To Dummy or not to Dummy? That is the Question

 
Most of the photos I have of Darcy with her dummy she is asleep

Before Darcy was born I had a list in my head of do’s and don’t’s that I wanted us to have with Darcy I can safely say a lot of these all went out the window as you don’t really know what you or the baby are going to be like until you are in the moment. One thing that I always thought I would never change my opinion on is Darcy not having a dummy, I am not the hugest fan of toddlers walking around with dummies in their mouths and you always hear the dreaded “dummies give you wonky teeth” story so that was one thing that I thought was set in stone. Fast forward to Darcy being 3 months old and the no dummy rule also went out the window.

Darcy from birth has always stuck her fingers (sometimes her whole fist) in her mouth, as the weeks went past Simon and I increasingly got worried that this was going to be a habit for life. As she grew and was able to use her hands more her hand/fingers went less in the mouth until it came to sleep time, as soon as Darcy got sleepy the fingers went straight in. After weeks of discussing it and thinking of all the positives and negatives when Darcy turned 3 months we decided to give her a dummy when she got sleepy. Our thought process behind this was that; it will be “easier” (note the air quotes) to take the dummy away from her than it would be to take her fingers away, as we knew we didn’t want her to grow up sucking her fingers/thumb.

I love photos of Simon & Darcy asleep 

The first couple of weeks were great, Darcy no longer sucked her fingers and the dummy worked perfectly; as soon as she got sleepy the dummy went in and within minutes she was fast asleep, the dummy would then usually fall out and if she stirred or cried all we had to do was pop the dummy back in and she was asleep again, lovely! Until we started using it for more than just sleep time now it was being used for; sleep time, grumpy time, mummy just needs to wee time, not quite dinner time. It was not all day it was just when she was getting a little grumpy or needy and the older she got she started to know what it was and where kept it when she didn’t have it.

I am sure Darcy is magic because every time Simon and I discussed taking the dummy away she would get poorly and we felt we couldn’t take it away as she needed it to comfort her. This happened every couple of weeks from 10 months until Christmas, so by now Darcy was 1 and we had already discussed by the time she was 1 it was going but yet again she got poorly. One of those lost days between Christmas and New Year we were sitting around talking about goals for 2017 and I said January 1^st Darcy is going cold turkey with the dummy, so the 1^st January came around and we woke up took the dummy away and that was it no one could say the word dummy around Darcy.

 Oh gosh I miss her being this tiny

I can’t say that it hasn’t been hard because it has, but it is nowhere near as bad as I built it up to be in my head. I was expecting a devil child who never slept and sucked their thumb she wasn’t quite that bad. The sleeping was going to be the most difficult aspect for all of us to get used to, her night time routine is quite solid so we hoped that if we kept to it she would fall asleep without the dummy. The first couple of days once Darcy was put to bed she would cry for about 30 minutes as the days passed it turned to 20 minutes, 10 minutes to when eventually Darcy could be put to bed at night without a single cry, hallelujah! We might have the night-time routine down but the day-time nap is a completely different story. This is still a working progress a month down the line but each day it is getting easier for all of us.
 
One thing that I would advise when deciding to take away the dummy or making a big change would be everyone who is involved to be on the same page. Darcy is fortunate not to just have her Daddy and I around she also gets to spend a lot of time with both sets of Grandparents and her Aunties and Uncle and we had to make sure that everyone understood what was going on and our new sleep plans so that Darcy could stay in a routine no matter where she was, as routine is the most vital part when changing an aspect in a babies life.

Whether you do decide to have a dummy or not, each parent to there own. You might be like us and changed your mind or you always knew that you would or wouldn't. One thing I am sure of is that every baby is different even when they are siblings do what you feel is right and never change your values or beliefs for anyone.