Sucking: the secret to a good night’s sleep

In the search for a good night’s sleep you will find there are many sleep secrets to help you on your way. Meg Faure, Occupational Therapist and mother of two pacifier suckers and a thumb sucker looks at the value of Sucking: the secret to a good night’s sleep.

Non nutritive sucking (ie. Sucking without feeding) really helps to calm young babies. Some babies learn to suck on their own hands from a very early age, others prefer to suck a pacifier. Both are excellent soothers for young babies. Do not stop your baby from sucking but guide your baby into a method you or she prefers.

Thumb sucking
Thumb sucking is an excellent self-calming strategy and is the first very clever, independent skill your baby learns. Your life will be easier if your baby can calm herself in this manner, especially at sleep time.

The pro’s of thumb or hand sucking is that it is something your baby can use independently from very early on. The negative is that thumb suckers may have a higher risk of needing orthodontics at a later age. Whether thumb sucking will result in bucked teeth is dependant on your family’s predisposition and how long your child sucks her thumb.

It is harder to get rid of a thumb sucking habit as you can’t conveniently ‘loose’ a thumb but if your baby is fussy, and sucking on her thumb really helps her to calm, so worry about getting rid of the habit later. Remember the issue is to get your baby to calm, so that sleep can follow.

In the early days, the startle and moro reflexes move the arms outwards when young babies are distressed, making it very hard to self calm while crying. Help your baby find her hands to suck on to self-calm, by swaddling her hands close to her face. Frequently this won’t be enough to sufficiently calm her and a pacifier should be used.

Pacifiers
On a sensory level, your baby needs to suck in order to be calm, and if she is not doing it herself (i.e. sucking her hands or thumb) a pacifier is a very effective tool. Getting rid of the pacifier is a bridge you can cross later. It will depend on your baby – some just reject the pacifier naturally in the first year, others need to be rewarded for giving it up in the toddler years.

Look for a pacifier that your baby likes. Orthodontic pacifiers are supposed to create less problems for feeding and in the mouth.

You may be concerned about the habit of pacifiers and that you will spend the next three years doing pacifier patrol – putting the pacifier in your baby’s mouth every hour at night when she wakes.

Teaching your baby to use a pacifier independently
At around 6 to 9 months, many babies do start to wake for mom to replace the pacifier in the middle of the night. At this time the pacifier is not something that is used independently. At about 9 months old however you can expect your baby to be using the pacifier at night independently.

If your baby is waking you to put in the pacifier at night, there are three steps to help your baby (older than 8 months) to use her pacifier independently at night:

• In the first few days, keep putting in her pacifier when she cries at night, but during the day never put the pacifier in her mouth. Rather place the pacifier into her hand so that she learns to pop it in herself in daylight hours.
• Once she has achieved daytime independence, do the same at night – never place it in her mouth, rather put the pacifier into her hand or attach it to a sleep blanky and put that in her hand so she must do the final step of putting the pacifier into her mouth on her own.
• When she has advanced to that stage (usually within a few days if she is older than 8 months), stop placing the pacifier in her hand and guide her hand to the pacifier in the dark. The next night put every pacifier in the house into her cot giving her the maximum chance of finding it at night

The message should be clear: if your baby self soothes at night she will sleep well. Sucking is a wonderful self soothing method. Encourage either thumb or dummy sucking for a good night’s sleep.

This excerpt comes from Meg’s new book on sleep, which will be on the shelves by the end of the year.