Any advice for introducing a favourite cuddly toy???

[sleepseeker]

Can anyone help a virgin mumsnetter??? After a fantastic sleep related to start to life, my 9 month old dd has got into a routine of needing to be given a dummy several times during the night to get her back to sleep. She doesn't need the dummy to get to sleep in the first place so I didn't anticipate a problem in an occassional proferring of the dummy during the night - how wrong i was!!! I've already taken some steps this week to try and stop her crying/waking during the night which have helped alot (i'm not quite such a desperate sleepseeker as i was when i signed up for mumsnet 3 days ago!!), but thought - having read some mentions of favourite friends in other sleep discussions - that introducing a favourite cuddly toy might help as a comforter during the night. trouble is dd doesn't seem to have, or want a favourite!! any ideas on how to encourage her???

My ds has a Mr Snuggle...one of things with a flat cloth body and a head - its his fav, this may be because I used to lay it across his chest at night so that he got used to it...I have also heard that it is an idea to sleep with the toy yourself for a couple of nights so it gets your smell and then introduce it. Mr Snuggle certainly works a treat for ds..

dd has one of those things too, but never really took to it. i'll try the sleeping with it thing tonight and see what happens. thanks blackduck, not only have you helped, but you've allayed my paranoid fear that no-one would think my posting worth replying too!!

Might it be an idea to take out all the other toys from the cot? It worked with my DS2 - he seems to have a favourite now but only because he couldn't reach the other ones! (You may well have done this of course )

My dd has a cuddly , the flat things with heads on. She loves them. We have some for going out and some for her cot. I used to give them to her to play with during the day and gradually she just took to holding them at night. It look so sweet when yougo in and she has one in her arms!!They also help during the day if having a sleep in her buggy as she uses them to self soothe. She does this really cute pouty sucky thing with them. She also wasnt interested for months.

God that sounds really spoilt, but as she loves them so much, I have to have back ups when cleaning them in the washing machine!!!

Ds1 has a bear called Bert. He's a little Avon bear and daddy brought him back from a trip to Canada. Bert was the most important thing in the world to ds1. Life stopped when he was missing. But kids are fickle. Or at least mine is. Bert had a nasty accident involving bolognese vomit and I didn't think he'd survive the washing machine so I replaced him with a slightly newer Avon bear. Old Bert did indeed survive the washer and now he takes old Bert and new Bert everywhere with him. They even have a cousin called Bubba that we bought on holiday when new Bert went AWOL (found later). So now he has three favourites. Then my sister got married and gave him a bridesmaid bear so now new Bert has a Mrs Bert. You think accounting for one important teddy is hard. Try finding all four!

oh good I feel better about flopsy,cuddly & pinkee & wunaway wabbit!!!

Melsey

We also have green Alien, a Leopard called Deaf (dad named him), a giraffe called Geoffrey and countless others. Although if any of the Bert family are missing it's screams until the house has been turned upside down and they're located. The worst part about it is that he's five. Perhaps I should shame him at school. Or maybe I'll wait for his eighteenth birthday.

wunaway wabbit is names so , as everytime we found him it looked like he was trying to get away. We even have photos as evidence!! my dh once said that he was saying "get me out of here before she sucks me to death"!!!!

lol

Hope you get the sleep you need, sleepseeker! I would recommend introducing something that can easily be replaced as a comforter. Cuddly toys can get lost and cause trauma! Also, if you've got a spare, you can wash them! Both my kids have "blankets". Dd's is an old cotton cellular cot blanket (divided into four pieces so we've always got a spare) and ds has a selection of my old cotton t-shirts. As blackduck suggested, mummy sleeping with the intended comforter seems to help at first. My two still use their "blankets" at ages 7 and 5! BTW, do you attach your dd's dummy to her? Might help if not.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, much appreciated.
Discordia, I'm trying (fairly successfully) to wean her off her dummy so haven't done the attaching thing. good idea re the easily replaceable idea.

sleepseeker, I'm not sure you can 'encourage' it or rather wait until there's something they choose for themselves. My dd, now 18 months, used to suck her thumb which was easy and helped her settle. But she gave it up at 7 months almost overnight and it was tough for a while but I never gave her a dummy, mostly because she didn't like them, though I've never been keen either. At around 9 months she befriended a cow called Kizzy. I don't know why but I think it was because i used to make it talk to her and do funny things. She loved it and we lost it one day which was awful as it was German and we couldn't replace it. So I got her a wolf which was similar in lots of ways and she's slept with that ever since and we have a spare in case of an accident. But my dd's really into cuddly things generally. She's got a little crew of friends one of whom has to come out with us and gets carried around the park, swung on the swings etc. She feeds them and cuddles them and makes them climb and talk and I think it's something in her nature that she's interested in them in that way. My friend's same age little girl couldn't give two hoots about any cuddly toy at all.