dummy question

[kbaby]

ds is 9 weeks, hes a sucky baby and always seems to be rooting for food, this makes it hard to get him to sleep as hes too restless, oh and he cries all the time.
weve been using a dummy to calm him and get him to sleep and then removing it, however will doing this still make him dependant on the dummy. at night he constantly waves his arms about in his moses basket and keeps putting his hands all over his face so in the end he wakes himself up. ive been tempted to give him the dummy at night to sleep with to stop this but i dont really want to.
how can i encourage him to find a thumb which will hopefully settle him or should i give in and give the dummy or even stop using it at all.

sorry theres so many qyuestions but im uncertain what to do. i dont want him to have a dummy but on the other hand it settles him to sleep without the rooting.

personally, if I were you, I would let him have the dummy if it means he is settled and sleeps contentedly. He is only 9 weeks old!!
My reasoning of this is that you can wean him off a dummy, infact he may even discard it himself, but once he's got a thumb sucking habit his thumb is there forever, whenever he wants to suck it so to speak right up past the age of 5.
Also, I guess you only have to read / see the horror stories of childrens teeth and what thumb sucking does to them, even the baby teeth.
I'd stick with the dummy for the night time for now, don't offer it during the day and review the situation say whens he's a 6 months or so.
Good Luck!

I would persist with the dummy. Neither of mine took it but I sometimes wished they did as a means of calming them, particularly when teething.

My son found his thumb but once his first tooth arrived at 12 months he stopped sucking - so no probs with ongoing sucking as described by mumatuks.

hi kbaby, sorry you're still going through it. My DS is about the same age as yours I think. I'd say use the dummy if it settles him. I was using a dummy but DS began to spit it out when he discovered his thumb, which he now sucks any time he's uncomfortable. Think it is often wind as I hear him sucking really hard in the night followed by enormous farts.

oh, and I do worry about what this will do to his teeth but for the time being it settles him, which I think is important when he is this small.

me again - don't know if anyone else has any advice about encouraging him to find his thumb, but I have found when I've tried to do it for him he just wrinkles his face in disc=gust and won't suck it.

i would have thought the dummy would be better.all mine have had dummies,although im finding it hard to get ds2 to throw his away now he's 3 but i wouldnt have been without them when they were babies.

my mum always says she wishes she'd given me a dummy.. i sucked my fingers constantly until i was well into my teens and stil do now when i'm tired/over emotional/stressed. her theory on this is that she could have taken the dummy away at a young age and had more control over the situation, whereas my fingers were always available to me. i remember the horrors of my dad trying to get me to stop by putting alll sorts of nasty tasting things on my fingers... today i have a phobia of mustard as a result!!

ds has a dummy he was a sucky baby.. i find it's other people's reactions thats hard asking me to justify why i gave him a dummy (as if their some evil contraption) better a contended baby than a stressed out mummy with a screaming baby i say!