Night time dummy battle

[jazzyoldjim]

Almost 4 month old, has always been so-so about his dummy, can take it or leave it mostly. He will go to bed at 7pm with a bottle and he goes off without a dummy. Last 3 nights he has woken up at 4am desperate for it we pop in it and he makes a noise like he's relieved and goes back off. Then he'll wake up 30 mins later and its fallen out, pop it back in and he goes back off... repeat until 7am when my 4yo will come in and wake everybody up.

I'm not sure what to do, whether to just ditch the dummy now and endure a couple of rough nights while he gets over it or carry on as we are - but to be honest the getting out of bed 10 times in the space of 3 hours is doing me in more than the rough newborn days.

He has got cmpa so he does suffer from wind and reflux so I worry the dummy is comforting him when this is bothering him. We swaddle him in a love2dream swaddle, he sleeps in pitch black with white noise and he also sleeps in a purflo nest (sleepyhead thing) so he has plenty of soothing / comforting props going on.

What do you think? Any suggestions v much welcome.

Yep I remember this well.
They soon learn to find it themselves, do you have a glow in the dark one?
But he would only learn out of the swaddle, is he rolling?

I didn't want to get rid of it as my son has reflux and it helped soothe him.

@Violetmo0n No, not rolling yet - we still swaddle him because he loves it and he won't sleep a wink unswaddled, just waves his arms around like a mad man and whacks himself in the face! That is a battle for another day I think.

Its weird, he doesn't open his eyes he just starts crying at the top of his lungs.

Sounds like classic 4 month regression stuff and I wouldn’t be pointing the finger at the dummy for why he’s struggling to connect a sleep cycle, in fact the dummy is probably giving you an easy way of getting him back to sleep and you might find wake ups are longer without it. Personally I’d push the cot/bassinet up to your side of the bed so you can pop it back in without having to get up.

Also, he won’t be able to replace it himself until minimum 6 months old, probably more like 7 months. So don’t ditch the swaddle just for this reason.

We went cold turkey and it was the best thing we could've done. We were told it could take up to 5 days before she'd settle without, but she was completely fine the first night and we've never looked back. Better to do it now!

@RandomQuest Yep, I think I agree with you there. I was wondering if he might be going through the regression, I've also just inspected his mouth and we have some small sharp bits emerging on his bottom gum, yikes!

Pushing his cot to the side of my bed as we speak.

Agree it's probably not the dummy, it's the 4 month regression kicking in. Unfortunately we had 10 weeks or so of this and it got progressively worse before it then got better. We stuck with the dummy as she did at least self-settle easily at the beginning of the night and for naps with it. I'm glad we did, she turned a corner a few weeks back and is now sleeping through most nights or if she does wake it's once and I just have to put her dummy back in and she's back off again. She also night weaned herself with no faff and I'm sure the dummy helped with this.