Night Time Dummy Tennis

[misskipper]

My DD is 4.5 months. She sleeps really well apart from waking for her dummy. This can happen during naps or in the early hours or when I'm settling her down for bedtime.

She can't find it herself. Does anyone have tips? I've order a strap attachment thingy but she doesn't know to use her hands to find it so not sure if this will help. Have encouraged her to find her fingers but no luck so far

FATEdestiny are you there ?! I faith you'll have some great advice

Oh hello

My DD is a similar age. I have ribbons sewed onto all our sleeping bags with press studs at the end - to attach a dummy to. Once you have a rolling baby I find the attachment thingies are rather big and cumbersome for night times.

In time she will be able to find the dummy herself if it is consistently in the same place (hence the ribbon). I've heard that other people use a "dummy rabbit" (google it) to help children locate their own dummy.

Until then she's going to need help getting her dummy back in. I've always kept my children in my room until the point that they are routinely sleeping through without any wake ups at all (including dummy re-insertion). This has been between 9-12 months for my eldest 3 children.

Until then (so for me at 4.5 months) then all a dummy re-insertion means is a lean over into the bedside cot to put it back in. I hardly wake up. So my first recommendation would be to have the cot right next to you in bed.

Having said that though, I don't often need to re-insert my DDs dummy in the night, I assume because she sleeps deeply so once asleep she stays asleep unless hunger wakes her.

So are your dummy re-insertions relentless or just every now and again? If it's every now and again then I'm afraid you just have to accept that's the way it is until she can find it herself. If it is relentless then you might need to deal with why your DD is sleeping so lightly and is easily woken up - which is an issue aside to (and probably more in need of resolving) the dummy.

The dummy in itself - or it coming out of baby's mouth (which is normal and natural once in a deep sleep) - shouldn't be a cause for baby waking up. Look at what is the underlying cause of her waking up.

I hope that helps

A Sleepytot has been great for our DS who had the same problem. He got the hang of it pretty quickly. I would recommend getting a small one to start with as the larger one is really quite big.