War on the Dummy

I never wanted to give Emmeline the dummy. I didn’t see the point and couldn’t actually read any clear cut benefits for the dummy. It seemed pretty equal in the pros and the cons. So I decided to not give it to her and wait and see what happened. Xavi was fine with that, although there were various times when he would wonder if it was depriving her of something as his son yaincoa had his dummy from the beginning for I don’t know how long. I wasn’t trying to be different, but I just didn’t want to give her something just because everyone else had done it!

But around 7 weeks old, she started to try to suck the life out of everything. She would stick her hands so far into her mouth that she would almost choke on them! So after a little bit of nagging from xavi, I eventually relented, dragged out the dummy, boiled them all and reluctantly gave in. We gently put it in her mouth and waited. I think that I was waiting for her to automatically spit it out in disgust so I could go ‘ha’ and xavi was waiting for her to suck it up like her new best friend so that her could go ‘ha’! She gave us a middle ground and spat it out the first time but took it in the second time. It was remarkable because a few seconds before, she was irritable and crying/whinging and just wouldn’t settle, but after giving her the dummy if was as though someone had just pressed some kind of ‘relax’ switch on my daughter! She just relaxed immediately and lay very quietly on the sofa! Shock horror. We could eat dinner together and at a normal speed without worrying about her starting to cry in the middle. I was gobsmacked . . . and a little disappointed that she took to it like that! The next night though, she spat that dummy straight out leaving me with a huge grin. However, she did seem to have a necessity to suck on something and so she took to the dummy. I gave out strict rules regarding the use of the dummy; it was only to be used if she was all irritable and wouldn’t settle and to help her to get to sleep. I was worried that there would be ‘nipple confusion’ issues and also didn’t want to have a child who always had a dummy stuck in her mouth! However, over the months, the dummy started to get used more and more, yes even I was using it more. She just loved her dummy and I felt bad depriving her of it but I found that I would give it to her even when she didn’t need it. She would cry and you would give it to her and she would automatically relax with a look of contentment on her face, or she would be so tired but fighting against sleep but the minute you put the dummy in her mouth, her eyes would just close! However, it was becoming too much. I realised that things needed to change, but I didn’t know how I was going to go about it! Firstly I had to make sure that xavi was on board with the idea, and then I would have to work out my strategy! While I was still going over the whole thing in my head, Christmas came along. My parents posted pictures of Emmeline on the internet and I noticed that in almost every one of the pictures of her, she had her dummy! Oh dear. Around the same time, I noticed her waking up and crying because she didn’t have her dummy. I would give it to her; she would suck it for a while, take it out her mouth, chew on it a little, drop it and then start to cry because she didn’t have her dummy! How irritating? Especially at 3am! It seemed that she was waking up more and more during the evening whimpering for her dummy and then I would be the idiot playing fetch the dummy, sometimes having to give it to her up to 10 times and trying to gently swat her hands away from her mouth so that she wouldn’t pull it out again. Eventually a few days ago I woke up and said to xavi “that’s it. The dummy has got to go!” I explained everything to him and decided that whilst I am not planning on taking the dummy away completely right now, I do want to start to use it less and less so that she becomes less dependent on it to help her sleep.

Along came day one. Her morning nap time came along and I decided to see if I could get her to sleep without the dummy. I decided to put her to sleep in my arms so that she at least had some other comfort. I know that there are probably plenty of people thinking that I just substituted one sleep aid for another, but my idea was to get her off the dummy and then I would get her back to sleeping by herself without a dummy or by being in mommy and daddy’s arms! One step at a time. I have come to realise that a lot of things with babies depends on who is more determined/stubborn and can go the longer. I think I will win every time, so I knew that no matter how long it took, I would walk up and down the hallway until she dropped off. It took around 30 minutes or so! She fell asleep but I was unable to put her down as every time I sat down, she woke up! poo.  Along came her second nap of the day and I thought ‘well, I can’t give her the dummy now’ so I didn’t, and she fell asleep in daddy’s arms! For the 3^rd nap, (she naps a lot as she never sleeps for longer than 30 minutes at a time!)her and I went to the room to have a sleep together. We share the bed and this is normally the only way the Emmeline will have a nice long sleep. I settled her down and the crying began. She wanted her dummy and I decided to not give it as it may send out mixed signals to her. So I stroked her hair and I sang to her. Eventually she calmed down and she fell asleep. That evening when I put her down to bed I gave her the dummy. I decided that would be the last hurdle to overcome and that she could still have her dummy at bed time.

Well day 2 went the same more or less, and here we are on day 3 and that has also gone the same. No dummy during the day and in the evening I am not giving her the dummy every single time she cries, I am giving it to her every other time so that she can start to slowly get accustomed to not having it the whole time. I don’t know I that is the right thing to do or not, but hey ho, it feels right to me.

I am so proud of her and how well she is adapting to this whole thing. I imagine that it could be quite a traumatic event for a little baby, but she is handling it like a trooper. Although I am not living in la la land. I do have a strong suspicion that she will give me a good run for my money in the screaming stakes those first few times of putting her in her own crib during the day to sleep without her dummy and not in the arms of mommy or daddy,! But as I said before, everything step by step. I know that she is still young, and yes, I could leave her with her dummy a little longer, but the longer I leave it, the harder it will be, and not just for me, it will be harder for her. It feels right to do this now, and I have noticed that she appears to be making more noises and ‘talking’ more these last few days as well. An added bonus is that she also appears to be sleeping slightly better during the evenings, although it is still early days so I won’t do the dance of joy just yet! I still have to tackle getting her to truly sleep on her own, so I may be eating my words next week!