Our Experience of The Dummy Fairy
We had an odd start to dummy life… Hallie refused it as a baby, I did try a couple of times but arguably not enough, I’d never had a dummy as a baby so didn’t necessarily see why it would be such a good sleep aid. Since Ottie’s taken the dummy from around 6 months I can see how it is brilliant at helping her go down.
Anyway, Hallie was around 18 months when we were flying somewhere so I offered her one on the plane to help her ears. She liked it, correction, she loved it. Before we had time to take a breath it had become a big part of our life. We only ever let her have it for sleeping, never just out and about during the day but I think we succumbed to her having it as a sleep aid as she took it up around when she was beginning to fight naps and so we let her have it as a way to hold on to her nap for as long as we could.
The issue with her dummy (or her ‘mmm’ as she referred to it) came about when a) I felt she was really getting too old for it and b) she started waking us up in the night because she couldn’t find her ‘mmm’, when previously she was sleeping through more regularly.
After a bit of a chat about the dummy fairy and how she takes the dummy to give it to little babies but leaves you with a present we decided to go for it. Hallie choose her present (a ballerina Barbie, obviously). And we sprinkled glitter *fairy dust* on her dummy’s and off she went to bed in her new unicorn PJ’s.
The first night she woke up a couple of times but wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately we timed it with her becoming unwell but we’d committed so there was no going back. That evening she was really sad. She went up to her room to look for them, forgetting they’d gone and was just sat on her bed sobbing cuddling her rabbits. Broke my heart a little bit… She did really well though, didn’t ask for them at all and only asked to borrow one of Ottie’s once.
The next few nights she did much better. I had to settle her a bit but not much and I actually gave her a teether to suck/hold instead. I think a lot of it was having something in her hands as she would sleep with a dummy in her mouth and one in her hand and then swap them over throughout the night - like some sort of weird dummy connoisseur.
All in all it took around 10 days for her to totally adjust and us feel like we’d moved on from it.
However, after about two weeks after that she took up sucking her thumb which is arguably so much worse as she does it all day and her poor thumb is red raw… so that’s the next hurdle. These parenthood challenges are.never.ending.
After one of my best friends admitted she sucked her thumb until she was 18 and she’s one of the most accomplished and brilliant people we know we’ve now accepted that that’s going to be part of our life for now. Hallie also has some monumental changes coming up with her starting school etc., so if she takes some comfort from it we’re not going to rush to stop her. We do, however try to ensure she keeps the thumb sucking to night time only.
