Sleep baby sleep?

Well last night CC had the house to ourselves so I decided to try a bit of controlled crying to gauge if his night feeds are through hunger or habit.

He does feed when I pick him up when he grumbles, but I've been so conscious of not awakening the household that I've never actually given him the choice - if he's grumbled he's been whisked up and latched on before he knew what hit him! My uber tiredness has thrown a spanner into any kind of routine because I've been so out of it through the night that I have no clue when I've picked him up and how often and long he's fed for!

Soo, last night he was bedded about 8pm, and I fell asleep about 10:30. He grumbled at midnight, so I fed him. He then started crying at 3:45, but I let him cry for a bit as I drifted in and out of sleep. The guilts forced me to get up to him as I thought he must be frantic thinking he was alone, but patting him and speaking made no difference. I picked him up and that made him worse! I decided to put him back down. Then I remembered that we used to play the plunky lullaby on the baby monitor to soothe BB, so I turned it on - silence! Ooh, that helped. Once the initial surprise was over he began grumbling again, so I started singing along thinking if he heard my voice he'd realise he wasn't alone - and lo and behold it worked! Annoyingly the monitor cuts out after a few minutes and it's on the other side of the room so I had to stay up to keep pressing it - and I found myself running out of lyrics to sing so I ended up singing the alphabet and singing up to one hundred etc. CC was frantically sucking away on his fingers whilst all this was going on (he's never worn scratch mitts as he's never scratched his face, and has now found his left fingers). After about 15 mins I stopped singing but kept playing the lullaby. I did this for another 15 mins, then risked letting it stop. By now it was 4:30, and he got himself over to sleep :0) He'd only actually cried for about 10-15 mins at the start of all that, and then slept until 6:30 - Result!

I may have screwed things up, as when I did feed him then I fell asleep and woke at 8:30 with him still in my arms! Anywho's, I'm hoping from that, that it's been habit that's been waking him up as he obviously wasn't hungry, and that a couple of nights of the same (if I'm not too tired to follow through) may break the habit and that might mean when his brothers come home from their grans he might let me have a bit more rest at night so I have more energy through the day......(well until our camping trip when all of this work will probably be undone!)

I took it a step further tonight and gave him his bedtime feed in our room with the lights low and no tv on in the background (it's normally on) and I've dream fed him at midnight. Fingers crossed for what comes next....