Help please?????
With my DD, the midwives suggested I offer her a dummy while still in hospital to encourage her to suck as her sucking reflex was not strong. My DS has no trouble sucking, but was wondering if giving him a dummy will confuse him and cause problems with breastfeeding?? He loves to suck all the time, and I think he may be comfort sucking some of the time. He is 11 days old, is he too young??
I gave ds3 the dummy the day he was born and it did help his sucking reflex. The dummy in no way hampered is desire or need for the boob. Fourteen months on he is still very much the booby baby!
I'm another whose both kids have had dummies at one stage or another DS#1 early days (1st week home), DS#2 started at 5 months and it has not hampered there breastfeeding wants or abilities.
Thanks everyone. Nicholas seems to really like sucking for comfort, but prefers my boob to the dummy. So far, we can't really get him to take it and we have tried heaps of different ones. As long as he is happy without one, I suppose I will just let him be and try to settle him another way (that doesn't include my breast!!)
Jo, I tried in hospital cos Oskar wouldn't settle when they were doing obs etc...which were 4 hourly so he took to comfort sucking on me. I think that he does still do this at times but he hates the dummy so I just put him on the boob cos he does drink a little each time anyway - only fore milk so maybe he's a little thirsty then just wants to stay snuggled with me. Either way, I've decided that for now I'm going to just go with it cos I seriously love feeling so close with him after he had a bit of a rough entry to the world.
We introduced a dummy in the last week (DD 3 weeks old). Hadn't needed it prior to now but she really wanted to suck (it is a reflex afterall). She is now (excluding today!) very settled and we have had no problem what so ever with the breast feeding. We only give her the dummy when nothing else is working so she isn't sucking it all the time. You could give it a go and if you feel that the breast feeding is effected after a couple of times then stop. The battle is finding a dummy that they will take! Old cheapo tommee tippee was the only one she seemed to like.
JOMARIE _ I too was told in hossy to give Claudia a dummy & I declined for a couple of reasons but the main one being that Jessica had a dummy & most of the times I had to get up during the night was to pop the dummy back into her mouth. I took it off her at 12 months & she never asked for it again, but so far Claudia has gone without a dummy. I don't even have one on stand-by. I found at times I thought she was comfort sucking, but you can tell the difference to them sucking & taking down milk & just sucking for the heck of it. Claudia is a big feeder & snacker during the day but she is going down for up to 7 hours at a time at night, so I'm not fussed about feeding her continually during the day as it gives me some peace at night!
I'll be interested to see what you end up doing & what outcomes you end up getting because Alan is starting to give me the pips about giving her a dummy because today we were in the car a bit (about 4 short trips) & she played up in the car & he reckons a dummy would have stopped that, however, she was getting hungry & wide awake when we put her in the car & as soon as I got her out & fed her she was great.
Sorry, I have just turned this post into being all about me! LOL, sorry, wasn't an intention!
I believe that the main concern with introducing dummies at a young age is that they are sometimes used to replace feeds, which can cause a reduced supply of milk. So if it has been say more than 2 hours or so then do a bf, if less then try a dummy. Personally we don't use dummies, each to their own though, but if you do use one just make sure that you use it sparingly and in between feeds(remembering that new bubs sometimes need to feed 8-12 times in 24 hours), and you shouldn't have a problem.
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Dummies and breastfeeding
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