Before my child turned one, her thumb was in her mouth all the time. Every photo that we took had her thumb in her mouth. She wouldn’t even remove her thumb just for that few minutes when we wanted to take a photo. When she was about 2 to 3 months old, she was still wearing mittens, and her mittens would be all wet. We didn’t think too much then, as we thought it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. But by the time she was 9 months, it was getting so serious that we got really worried. Of course the advice our parents and some older generations gave was that we should pull her thumb out every time we see her sucking her thumb. So we tried to pull out her thumb, but it didn’t work. She would cry furiously if we pulled out her thumb. We started to explore ways remove her thumb sucking habit, and we embarked on our 2 year quest.
First, after talking to various people, we realized that the reason why our daughter sucked her thumb was because she slept alone in her room since birth, resulting in a sense of insecurity. Babies know more than we think they do, and they certainly know if they are alone or not - they can sense it. So when we leave them alone the whole night, they feel alone, unwanted and unloved. After knowing this fact, I felt so sorry for my little girl. There were times when she vomited and slept in her vomit the whole night without me realizing. Of course I went in every 3 hours to nurse her, but there were still things that happened which I didn’t know (for example if she vomited). This was because I went in without turning on the lights, and merely just nursed her and put her back into her cot (being half asleep myself).
Because this daughter was a light sleeper, allowing her to sleep alone in her own room was good for all of us. We slept well, and she slept well (so we thought). Otherwise, if she had slept with us, every movement that we made, or every tiny sound that we made would wake her up. But as it turned out, that caused her insecurity which we were ignorant about. So I felt really bad, and was hoping we could undo all the damages that we’ve done. So we started to let her sleep with us.
