thumb sucking attempts waking 9 week old

[Hedgehogging]

Not sure if this is the right board for this but any advice welcome!

DD is 9 weeks and in the last 3 days has started chewing earnestly on her fist and really working on getting her thumb in her mouth. She loves sucking but rejects a dummy so this may ultimately help her self settle (whether we should be trying to prevent it is moot as she's quite determined).

The problem is any time she stirs at night now she brings hand to mouth and wakes herself in her frustration at not being able to get the thumb in/keep her hand there for a suck. I've been awake nearly every hour overnight with her, having gotten a taste of a few glorious 4 to 5 hour stretches of sleep previously! She'll only settle with a BF so she's getting a lot overnight.

Anyone with any experience of thumb-suckers? How long did it take them to master it and get past the frustrated attempts? At this stage I'd just like her to go ahead and do it if it'll help!

My advice would be to keep trying with the dummy, if you're already getting disturbed. My daughter eventually accepted it if I slipped it in as she was dropping off to sleep. I know they're somewhat 'controversial' but dummies have saved our sleep in this house!
Congratulations! x

Thanks Tropical! I've no problem with dummies for sleep if she'd take one. I'll give that a go. If she's going to have a "vice" it may as well be one we can remove when needs be!

You'll find this with most developmental milestones, she just needs to practice then one a day she'll just get it and move onto the next thing. Might be almost straight away, but I doubt offering a dummy will help as she'll still want to master it.

Well she wasn't buying the dummy last night. I think I'll just have to let it run its course. Thankfully her attempts are very cute. Hey ho!

Yes they are very cute aren't they. My 4 month old has started sucking her thumb in the last week or two, before then the more fingers the better. Except she hasn't got the hang of what to do with her fingers while her thumb is in her mouth so she is usually poking her eyes out luckily not affecting her sleep