Settling in the night -dummy?

[Chloris33]

My little one is quite often hard to settle after his night time feeds, & Im wondering if a dummy just for that purpose at night might help or can that cause problems of its own? Last night at one point after a feed I got him to sleep, when he was crying, by giving himy finger to suck. Picking up & cuddling doesn't help much, but he is soothed by sucking. Also I'd love opinions on how normal you think his sleep is at 14 weeks. Basically despite the same bedtime routine it's all over the place. Some nights the intervals are 2 hours, with a 90 min one thrown in somewhere too. Sometimes if lucky I get a 4-5 hour stretch followed by a 2 hour stretch - brilliant when that happens but it's not consistent. Or it can be anything in between. He does have reflux which doesn't help, tho he's on ranitidine for it.

Give him a dummy if it will help settle him it's easy taken away when he's older

Dummies are recommended for babies with reflux. In actual fact I think dummies should be recommended for all babies because of how quickly and effectively the usually calm and pacify a crying and/or tried baby. Given that reflux babies are babies who cry a lot, dummies are therefore especially useful.

As with all sleep triggers, it will work brilliantly if used in an effective way. But you will no doubt here horror stories from some.

The science here is that babies do not have the emotional development to self settle in the way an adult would (tired, close eyes, sleep) until school age - so about aged 4 or 5. Until then they need something to help then sleep, if they are to stay emotionally secure. This is what a dummy is for - it allows for self soothing but without an adult being needed.

A few pointers though:

• Sometimes it takes some perseverance to teach the baby to understand the dummy - that it is there to suck rather than the natural reaction to spit it out. Don't accept the spitting out as a rejection of the dummy. It is worth any work needed to get the dummy accepted.

• Baby will go through a phase (around 4 months) of clawing at face and constantly pulling dummy out. Its a phase, push through it. Swaddling helps.

• Have a means for baby to consistently know where the dummy is at night. We have ribbon sewn onto the sleeping bags for this reason. As baby gets older, he quickly learns how to find his own dummy and re-insert it (somewhere around 12 months old this will start).

• Until baby can reinsert his own dummy, you may need to.

• The dummy naturally drops out of the childs mouth as they fall into a deep sleep, so may only be in their mouth for 10 minutes or so. This is perfectly normal so don't expect it to be sucked on for long.

• If baby is waking often, there is a reason for this aside from the dummy. The dummy itself will not be a reason for disturbed nights (since it is only used for 10 ish minutes anyway). many people make the error of assuming that because baby is shouting them for the dummy being put back in often through the night, that the problem is the dummy. It isn't. Tacking the route cause of the light sleeping is more effective.

• Don't remove the baby's comforter too soon. The dentists recommendation would be the lose the dummy at 12 months. For emotional development to aid sleep though it is needed for a couple more years, until the child is old enough to sleep without it (so removing it is a pain free affair).

• Reasonable use of the dummy would be to use as a sleep tool only. I have never allowed my children to use a dummy when awake and playing (no matter how tempting when the child is tired/poorly/grumpy).

Re your sleep pattern - many will tell you that the way things are for you is normal. For my DD (my forth child), she was sleeping 8pm-11pm-8am from 8 weeks old (while EBF). No coincidence that it took until 7 weeks to get her to accept the dummy and she was 'sleeping through' 11-7 within a week.

We have had a few blips here and there (she's 6 1/2 months now) for growth spurts, developmental leaps, teething etc. But mostly she continues to sleep well daytime and nighttime. I believe this is largely down to the use of the dummy (and formula, when we started mix feeding at 12 weeks).

IMO using a dummy does not lead to good daytime & nightime sleep. That comes from following baby's sleep cues & establishing good feeding & sleeping routines. And the passage of time - some babies nap better & sleep through much sooner than others. Both my children have had a dummy from birth - ds slept through 7-7 at 3 months, dd still hasnt even done 11-7 at 5 months.

For me, at present, the dummy is the most frustrating sleep tool ever. DD (5 months) is still rejecting it, I often have to reinsert it 20+ times whilst trying to settle her to sleep at bedtime or naptimes. She pulls it out or if swaddled she spits it out. Then cries for it back. It drives me up the wall! Has been this way for months now & she is also waking very frequently at night needing it to be reinserted.

Babies naturally come into light sleep/ wake many times a night, those who can self settle put themselves back to sleep. Those like dd, who have learned to associate sucking & sleep, need the dummy to help them go back to sleep whenever they rouse, meaning you have to get up until such a time that they are able to insert it themselves.

We never got past this stage with ds (4.5) - he thankfully ditched the dummy himself at 6/7 months (in favour of a teddy comforter) & our nights immediately improved, going from up to 10 wakings to none. I'm desperately hoping dd will do the same as I really can't see any benefit in persevering for much longer. I'm fed up of the disturbed nights!

Long story short - if you can avoid it I wouldnt go there!

Blimey. I don't think I'd still be trying with the dummy at 5 months! By persevering I meant for a few weeks not for several months. If a dummy isn't established by 5 or 6 months, its unlikely to be at all IMO.

I maintain that a dummy does not cause light sleeping (and so crying for dummy reinsertion). Something else causes light sleeping and the dummy is a tool to deal with that light sleeping and get baby back to sleep. Not the cause though.

My DC2, DC3 and currently DC4 all sleep deeply enough to just need a dummy for 10 minutes when dropping to sleep and then staying asleep for the rest of the night - right from being little babies.

DC1 was a nightmare with many aspects of sleeping a light sleeper. She needed exacting conditions in order to get to sleep and stay asleep. Silence for example, the slightest tiny noise would wake her. Rocking her as a baby developed a hard to break association too. So many mistakes we made things that would cause her to wake up and grumble, because she was such a light sleeper.

DC2s carrycot sat right next to a loud TV, under bright overhead lights and with a toddler tearing around from DC2 being newborn, in order to teach him not to be woken easily

So we spent lots of the night reinserting DC1s dummy over and over and over and over again. Was that the fault of the dummy? Or was it all the other issues affecting the quality of her sleep? Life would have been even harder than it was with her if we didn't have the dummy to more effectively get her back to sleep.