Pacifier while breastfeeding... Yes or no?

thenoune

What is everyone doing about pacifiers? My boy is almost 4 weeks now and we are thinking about letting him have a pacifier when he sleeps. We have introduced a bottle and he's taking that well, and still breastfeeding without issues.

He has started comforting himself by sucking his thumb and I feel like having him use a pacifier would be better than letting him get into the thumb sucking habit. What does everyone think? 

lalala2004

It’s totally fine. You may have heard of “nipple confusion” but that’s not really a thing. There is bottle preference, generally from not pace bottle feeding, but a pacifier won’t mess with that. If your supply is established and you’re feeding on demand, using a paci for comfort sucking is just fine. I haven’t had luck with either of my kids yet, so good luck to you!

lalala2004

Oh, as far as the thumb thing, I get where you’re coming from, but if they are dependent on the paci it can fall out or get lost, so the thumb never goes anywhere (hopefully )

7425cait

If you could avoid thumb sucking, I would. My 3 yo daughter sucks her thumb all the time, and her palette is completely messed up and affects her speech. She also just had an infection from it. We've been trying to break her of it for over a year. The next step is to use an actual barrier like thing guard or mavala stop. She used a pacifier too, but like @lalala2004 said, the thumb doesn't go anywhere, so when the pacifier would fall out, she would just use her thumb. We are trying to only do a pacifier with LO. 

delujm0

Both my girls refused pacifiers and thumb sucked instead.  DD1 sucked her thumb ALL THE TIME but then suddenly quit cold turkey right after she turned 2.  DD2 only sucks her thumb when she's soothing herself to sleep.  She's 15 months now so we'll see how long it lasts, but since she only does it for short amounts of time I'm not as worried about it.  So far this baby has also rejected a pacifier, so he might wind up sucking his thumb as well, that remains to be seen.