Why should I not let my baby “use me as a human pacifier”

@yoshinat0r I have three. The first I allowed to comfort nurse and he was the worst sleeper ever. It was awful because he would only nurse to sleep so I had to take every night wake and I felt so trapped and grossed out; and worst of all he became so reliant he could NOT connect sleep cycles even at a year old without nursing. Sleep deprivation led to the worst PPD/PPA. He was exhausted and cranky. Needless to say it didn’t work great for us until we sleep trained.

With my other two I don’t allow comfort nursing, they get plenty of love and affection and cuddles, I co slept with them, but we all just slept better if they weren’t reliant on my boobs for falling asleep. I encourage independent sleeping by using as little intervention as needed to help them sleep. They’re generally good sleepers. The youngest still wakes occasionally at two years old, but I don’t mind that.

Oth I have a lot of friends who enjoy the comfort nursing and closeness. So I’m not saying it won’t work for you. It is a season that will pass like any other. They won’t always be little and won’t always need you so much. So if it’s something that feels right for you, and you’re happy with it, then go for it. But also if it is not something you’re comfortable with because you need your sleep to be the best mom you can be, don’t feel bad about not comfort nursing either! They’ll be fine either way. :)
 
@ravenblue It is really dependent on the baby, and it's hard to see how that will be at 9 weeks old. Personally my second took the paci around 3 weeks old but would only fall asleep on the breast (the paci is good for some wake ups). I bedshared with both kids, my first I had to wean at 13 months due to pregnancy pain kicking in at 4 months pregnant but by that time she only really woke up once and once she was OK falling asleep with cuddles (only took a week to transition) she started sleeping through the night. She began sleeping with dad once my second was born at 17 months old, and apart from the usual wake up at midnight to pee where she stays half asleep, she sleeps through. She'll be 3 in November. My second was awful for the first year, some nights (some periods most nights) not even the breast worked, just walking around for fucking half an hour straight. Even at 8 months old it happened, when he was almost 9 kg already, so it was good training at 2 in the morning 😅 But not long after the one year mark he started to have sleep through nights and more reliably falling asleep on the breast in 5 minutes otherwise, so I continue to nurse to sleep. He's 17 months now and most nights the max wake up is like 5-10 minutes 1-2 times, with 50% sleep throughs. He falls asleep on the breast in 10 minutes, but he uses the paci to calm down during our bedtime routine (only using the paci for sleep)
 
@seekerofthelivingword Thanks for your comment! A good reminder!! Being a new parent and having so many people/resources telling you one thing or another or telling you you’re doing it all wrong makes everything so confusing and makes me feel like I have clouded judgment.
 
@yoshinat0r I hope you can shut all that out and find your stride! It took me about till 5 months to finally trust myself and not worry what anyone says cuz theyll constantly say it even well intentionally. I still research and am open to new tactics but most advice is based in dumb colloquial shit that i cant help but laugh at. We did basically everything "wrong" but we have an amazing baby who trusts us so much. Do your research, nothing is black and white and depends on what your tolerance level is on what youll allow.
 
@yoshinat0r Sleep associations like this are only a problem when they are a problem for YOU. There’s nothing harmful to the child about non-nutritive sucking, AFAIK.

If you are intending to sleep train in the future, then you can pretty much let your kid form any sleep association they want to right now, because when they sleep train, they will replace their older sleep associations with new ones (bedtime routine, dark room, pacifier, being alone in crib at bedtime, etc.).

If you don’t want to sleep train or are undecided, then just be aware that at some point in the future, you may have to force him to give up the sucking if he still wants to do it when it’s no longer working well for you/the family, and he may cry and protest that a lot, and it can be really upsetting for the parent to wait it out. If you are okay with that, then go ahead and let him get used to it now. If you want to avoid going through that, then that’s why people are saying to avoid letting the habit form now - they feel it’s easier to just not allow it in the first place than to take it away later and deal with the crying.

The only way I can see it being an issue now is that if it becomes a necessity for him to fall asleep, that might interfere with your coparent or another caregiver putting him to bed. Maybe you don’t want your body to be the only way he can get to sleep, because if something happened - say you get in a car accident tomorrow, and need to stay in the hospital for a couple days - then you want your baby to be able to sleep at home with whoever is caring for them. Or if he doesn’t sleep through the night, it might interfere with your own sleep hygiene and mental health if your coparent has to come pop the baby on your boob at bedtime, since that might wake you up when you really need sleep. But that’s kind of up to you whether it’s an important enough worry to not allow the non-nutritive sucking in the first place, and if you’re willing to put up with crying in the future, then it’ll all work out fine.
 
@yoshinat0r Fwiw, I nursed mine to sleep until she was about 1. Then she just didn’t want it anymore, she pretty much weaned herself. She would literally shake her head “no” when I offered. So I stopped and it was no big deal. She’s almost 2 now and is a great sleeper. I find no issue with it
 
@wiloftcnc Not usually. She was usually pretty easy to get down for a nap. But I did sometimes do it for naps when we were in a nap transition and she just needed like a quick 20 minute nap in the afternoon. Like when we were dropping from 3 to 2 naps sometimes she just needed a little snooze at like 5pm so I’d do what I call a “boob nap” lol.
 
@yoshinat0r I had a comforter nurser. He would never take a pacifier. Close to his second birthday we found out he had five cavities. 😳🙃 The pediatric dentist recommended that we stopped breastfeeding immediately, so we did. Haven’t had any issues since stopping. However my son does have black stains on his baby teeth from the medicine they had to use to on the cavities.
 
@aeryn This exactly thing happened to my niece. My niece is 2.5 and will need to be put out to correct the cavities. When they comfort nurse milk is constantly in their mouth feeding bacteria and tooth decay.
 
@yoshinat0r My first comfort nursed all the time. I always joked that I was a human pacifier. He had no interest in an actual pacifier. Never sucked his thumb, etc.

He is now a perfectly well adjusted 3 year old and it didn’t cause any issues for us whatsoever.
 
@yoshinat0r We don't really know why, but sleeping with a pacifier, is suspected to reduce the risk of SIDS.

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/baby-sleep/can-baby-sleep-with-pacifier#:~:text=Pacifiers%20may%20also%20help%20keep,increase%20the%20risk%20of%20SIDS.

Edit to include:

We introduced a pacifier around 2 weeks old with our baby, and I still nursed her to sleep until she was over 4 months old, I would just give her the pacifier when I put her back in her bed. When she was just over 4 months old she started rejecting being nursed to sleep, and already having a sleep association with the pacifier made it much easier to transition her to falling asleep without nursing.
 
@londonleah My understanding of this finding is that it was pretty heavily funded by pacifier manufacturers. It could also be that what you're essentially doing is mimicking the biological function of nursing throughout sleep (though, obviously, since nursing through sleep is associated with bedsharing, the risks of that must be factored in too).

Also, it seems from everything I've read about this study (these studies?) is that basically once you've given the pacifier, there's an increased risk if you suddenly take it away, and it's this risk which is reduced by continuing to give the pacifier. Compared to the baseline risk of never had a pacifier in the first place, there's no reduction in risk, so it's kind of misleadingly worded.
 
@cutin Hmmm interesting.

I hadn't actually heard any of this until after I introduced one, we tried it a couple weeks after the birth I just kinda tossed one in her mouth in the middle of the night and prayed she would go back to sleep, and it got us down to just a couple night feeds. (Due to hip issues I could not do the side lying thing for night feeds, and we didn't bedshare so the high frequency of night feeds was doing a number on me)

I do personally find that there are other benefits, but didn't think "it makes my baby stop screaming in the car" was the kind of answer OP was looking for when she hit up this sub.
 
@londonleah Oh yeah totally. I used pacifiers too. There is definitely a place for them. I just think that the idea they reduce SIDS risk is a little flawed.
 
@londonleah Sorry where do you see that pacifiers reduce risks of SIDS?

Looking at your links I get to this:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28378502/

***Main results

We identified no randomised controlled trials examining infant pacifiers for reduction in risk of SIDS.***

This weird website you are liking seems to be of very poor quality: it makes a conclusion completely opposite to what the sources it is citing are themselves concluding.

Generally speaking I recommend to cite the actual peer reviewed study instead of sources citing them. This kind of mistakes is not uncommon. Even peer reviewed studies can be of poor quality
 
@katrina2017 That study is basically just saying there is nothing in the research that meets the definition of a RCT, but in the full text they also acknowledge:

"Many of the interventions for the prevention of SIDS, including avoidance of prone sleeping, have not been tested in RCTs (Gilbert 2005).

While adequately powered RCTs on infant pacifiers for reduction in risk of SIDS would be ideal, such trials would require large sample sizes (i.e. with significance level of 95% and power of 80%, a minimum of 9894 infants). In addition, given the existing lower level evidence of the effectiveness of pacifier use in numerous case‐control studies, and support for pacifier use by some professional bodies it may be difficult to recruit participants into such a trial."
 
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