Urgent advice needed with 4.5 month DS's sleeping - it's gone wrong!

[kittypower]

DS sleeping has gone really wrong and we are stuck in this pattern. He used to have his dummy to go to sleep and would sleep really well, maybe waking once. This has now totally changed and he wakes every hour from about midnight through to 7am and wants his dummy. If we give him the dummy he is straight back to sleep in seconds, we made the mistake of doing this as it was easy and he is now stuck in that pattern. last night we tried not giving it to him but settling him instead and this just didn't work, if we left him on is own when he woke up he screamed and screamed and if we went in to settle him he just wouldn't settle until he had his dummy - what do we do as we can't carry on like this is? Fingers crossed someone has some advice!

I'm really sorry to hear that you've got into this pattern.
Someone may come along with some better advice, but as far as I know, you just have to accept that breaking this habit is going to take a couple of tough nights.
Once you have decided to no longer give him his dummy, you need to stick to it. If you give in he will continue to scream until he gets what he wants. If it never comes back, he will quickly learn that screaming makes no difference and will stop.
For a couple of nights you will find that he has determination and stammina that you never imagined possible from someone so small, but after a couple of nights he will get used to the idea and will stop crying sooner and sooner until he no longer needs it.
My DD has never used a dummy, but I found the same thing when I stopped BFing a night and also when I stopped feeding or cuddling her to sleep in the evening.
Babies are stong and know what they want, but they are also resilient and very adaptable.
You can help to ease him through this change with lots of love, cuddles, soothing music, feeding etc, just try to avoid weaning him off his dummy and onto some other habit that he'll need to be weaned off in a few months time!!!
Good luck with it!

Does he use a dummy during the day, to go down for a nap? If so you could try removing it then first, so that he gets used to sleeping with or without a dummy and then drop it at night. It's likely that you will have several bad nights as you wean him off it though - but it sounds like you're having those anyway!

I've read that you can try putting a few dummies around the cot so that he can start to try and find them if you don't want to wean off the dummy??? no experience of this myself though so can't vouch for it.

I decided to take away DSs dummy around 5mo, as i thought he was waking at night for it too. He cried so much i couldn't do it, so decided to use the "no-cry sleep solution" method where you remove the dummy before they fall asleep. If they cry, you replace it, and so on, until they are asleep and don't cry for it. Eventually they get used to you removing it and don't cry. After a couple of weeks i stopped using it and used cuddles/soft music instead. He sleeps much better now.

i would agree that whatever you do you need to stick at it for a few nights - don't deviate and accept that those nights will be tough and you will be tired/frustrated but if you stick to it it will eventually work. Good luck