Thumbsuckers

So Becca is a thumbsucker, I don't mind because it comforts her or tells me when she is tired.

But i have noticed lately her poor thumb is bright red and has teeth marks! Is this common? I'll ask her pedi at their 2 year appointment - just curious what others have experienced.

 

She must really love her thumb! I have a thumbsucker (well, former thumbsucker)... I don't recall his thumb being teethmarked, but I'm sure it's normal if she's really sucking hard... I wouldn't worry about it, but keep in mind that eventually she'll have to give it up for dental reasons... Takoda has an appliance in his mouth to prevent him from sucking his thumb... We tried for a long time to try to get him to stop, but he was persistent... This is the only thing that has worked... He had it put in in June, and will probably have it in for another month or two... He has done surprisingly well with it...

 

Yes very common. My son sucked his for years and the worse is when a callous would appear and then he would suck it off. Many times it would be read and mushy and have teeth marks and look painful, but he would just suck away and it never seemed to bother him.

 

Yes, DD had this at one of her well-checks as well. It does go away without any treatment.

 

If it hurt, I think she'd stop.

We never had teeth marks but Trent's thumb developed a callous and that helped him quit. He didn't like the callous and was whining about it so I told him that it was from sucking his thumb and if he wanted it to go away, he'd have to stop. I was a little surprised when he suddenly did stop. I saw him a few times start to put his thumb in his mouth, look at the callous, and then decide to do something else.

 

I have two avid thumbsuckers -- and I wish the third one would have picked it up, because he's not as good at self-soothing. I've never seen teeth marks, but I've seen pretty nasty callouses and such.

Try lanolin -- like Lansinoh -- on her thumb. I have to use it every day on Nadia's thumb, still.