Dummy causing sleeplessness? Your advice, please

[CookieTramp]

I've posted about this before, but we have a nearly 7mo who still wakes every hour wanting his dummy replaces. dS1 didn't have a dummy so we have no experience with this.

Have you had this issue? If so, did removing the dummy completely resolve it? We feel it might be CAUSING the wake-ups but maybe he'd wake anyway and be harder to settle? Have you done this and it helped, or found it didn't actually help after all?

Experiences please. We are close to desperate. We take turns with the nights but it's still very hard.

As added info, he only has the dummy for naps and nighttime. The day naps have finally taken shape (half hour in the morning, an hour or more at lunch and shorter nap in the afternoon) but the nights have not shown any improvement. We really thought when the naps took shape, the nights would follow. :-(

Bumping this as still hoping for a new plan for tonight...

Have you tried sleepytot? It's a bunny thing with Velcro paws you attach dummies to. We got one a month ago for dd who is now 6mo. It didn't work at the time (she couldn't work out how to get the dummy into her mouth again). We reckon she could probably manage it now she's 7mo but actually, the issue passed - thank god. Either way, it's quite cute.

She had been waking about every hour - one night I was up 13 times; and I'd just gone back to work. It was all consuming and a nightmare. But, it just passed. It was a bit random but I didn't question it!

I posted about it at the time. Someone gave great advice for if I was going to go cold turkey. The said to start on a Thursday night as you could go one day at work without sleep and hopefully the Worse would pass across the rest of the weekend. The poster also suggested that you have to throw away all of your dummies before you start (to avoid giving in half way thru the night). Her advice was that if you give in after a couple of hours, you just teach your baby that if they want a dummy, the thing to do is to cry, for 2 hours. We just weren't man enough to do it. We may have to at some point but she's more chilled about the dummy now. We still use it if she's upset and if she's really tired, she likes it when going to sleep. But, if she wakes at night, she'll usually settle herself without. Thinking about it, it probably coincided with her being able to turnover in bed and sleep on her front - she tends to do this now to settle herself during the night.

Good luck whatever you decide.

My DS is 9 months and loves his dummy at bed time :)
I put a few dummies in his bed in addition to the one he falls asleep with :) he wakes up finds a dummy and goes back to sleep! He still wakes 1 for a feed so not sleeping through!
The phase your in passes thankfully!!

My DS had a dummy for sleep (naps and nighttime) only too.

His sleep has always been rubbish, but I thought the dummy may have been a factor, so I got rid of it at ten months (went cold turkey: it took a few days before he "forgot" about it). It made negligible difference to his sleep but he has a few other health issues. Still, I was glad to be rid of the silly things. Gets annoying carrying then everywhere "just in case".

Hope you have better luck than I did

Thanks all. Blankiefan, you have given hope. It is still very bad but I live in hope that it will resolve. We do know about Sleepytot but he still can't et the dummy in himself.

I am so sleep deprived that I said he is nearly 7 months but actually he is just 6 months. I don't know what brain glitch caused that!

We can't go cold turkey... We don't have the balls. So either it will pass naturally or we have to sit tight until he can find and get the dummy in by himself. Any idea roughly when that happens? He's such an adorable baby, very sweet, but I feel like I am missing it all due to the severe sleep problem. Hubby goes away on business soon so I will have to cope alone with these dire, desperate nights. :-(

My DS started putting his dummy in by himself at about 7months but to be honest I spent hours playing with the dummy to teach him what to do!
Put the baby in bed with you if your really tired it really helps for a night or two of sanity!!

Well older, co-sleeping breastfed babies & toddlers wake up for this exact reason - to. be pacified at the breast... A dummy is a substitute teat for being soothed at the breast. So it makes sense that when a baby who enjoys his/her dummy loses it during the night, would be waking wanting to sooth his/herself back to sleep on the dummy.

It's a pain, but perfectly normal & probably serves a purpose. If you can't take the waking any longer you're more than likely going to have to wean your baby off of the dummy altogether.

Ours had dummies up to 6 months and then we took them away... as part of sleep training. We did controlled comforting. They had some other issues - still being swaddled at 6 months (!!) - but yes, once we took the dummy and the swaddle away and did the sleep training they slept tons better. From the first night we did it.

This is our exact situation one month ago. Seven months old awake every hour for dummy. We were exhausted. Decided to go cold turkey. I was terrified. Did the dream feed at 10am. Woke up at 4am screamed for an hour. Slept till 6am. (In that hour I stroked back for 2 minutes left her for 5 minutes on repeat). Night 2 cried for 7 minutes. A month on hasn't cried since!!!

Sleeps better in the day 2. The hv said 'you're having shit nights at the moment, what have you got to loose?'

Good luck!

I had same prob! As pp stated the sleepytot on amazon is amazing. It changed dds sleeping overnight. She never loses dumm now.

I adapted both dc's lovies/cuddly so I could add a couple of dummies to the corners, similar to the sleeptot bunny. Both got it at just turned 8m, earlier than I thought they would manage looking at how the played at putting a dummy in during play times. Life (well, sleep!) changing. Still both major dummy addicts now though, I'm sure I will hate the dummy at some point!