Self-soothing (fancy language for she sucks her thumb)
Morgan started sucking her thumb about a week ago. A couple of weeks ago, she started out generally slobbering all over her fist, then would suck whatever fingers managed to inadvertently make it into her mouth, and now reliably moves her thumb to her mouth to ‘self-sooth.’
Our pediatrician suggested that sucking her thumb to sooth herself can be better than a pacifer. At her age, if she were using a pacifer she wouldn’t be able to get it back in her mouth if it fell out. The likely outcome is that we’d have to get up multiple times in the night to put it back in her mouth. She, however, can find her thumb, no problem.
I actually thought nothing of this skill, as I kind of thought all kids would suck their thumbs. Talking to some of the other mothers at daycare today however, this seems not to be the case. So I thought maybe it was worth a post…