Better to rock to sleep or pop in basket with a dummy

[Jane7]

HAving bedtime issues with my eight week old. I know he is little and I should just do whatever works, but in terms of getting him to sleep that means either rocking him on my shoulder for half an hour and then having a painstaking put down when he often wakes as he's put in his basket meaning I have to do the whole thing again. OR I can pop him in the basket when he's sleepy but calm, pop a dummy in and he usually drops off. After 20 mins or so, I pull the dummy out. BUT I really don't want to be using a dummy in a few months time, or get stuck in a replacing-dummy-through-the-night situation. Apologies for posting quite a similar question a few days ago (hope i'm not breaking mumsnet etiquette to post again)

I'd go with the dummy just now - you can always get rid of it later. We took ds's away at 5 1/2 months when he started waking for it too often.

Hi Jane - personally I used a dummy with DD who is 6 mo now. She has it now for sleep and only if she is overtired and can't settle. She has also started pulling it out if she doesn't want it and is able (sometimes!) to put it back in.

We haven't had that many issues with having to put dummy back in, but yes you may need to replace it in night. But I found it would literally be popping dummy back in and then straight back to sleep.

I'm very much in the "whatever works" camp - you may find he rejects the dummy anyway when he's a little bit older? Also dummy might be much easier than rocking etc when he's older and heavier!

Thanks Mimmee and Seona. Tonight I ended up doing a bit of a combination. He sucked he dummy for awhile but it didnt' seem to send him off so then I picked him up and gave him a bit more boob, by which point he was pretty much asleep so then bit of a rock on shuolder and down in basket, which worked ok except I had to put a firm hand on his hands to stop them thrashing about for about ten mins, but at least I could do that from comfortable kneeling position next to the cot, rather than the dreaded rocking which makes my arms ache. So far, he doesn't seem to wake up wanting the dummy, perhaps because I always pull it out as soon as poss when he's asleep.

We don't use a dummy, though at times I have wishes she would, but found as she got older rocking her horizontal lying in arms rather than on shoulder made the transfer easier. Over time we gradually reduced the rocking and length of time holding so by 5 months she would drop off on our laps with no rocking and could be put down after 3 or 4 mins. It has been a relatively painless transition to getting her to fall asleep in the cot in the last couple of weeks.

HTH!

I would definitely go for the dummy. At least it means he's learning to fall asleep independently of you. If you rock him, you'll have to do that in the middle of the night every time he wakes and he's going to get heavy! If he can get himself to sleep from awake with a dummy then you're doing really well!

Dummy! Imagine rocking at 20lb baby - it's bloody hard work! We ended up using a dummy with ds between 8-18 weeks. At about 18weeks-ish he just stopped using it of his own accord (I would plug him, but he would take it out, play with it and it ended up keeping him awake longer!). He never woke for it either, but then if he spat/dropped it out once asleep I never put it back in so he never got used to that.