"That blinkin' dummy"!!!

[helenness]

My six-week old DD has a dummy to help settle her at sleep times (and occasionally through the day when she is fretful over something) but it's driving me bonkers! When I first put her down at night (after her bath and bottle) she has started falling asleep, dropping the dummy, waking herself up and screaming! I then have to run upstairs/get out of bed to pop it back in her mouth! Last night I lost count of the number of times I had to rescue her dummy in order to allow peace to descend over the household once again!!

Isla does like to suck to soothe herself and she was first given a dummy by the nurses in hospital when she was born as she was using my breast then to comfort herself. As she's so young I do appreciate I can't really take it off of her yet or let her cry it out and hope that she will settle herself without it but I am at my wits end with her dropping it at night all the time! I don't turn on the lights/talk to her when I do go in so she's not getting attention from me in the night that she is liking and therefore using dropping her dummy as a game to get me in to her.

Once she is fast asleep she does lose her dummy and doesn't wake up again, the problem lies when she has just drifted off and she drops her dummy. Has anyone got any ideas of how I can go about sorting this out? Is six weeks too young to start taking it away from her or do I just need to ride this out and know that one day she'll either learn how to control it or be old enough for me to wean her off of it?!

 

[X5OT]

Jenna used to use a dummy, only when in her cot. Like your DD, once she was asleep it used to fall out and she would stay asleep. It is a problem as at 6 weeks they are not mobile at all. You may just have to grin and bear it at the moment. When Jenna was a bit older, and rolling etc, we used to put 3-4 dummies in her cot and she would usually find one of them. Then, when she was about 6 months old, we started using a dummy strap attatched to her Grobag (she was swaddled until 4-5 months old). This worked a treat as she soon learnt how to retrieve her own dummy!

 

[Batie]

Oh I had to laugh reading your post - cos it sounds just like me !!! My little one is 3 1/2 months now and I have the same problem!

The dummy falls out and I have to run up the stairs to put it back in - once I've done that she settles instantly. I have tried leaving her to cry/whinge a little to see if she will settle without it, but invariably she doesn't it just begins to escalate into proper cries.

So I'll be very interested to know what other people say about how this may get sorted out, I suppose on the plus side it's good exercise......