It Has to Stop

Heather has been sucking her thumb since we took away her pacifier at 4 months old. She had reached the point where she could pull out the binky, but couldn't put it back in. Bill and I didn't like the pacifier to start with and now I was getting up in the middle of the night to feed Heather AND getting up more times to put her binky back in her mouth. We quickly decided we weren't going to wait around for 2-3 months for Heather to figure out how to search for the binky and put it back in her mouth to suck herself back to sleep. We basically stopped cold turkey.

Heather quickly found her thumb and we've all slept pretty well for the last 4 years.

Her teeth have not made out as well.

It was obvious when she went to the dentist at 2 1/2 years that her teeth were starting to shift due to thumb sucking. It was obvious at 3 years. It is VERY obvious now at 4 years. We frequently tell Heather to take her thumb out of her mouth. She seems most interested in her thumb when she's bored or tired. And, when she goes to bed, she always sucks her thumb. (She also holds on to her belly button at the same time, which is just down right gross! The upside to getting rid of the thumb is getting rid of the belly button hold too. The two activities seem to go together.)

The dentist told us last week if she doesn't stop sucking in the next 3-6 months, she's going to need a device put in to keep her thumb out. I did some quick research and found that what they would probably put in would be a bar in the back of her top teeth. Since it would have to be attached like braces to the two back molars, we now have many reasons to stop:
* It's obviously hurting her teeth.
* The belly button hold is awful!
* The device is bound to cost money.
* It wouldn't surprise me if they needed to put Heather out to attach the brackets to the back teeth.
* It would probably make Heather unhappy.

So, this week has been spent trying to get Heather to stop sucking her thumb. We have told her how it's hurting her teeth, we have told her the device probably doesn't feel very good and we have put bandaids on both thumbs at night. (We actually found months ago that if she is denied access to the preferred thumb, she'll move to the other one!) Kailey is even in on the act!:
"No mouth, Heder!" (or something very similar to that).

We have also gotten nail bitter/thumb sucking paint to cover her thumb with during the day instead of limiting her thumb motion with bandaids (since she needs her thumbs to do stuff... it's what separates us from other animals, isn't it?!). It's made with cayenne pepper. I haven't seen a reaction from her yet, but I don't think she likes it. But, this is also the same girl who used to eat the pepper flakes from the shaker bottles at pizza places when she was little!

We'll keep everyone updated on this progress. Or, we'll tell you when we are starting to take up a collection for dental work!