The Dummy Dilemma

Our son is almost 4months now and has always been a big fan of his dummy. I liked having it because I think he associates it with sleep/relaxing so it made it easy to get him down for his nap, evening sleep, or even just some quiet/relaxing time for when we’re trying to get through that last wake window into bedtime. He’s gained weight very healthily so when he was maybe 2 months ish we started stretching his sleep out by putting the dummy in when he starts to fuss at night and he will go back to sleep. If he’s hungry he’ll usually cry through the dummy and I’ll feed him. HOWEVER, I think we have maybe built a bad habit because even though he can go up to 8 hours sometimes between his feeds, he will fuss for his dummy multipleeee times at night. It’s always been inconsistent but it’s obviously super disruptive for me sleeping next to him and having to put his dummy in, but this was just about ok for us until… He recently has learned what is probably the most useless skill 🙃 of pulling his dummy out of his mouth. I think it’s a form of self soothing that as soon as the dummy goes in his hands go up to his mouth and fiddles with his dummy until he pulls it out then shrieks that someone took his dummy 🫠 This means my night sleep now instead of just waking up multiple times to put his dummy in, has now become waking up to put his dummy in, watch him pull it out x repeat multiple times 😭and maybe sometimes hold his arms down till he falls asleep Ive tried to wait it out longer to see if he self settles without it, and though he does sometimes, the times he doesn’t he’s just absolutely furious and it’s hard cause I know exactly how to stop him from crying. I know it’s starting to form a terrible habit and we do want to get rid of the dummy but just haven’t had the energy or heart to do it yet. Does anyone have a similar experience and have any tips on how they successfully got rid of the dummy?