waking in the night for dummy

[Blaggingit]

Hi,

My 6 month old DS is waking at the moment looking for his dummy in the night. He has it for most of his naps and I reluctantly gave him a dummy when he was little as he was using me as a dummy which I was not prepared to do (have another DS who is 3 so no time to be used as human dummy!). Anyone have any advice re whether I should try to get him off his dummy fixation now or leave until until he is older and less reliant. He has always been a very sucky baby and I prefer dummy to thumb( just personal preference .

Hm, I'm thinking that we're going to be getting to this point soon. Our boy is 18 weeks on Friday.

He loves his dummy and sometimes does wake for it in the night. He doesn't always need it to go down, esp after his 7 and 10.30pm feeds, but it helps him for his short naps during the day.

The way I look at it is, we had dummies when we were little and even though my sister had teeth trouble following hers (she put the plastic bit in her mouth and it pushed her teeth out, cue tons of orthadonal (sp?) appointments!) but as long as we are prepared to keep an eye on this I am not willing to take it off him yet.

As a friend of mine says, it helps them sleep which is a good thing and when do you see a 21 year old with a dummy?!

We're going to wait until he's older and can be bargained with (!) to take it off him, though I don't think it's going to be hard with him, he's not mad for it.

But the waking in the night thing is tres annoying...wouldn't know what to do about that really. Just see if he settles before rushing in to plug him?!

Interested to see other replies.

Our DS was waking evening and night for his - as well as for feeds - so at 5.5 months we went cold turkey. Although it was tough for the first naps and bedtime it had an instant positive effect - he didn't wake in the evening and settled quickly at night - but for one reason and another I started picking him up to comfort him when he woke in the night - so now he wakes not for the dummy but for cuddles and picking up and rocking.

One way or another he is waking for comfort - it was the dummy - now it's me.

SO I would say have a plan for the nights before embarking on it so you don't have to do the crying twice!

I know that as soon as he can traverse around is cot better, he will be able to find the dummy himself so hopefully it should be better but still just wondering if this is a good time to ditch the dummy.Having said that, I agree that he is seeking comfort so if he is happy with the dummy I would rather he had that than me!! Good luck dycey, there are never any simple solutions.

We went through this about this age, it took them until about 9 mo to find the dummy in the cat so you could have a little while yet! PLus the number of evenings it fell through the bars onto the floor... they ahd a wooden floor in their room and it would wake us up and my heart would sink....

At 2.3yo they still use them at night and naps, no idea how will wean them off and hate the sight of them! It gets harder when they can actively ask for them, but it works and they sleep, which is so precious! I can't face the thought of the difficult nights.

Maybe now is the time to try and ditch them if you can. I remember someone on here saying they quickly find them in the cot - well my two didn't!!

Good luck with whatever you do.

COT.. I meant cot... they would have spent years looking for them in the cat...