Forgotten how to self soothe

I have a baby who is just on six months old. All his life his routine has been feed, play, feed, sleep. Now we have started solids it is slighlty different with solid feed, play, milk feed and sleep. Up until afew days ago he used to go to bed happily and play to fall asleep (occasionally he would dream feed/fall asleep on the breast) but now he has forgotten how to self soothe and will not fall asleep without being latched to the breast. He goes to bed and plays but then gets grumpy with his toys and begins to whinge which then turns to a cry. I have tried controlled crying but a. I dislike it and b. it doesnt seem to work. Over the course of an hour he will become more and more upset and I give in giving him the breast. I'm not sure what to do to get him back to self soothing. If I stay in the room with him and wait for him to fall asleep in the cot he thinks I am there to play and will not sleep at all. I've heard that feeding to sleep is a bad habit and I don't want him to rely on me to fall asleep. I would perfer not to give him a dummy as that's just exchanging one habit for another. He needs to be able to fall asleep himself so when he wakes in the middle of the night he can go back to sleep and so other people can put him to bed too. Plunket has said you can't spoil a baby. So should I just go with this feed to sleep thing and hope he grows out of it or should I try something else to combat it now? Please shed some light on this situation.

6 month babies are very young to be self settling, human beings are hard wired to be in close proximity to their mothers and to have breastmilk on tap for the first years of their life. It not only promotes the best health and wellbeing for the child, but it is also a survival instinct to make sure a caregiver is close by.

Totally normal behaviour, and often babies will wake at night for such a huge variety of reasons that we are not aware of, they may have sore teeth, an uncomfortable spot in their clothes, being bitten, feeling slightly sick, hungry, sore tummy, you name it, and often the only thing which will help is hands on assistance from mum, or whoever they know and love.

That's the nature of parenting, and of babies.