😴Nat’s sleep story #2 😴
This next part of the story is about my second son. Born 3 weeks before the very first lockdown. This actually worked in our favour! Although we had a 20 month old, we had nowhere to be or anyone to see. I worked hard from the start making sure I put him down when he was tired rather than keeping him awake to be dragged to different places and by 8 weeks he was sleeping through the night!! Apart from me being more ‘on it’ ensuring he was getting the sleep he needed, the main difference between my first and second son was that my second born sucked his thumb!!!
Anytime he was tired he would put his thumb in and fall asleep. He was an absolute dream sleeper!
However, he was 100% dependent on his thumb as a comforter. Even in nursery he would sit and cuddle the nursery nurses and suck his thumb rather than playing 🤦🏽♀️ Would this be a problem in the long run? Was his great sleep too good to be true?
We visited the dentist when he was 2 as part of a routine check up and asked about his thumb sucking. His teeth were somewhat crooked due to the thumb sucking. The dentist said that as long as he stopped sucking his thumb by the time he was 3, his adult teeth would be ok.
We panicked. The only way he knew how to fall asleep was by sucking his thumb. It was his ‘comfort blanket’.
Our son had a good understanding in general so we put a plaster on his thumb, told him he couldn’t suck it and he literally didn’t suck it anymore and the rest is history! We were shocked at how easy it was! Especially as everyone told us ‘you can take away a dummy but not his thumb’.
At 5 years old his teeth are perfect!
Looking back, his only real sleep ‘challenge’ as a baby was that he would wake at 5.30am singing!! He would sing every nursery rhyme he knew. He was never upset, we just didn’t get a lie in! Even now, at 5 years old, he’s a performer 😅
He did have random times where he would wake crying in the night and infact needed his tonsils out too! His tonsils were HUGE (grade 4 – touching!) and therefore obstructive sleep apnoea was waking him up. Once his tonsils came out, he was sleeping through.
Overall my second son had quite an easy sleep journey. I think it was partly covid and being able to get into a routine early, part me knowing more about sleep and not wanting a repeat of round 1 and partly him! He was always quite a chilled out baby! Proof that you never get 2 children the same!
