Are you a user? Dummies not drugs. Pose this question to a drug addict or a sleep deprived new mom and you are likely to receive an equally violent, opinionated and emotionally charged response. Before I was a mom, if someone had told me what a big deal the whole dummy debate is amongst parents (and even those who aren’t parents) I would have retorted with “um … ever heard of AIDS, world hunger, violent deaths, war and drug addiction?”. Ashamedly, after seven short weeks as a parent, I have succumbed to the great dummy debate and formed an opinion. My philosophy as a mom is to trust my instinct – translation: if your gut tells you that using a dummy is the best option for your baby, then do it and visa versa. My own fear is that if I give my baba a dummy, it will become a crutch: an easy way for me to keep her pacified when it suits me. Basically, a gag. So I guess my stance is based on self-doubt. Irrespective, my baba is learning to self-soothe without the use of a dummy and that has made my decision not to use a dummy pretty easy.
‘The dummy war’ pits the ideology of non-users against that of users. See below some of the advantages and disadvantages of dummy use.
Advantages:
- Dummies can soothe a baby and thus help the baby settle to sleep.
- Sucking on a dummy can relieve pain (Pinelli et al 2002; Carbajal et al 2000), which is why parents often give their baby a dummy when they have colic.
- Using a dummy has been linked with helping to prevent cot death (Department of Health 2009).
- Sucking on a dummy can help some premature babies. If they are given a dummy to suck on before feeds, they may transfer more quickly from tube to bottle-feeding, and feed more effectively from a bottle (Pinelli and Symington 2005). Using a dummy can also result in shorter hospital stays for premature infants (Pinelli and Symington 2005).
Disadvantages:
- There is a proven link between prolonged dummy use and middle ear infections (PIER 2001). It’s thought that sucking on a dummy increases the chance of an infection back-tracking from the mouth into the Eustachian tube (the air-filled passage connecting the middle ear with the back of the throat) (Hanafin and Griffiths 2002).
- dummy use has been associated with a higher risk of symptoms such as vomiting, fever, diarrhoea, and colic (North et al 1999).
- Long-term dummy use can lead to dental problems – the British Dental Health Foundation (2005) discourages the use of dummies or thumb-sucking as both can result in problems as the teeth grow and develop, particularly if your child is still using this as a comfort when their permanent teeth are coming through (BDHF 2005)
- Using a dummy prevents babies from babbling, which is an important step in learning to talk, and discourages toddlers from chatting, which they need to do to develop their language skills (The National Literacy Trust, accessed 2008).
- Using a dummy on a daily basis interferes with breastfeeding – there is strong evidence that women who use pacifiers are more likely to wean their babies off the breast earlier than breastfeeding mothers who don’t use pacifiers on a daily basis (Benis 2002; Vogel et al 2001). Dummy use is linked to breastfeeding exclusively for a shorter amount of time and a lack of milk when the baby is one month old (Vogel et al 2001).
Source: Babycentre
Many of the points posed above will be debated by users and non-users. Although it is a good idea to do some research I don’t think that it is good to get caught up in opinions, theories and even facts. Do what’s best for you and your baby, without shame or guilt and without being bullied by research and advice givers.
