My 8-week-old has taken to crying inconsolably in bursts in the late afternoons/evenings (I understand this is fairly typical), and the only thing that comforts him is me or my DH putting a little finger in his mouth. Actually, he loves it (boy can he suck!), and I'm beginning to wonder whether he is now crying FOR the finger.
He's not hungry -- I'm feeding him on demand an average of every 2.5 hours. He's not a refluxy or particularly windy baby. And he doesn't cry all the time; he feeds, then has a quiet alert period, and then cries and latches onto the finger like a piranha. (And then sometimes goes to sleep.)
Neither of us mind, particularly, but we are beginning to spend hours in the evenings with a baby latched onto us and it's now impinging on necessary housework, etc. We can't keep this up forever, and we're also worried we're encouraging a bad habit that will be hard to break.
Should we give him a dummy (we're reluctant to go down this route)? Or is this just a phase that will end once he's worked out how to suck his own thumb (he tries desperately hard to do this too but hasn't quite worked it out yet)?
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Behaviour/development
baby sucking my finger for hours - help to stop
21 replies
beanlet · 29/08/2010 21:47
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