6 month old needing dummy to go to sleep & soothe back to sleep during the night

[Nic165]

Hi everyone, hoping for some advice! This is my third child - he's 6 months now. My other 2 children never took a dummy so I'm a bit clueless as to how I need to deal with it at night/nap times.

Basically, my 6 mth old used to do 5-6 hour stretch at night. Now, he is waking up multiple times and needing his dummy to go to back to sleep. He also needs it for day time naps. It's the nights that I need to get sorted as dp and I are exhausted getting up and down to put his dummy back in.

He's too young to put it back himself. Do we just need to ride this out until he can? I'm not averse to weaning him off the dummy - but how best to to about this?

Any tips welcome!

Yeah it wasn’t ideal but we rode it out. By around 8 months he was putting it back in himself. He’s 20 months and still loves it now.

I had this too about this age, it didnt last long, just have to ride it out I think

I feared the consensus would be to ride it out 😬 thank you though, at least I know I'm not alone!

I would actually say take away the dummy cold turkey. It must be frustrating for him too to be waking up and not being able to get himself back to sleep.

I had a similar problem with DS who is 4 months. He got used to breastfeeding to sleep. He started waking every 45 mins during the night wondering why my nipple wasn’t still in his mouth.

I started putting him down awake in his cot for naps and at bedtime and limited the number of times I would feed him during the night to 3 times. Now he can put himself to sleep and will only wake 1-2 times during the night for a feed.

I coslept with DD and couldn’t get her out of my bed, so i though hey I’ll just ride it out. I didn’t get her out of my bed until she was 5 years old! And she still has trouble staying in her own room all night. Not all children grow out of the things they need to go and stay asleep. I think if they can learn to get themself to sleep at a young age then that’s really good (and they will be better off getting more sleep). It’s harder to break habits the older they get. Or at least in my experience

We went cold turkey when we had this issue and it was the best thing for us. The first day and night was tough but the 2nd and 3rd days were better and then it was completely forgotten about and sleep was loads better!

Thanks for all the advice and sharing experiences! After some reflection, I think I will take the dummy away now. I'm back to work next week so if I can give it a good go over the next few days, with any luck he'll be much better sleeping through the night by that stage 🤞