Bye Bye Dummy

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Yesterday my partner and I decided to go cold turkey on dummy usage with our 4 month old son.

Oh.my.word.

He was fine in the day time but when 5pm came around he was screaming for England.

Tough but we persisted with singing, nursery rhymes and generally making a bit of a boob of ourselves. It seemed to work and he calmed down,

Fed at 7pm followed by the mother of all screaming and crying fits. I cried too

He settled at 9:30pm, woke for his 11pm feed, settled straight away then woke at 5am.

Not bad for the first day. Awaiting tonights antics with baited breath.

Anyone going through a similar challenge?

Oh I was very anti dummies......

And then dd was born. She really suffered with colic, and would desperately suck. I found that she wanted to feed all all all the time. But that the more she fed, the more gripey her stomach got. The dummy really really helped to soothe her.

Then I remember, once the colic had passed, thinking about getting rid of it. But... she seemed so happy. So instead I limited its use, to bedtimes, to naps and so on. It may just be a coincidence, but the day she finally (happily) gave up the dummy, was the last time she had a regular afternoon nap.

She was not particularly coordinated as a baby, and never found her thumb or fingers. Has excellent teeth and my goodness is she a talker!

DS similar. Very happy and contented. He has been a fantastic sleeper too, right from the get go (no colic for him). He is also very chatty. Am more relaxed with him than I was with dd, but he still generally only has his dummy and clothie when ready for bed.

If my ds hadnt started waking multiple times for his dummy then he would probably still have it. Dummies are fine until they start causing more problems than they solve. If your lo was sleeping fine using a dummy and it wasnt causing sleep issues then they would be ok to keep it. If it was meaning you had to get up many times in the night to re-insert it then, yes, it would probably be best to get rid of it. It is amazing how quickly they get used to not having it although ds uses a taggy blanket for night-time sleep now so it would be worth trying to get him to form an attachment to something else for sleeptimes.

Haven't got the time to read through full thread, sorry, but my 7 month old used to need a dummy pretty much all the time (although he didn't always get it ) in the last few weeks we've noticed he barely uses it in the daytime any more. Now he's more mobile he's much easier to entertain (and can entertain himself), and his 'crying for no reason' has almost disappeared (so we now assume must have been boredom). He's having some sleep issues at the moment, so we'd use anything to help, but in fact the dummy is less use at night / nap times than it used to be. As soon as the sleep issue is sorted I'm going to see if this is a good time to wean him off the dummy naturally.
Just thought I'd let you know, as you might find the same in a few months. At 4 months I ocassionally tried him without a dummy when he normally would need it, it was a nightmare!