To be thinking of giving 5 year old dummy back?

[fr4zzledmum]

I would like to preface this by saying I absolutely know IABU and it's not a great idea to consider, but me and my DH cannot continue like this (I don't think I'm losing my mind - I've lost it!) and it's all exacerbated by my being 9 weeks pregnant.

DD had a dummy from birth then from about 2.5 only had it at night time for sleep. At 4.5 her bottom two adult teeth came through so we got rid of the dummy straight away (dummy fairy - went very well and no drama at all). Although no drama, her sleep was affected to some extent - waking up 1-3 times a night for a tuck in, quick reassurance pat. It was manageable.

But this has declined over the six months she's been without, with the last at least two months having us settling her twice a night and having to get into bed with her. She's very hard to settle (not upset, but clearly struggling to get back to sleep), and we can lie there for hours.

She has said on a few occasions that she misses her dummy - it's not a regular thing she says though.

We have tried so many things to settle her/keep her asleep but they haven't worked. (Think: night light, gro clock, white noise, aromatherapy sleep patches, weighted blanket, heating on during the night, punishments in terms of removal of TV privilege, and lots of praise for nights that are better than others). We've also tried ignoring her shouts but she literally screams and cries - not ideal at 2am.

Over Christmas, we had three nights of no shouting and full nights sleep, purely as she thought Father Christmas wouldn't come. Although this solved our problem of getting no sleep, I actually think she was awake in the night but just didn't shout, so hadn't solved her broken sleep issue.

She's generally pretty good at bed time and is asleep no problem, but we have noticed this last couple of weeks this is becoming more difficult and she just seems wide awake.

We're exhausted and I just don't know what else to do.

Could she have a double bed or another single bed or mattress on the floor?

If Father Christmas worked have you tried a reward chart with stickers for every night she doesn’t wake up and shout and then a bigger prize (Eg: new toy, day out etc) every time she gets a certain number of stickers on the chart? It sounds like if she has a reason for doing it she can go through the night or she wouldn’t have managed for Christmas. You can start with her only needing to do a few days to get the big prize but then gradually make the number of days with a sticker she needs to get the bigger prize more and more.

Sensory chew toy?

Wow. People seem to think that dummies really are the work of the devil. What are these “future problems” that people are so afraid of? Has there been new research since my children were small?

seems to me like you’ve got “now problems”. If the dummy actually worked -would it? - it would restore everyone’s sleep, which would be worth a lot.

Last I heard, the main objection to dummies was snobbery - children look a bit common when they’re sucking them.

Do they damage teeth? Is that it? Not as much as thumb sucking. I don’t know what else it could be.

If it’s just fear that she might find it hard to give it up, well, you could always just let her suck it her whole life. There are worse addictions and it would just be in bed. I doubt she would though.

I think you need to hand all overnights to dh. You've already said about the PND and perinatal team involvement and sleep exacerbating that. Sleep is your main priority for the baby and your own wellbeing.

Your dh cannot tag team the pregnancy, so you need the sleep and he needs to do the night waking.

Hell no enough is enough find a sub