dummies / pacifiers and how to avoid using them?

[benjaminty]

Hello All,

Help!

Aged 26 days and our daughter has turned into a "sucky" baby! If she's not asleep or feeding she's demanding attention and sucking her hands and fingers, we've tested to see if she is still hungry and she just suckles on the boob without actually feeding.

She's now a powerful eater and takes a full feed in around 10 minutes.

So now it feels like we have no option but to reach for the dummy but that was always something we said we would try and avoid.

we have a pack of specially shaped dummies if we decide we can't take the wailing any more. She only seem sto play up in the morning and afternoons and evenings she is pretty good.

Anyone found any cunning ways around this issue please?

[prdarling]

Err just give her them! Stop trying to be so perfect.

She is 26 days old. Don't try to control the situation. If she's a sucky baby, let her get on with it. My son was the same and i let him be until he was after 1 and then we did 3 days of controlled crying and he has never remembered it since.

Some babies need to suck. Best to let them do it. Makes everyone happier

[craigy]

My son was a fab feeder and liked to suck all the time. I gave him a dummy at 3 weeks which he continued with on and off till 11 weeks then completely rejected it of his own doing and never had one since.

Relax, they are not that bad....

[snowboarder]

My little boy was similarly 'sucky' and I decided no dummies (why?!? Think thought would never get it off him if I gave it to him) - so in mad post natal state I spent many hours letting him suck my little finger...He then found his thumb and has sucked that happily ever since. I have NO idea how I'm going to get his thumb off him - almost wish had given him the dummy....

[Pickle]

I too was completely anti-dummies until my son got to 9 weeks and seemed completely unable to settle/relax without being attached to me (like your little one, not suckling, just attached - which after a while gets annoying and sore). I agonised, and finally gave him a dummy and it changed our lives. He went from barely sleeping in the day to having regular and reliable naps and his nighttime sleep got much better.

I only gave him a dummy during the day, for some reason at night he was fine. By 6 months he had given up the dummy and transferred his suckiness to a soft toy - his beloved Barney, who has a tail which has been sucked within an inch of it's life in the last 3.5 years. We never had to go through the process of taking the dummy away, he did it by himself.

So don't worry too much. If the worst comes to the worst you'll need to go through a process of taking the dummy away, but I know lots of people who have managed it without too much drama.

P

[missd]

We gave our son a dummy in the early days and just took it off him when he was around 3/4 months. I think it's a bigger problem if they still have it when 2/3 years old and then know it's a pacifier and they cant do without it. If you lose it in the early days before they realise what it is,then it's fine

[Belle]

Yep - we gave our son one but he was ambivalent for ages - would go to sleep without it at around 8 months, then a spate of ear infections meant he got reliant on it. Went cold turkey at around 15 months (with helpful advice from PR darling and others on a thread I started, thanks people!) and was fine after 2 or 3 nights (and really only the first night was tough). As others say though some just give up on their own much earlier. I was anti-dummy at first but came to think: if something gives them comfort, why not give it to them?

[crystal7]

I was really anti dummies but my daughter used to cry a lot in the evenings and it took ages to get her to go to sleep. It helped her settle to sleep although i still disliked the look of it. She rejected it at 12 weeks though and found her fingers which aged 18 months are always in her mouth. Maybe dummies are better...

[Sanne Panne]

Agree with the other posters, having a dummy gives you and your baby months of an easier life whereas taking it away is probably just 2-3 days of drama. I hate dummies too but only really from about 12 months when they start babbling. Our first child was seriously addicted (we went cold turkey at 18 months) and our second child is not interested at all so far (at 6 weeks). Really happy about that but if she does seem to need to suck more at some point (or if she's generally cranky and I notice a dummy calms her down) I'll probably give in again. Just tell yourself you'll wean at 6/12/18/24 months or whenever you want to get rid of them (and re-evaluate when the time comes).

I fully understand your feelings, I still hate the things, to me they're a hybrid between a plug and a mute button, but it's probably worth giving yourself and your child a break.

[ludoscotts]

hi we were the same and totally agree with the other posters. We didnt want to use a dummy but when It got to the point where I was bleeding because my daughter was such a sucky baby we gave in and used one and have never looked back!

by the time she was 3 months old we insisted she only had it for naps or bed and that worked fine.

We have literally this last week taken it away from her. She will be 3 in nov and decided it was time to bite the bullet and get rid of it.

From advice from others on the forum(thanks guys) we used the dummy fairy ruse. She put all of the dummies in a little bag and hung it up for the fairy, the next morning the fairy had left her a present.(a little fairy box from soup dragon)

We were dreading it, and have thought of doing it many times since she turned 2 but its been fine. She woke a couple of times during the first couple of nights and only once asked for the dummy, she had some milk during the nights when she woke (prob helped comfort her) but a week on she isnt waking, she is back to her normal sleep routine, and isnt missing it at all.

Im so glad we used one as 2 of my friends are now tearing their hair out trying to work out how to get their little ones the same age to stop sucking their thumb(which they do off and on all day and night!)

We wont hesitate to use a dummy with the second one at least you can take it away when you are ready and regulate when they get to use it.

One bit of advice id give is if you decide to use one and they are happy using it, when they get to the point where they can grab it and put it in themself start putting a spare one in the same place in the cot.

I used to tie a muslin cloth (a bit like a pocket)into the corner of the cot and put a spare into that. Whenever my daughter would wake at night rather than just putting it back in her mouth id take her hand and show her where the spare was and let her put it in herself. After about a week she would do it herself. One thing friends who used dummies complained about was having to get up in the night to put the dummy back in but we were fine as we used this system from her being really small.

good luck with whatever route you decide to go down

[Claire29]

Not sure why people are so against using dummies, I've used them for both my boys, and 2 year old still has for sleeping, my 5 year old was easy enough to wean off with the bribe of a big boy toy (i think he was nearly 3) and like many people mention above a dummy can be removed, a thumb or finger cant! I found them a godsend when they were little tiny babies and wanted some comfort! Also when babies are that young I find it hard to understand why people are so hard on themselves for not doing doing certain things - before i had kids i had lots of plans of what i was/wasn't going to let them have........ how things change!

Good luck!

[lucyjessica]

Not sure whether we will use one yet with our baby (considering it at night as she too is sucky!) but have done some reading around the subject and on the positive, it is thought that dummy use at night can reduce the risk of SIDS as the act of sucking encourages/reminds baby to breath and they are less likely to roll onto their front and bury their nose in the bedding as would be uncomfy with a dummy in their mouth. Secondly, from an orthodontic point of view a dummy does not cause dental problems in the way thumb/finger sucking can (not that it always does). Hope this might help in your decision making.

[Bumpkin]

My parents were v anti dummies and never used one with me & my sister, but we gave in after several weeks and it's been a godsend for getting baby B to sleep, on aeroplanes and (currently the most useful to me) as a threat of removal at bedtime in order to get him to go to sleep / get into pyjamas / clean teeth aged 2.5.

My mum now says she wishes she'd used one for my sister as she sucked her finger for years and still has a swollen bent finger and had to have train tracks for very buck teeth whereas I struggle to see how a dummy would result in your teeth sticking out much if at all.

[LauraHW]

Just to echo what everyone else has said. I gave in at 4 weeks because I was sick of my nipple being used as a dummy. Now I'm a dummy convert and can't remember why I was such a snob about them!

[MrsMc]

Just to add my agreement to the majority - dummies have their place and are great with sucky babies. I too resisted at first, but as soon as my mother in law told me that some babies need to suck more than they need to feed I caved! Cracked nipples were probs influential!

[KateW]

Speaking as someone who sucked her thumb from being tiny and struggled to break the habit in my teenage years (and yes, had to have lots of orthodontic treatment as a result), I won't hesitate to use a dummy with my little one if necessary because, as many people have said, you can always take the dummy away.

[Moos]

I have read that they can interfere with the establishment of breastfeeding so avoided dummies for the first month of my son's life for that reason, but am not sure how true that is. Plenty of evidence from pp that there was no ill effect.

We had to take our son's dummy away at about six months as he couldn't fall asleep without it, but it used to drop out and wake him up as he dropped off (aargh), and he was too little to replace it. Bu that seems to be far from the norm.

[Sanne Panne]

Moos Wrote:

> We had to take our son's dummy away at about six

> months as he couldn't fall asleep without it, but

> it used to drop out and wake him up as he dropped

> off (aargh), and he was too little to replace it.

> Bu that seems to be far from the norm.

We needed to replace it every single hour (or more often) at night when our eldest was a few months old too and put up with it until she could do it by herself. Never again... will either not give a dummy to our new baby (so far she doesn't seem interested) or wean her off it if we get this nighttime problem again.

[Moos]

Agreed! It was No Fun doing the weaning, but better than the continual replacing we'd been doing.

[Saila]

we used dummies for out side of house only. It was a real godsend. Especially during those bus journeys when the last hting you want is a crying baby.

We occasionally use it to settle our little one (10 months) if he's over tired etc. But he's just growing out of it himself.

I know many people who've used dummies and none of them have not been able to kick it when they're older. It just takes a few nights of 'no' and they forget about them. or if they're older that 'dummy-fairy' trick etc. I'd definitely use them next time again as it's work well for us and sorts out the over tired thing so quickly and calmly, as and when he gets over tired.

[nicolemodesti]

Different perspective but we never used dummies. Not able to offer advice on how we escaped using them! Bought a couple before my sons birth, which I recently discovered 2 years later during our house move, but never offered them. He did suck his fingers for a short time. Go with the floe and see if your little one will require it.

[linzkg]

Same with us - we were able to avoid dummies and I am glad for it (though my son was a massive sucker too) .. though there have been times when I've tried to get one in my son's mouth to calm him (and I possibly thought it would help with teething somehow) but he's 14 months now so there was no going back which from time to time I've actually regretted.

Maybe leave the dummy in the cot and just use it at sleep time?