6 month old no longer sucks thumb to sleep

[SleepyMummaBear]

Hi,
My little boy turned 6 months last week and from a pretty young age, he started thumb sucking.
Whilst I wasn't entirely sure I wanted it to happen, getting him to sleep was a dream as he'd pop his thumb in and be happily rocked to sleep. And would often suck his thumb to nod back off when he stirred in the night (just one feeding at 4am).

BUT this past week he's clawed at my face, pushed away, screamed anything he can do to tell me he wants boob to sleep. He won't even put his thumb in for a moment.

All of a sudden he's waking every hour or two at night.

Has anyone any experience with this? Is it a phase or a start or something terrible??

Any advice really, really appreciated!

There is a growth spurt around 6months so perhaps he's just wanting more feeds to get more calories in for this?

Exactly the same happened to us, at about 5 months. As it couldn't get any worse than the zero sleep I was getting, I tried some sleep training (controlled crying) to help him self-soothe. He responded well to this and is now back to sucking thumb to sleep, but on his own rather than with me rocking him. He wakes just once in the the night for a feed.

Good luck with whatever you try!

This happened to us too! We think it's to do with teeth as DD seemed to really ramp up teething thereafter - I think she was biting herself. She took to wrapping her thumb up in my clothes and sucking on that (I'd have huge wet patches on my tops.....) and eventually we gave her a dummy (she adamantly refused them as a baby) which has sorted the issue. I felt terrible giving her a dummy, but it soothes her so much.