My first daughter had a fierce connection to her dummy. She would often want a couple of dummies at one time. One would be in her mouth and another in each hand. Sometimes the dummy in her hand would be used to stroke her face as she fell asleep.

My daughter slept well when she had her dummies. They were her comfort and I didn’t know any different because I assumed dummies were a baby’s and mummy’s best friend.

When my daughter turned 2, the dummy use was generally limited to night time and was the first thing that was grabbed for comfort during the day. I had a predicament where I had to practice tough love and wean my daughter off her dummy. With the arrival of her baby sister, I was apprehensive about removing the dummy as I didn’t want to have to be up to two kids during the night.

My husband and I decided to use Christmas time as a way to get my daughter to ditch her dummies. She would leave them out for Santa and he would leave a present in return.

It worked for Christmas Eve, but once Christmas night came, the overexcitement of Christmas Day and the exhaustion my husband and I experienced from the big day were enough to break down our resolve and open a spare packet of dummies to get our daughter to go to sleep. To put it lightly, we became a dummy about the dummies.

But the crunch time came when I took my daughter to her first dentist visit. The dentist asked if my daughter was a thumb sucker and I told him she still sucked her dummy and he suggested we get rid of it sooner rather than later because my daughter had a large bite. Her teeth don’t go together when she smiles. I felt like the worst mum in the world and I remember feeling disappointed in myself for not being stricter about the dummy use. That one visit to the dentist was enough for me to be strict with my daughter and I told her that she couldn’t use the dummies anymore because the ‘dentist dr’ said so. That was all it took for my daughter to stop using them. There were times where she did wake up during the night, but she eventually learned to fall back asleep. And we persevered with the change.

In the early days, as a new mum with a newborn that wanted to suck my nipples off, the dummy was a blessing and it helped my daughter self-settle. My daughter didn’t learn to sleep through the night until she was 9 months old. The sleep deprivation was hard going so I was desperate for anything that would not only self-settle my baby, but help her to sleep through the night.

When should a baby stop using a dummy?

It is recommended that babies shouldn’t suck on a dummy after they are 5 months old. Some experts warn not to use dummies at all, but from my experience with my first born, it was a lifesaver and I knew what I was getting into when I gave my daughter that dummy.

If you find your child does use their dummy as a comfort, experts say the dummy should have limited use to night time when they go to sleep. If you read the research on the prolonged use of a dummy, you will think twice about giving one to your baby. But research means little when you have a newborn screaming in your ear and you’ve got sore, cracked nipples with a double dose of sleep deprivation.

My suggestion as a mum is to have clear boundaries on why you are introducing a dummy to your baby and when you will transition your baby away from dummy use. It’s also important to be firm when you do decide to wean your child from their dummy.

Is your child a dummy sucker or thumb sucker? How did you go about weaning your child from their dummy?