Spitting the Dummy

[heather]

Hey guys

I feel a bit silly posting this as i really cant complain about hendrix's night sleeps as he goes to bed at 6:30/7pm and wakes for a feed at around 7am but some nights we dont hear a peep and others he calls out. When he does call out i go in and pop a dummy in his mouth but this generally means that for the rest of the night he will call out for it every couple of hours. It only really means i have to get up walk a few metres and put it in and walk out but id really like him to be able to settle himself without this. He is still swaddled very tightly as he still startles himself so he cant self soothe with his hands.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Gemma]

We give Amy a dummy occasionally if she is having trouble getting to sleep and when she spits it out we don't put it back in. She is also swaddled most of the time. I know once you start putting it back in it is a hard habit to stop but I'm only new at this too.

[Angel]

Hey Heather,

How about wrapping Hendrix with his hands up near his mouth? That's what I do with Kynan.

[heather]

Thanks for the suggestion Angel but he has to be wrapped like a straight jacket as otherwise he startles himself so badly that he screams like he is being murdered!!

[Astrolady]

When Kameron started spitting his dummy out he just never got it. He was without a dummy fully at 8mths old and Lachlan from about 5 or 6mths old.

Love

[Melinda]

I'm definitely no expert (Jacob has a dummy!) but I'd suggest that if you want to get rid of the dummy, then you will most likely need to find an alternative way of settling Hendrix. Probably the first couple of nights will be difficult whilst you do this.

Hendrix may still be a bit young to settle himself off to sleep entirely, but you can do things to relax him which may help the process perhaps. You could put some nice soft music on in his room (e.g. the "Peace Baby" or "Music for Dreaming" CD's for babies), or try patting/rocking him until he is nice and relaxed (but not quite asleep) and then leave him to see if he can put himself back to sleep once he's calmed down.

When you say he calls out, is he just making a few noises in his sleep (I know Jacob used to do this a lot) or is he actually breaking into an established cry? DH and I used to go straight into Jacob as soon as we'd hear a peep, but we don't now - because a lot of the time he will now put himself back to sleep and also we discovered that Jacob was becoming dependent on us going in to settle him or to give him his dummy the minute he called out. If he's broken into an established cry - that's different, we'll go straight into him.

[~Raven~]

He may learn to settle without his dummy over a few nights if you can persevere with it. Is he in your bedroom? Like Melinda said they can make a bit of noise in their sleep. I had Mason in with us untill he was around 6 weeks then put him in his own room as I was always waking up when he made little squeaks. I'd wake up for the loud ones no worries.