Are you waking 6x/night your 4mo old?

I am still waking 5-7x/night. Online research says I should be waking 2-3x to get through a 10-12hr night. I am so tired. He nurses to sleep each time.

Day or night he nurses every 1.5hr-2hr. He is a very distracted eater during the day. Usually nursing for only 3min. Even in a quiet room facing a boring wall, he will try to have a conversation with me while nursing. At night, some of the feeds are 5+ min of strong and deep sucking, so I think he is getting most of his nutrients at night. But 2 or 3 of the night time feeds are just as short as the daytime and seem more like he is using me as a pacifier. He used to unlatch himself, but he doesn’t anymore.

When I try to “drop a feed”, I give him a pacifier upon waking instead, he will spend 40-60min sucking it and rubbing his head to self-soothe, but still won’t fall asleep. He always ends up nursing to sleep anyway and I’ve lost an hour of sleep. I do this occasionally, but have not tried multiple days in a row. Do I just need to tough it out and stick with it for a week? How do I know which nighttime feed to drop?

I complain, but he is healthy and happy. He has stayed along the 60th percentile growth curve for length and 80th for weight since birth.

I feel like I’m creating bad sleep habits, but don’t know how to fix it. I am looking for advice from moms who also exclusively breastfeed.