Dummies? Anyone use them?

[MummaSue]

Ok, I am just asking the question - who uses a dummy for their baby?

Does it work? Does it interfere with your breastfeeding? How do you use it if you do?

I really don't want to use one for our little one but I think that it might just keep us all sane (including her) between feeds - she is coming to the boobie for comfort at times, falling asleep there and just latching on and pretending to suck.

Just wondering if anyone else has had success - or failure with dummies.

Thanks in advance.
Sue x

[STARRYSKY]

hi!

we gave DS a dummy at a few days o age, the hospital people commented on how he kept sucking his thumb and that a dummy would be easier to get rid of then his thumb LOL.
I was keen not to have a dummy but DP kept shoving it back in DS mouth.
DS would definately let me know that it was me he wanted and not the dummy if he was hungry.
He is still BF now....so I guess it didnt hinder us at all, most nights now he takes it(the dummy ) out his mouth himself and then falls asleep. we tend to only give it to him at nap or bed times or if he is VERY unsettled (ie sick or something).
We ended up having to use Avent dummies, tried the cherry ones (happy baby andthe like) but DS would retch when it went in his mouth, dont know if it was the shape or the latex, but we have stuck with the shaped silicone ones. HTH.

[Butterfly Dawn]

Had a meme (dummy) he had cronic reflux and colic so it was a matter of neccessity for him, and he had it up till he was 2 and abit, then we just threw it away ( Had 3 nights of dramas then he was fine) I would use it after a feed, when he was little to help try keep it down and when he cried from colic he would have it, then as he got older he wanted it all the time- so we limited it to sleeps.
DS2, never like 1, but hes has had issues with eating.

I have no problem with memes, lots of people do,
Just curious, why do you want to use 1?

[MummaSue]

I'm actually not all that sure why we thought about it to be honest. I guess just that she is constantly on the breast at the moment and often isn't even feeding from it - using it as comfort I think!

Thanks for your input guys
Sue x

[CinderToriella]

Hey Sue

we didnt want to use one either- we did not try one untill breast feeding was well established .
Hannah was using/is lol my boob as a dummy as well, which is great for milk supply early on but it starts to hurt them

we tried one but she spits it out and gaggs on it , sometimes she will suck on it for a little bit and then spits it out but it does really calm her a lot, i dont want her to have one all the time, but for times when she wants comfort of sucking and she wont settle, but is not hungry then i think its ok for her to have one IF only she would take it, we have to hold it in her mouth and she sucks on it and starts falling asleep then she wont hold it in and it comes out

oh well cant win them all

[MummaSue]

LOL, Shell we tried her with one this morning and she wouldn't have a bar of it. Seems that she might have made the decision for us!!

Sue x

[Bridg]

Sue- Jake and Zac hated dummies. I was adament that Logan wouldn't have one, but he was unsettled with wind, so gave it a try. He likes it. He only has it when he's really upset, if it's sleep time, or if he is in a strange place.

[CinderToriella]

NO they are like that lol.

also try her with different types of dummies as they are shaped different ,that may help, to give ur poor nipples a break IF she will take one that is, try her each day she may take one .

Its funny, they know its not the nipple and are like PFFTTTT lol

[Rowellen]

We gave our DS one from about 6 wks. He wanted to suck all the time (for comfort like your DD) so it was a lifesaver for me. It didn't interfere with BF at all. We also preferred that to thumbsucking. If his thumb drifted towards his mouth, we'd remove it and replace it with a dummy. Now, he only has it to sleep. We have to keep them out of reach during the day though because if he can get his hands on one, it'll be in his mouth & he cracks it if we take it away (that only lasts a moment though). He knows where we keep them too, he'll go to his nappy bag and search for one. We have to remember to take them out lol!

[AliBaby]

We gave our DS one from about 6 wks. He wanted to suck all the time (for comfort like your DD) so it was a lifesaver for me. It didn't interfere with BF at all. We also preferred that to thumbsucking. If his thumb drifted towards his mouth, we'd remove it and replace it with a dummy. Now, he only has it to sleep.

Same here. It really was a lifesaver. I hated it at first but you know what, if it offers comfort to my baby then why not?

We use the Avent ones. They are gorgeous and didnt interfere at all with bf, I bf her until 11mths. I actually got a dummy chain as I have a child that chucks things that arent attached! Also when she got a bit bigger, it is easier for her to find in the night when she wakes as she just feels for the chain and then picks up the dummy and put it in.

If I havent put it on the chain then she often wakes up in the night or from a sleep early as she cant find it to help her resettle.

[amberj]

I am a big dummy fan, but then I haven't had to try to wean DS off it yet!!

What we did that worked well was to limit the dummy to naps only when DS was about 4-6 months old- at a time when we could keep him interested in other things so he didn't miss the dummy too much when he was awake, but still young enough for him not to throw fits about it.

Now dummies are for sleep only, and they are a great sleep cue for DS. And occasionally if he is really upset we will use a dummy too and its astonishing how much it calms him right down. I guess the sucking is very soothing.

The only problem we ever had with dummies was around the 6-9 month mark (I think, can't really remember), when he would wake up 4-6 times during the night needing a dummy put back in. It was really quite annoying at the time. Eventually he learned how to find his dummy himself during the night (we put like 4 in the cot), and that stage passed.

[~Kim~]

Yep! I love ours.
I had/have got 2 comfort suckers and a dummy really wasn't that big a deal to me. If that's what they wanted I was good with that. Neither have comfort 'items' just their dummies.
I BF DD until 16 1/2 months and DS is still going so no dramas there.
We've always used the cherry teats. DD would only have them, DS doesn't particularly care.

[westy]

Hi Sue,

My first son wouldn't have a bar of the dummy, he would simply spit it out the moment i put it into his little mouth. Although as he got older i used a dummy from time to time for him to chew on when he was teething (i would put it in the freezer and he would chew on it until it was no longer cold).

My second son however loved his dummy and it was a real saviour at times. I think each bubby is different and by the sounds of it Evie isn't too fussed about a dummy just yet which is ok too.....just do what ever you think is the best thing for you and bubby.

TAKE CARE

[Miss E]

I'm actually not all that sure why we thought about it to be honest. I guess just that she is constantly on the breast at the moment and often isn't even feeding from it - using it as comfort I think!

I tend to think that for some bubs dummys are lifesavers, but that not all bubs need them. At a week old it is normal for a little one to be on the breast constantly as they try to get your supply established and increasing to meet their needs. From what I've been told this is really important up until the 6 or 8 week mark when your supply starts to settle.

If she's on the breast and getting sleepy maybe try tickling her feet or under her chin to stimulate her sucking. When they're really little they do tend to get sleepy and dose off, or at least my DS did. We had to work really hard for the first couple of weeks to get him to feed while on the breast because his weight gains were quite slow and he clearly wasn't getting enough, despite being on the breast nearly all the time.

[MummaSue]

She won't have a bar of the dummy anyway - we tried her with it earlier and she spat it out as far as she could. It was really funny.

I've since found out that falling asleep on the breast can actually be a good thing. I'm not going to stress about it now and just continue on with what we are doing. She is getting plenty of milk though as she has already gained back her original birth weight at only a week old and I am able to express large amounts in between her feeds so we are doing fine. I guess I just had a moment of panic yesterday.

Thanks for all the input guys.
Sue x

[sunshine_sieben]

Hi,
I didn''t want to give DD a dummy. But it quickly became clear that she had a pretty strong desire to suck. She pretty much wanted to be attached to the breast at all times while asleep. Unless she was in the Hug-a-Bub. I could not put her down once she was asleep. I could rarely sneak away after she''dd fallen asleep on the boob. We co-slept, so it was not the end of the world but I got to the point where I was desperate for her to take a dummy so I could have a break, but she didn''t want a bar of it. She also was beside herself whenever she had to be in her car seat. It was absolutel torture for everyone involved. i first tried a dummy at 6 weeks, but she didn''t want it and I didn''t push the issue. As the weeks went by, I got more desperate and tried again. No success. She was 6 months old when she all of a sudden accepted the dummy. To me it was a godsend. She went down to sleep quicker and car trips were easier, too.
She was BF exclusively until 6 months and continued to BF until she self-weaned at 19 month(probably due to my pregnancy). One of the reasons why I didn''t even consider a dummy with her was because I had BFing problems in the first couple of weeks and a dummy would have been detrimental in this situation.

With DS, I felt that he wasn't quite as boob-focused as DD, but I still thought a dummy might be useful. I wanted to get him used to a dummy earlier to avoid the dummy-rejection I experienced with DD. DS got a dummy at 5 days or so. We had no feeding problems and he only got the dummy in a very controlled manner only when i knew he''d had a good feed and when he wouldn''t settle without one. Never to stretch out feeds. He put on weight like a champ (had surpassed his birth weight by day 5) and he''s still BFing well at 9 months.

I don''t think dummies are the incarnation of all evil, if they are used carefully. But if you have feeding problems, i would avoid them. I''d be very cautious about using them in the early weeks if you intend to breastfeed to make sure your supply establishes well. Never use them to stretch out the time between feeds. Especially in the early weeks, lots of nipple stimulation is the key to a good milk supply. So try and limit dummy time.

Another word of warning: I would strongly suggest you avoid dummies that contain BPA. There has recently been a large European study on that exact thing and there were a handful of manufacturers that we have here, too, that are either BPA free or very very low. Some of the big names did not test so well.

[skybie]

DD1 had a dummy from the day she was born and we finally got rid of it about a weeks after her third birthday, it was hrad but she did it!

DD2 however, will not have a bar of a dummy, if u put one in her mouth she gags on it and takes it out or spits it out. shes a major thumb sucker always sucking her thumb to get herself to sleep.
i wish she'd take a dummy, its much easier to give up a dummy than it is to give up thumbs!

[littlebear]

I didn't want to because I thought it would interfere with bfing in a big way, but caved in when DS was 3 days old because I was his walking dummy! Haven't looked back since as it's saved me a lot of sleep and headaches, and we've bfed for 10 weeks tomorrow and still going with no issues.

The only thing I think you have to be careful of is that hunger signs could get harder to see. DS sucks on his dummy harder and will sometimes spit it out to suck on his hands to let us know that he's hungry but will mostly just keep the dummy in hoping to get milk out of it! so looking for other signs like still looking around for something, not relaxing, jerky hand movements etc.

He can't be without his dummy at sleep times, or when he's starting to get tired or has tummy aches and reflux. But, he's not chained to it, he's happy to play & cuddle without it too.

HTH!