dummies??
Hi ladies
hope we are all getting on well with our lo's!
Just wanted to get your opinions on giving lo a dummy. My gorgeous girl is good as gold all day but after her tea time feed she is quite unsettled and will look for another feed within as little as an hour, and this continues after her evening feed and she won't settle to sleep at night. She constantly tries to get her thumb in her mouth and sucks at her fingers, and DH wants to give her a dummy as he doesn't want her sucking her thumb. His reasoning is that we can take a dummy away but we can't take her thumb away. DH thinks that she is looking for the comfort of something to suck rather than being hungry, so a dummy would help.
I have always been against them, but then again i've never had a baby of my own before! What i want to know is that if we did decide to give her one, do you think it is possible to just keep it to something she gets at night as part of her settling routine? Or once i give her one is that it, and she will need it all the time?
Any help or advice would be really appreciated!
xxx
hope we are all getting on well with our lo's!
Just wanted to get your opinions on giving lo a dummy. My gorgeous girl is good as gold all day but after her tea time feed she is quite unsettled and will look for another feed within as little as an hour, and this continues after her evening feed and she won't settle to sleep at night. She constantly tries to get her thumb in her mouth and sucks at her fingers, and DH wants to give her a dummy as he doesn't want her sucking her thumb. His reasoning is that we can take a dummy away but we can't take her thumb away. DH thinks that she is looking for the comfort of something to suck rather than being hungry, so a dummy would help.
I have always been against them, but then again i've never had a baby of my own before! What i want to know is that if we did decide to give her one, do you think it is possible to just keep it to something she gets at night as part of her settling routine? Or once i give her one is that it, and she will need it all the time?
Any help or advice would be really appreciated!
xxx
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Replies
It sounds like Grace is cluster feeding in the evenings which is actually a good thing because it means she's starting to learn the difference betweeen night and day so is feeding more in the evenings to ty to fill up more so she can go longer stretches at night. Most babies do this, its not unusual for them to have a few hours in the evening where they are unsettled and just want to feed.
I wouldn't recommend giving a dummy if your breastfeeding until she's 4 weeks old because it can cause them to get nipple confusion and mess up your milk supply, are your bottle or breast feeding? Sorry I can't remember!
Its entireley up to you though...all of mine have had a dummy, Abby and Theo had it from a week or so old but Lily was breastfed for longer and wouldn't take one until I'd stopped breastfeeding, I guess because she got used to the plasticy sensation when she started on bottles.
xx
I will go google it, thanks!
xx
Nothing wrong with a dummy though; it apparently lowers risk of cot death if baby is given it to settle to sleep (though they dont know why!) and your DH is right about it being easier to take away than a thumb. We introduced one to Daniel to make him go longer between feeds and also because he had started sucking at his thumb. I've seen countless parents struggle to stop thumb sucking, but you can take a dummy away and after a while of tantrums its over with (though with Daniel we took it away and he never seemed to notice! lol). xxx
But cluster feeding is a good thing, it takes babies a while to sort their body clocks out and cluster feeding is a good sign their learning night time is for sleeping so in theory should start sleeping for longer periods of time.
xx
I must admit that i let her have it too much of the day when she was a baby so trying to reduce use when she got older was tricky. She still has it but only when sleeping which she accepts. I'll be trying the dummy fairy when she's three I think.
I'm already lined up with three different types of dummy (all newborn but different shape teats, etc) for our next LO but will restrict to sleep more than i did last time. My friend gave her very colicy baby a dummy at three weeks and then took it away at 6 months so as not to make her dependent on it, so it helped with the colicy weeks and she doesn't really miss it now she's older. You could aim at that if you're worried about her having it long term.
She's 2 now & it's not like it's stuck in her mouth permanently. She tends to suck it when anxious, tired or upset or when she's sitting quietly watching tv or something.
I think its good to use a dummy so he knows the difference
so far he only uses it at night but that might change
Friends that use dummys have all had different experiences, one spat hers out as soon as she found her thumb anyway, another does use it just for bed, and anothers little one is 15months and she has it all day, you can't hear her talking as she has the dummy in there. I guess really its all to do with how you use it.
jack had a dummy aswell, he used to comfort feed so when we gave him dummy he calmed down with feeds and got alot more regular with it.
xxx