Well, her nightmares continued for a while, and after a few months she finally stopped waking up at night to throw tantrum. And yes, she did not suck her thumb to sleep at all since the day she ‘lost’ her favorite bolster cover. Butwe noticed that she still sucks her thumb unconsciously in the middle of the night, when she some how drift into shallow sleep, or if there was a slight noise that disturbed her sleep.
Since I was sleeping with her, I would talk loving words with her every time I see that she sucked her thumb unconsciously, and then pull out her thumb. We were continuously afraid that she would suck her thumb consciously again, so we avoid bringing up the thumb-sucking problem. There was nothing much we could do about her sucking her thumb unconsciously, so we just tried to give her as much expressions of love as possible to boost up her sense of security. Through the months, we noticed that the frequency of thumb sucking (while she was sleeping) reduced slowly. We also noticed that the frequency of thumb sucking is less when I was not working, like weekends or holidays.
This went on for a whole year until she turned 3, where her thumb-sucking problem reduced until almost nil.
