Breaking The Habit

Of Thumbsucking.... My poor little girl, she takes after her mother in so many ways, one of them being the self soothing dependency she learned as a 2 week old infant. After waking up night after night in the first week we brought her home looking for her paci/binky or whatever you choose to call it, Kara learned a much easier way to soothe herself, her left thumb! Then, other than the occasional midnight feeding, we were never woken up in the middle of the night again to find her sucking device for her. Kara has carried this habit with her through the last 20 months of her life. Along the way she has grown very attached to a lovey called "Mr Bunny" whom she strictly associates with her left thumb. The good thing about this though was that she only seemed to need these 2 companions when falling asleep. That is why to my surprise a couple months ago when she developed a blister on her thumb and we took her to the doctor to have it drained and they informed us it was a staph infection I was completely astonished. Its not like she was one of those kids who went around sucking her thumb all day long, it was only at night and nap time! Luckily the 10 day course of antibiotic killed the infection and we forgot about it from that point forward. I should say that during that 10 days we were told to wrap her thumb up with gauze to prevent her from sucking it. HA! Yeah, after the first day of that the child figured out how to unwrap all of the medical tape and gauze and find her thumb. We then got mean and put a mitten on her hand and wrapped medical tape around that all the way up her arm. She did not like it, but after the 10 days, she went right back to the thumb.
Well, just this past week we had to get meaner. Kara developed another infection, and this time, her doctor told me it was time to break the habit. (Yeah ok doc, got any good suggestions?) Well she didn't, but I found one on-line. It is called "The Thumbguard."



We decided to go with this, because honestly the thought of wrapping our childs hand in a wool mitten with rolls of medical tape just doesn't sound so good, especially when the warm days of spring are around the corner! So, I ordered "the device." The first 24 hours was pure hell! It took my once easy to put down child, over an hour to fall asleep, and then I heard her wake up several times in the night wimpering. Then, to top it all off, she was up at the crack of dawn, wailing, and would not be coaxed back to sleep! My little baby who once used to lie happily in her crib talking to her lovey and sucking her thumb until we came in to get her just wasn't having it any other way! Nap times are harder now too, I have to go in several times to lay her back down before she falls asleep, and while she used to wake up and sometimes sit and play, thats it, when she's up she's up now! But I will take all of this over the infections she seems to attract so easily.

And I'm hoping in the long run she'll thank me. Not like her mother who at the age of 15 was still sucking her thumb at night! It took my younger sister getting braces and me seeing how pretty her new smile was for me to coerce myself into quitting the habit, and let me tell you, it was NOT easy! But I am now the proud owner of a straight smile thankyouverymuch!

Thumbs Up Baby!