Getting rid of the dummy - how bad was it

Best way is to just go cold turkey! The first few days and nights will be tough but they will quickly forget especially at 6 months old! We cut it of at 2.5 years, it happened quite organically , she ended up loosing her last one and we refused to replace it and tbh she just accepted it , she woke up a few extra time in the night initially but quickly got over it. I think she was ‘ready’ to let go.

At that age probably cold turkey... Not done it at 6 months We stopped day time dummy first maybe around a year old and then at 2 years old we planted his dummies with him and the next morning he got a doughnut flower.. he was happy as Larry and it was so much easier than I thought.

I hadn’t really planned to give a dummy at all, I didn’t with my first and we just never needed one. But she had such bad colic and an umbilical hernia which ended up getting really big from all the crying and I just wanted to do anything to try and stop that getting bigger. She only uses it for sleep. @Lucy when you say you got rid of the day time dummy, do you mean naps too? Did your little one manage to nap ok without it - I sort of feel like if I’m gonna get rid of day time I may as well get rid of it altogether I’m not sure what the benefit to getting rid at day time first would be aside from maybe at least not having disrupted nights so much but if she copes without the dummy for day time naps would it not make sense just to go cold turkey…? My first was such a good sleeper and this one is just such a different kettle of fish! I’m just so stumped as to how to help her sleep.

Also thank you both for your responses. I’m really tearing my hair out over this. I just don’t know if the dummy is making sleep worse, or better 😂

@Liz I'd say for a 6 month old cold turkey is probably best. With my toddler he seemed to transition well with no dummy at nap times and got used to it which then made bedtimes fairly easy too. I think cold turkey with a 2 year old is just different to a 6 month old. Hopefully it's fairly easy! It's for the best! ❤️

My son gave up diddy himself just after 2 and a half. Xmas elf took all his diddys lol x

Thank you all for your responses. Decided to go cold turkey. Coming to the end of day 3. Little one seems to be cutting her first tooth… so I feel terrible for taking the dummy away now 😂 but feels wrong to reverse it now. First night was way better than expected - she slept solidly from 20:00 (when she went down) to 23:30, when she woke for a feed. Then slept again until about 04:30! She did need a bit more settling but really nothing to write home about. I was very pleasantly surprised as I was expecting absolute chaos. Night 2 not so easy but in hindsight I think this is teething related - she just would not settle from 22:30-01:30 when I thought this might be teething rather than dummy related and gave her calpol. She was fine after that. Will see how night 3 goes…

My son was around 2.5 and one night we couldn’t find it so that was it he asked for it a few times when going to sleep but ultimately fell asleep with no drama. He asked for it a few times after that first night but never kicked off about it. We were so worried about taking it away but I think he was just ready. We also were only letting him use it for naps and bedtime at this point so might be good to cut down first and then cold turkey! Good luck! X

Oh Iv just seen that this was last week I hope you’ve successfully weaned!

Haha thank you. Yeah it’s been gone awhile. We’ve had the worst couple weeks in terms of sleep but it’s been due to cutting two teeth AND being ill - I think it was incidentally the worst time to get rid of the dummy, as so much happened for her after we made that decision, but we had no idea it was going to fall like that and I think we’re through the worst of it now!