20mo pulling out her hair and eating it

[Panda34]

Please help, my little girl has started pulling her hair out and eating it when she's settling off to sleep, when she wakes up and in the car. She's always liked to hold my hair to go to sleep but now she's started on herself. I distract her and she stops but I'm not always able to do this in the night and she wakes up with hair on her sheet so know she's doing it in the night and it's coming out in her poo so know she's eating it :(

She has several soft toys in bed which she cuddles and also sucks her hand for comfort, I give her toys to play with in the car for distraction.

Following in solidarity OP as my 19 month old does it. More with my hair than his, and I haven’t seen it in his poo yet but he pulls it out, wraps it round his thumb and then sucks his thumb. Similar to your daughter it’s when he’s tired/ as he’s falling asleep

Hi @Cdoc sorry to hear your little one has the same problem! My dd seems to be getting worse and pulled huge clumps out the night before last :( I put socks on her hands last night which stopped the hair pulling but she then couldn't settle herself when she woke in the night as she usually sucks her fingers to soothe herself, so she ended up in my bed.

Sounds tough

given it’s winter I’d buy a couple of slumber sacks like this

https://www.slumbersac.co.uk/products/sleeping-bag-with-feet-3-5-tog?variant=50052500259143&currency=GBP&utm_medium=productsync&utmsource=google&utmcontent=sagorganic&utmcampaign=sagorganic&gadsource=1&gbraid=0AAAAACqupRP0dzT5Js8jmgtSXFojhqdY&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIl6ncmZeBiQMVsKRQBh0-ijoEAQYAiABEgIXkfDBwE

and stitch the arms shut at the ends

when you put them on zip them up backwards so zip runs up her back.

also try tighter hats and mittens in the day

If you want to stop this you need to let her find other ways to self settle other than sucking fingers and accept a couple of weeks of disrupted sleep or let her CIO

Thankyou @TemuSpecialBuy I have actually just ordered her some ScratchSleeves, which is like a cardigan with sewn up sleeves to go under her sleep bag, hoping this helps just doesn't solve the issue of her not being about to soothe herself with the hand sucking :(

Honestly sometimes you have to just decide what’s more important and go for that.
(I say this empathetically as I’ve been there and it’s hard seeing your baby “upset”)

Resolving the hair thing would be paramount for me. Can you introduce “mr/mrs bunny” and she can give it a cuddle or suck on the ears 😅 instead ?

I would try a combination of a sleep bonnet and some kind of silky satiny sensory toys that she can rub between her fingers.

@TemuSpecialBuy yes she already has several bunnies that she's very attached to but sadly don't replace the hand sucking 😭 I'm going to try and stick with covering her hands though and hope she learns to settle some other way as can't bare the thought of her pulling out her lovely hair

I think I'd get the hair cut very short so it can't be pulled out. It can be dangerous to life hair eating. I'd probably ask for professional help tbh so it doesn't turn into a lifetime habit.

So she's asleep tonight in her scratch sleeves, I rocked her to sleep so let's see how tonight goes 🙏🏻

Any advice on helping her self settle without sucking her hand? She's got several comforters and teddies in with her but that didn't help last night..