can you give a bf baby a dummy?

[kat13]

We have a gorgeous 3day old boy who consistently wants to suck on his thumb or his dads whilst sleeping. Can we give him a dummy when i am bf or will this confuse him and stop him feeding?

some people have done it sucessfully HV recommended it for dd but it disestablished feeding so we gave up , think it may be better to wait until he is older than a couple weeks

Yes you can - just be careful it isnt given when he is actually hungry. I successfully bf my dd til she was 12 and a half months and she had a dummy from about 3/4 weeks old. She used to just spit the dummy out when she wanted milk and vice versa at bedtime she would stop feeding when she was finished and grab for her dummy (obv not at 3 weeks mind).

I gave both mine dummies early on (dd1 about 3-4w, dd2 about a week)

I knew with both that bf was well established (feeding well and frequently, gaining weight, was aware of their hunger cues etc)

At 3 days though your baby may be wanting to suck all the time because he wants to feed

If I were you I would probably continue to offer the breast, rather than a dummy. At least for a couple of weeks, if you can

I know you're talking about dummy, but I think advice re bf and introducing bottle (ie alternative to nipple) is to do it after 3 weeks when bf established, so guess best to do same thing with dummy. Bear in mind your DS may have other ideas though! Ours did, though we didn't give dummy early on (and he never accepted bottle either!).

Oh - meant to say introducing bottle as in expressed bm. I wanted DH to be able to feed DS as thought it would be nice thing for him (and break for me!) but we left it too late (after 7 or 8 weeks) and DS decided he would much prefer Mum's boob! Mind you we didn't really persist with it, he may have taken bottle in the end...

Gave my dd2 a dummy at 3 weeks, prior to this her seemingly constant need to suckle helped to kick start plentiful milk supply. She still let me know when she wanted boob rather than dummy after it was introduced. the dummy didn't reduce the amount of feeds/ suckling my baby wanted but really helped her to settle for sleeps.

I was interested to read a recent research paper which concluded sucking a dummy may help reduce incidence of cot death.

good luck.