The Great Dummy Debate.

Who knew a small piece of plastic could cause such conflict! Inspired by a recent debate at my Birth Board on Babycentre, I've decided to share my thoughts & experience on dummies.

I've said it many times before -- before I was actually a mother, I was the perfect parent. My child would be a dream; they'd never cry, they'd sleep through the night and they'd never have a dirty piece of plastic in their mouth to comfort them. I'd judge parents for giving their babies dummies and I vowed to never be one of them. Oh, how naive I was!

John was about 8 weeks old when my Health Visitor suggested a dummy. "It is possible that he's not hungry but is in fact using you as dummy." Nonsense I thought, no child of mine would need a dummy, I'd rather he used me as one... And we carried on how we were. Then my Mum started; "Have you thought about trying a dummy?" Nope, never, not necessary.

John was around 3 months old when he started to suck his fingers. At first, I thought it was extremely cute -- my little boy was learning to self settle and it was much nicer than his face being covered by a piece of plastic. Then I recalled my own childhood. I had sucked my thumb for nearly 9 years. It was a great comfort but a bad habit, one that was hard to break. My parents had tried numerous tactics to deter me from shoving my thumb in my mouth but nothing worked. And it wasn't as easy as just cutting it off. I knew what comfort a it could bring but I also knew of the torment that comes from other people when they see a grown child sucking their thumb.

I remember in P3 of primary school, sitting at my desk finishing a task. I was behind on my work compared to everyone else and my cruel teacher called out for me to "stop sucking my thumb" and "grow up" whilst simultaneously blaming my thumb sucking on my slow work. All eyes were on me and the sniggering and comments are still clear to this day. That was one of many experiences where I was singled out for sucking my thumb. I knew I didn't want John to suffer the same.

One day as we walked around Asda, I nipped down the baby aisle. I stared at the dummies, feeling resentment and fear. What if we end up with a worse off habit? What if he stops sucking his fingers in a few weeks, then the whole situation could have been avoided? I hesitantly threw a package of dummies into the trolley, ensuring that if we were going to do this, we'd at least get the orthodontic ones.

It took me a few days to actually give John one of the dummies and despite my disappointment, he took to it straight away. And the difference was obvious -- he started sleeping longer periods, settled to sleep without breastfeeding and was no longer wanting to feed 24/7. OK, so maybe they're not that bad.

When we started giving a dummy, I'd always said I wanted it gone by John's 1st birthday -- it seemed like a reasonable request and by that time he'd hopefully be sleeping through the night regardless. Well, at 1 year old he still wasn't sleeping through and he still had a dummy. Now at 18 months old he might well be sleeping through but he still has his dummy. And I'm in no hurry to take it from him. The thing is, John finds his dummy a comfort. He's never adopted a favourite cuddly toy, nor did he take to the idea of comforter blanket. His dummy helps him sleep, aids in soothing pain and is the little piece of home that he can take to nursery. Who am I to take that away from him? Don't get me wrong, we'll obviously take it away from him at some point but the decision is now to wait until he can understand why he no longer needs it and when he is old enough to seek comfort from elsewhere.

Dummies were one of the many parenting decisions that were different from my initial expectations. Based on our experience with John, I won't be rushing out to purchase dummies for baby no.2 but I also won't be so stubborn in terms of using one if I feel this little one would benefit from it. I've also learnt that dummies aren't the devil and not to judge other parents that use them.

And who knew a dummy could cause such humour? Thank you to my friend Hannah for John's moustache dummy!