My DD (2.11) has sucked her thumb from a very young age. She never took a dummy. This has always worked for self-soothing and she's always been great at sleeping through the night. Over Christmas she ended up cutting her thumb and it got a little bit infected so she stopped sucking it because it was obviously hurting. I was fine with this. In fact I thought "great, we don't have to try to wean her off doing it when she's older".
However since then she has started waking in the middle of the night and not being able to get herself back to sleep. She's also really difficult to get to sleep at night. My DH has to lie beside her bed until she drops off. This takes over an hour every single night. Some nights she's not going to sleep until 10pm!
I'm due DC2 any day now (in fact I'm being induced on Friday so baby will definitely be here by the weekend) and I'm absolutely shattered. My DH is knackered because he's having to do all bedtimes and night wakings with DD along with still working. So most nights we just bring her into bed with us and she drops off again fairly quickly. She wakes up as soon as you try to transfer her back to bed though.
Does anyone have any tips on re-teaching - toddler to self soothe without her thumb? I know with a new baby coming along it's not the best timing to try training her but it's only going to get worse when we add a newborn into the mix. Are we doomed for months of sleepless nights for the foreseeable future??