Thumb Sucking in the Breastfed Baby (Mom-to-Mom #16)
November 3, 2008 by Angela White, J.D., breastfeeding counselor
Filed under Mom-to-Mom, breastfeeding
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!
That photo is adorable! I think the worst thing you could do would be to worry about this. Your daughter is healthy and beautiful, and apparently she has a high sucking need. She has found her thumb, and that gives you a nice break. Take it! Because really, if you DID decide this was a problem, what on earth would you do about it? Try to keep the thumb out of her mouth? I don’t THINK so! Just look at it as a need she has, be proud of her for fulfilling it herself; if she’s still sucking her thumb in a few years (which she most likely will not be), you guys can negotiate a reasonable plan for avoiding orthodontia. In the meantime, I bet you have lots of better things to focus on!
Best,
Carrie
My younger daughter sucked her thumb until she got her first teeth at 4 months. The sharp little teeth cut into her thumb (yes, they broke skin) and that was the end of the thumb sucking.
My advice? Don’t worry about it now!
PS-They really look so sweet when they’re sucking a thumb, don’t they?
I breastfed my now 10-year-old daughter until she was 1. THis same daughter, still sucks her thumb. Mostly it is when she is sleeping or sick. I cannot bear to tell her to stop. The orthdontist has told her that her thumb sucking days are numbered. She has tried to stop on her own because she sees this as a ‘baby’ problem. We have tried covering her thumb with a band-aid and we also bought some sort of large plastic thumb contraption. Neither worked. She says that she gets a headache when she does not suck her thumb. Either way, I wouldn’t change it for the world. We are trying to find an alternative to sucking her thumb. Until then, we do the best we can and postpone the next orthodontist appoointment as long as possible.
My 2 1/2 year old daughter who I just recently weaned still sucks her finger (index finger) she found it in the womb and continued on as early as she found her fingers. She still currently sucks her finger and I have found it isn’t a problem at all she is very articulate and tends to now only suck it while going to sleep and when super tired. It wasn’t a problem with nursing except that I had to be more vigilant when it came to making sure she was eating often enough and I found it extremely useful when in the car and places like the grocery store because she could self soothe. I remember at your daughters age I was very worried but now I just look at it as something that she needed. Enjoy it and think about what a great skill she developing all on her own.
We thought our daughter would be a thumb sucker, but she definitely prefers “noodling” at the breast rather than anything else. Pacifiers are also choo-choos to her.
I was a thumb-sucking breastfed baby however. I did have to have braces, but not solely because of thumb sucking. I have a misshapen thumb, probably because I sucked my thumb in the womb. I finally quit the “habit” when I was 8 and my parents PAID me to quit. Nothing else deterred me – the yucky nail stuff, hot pepper sauce, a bandage.
I say don’t worry about it. She’ll be fine.
My now-almost-5-yr-old daughter sucked her thumb from the time she was about 2 months old until she was 4 and a half. I had absolutely no trouble breastfeeding her. She was very, very oral, mouthing toys, etc. She weaned herself at 17 months when I was about 3 months pregnant with my second daughter. She stopped sucking out of the clear blue at around 4 and a half years. I never said anything to her about stopping sucking her thumb. I believed that trying to get her to stop would just make her suck it all the more! I have no idea what made her stop, except that it happened while my mom watched the girls while we went on our first “alone” vacation. My mom said she never told her to stop, so maybe it was just her way of “growing up” while we were gone.
My breastfed baby sucked her thumb in the womb and from birth on. My advice is when she hits about 2 1/2 or 3 and can understand fairly well, to ban thumb sucking to nap time and night time only. That way, she won’t always have her thumb in her mouth, and she won’t get made fun of by her peers in school. But I wouldn’t make a big deal out of the thumb sucking issue in general. My four year old only occasionally sucks her thumb now, she is gradually outgrowing it.
Well, my daughter was not a thumbsucker. She is a paci baby. But I was a formula fed thumbsucker, and I was forced to quit in elementary school. My dentist put this horrible contraption in my mouth, similar to a retainer, but that went in the top of my mouth and had spikes on it. The spikes stuck my thumb whenever I tried to suck, but also stuck in my tongue, and got food caught in them all the time. (It wasn’t removable like a retainer) It made it very hard to speak and eventually I just stopped thumbsucking because I was desperate to get horrible thing out of my mouth. I never needed braces or any orthodontics when I got older. My daughter is limited in her paci use to bedtimes. Although, if she sees one, it goes in her mouth, even if she’s yanking it out of the mouth of another baby! That said, I wouldn’t worry too much. If she’s maintaining/gaining weight well, no worries. Cross that bridge when you come to it.
As a breastfed baby born in the 70s when it was not nearly so common (i nursed for about 1 yr) and as a child I was a proud thumb sucker! That, along with my blankie, brought me so much comfort growing up I cannot begin to tell you–and I recall it vividly. When it was time to give up thumb sucking, my mother struggled with whether or not she would have to take away blankie too (of course they went together!) and it wasn’t necessary to remove both comfort objects; she asked me and I told her NO! I promised to stop thumb sucking but would not give up the blanket. I did have braces, but not buck teeth, and I would probably have had the braces anyhow. To this day, I still have my blanket (which I’m sure most people probably think is super weird) and it continues to bring me comfort (and joy).
My son doesn’t suck his thumb, though I wish he would!!! He does love the boob, though. I think I turned out just fine, and honestly, if I were you, I would look at the thumb sucking as a bonus and a blessing.
In addition, as she gets older, I think that you can teach your daughter guidelines for thumbsucking: be it place or time appropriateness or in the context of an activity / what’s _on_ her hand/thumb before she puts it in her mouth.
One of my daughters sucked her index and middle fingers in utero (born with two little fingernail scratch marks on either side of her nose) and continued to suck those same two fingers a long time. She sucked only at sleep time. When she was about 3 we gently talked about her sucking less which she did, but continued until she was about 7. I never made a big deal of it. She didn’t need orthodontia for it but I was told thumbs are harder on the mouth structure. Don’t know if that is true or not. Some babies seem to need to suck more than others and it seemed natural to me to let her do so. She was breast fed. My first rejected a pacifier as a newborn, never used one, never sucked her fingers or thumb and was also breast fed. I think babies choose for what meets their needs. When she can understand quite well, you can begin to talk to her about it with gently suggestions.Your baby is a beautiful baby and seems content. Can’t ask for much more.
Thanks for the affirmation everyone! Seems like it’s unanimous and I will definitely just go with what Nicole wants. She settled herself the other day and I rejoiced in her thumb sucking! I appreciate the reassurance.
None of my babies sucked their thumbs, but sometimes I wished they had, especially on car rides when they cried until I could pull over.
If they do it naturally, why not?
My 3 month old is fully breastfed and also sucks on his thumb. I’m really glad I read all of these comments because I was starting to freak thinking it was a bad thing for him. I was a bottle and breastfed baby myself, I used a pacifier until elementary (it was the most soothing feeling in the world!). I also got braces but the orthodontist said there are many other reasons why teeth get separated other than thumb or pacifier sucking. Your baby is absolutely gorgeous. My little one sucks on his thumb just like that
Sigmund Freud noticed the displacement of the emotional fixation from the nipple to the thumb. In any other mammal a premature imprint (thumbsucking in utero and a likely postpartum fix on the thumb) would not be viable without human intervention. Unfortunately, being male, Freud saw it as a sucking need. A better explanation is that sucking is used to form the first emotional relationship on part of the mother (theory of imprinting) and when the imprint fixes on some object (supernormal stimulus feature) other than the biological nipple, that object is referred to as a decoy. If it were a sucking need then babies would suck on any object to satisfy a need but this is not the case – try changing the baby’s oral tactile imprinted sucking object and you will only get emotional distress and cortisol levels rising. Elsie Mobbs, RN RM BScDipEd MStudPsychol MA PhD(Syd) IBCLC