Wandering hands
Elli143
member
DD has always loved to have her hands right in front of her face, starting in the womb and it hasn't ever stopped. It was prohibitive for breastfeeding (I often had to have another person help me pin her arms down just to get her to try to latch) and it's still a problem with bottle feeding and sleeping at 4.5 months. It's like her hands have to constantly be reaching out and touching things, even as she's falling asleep, and each new touching sensation seems to wake her up.
Lately it's gotten bad enough that I've had to swaddle her just to get her to eat - otherwise she sticks her hands in her mouth while the bottle is there or knocks the bottle out of her mouth and starts wailing because she doesn't get why she can't eat anymore. Same thing with the pacifier at night - she rips it out and then can't figure out why it's gone.
The past few days she has really resisted swaddling and it's about the time to stop swaddling her anyway, but I'm at a loss as to how to get her hands under control so she can eat and/or fall asleep. Has anyone else conquered this problem? Swaddling was my only cure but she's so unhappy in the swaddle lately that I don't know what to do.
Re: Wandering hands
Every ultrasound he had his hands by his face and he was sucking his hand as I was delivering him. He actually had a little blister on his hand from where he used to suck so I totally empathize with having a tactile baby
I was going to say small blanket, and or, letting her hold your fingers while she eats. It's how I keep DS happy, focused, and feeding.
She will sometimes suck on her fingers, but most of the time she just shoves her fingers in her mouth and licks her fist instead of comfort sucking so we still have to use a paci. That's one of the primary reasons why I'd like to stop swaddling though, I'd like for her to start learning to self-soothe with her fingers.
I'll have to look into buying a small blanket for her. I try to let her hold my fingers while I'm giving her a bottle but she's got a strong grip and often knocks the bottle out of her mouth by pulling my hand in one direction. I had some success holding her hands down to help her sleep when she was a newborn, so I might just have to go back to that option again.