The down low on dummies.

A dummy is a brilliant tool for settling a newborn baby who just wants to suck.  Sucking can be very soothing and calming for your baby, and a dummy can help give mum’s breasts a little break throughout the day.

It’s important not to use a dummy to stretch out feeds too much in the early weeks if breastfeeding is becoming established. Breastfeeding relies on demand to establish milk supply, and in the early days, your baby will want and need to feed frequently. Overuse of a dummy may also lead to nipple confusion in the early days, as your baby gets the hang of the style of sucking required to breastfeed.

Newborn babies do need to feed fairly frequently, so if your baby is giving hungry signs at the 2-2.5 hour mark, go ahead and feed them instead of using the dummy.  However if it has been just an hour since a feed and your baby is showing that they are hungry, they are possibly just tired, so using the dummy to help them settle off to sleep will be helpful.

Dummies can become a strong sleep association if their use is continued past the 3 month mark, and while still in the newborn phase, it is easy to wean off their use by replacing the dummy with some patting.  Beyond 3 months, your baby may not be as receptive to patting as a replacement, and sleep training may be necessary to help your baby learn to fall asleep without the dummy. The dummy generally becomes a problem if your baby wakes up looking for it to be replaced mid nap or overnight. 

From about 6 months of age, teaching your baby to find and replace their own dummy is an achievable goal (but keep in mind most can’t do this consistently until about 8 months of age).  Younger than this and the best option is likely going to be to ditch the dummy and teach self settling without it.

Over 8-9 months, we wouldn’t look to ditch the dummy as your baby will have formed a strong attachment to it by this age. We would instead teach them to find and replace it and wait until toddler/preschool age (2.5-3 years old) to say goodbye, once they have more cognitive understanding.