Sleep, Sleep, Sleep

After a particularly terrible night of sleep a week back I decided it might be time to take action. I had read about the infant colic, sleep, and behavior clinic at Brown University and thought that maybe they had some insight into our sleep problems. My problems with T's sleep are twofold. One he wants to eat at night every 2-3 hours just like in the daytime. With him approaching 15lbs I know he can go a little bit longer. In addition even when he is not hungry he wakes often, sometimes every hour. He can cry for long periods and the only thing that stops him is giving him a pacifier. His sleep problems are especially confusing for me since I have tried everything that the books suggest, except using Ferber. He goes down for all 3 of his naps and bedtime fully awake in his crib and falls asleep on his own. It is wonderful. He knows how to put himself to sleep and has for over a month. I keep asking why he can't put himself back to sleep in the night once he wakes up.
So I called the clinic. They got me an appointment within the week. We went Friday the 5th. They gave us a log to record when he was crying, fussing, eating, or sleeping. We recorded this for 3 days. In the end we found that T still crys and fusses enough to be considered a "colicky baby" and that between the hours of 10pm and 6:30am we were getting up to give him the pacifier or feed him between 8-10times. The longest stretch of sleep we got in a row was 2 hours and that was only maybe once during the night. I felt validated that I truly should be tired. Poor GT, he never gets to even take a nap.
We went back for our second appointment on Monday the 8th. They had some suggestions but seemed as stumped as we were as to why our baby can fall asleep himself but can't put himself back to sleep. They hypothesized that he is getting too much to eat at night and therefore is not eating enough during the day causing a cycle of night hunger. They suggested I shorten my nursing sessions at night to create more hunger during the day. They also suggested that we stop swaddling him so that he can use his fingers for soothing rather then his pacifier. They also suggested starting him on solids to give him some extra calories. We've been trying this plan for three days now. We saw improvement the second night but last night was a dismal failure. He cried and cried and cried last night. Finally at 4:30 I was so tired I gave up and let him nurse as long as he wanted. He slept until 7:00 this morning (late for him) and was ready to go back to bed at 8:00. He is one tired baby. I hope we see some improvement soon. We have another appointment to go back and re-evaluate in 2 weeks. I just want 6 hours in a row please. How do you reason with a 5 month old?