A Lesson Learnt

After much discussion between Hubby & I, we decided to get rid of Morgan's dummy. I know it's a much debated subject and I know several people on both teams, some whose babies never took to a dummy, others who have toddlers still using dummies. We didn't have to make the decision in the first place about whether to use one or not. Premmie babies that are admitted to the NICU are given dummies to help encourage the suck reflex (since they're not getting put on the breast straight away) and I guess it's probably also used as a comforter for the wee bubs.

We only use the dummy at nap or bedtime and majority of the time Morgan spits it out during his sleep. However! Since hitting the 5mth mark (or thereabouts), he's developed night time sleep cycles, and has gone from sleeping 6-8hrs through the night to now waking every couple of hours cos the dummy has fallen out! It has also affected daytime naps, which are now between 30-60mins max, which as I've been told isn't beneficial to development etc. Lately we've had to get up 3 or 4 times a night to put the dummy back in. Some nights it works a charm and Morgan goes straight back to sleep. Other nights, it wakes him up more and it takes forever to resettle him.

Anyhoo, we started the trial with Morgan's first nap on Monday morning. Boy did he protest! Almost an hour later, of almost getting Morgan to sleep then the crying starting up again, I decided to feed him. He was due for a feed by now anyway and was so worked up it was all that would calm him down. Afterwards he was all smiles despite completely missing a sleep. At the next nap time he was fine for the first 10mins, just whinging a bit but then really started to get upset. It took Muz 13mins to settle him down but then he only slept for an hour. For the afternoon nap it took around 10mins for him to calm down but this time he only slept for half an hour. Muz tried to resettle him but to no avail. In the evening he went down without so much as a whimper but woke twice before the dreamfeed. He then went on to sleep through til 4am when he cried out but went back to sleep.

Tuesday was the same again. Then yesterday morning he went down for a nap without crying and slept for 1hr 40mins. Progress! He also slept for an hour in the car when we went out. But then he refused to go down for a late arvo nap (which he usually does around 4.30pm) and when he went to bed he sure did scream. Some people have told us "just let him cry" so we tried. But with Morgan we have come to learn that he can go from a mild protest cry to a heartbreaking wail in a flash. So I hate to admit, we caved. Morgan got his dummy back. It was instant success, our wee man went straight to sleep! 

It's been such a stressful few days for me. As soon as the first nap was missed I was doubting our decision. I felt like such a cruel mama, we should have done this ages ago, before Morgan was so alert & aware of everything. Or maybe we shouldn't have done it at all. I guess this is all part & parcel of parenthood, there will be tons of decisions we have to make in the future and each will have their own pros & cons. Muz has reasoned that we'd been talking about it for so long we had to give it a go. The thought that I may have traumatised our lovely wee bubba breaks my heart. I guess we'll just wait til he's older and can join in the decision of saying bye to the dummy.

Crashed out on Christmas Day

Last night after the dreamfeed, I put Morgan back to bed without the dummy (he was aleady asleep anyway) and during the night he cried out around 3am but this time I didn't jump out of bed to put the dummy in before he could wake up completely. A few minutes later all was quiet. Lesson learnt! It wasn't about trying to teach Morgan not to have the dummy, it was me who needed to learn not to leap out of bed the second he makes a noise! And to not listen to warnings of "it's gonna be so much harder to get rid of the dummy once he's older". If it works for us then so be it. I just need to do what's best for our bubba and us at the time.