Bedtime and Pacifier

M., it is possible your son is hungry and wants to nurse during the night, not suck a binky.
A ten week old baby should nurse two to four times during the night, yes?
A baby cries because it is their only method of communication and usually if one cries when they should be sleeping something is amiss.
Soiled diaper, hunger, cramp, gas pains, ect ect.
A mother of a ten week old seldom gets good sleep.
My best advice to you is to sleep when your baby does, afternoon nap, morning nap, whatever it takes.
And nurse ( or bottle feed) your baby when he wakes at night.
Best wishes and God bless
Grandmother Lowell

do you breastfeed? He is needing to suckle for good reason and not getting what he needs from the pacifier. Give him your breast if you can and snuggle up to him in your bed, this is the best remedy for sleep troubles that I know of! also check out http://askdrsears.com and get the Baby Book by Dr. Sears.

take him to bed with you and nurse him all night like your body was meant to do... He is surely hungry. I sleep all night and never get out of bed with an 11 month old.

I am shocked that people are giving you advice that does not center around actually feeding such a young baby during the night. Even the "crying it out" method does not advocate starving your children and letting them scream when they are hungry. Perhaps these people have not even read about this method (which in my eyes is bad enough as it is). I am so saddened when I hear moms saying that they have not cared for their babies well. Moms are after all their child's number one protector.

M.,

He is 10 weeks old, he will eventually find it himself. I used to put about 3 in with my daughter. At this point you have to wait for when he can find it.

D.

Hi M.,

I had a similar problem with my son at that age. We decided to take the pacifier away and let him find new ways to sooth himself to sleep. He ended up sucking his thumb for a short time but then that went away. You may be up a lot for a few weeks breaking him of the pacifier habit but it is well worth it in the long run. My son is now 5 years old and gives me no trouble going to bed and going to sleep without me, a special blanket or stuffed animal. He is conditioned to just close his eyes and go to sleep.

Good luck!

J.

My sister had this problem with her son until he was like 6 months old! They finally took his paci away. I'd say if he is that needy with the pacifier, get rid of it...I have a 10 week old as well. She likes her paci during the day, but once she falls asleep and it falls out, she sleeps fine. Our older daughter used one at night as well, but didn't cry all night when it fell out. If you know he is not hungry and is just wanting the paci all night, I'd say you might be better off getting rid of it. Our daughter eats around every 3-4 hours at night right now... good luck!

My son is finally growing out of this, but I used to stash 2 or 3 extra ones in the bed with me...under the pillow, in my shirt and on the bureau next to the bed. Good luck!

Hi M.,

10 week old babies are still in that newborn phase...they need to eat every 2-4 hours around the clock. Your baby is probably crying because he is hungry vs. wanting a pacifier.

Babies at this age also do not have a good sense of night and day-this will take a while to develop.

Parents of newborns therefore do not get good sleep!! Try to get in the mind frame of a 24 hour day-sleep when the baby sleeps (nap during the day when he does), keep him right next to the bed (and keep diaper changing stuff next to you too-babies poop 24 hours a day too!). Get some night lights for room so that you don't need to turn the lights on.

Finally, get lots of help if you can!!! For all the house stuff so you can focus on taking care of your baby and sleep! also, you will need to lower your standards on level of clean house, how much you can do, etc.

Babies are a HUGE amount of work-it will take some adjusting but it will get better promise!

Take care.

It takes a while, but my son also learned how to find it and put in his mouth on his own. I find the pacifier to be such a big help with bedtime that I think it is worth it!

We used to just put a whole bunch it the crib, hoping my son would find one of them. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't and when we took the bumpers off the crib they used to fall out. But my sister in law had a great idea, and this worked for my niece. She sewed the pacifier to a small stuffed animal and sewed it on pretty tightly so there wasn't a cord/choking hazard attached. The stuffed animal rarely moved far from the baby and then it was easily found again. I will admit that I was pretty skeptical of this at first, but I saw that it really worked, which was better than what we ended up doing - going in to help him find it!!
Good luck!

The only advice I can give is try to get rid of the pacifier now. My son would not take a pacifier at all until one day my daughter found one in the toy box and gave it to him. After that he wanted it all day every day. we soon cut it down to nap time and bed time. but here he is, almost 3, and still ahs it for naptime and bedtime and if it falls out during the night, and he can't find it, he cries until I go in and get it for him. I have no idea how to stop using it, I am scared for when we finally decide to take it away for good. More sleepless nights to come. So if you can soothe him somehow other than with a pacifier i definitely recommend it.