Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

When my first two daughters had the need to suck, I would either have them continue to do non-nutritive sucking at the breast (which feels like light sucking in a fluttering kind of way, not the harder suck-swallow pattern). If they didn’t want to nurse, my husband or I would offer a clean finger to suck, turning the pad of the finger to the roof of the baby’s mouth. Neither of my first two would take a pacifier except to chew on it, hence our calling pacifiers “choo choos.” Neither of them ever learned to suck their thumbs.

Along comes baby number three, and lo and behold, she’s a thumb sucker (see above). On the one hand, I’m thrilled. The thumb is always available and it helps soothe her back to sleep. She remains in the 80-85th percentile for height and length, so she’s still getting plenty of milk and time at the breast. On the other hand, the thumb may not always be clean in the months to come, and I have heard bad things about thumb sucking and development of the mouth and positioning of the teeth. And what if this becomes a terribly hard habit to break?

So, I open the question up to the wise and more experienced readers out there. Is thumb sucking in the breastfed baby a good thing, bad thing, or both? Was it a hard habit to break? What has your experience been? Leave a comment and enlighten me please!

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3