Dummy cold turkey - Night 3 looms...

[MissBonpoint]

I have a 4.5 month old boy who used a dummy for naps/nights every day since coming home from hosp... until Sunday night.

I took it away because he started waking up at night wanting the dummy back 4 or more times (not hungry, just wanting the dummy) and it was very wearing. It also seemed to be disrupting his daytime naps as he constantly dropped it and it would fall rather annoyingly behind his neck & wake him up.

First night it was awful to get him to go to sleep & he was almost inconsolable in the middle of the night.

Last night there were tears & he woke up every hour after midnight needing re-settling, then insisted on a much earlier feed than usual at 4am...

Tonight he went to sleep easily and only needed brief re-settling once. What can I expect overnight ladies? Will this improve?

Hello,
3 nights it should take I was told by my Hv but it could take up to a week or two but stick with it if you dont want him to have the dummy anymore.
I took the dummy away at one year old but then she started using it at 9 months as I thought it would help her sleep better!
They are great for settling and comforting and your little boy is still very young.
My two daughters didnt sleep through for a long long time, DD1 9 months and DD2 12 months. DD2 had the dummy and was waking up in the night as it would fall out and I would have to put it back in.
Your doing the right thing and listening to your maternal intuition...
If he wakes up again just rub his back, sralk his hair or tickle his feet, dont pick him up ( if he is screaming blue murder pick him up )
Stick with it and reep the rewards...It will get easier when he forgets about the dummy.
I threw mine all away so I wasnt tempted.

Thanks for that! I will persist! Have put all my dummies away in a zip-lock bag so they're not in the steriliser waiting for a weak moment.

Will update on progress tomorrow!

How are you getting on MissBonPoint? I have ear-marked this weekend for doing the same with my DS2, for exactly the same reasons. But i'm getting cold feet now that it wont be the miracle we're hoping for!

Also, are you getting rid of them totally? Or will you plan on giving them for comfort, just not for sleeping, IYSWIM? I'm not sure how I will approach this as DS is a very sucky baby and does seem to get alot of comfort from the dummy during his awake time...

Am hoping it is going well for you!

we too our ds's dummy away at 5 months for all those reasons- pretty much as you report, night 1 was like nursing someone coming off crack, night 2 a bit disorientated but nothing worse, and day/ night 3 like he'd never had one. 2 years later i am so glad we did that!
the thing you now need to watch is that YOU don't fall back into needing it (in a kind of omg he's crying what do we do NOW?!)
But he'll be fine. Stick with it so worth it well done!

We MADE IT! The second night was also rough - he woke up a few times and needed re-settling before 4 am (yawn!), then required constant re-settling between 4-5am, when he demanded to be fed. After that he slept until 8.30am! Naps were also tough, though he was so tired from being up half the night that he did eventually sleep.

Last night was MUCH better. He went straight to sleep at 7pm, grumbled a bit at about 8-9pm, then slept until 4am straight without a peep! At 4am I just patted him for a few seconds and he went back to sleep until 4.50 when he ate (that's early for him). Then back to bed until 6.40 when he woke up.

Before embarking on this he used the dummy every time he had a nap and every night. I stopped using the dummy outside the cot some time ago - just got fed up! He does grumble when we are out in the pram, but he doesn't get it.

I'm really glad we got through this. My view is that in the first few months they have a natural sucking urge that they need the dummy for, but after that urge wanes it becomes just a bad habit, like chewing gum.

I read some things by experts/doctors saying that if around the 4-5 month mark they start waking up demanding the dummy 4 or more times a night to just take it away from them.

Good luck! Meant to be a lot easier the earlier you try it. But whatever you do - don't take it away then give it back - that just makes the next attempt harder!

I've just done something very similar with my 4.5 month old DD! after sleeping through the night with no problems since 10 weekss old, last week she started a new pattern - she would suck the dummy to go to sleep, then pull it out of her own mouth, then wake herself up screaming seconds later because the dummy was gone! afer 3 nights of standing over her cot putting the dummy back in each time it fell out I decided I couldn't take it anymore and decided to have a dummy amnesty.

night one involved DD screaming her head off the entire night and absolutely inconsolable until about 2.30 when she finally fell asleep with exhaustion, then woke up again at 6.30 to scream a bit more...

night two was a lot better, and it only took me 2 hours to settle her, but had to keep going in to re-settle every two hours as she would have a little cry.

night three (last night) she settled immediately and I only had to go in twice.

Things can only get better I think!

Good luck with your dummy amnesty chunkamatic, I think 4.5 months means they are small enough to forget about dummies completely v quickly. Our DD doesn't get her dummy at all now and doesn't seem to miss it that much....

Thanks for the advice. Can I just ask what you have done to resettle them? I'm concious that if I rock, pat etc etc it might just give him something else to need to go to sleep with, iyswim? Or do I just need to do whatever neccesary to settle him other than give the dummy?

Things I have read in how to approach it seem abit too close to contolled crying -i.e leaving them for a minute and comforting for 30secs.

Also, how do you deal with feeding? DS still comes into my bed to feed in the night, usually around 2am and usually stays there. he doesnt have the dummy in bed with me but will feed more often. So, lets say he doesn't settle without the dummy till around 2am, which is when he usually has a feed. So I will feed him which I would imagine will send him to sleep. So instead of using the dummy he will have been fed to sleep which is no better is it?!

Probably over-thinking this should just get on and do it - I'm dreading the upset though I think i'll be crying more than him!

Hi Chunkamatic, sorry to leave the reply so late - haven't had time to log in!

When he isn't actually hungry it seems that just turning him on his side (he's in a sleep-bag) and giving him his knitted toy dog seems to work. I introduced the toy a few days before I took the dummy away. He likes holding it close & sucking its ears a bit. A book I read suggested substituting the dummy with a muslin cloth - but that seemed a bit mean and impersonal to me! Though the book is probably quite right in saying that many babies derive a lot of comfort from sucking a muslin.

I also sing to him to calm him down. That really helped a lot on nights 1 and 2 when he was quite upset. But I try not to do that at every sleep time because I don't want him becoming dependent on it.

In the last couple of days he appears to have hit a real growth spurt & is feeding more than ever. I think that's affecting his sleep patterns. I haven't had to feed him before 4am for a very long time, but found I was feeding him at 3 something this morning as he was ravenous and quite upset. After that he went straight back to bed without any trouble. I don't think the dummy would have helped him - he just needed to eat.

At nap times there is a bit of crying without the dummy unless he is really tired. Sometimes I misjudge when to put him down to nap. If it's clear that he's simply not tired enough & he is crying because he is refusing to nap I just haul him out of the cot & the crying stops.

I hear that you shouldn't try controlled crying before 6 months. However I don't think that means you have to pat and hold them constantly when they cry before they are 6 months old. I'm a soft touch and find it difficult to leave him for more than a minute anyway - but I do try to differentiate between different cries (ie, on the crying scale of 1-10 & the difference between little moans and an all out bawl).

'Sleep trainers' say that you have to try to let them settle themselves and that it does involve leaving them to moan/cry to themselves for a bit before they fall asleep. The rationale is that if you don't let a baby try to self-settle, they will never learn how. Anyway, these things are much harder in practice!!

On the first couple of nights when it was clear that the baby was crying because he really wanted the dummy it was difficult to listen to the crying and by my actions say 'no'. It's part of parenting I guess. I felt like I had to help him get over his dummy addiction as it was just keeping him awake. When I saw how badly he seemed to need this thing that actually wasn't helping him any more it just made me feel like it was for the best that he got rid of it.

I don't regret giving him the dummy in the early days - but I think we gave it up at the right time.

How are you faring this weekend anyway?