# Sucking hands wakes herself up at night



## anatoliy24 (Jul 27, 2004)

I have a 10 week old baby whose sleep at night has gotten worse since she's found her hands. Before when she was about 7 weeks old, she woke up usually 3-4 times per night (always to nurse), and would go a stretch as long as 5 hours! Now, however, she still wakes up those 3 times to nurse PLUS another 3-4 times because she's sucking her hands and cooing. When she's sucking her hands, I reswaddle her and she goes back to sleep usually within minutes without fussing, so I know she's not hungry. Anyway, as a result, we're up twice as much...6-8 times per night and there goes that 5 hour stretch.

There are two problems with this: her sleep and our sleep. Both are suffering tremendously because of it. We try to swaddle her to keep her hands in, and that helps her fall asleep after a couple tries, but she's back up because she can wiggle herself back out. The sucking of the hands (it wakes her up and us up) really disrupts the long sleep stretches that are needed for restful sleep.

Any suggestions on how to overcome this?


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## jocmtl (Nov 13, 2002)

Hi there,

Our ds did the same thing. He'd either suck his hands or his fingers would crawl all over his face and he'd wake up.

This is going to sound insane, but here's what we did: We bought a special swaddling blanket made of cotton jersey that had a velcro fastener. The velcro, however, wasn't in the right spot and the swaddle would be too loose. So we taped it shut with masking tape!







: My mom nearly fainted when she saw it ("oh, poor baby!"). But it totally worked. Because the blanket was a jersey knit, it had enough give for him to move around in, but the tape kept the swaddle nice and taught. We had this whole operation set up when we'd be putting him to sleep: swaddle, check; masking tape, check. :LOL He slept beautifully (six months later and out of the swaddle's another story, however....







)

We found the blanket at some baby store, but if you can't find it, any knit flat sheet will do. You can always cut it down to size if you need. The one we used was this one, I think, but there are others out there:

http://www.babyslumber.com/swaddlingblankets.html#amb

Good luck!


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## RobynFSU (Jul 15, 2005)

My dd did this until she figured out how to get just her thumb in her mouth. It took her a few weeks, but now she goes straight for the thumb when she's tired and has finished nursing. At first I HATED that she sucks her thumb, but she does it to help herself settle and fall asleep or fall back asleep in the night.


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## jerawo (Jan 28, 2003)

We swaddle DS everytime he sleeps, so this hasn't been an issue for us. I have noticed in the past 2 weeks, how much he loves to suck his fists and his finger (hello, teeth!) and he does it all the time. I imagine if we didn't swaddle him, he'd be trying to suck them while asleep too.

As for a swaddle, DS just outgrew a normal swaddling blanket and the miracle blanket, so I bought 60 inch piece of cotten knit - it's working great and he's not going to outgrow it anytime soon.


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