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I think this sounds pretty normal for 3.5 months and I wouldn't feel guilty like you should be sleep training or are doing something wrong. It's great that sometimes you can just give him his paci and he will go back to sleep without nursing!

Personally I am more comfortable with waiting til around 6 months to do any sort of sleep training. In reality we didn't really sleep train at all until maybe 8 months and even then still did one or two wake ups for a long time after then. We all survived and my daughter is a great sleeper now (since around 2 when I finally did night wean her fully).

I totally agree that this is one of those things you'll see a wide range of advice about - which I actually found really comforting when we got to the point of sleep training with my younger daughter. Once we settled on a plan that felt good for our family (one that we could stick with and live with, and that ideally moved us ALL toward more sleep), we felt pretty confident that there was support out there. We also felt like if our original plan didn't work, we had lots of solid back up options to try next since there are so many ideas about baby sleep.

My younger daughter is five months old, and we started sleep training with her about two weeks ago. I'd originally leaned toward waiting until closer to six months; I think that was mainly in hopes of her just "figuring it out" on her own though because I was feeling so stressed about the prospect of her crying and having trouble settling through the night. My older daughter seemed to just naturally fall into good sleep habits and we didn't do anything in particular to help with it, I don't think. So I felt like I was in uncharted territory with my younger daughter. In retrospect, I wish I'd started a little sooner because it worked out so much better than I anticipated. Her sleep just deteriorated more and more from about 3 months on, and it was getting to the point that she wouldn't fall asleep without the pacifier in or with some rocking/settling from us. And as soon as her pacifier popped out and she noticed, she would wake up crying and we'd repeat the whole process again - sometimes as often as every 30-45 minutes through the night. We needed a change! And honestly, I think the lack of solid sleep was affecting my daughter too. As her nighttime sleep got worse and worse, we noticed she was more unsettled through the day too.

The first night we put her to bed without the pacifier and decided we weren't going back in to offer it to her or rock her to sleep, she cried for about an hour before falling asleep on her own. She woke up a few times that night and cried for about five to ten minutes before falling back asleep. At bedtime, we'd planned to go in to "reassure" her every ten minutes or so until she settled, but honestly she just ended up more worked up in the process - so we would just check her on our monitor to make sure nothing was seriously amiss.

Over the next few nights, she cried less and less at bedtime and began sleeping through the night solidly. At this point, about two or three weeks in, she sometimes still cries very briefly when we put her down to bed, but she sleeps for 11-12 hours. I've found she is way more content through the day too, and her naps have improved tremendously in the process. She definitely figured out how to self-soothe and doesn't depend on the pacifier or bouncing or rocking or whatever else we'd been doing to coax her to sleep.

I'd been anxious about the idea of sleep training, and looking back, I think my own lack of sleep exacerbated those worries for me. I have a good friend who kept reminding me when I was concerned about what to do that babies are pretty resilient - if I needed to back peddle from a failed attempt at getting her to sleep, she'd bounce back. And I would, too.

I cannot recommend the book "Bedtiming" enough when it comes to this question. It talks about emotional and cognitive development stages and which are better for sleep training. It also contrasts the different methods out there and basically says they all have pluses and minuses, and that you should choose what you can stick with. There's so much out there, and I feel like this is such a science- and research-based take on sleep training, and it really helped us.

Your situation sounds a little like mine, where we were co-sleeping early on, and soothing or nursing to sleep during night wake ups. I'm still working on sleep at 15 months and was nursing during the night to keep my supply up until DD turned 1, so you may not want to follow what I did 100%, but I did think it was easier to take it in steps. So we worked on falling asleep lying down in the crib first, with the crib next to my bed (I think I did that at around 6 months); then moved the crib across the room; then out of the room; then we worked on staying in the crib during night wakings - this was around 12 months. I tried to look at what I thought would help both of us get more sleep at each stage and worked towards that step. For us, I wanted some distance between us because I thought co-sleeping and being in the same room was waking her up unnecessarily, so I worked on that. Then we did night weaning and self soothing during the night when I was ready to ease off on breastfeeding.
Like others have said, it's all about doing what is right and workable for you.

I think a good first step at this point is developing a good bedtime routine. Something along the lines of bath, lotion, pajamas, sleepsack, sing a song, nurse. It doesn't even have to be that involved, just a series of steps that you do in the same order every night before bed. It won't take long for your LO to associate those steps with bed and he'll start going down much easier for you. That's really the only kind of "sleep training" I'd be comfortable with at such a young age.

@kiddosc: @gingerbebe: Yes to things both of you said.
Def set a good bedtime routine regardless of sleep training or not. It's important no matter what in getting them in the bedtime mindset. Also want to add that bedtime might need to be way earlier than what you are thinking. Newborn/infant bedtime should be between 5-7pm! Which sounds insane but the big names (weissbluth, Ferber) explain this. That's why many infants have a witching hour between 5-7...they're actually crazy tired and ready for bed.

And agree with @gingerbebe about consistency. So important to create a plan and stick with it for at least a week or two. If you waffle it's not fair to you or the baby. Sometimes it takes a few days to see results, don't throw in the towel. And whether you're doing extinction or checks, be consistent.
Also just generally ditto everything gingerbebe said. I could have written it myself.

I sleep trained around 4 months for falling asleep at bedtime/naptime (not MOTN wakeups, because I didn't feel like dealing with that). If I were you, I'd do some pretraining. Get the bedtime routine down. Also, make sure you are giving your kid a chance to figure it out when the pacifier falls out etc. 1 or 2 min to see if the fussing settles (and not just one time - try it lots of times). That was my mistake with my daughter. I thought she couldn't fall asleep alone. Truth was, I never gave her the chance to try. After you've tried that for a while (weeks), then try the sleeptraining. Also, you've got a big sleep regression coming up, so you might want to wait until it's settled down to do the real sleep training.