Bubble and her Wubbanub

When we went to the pre-birth seminar at the hospital, the midwives who ran the session warned against starting babies on a dummy (pacifier) too early because it could cause confusion with breastfeeding. We were a little surprised that people would be so keen to give their baby a dummy before they were a couple of weeks old anyway, so it wasn’t really a big deal to us. We waited the recommended four weeks to introduce Bubble to dummies, and despite her doing very well with both breast and bottle feeding, she was not interested in a dummy at all. In fact, she dry retched whenever I tried to give her one. So I figured it was no big deal; if she didn’t want one then that was one less thing to worry about weaning her off of later, right? Oh SO wrong!

At about five weeks, Bubble started to fuss for the first time. Up until then she’d been a very calm, placid baby who only cried when she was hungry or very tired. But suddenly I had a baby who desperately wanted to suck on something, but still HATED dummies. I tried silicone, latex, cherry shaped, orthodontic… you name it, she hated it. All but one made her dry retch, and that one confused her so much she’d burst into fits of frustrated, angry tears. In the end she settled for using me as a dummy, and wanted to suck long after she’d finished eating. At the time I had an overabundance of milk, so this frustrated her even further; she wanted non-nutritive sucking, and kept getting more food. At this point we even had to give up bottle feeding with expressed milk because the bottle nipple seemed to be just the size and shape of what she wanted to suck on, only the milk came out of that even faster than the breast, causing her to choke, splutter and again cry with frustration.

The one dummy Bubble would accept without gagging was a Tommee Tippee orthodontic latex one, but she seemed at a loss as to exactly how to suck on it. She’d roll it about in her mouth, chew on it, very occasionally suck on it, and then she’d fall asleep seemingly against her will with her face red from frustrated crying.

I looked everywhere online and in books to find information about how to train a baby to use a dummy. All I could find were articles about how to wean your child OFF a dummy. I found several people asking the question I wanted an answer to on sites like Yahoo Answers, but the usual replies were things like “If your baby doesn’t want a dummy, don’t force it! You’ll only have to wean later.” This was so frustrating! I knew Bubble wanted a dummy, she just couldn’t work out how to use it. I started to get mad at all the experts who had told me not to give her a dummy too early, because I felt that she’d forgotten how to do the non-nutritive sucking that babies are pretty much born knowing how to do, and she was now attempting to eat the dummies with a wide mouth, which just had them rolling around and falling out.

So what did I do? There is a happy ending here, folks. The only tip I ever found online about babies that didn’t like normal dummies was that there was a special kind of dummy being given out in US hospitals called a Soothie that seemed to be popular amongst the more discerning babies. When I looked into it further, I found that there were two types available that I could order online; one was the Gumdrop Soothie, which is available in four colours (pink, blue, purple and orange) and the Wubbanub, the original hospital-grade Soothie with a soft toy attached. I promptly ordered one of each from sellers on eBay.

I was both excited and nervous when the new dummies arrived. I knew it was our last chance before I gave up all together. Bubble was just getting ready for a nap when the mail arrived that day, so I quickly washed and sterilised the Wubbanub (with its plush caterpillar attached) and offered it to her as she was lying in her cot getting ready for sleep. To my absolute shock and delight, she slurped it in like she’d had it forever, took two or three happy sucks and dropped off to sleep!

I was still thinking it was all too good to be true, so I tried again, this time with the Gumdrop Soothie (vanilla scented), later that day. She fussed a little at first and I thought, “Uh oh, it was a fluke before.” But moments later she was sucking happily away like a limpet. Amazing!

Since then I’ve ordered quite a few more (a cat and a duck in the Wubbanubs and some different colours in the Gumdrops) and she’s still happy with them. In fact, these days she’ll even use the ordinary kind, but she still prefers the Soothies.

So what is the big difference, I hear you ask. It’s in the shape, really. The teat of the Soothie is shaped more like the top of a bottle, rather than a bulb like other dummies. According to the manufacturers, it is less likely to cause nipple confusion because it is so close to the shape of a nipple. You can also buy bottles that are the exact same shape if you are particularly worried about your baby getting confused.

There are a couple of points I should mention, however. Firstly, as I mentioned above, I ordered the first Soothies from eBay, which was fine. The next lot of Gumdrops I ordered were directly from the manufacturer via their website, which was less successful. It turns out that when you order through that website, they try to find a distributor in your area who can ship it to you locally. I emailed them after waiting almost two weeks and they replied that they were having trouble finding a local distributor for me. I emailed back and asked if it would be better for me to order via one of their authorised eBay sellers and they told me that was a better plan and cancelled the order.

The other point, which applies to another baby I know of who was having similar problems with dummies, is that she was almost two months older than Bubble when she finally got her Soothie and tried it out, and apparently she rejected it along with the others. I don’t know if this is because it was too late, or if she wouldn’t have taken one regardless. In any case, I guess they won’t work for all babies, but they sure have made life easier for us.

Links:

I bought my Gumdrop Soothies from: http://myworld.ebay.com/17labarbie/

I bought the Wubbanubs from: http://myworld.ebay.com/lilonesworld2004/ and http://myworld.ebay.com/elite*breastfeeding*supplies

I would highly recommend any of these sellers. They were really fast with shipping to Norway and communication was excellent.