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December 2022 Babies 🇬🇧

Getting rid of dummies!

Hi Mummies,
I just wanted to share what’s recently worked (surprisingly well!) for us, in terms of getting rid of the dummy. I made it up as I went along and by no means am saying this will work for every toddler, but may help someone!
I started off a few weeks ago limiting his dummy to just in the car and then for nap/bed (before this he was asking for it all day!), then I stopped giving it to him in the car too, so just for nap/bed and making sure he’d leave it in his cot every time. After a week of that, I hid all dummies apart from one (before that he’d been going to bed with about 4 of them!) so he was having the same one dummy for nap and bed (he asked a few times for different ones, I just said I didn’t know where they were!)
Then after about 4 days of just one dummy, I cut a small hole in the top of it which stops the suction action when they have it in their mouth, which is what the appeal is! The idea behind this is that by cutting the teat, he would decide to reject it himself as it just wasn’t doing anything anymore, rather than me taking it away from him.
The first few times I offered it he would make a disgusted face, take the dummy out, look at it, wipe his tongue (like it was his mouth that was the problem!) put it back in, then repeat all of that. He also asked for a different dummy, but I stuck with saying we only had this one.
First nap was a disaster - he didn’t cry, but also didn’t sleep at all (which is unheard of for him as he has a 2hr nap every day, without fail!) then bed time that night he took quite a bit longer than usual, but did eventually fall asleep. Then slowly over the next few naps/bed time he’d try sucking on his dummy multiple times when I gave it to him, realised it wasn’t working and then would just hold it or throw it to the side. Then after a few more days of that I stopped offering it altogether. We’re now 4 days on from no dummy at all and naps are back to being 2hrs and he sleeps all night (19:45-6:30ish) without an issues.
A few times along the process it has been very tempting to give in and give him a dummy, like the other day when he hurt himself quite badly, but I stuck with it and just comforted him instead. Don’t know if we’ve just been quite lucky, but the whole process was pretty stress free and may work for others too 🤞🏻☺️ xx