his dummy. He'd just drift back off with it. Before this I'd usually get him out of his crib and feed him till he fell back off to sleep.

In the last 2-3 weeks he will not take a dummy at all. Either awake or sleepy, calm or crying! I've resorted back to feeding him in the night. I've tried to ensure he gets more milk in the day so he's not hungry.

I'm starting to see why they use sleep deprivation as a form of torture tbh! All advice and criticism welcome!

If it helps, he's bf 70% of which is via expressed bottles. We've always used same brand of dummies and recently tried brand new ones in case that was the issue.

Thanks in advance x