A Finger-licking Good Time!

Two weeks ago, Julien discovered the joy of making bubbles with his saliva and on top of that, he has started to have a happy stream trickling down his chin to his clothes, so, now, a bib has become an essential item of clothing.

Last week, he has gone on to suck his hands - there is always one hand in his mouth at any one time. And he sucks so loud too! It is incredible, the noise he makes!

Right now, all his sleepsuits have integrated mittens and if he is not in a sleepsuit, he is wearing mittens. We are still having his hands covered up, because he tends to give himself scratches, no matter how closely I cut his nails or how much I file them. Which means my darling boy is chewing cloth the whole time these days. And honestly, that's horrible.

Because he always has wet "hands", so to speak. And you don't know what kind of germs and eecky stuff the cloth picks up, once wet. Plus it is not the most exciting experience in the world to have a wet soggy hand touching you everytime you pick him up, feed him etc.  And not to mention the eecky smell...

So, I understand now why some of my girlfrens offer their hands and fingers to their babies to suck instead. But I am not really sure that this is the best solution.  I noticed that my girlfrens also tend to let their babies go "mittenless", so I am curious and asked if the babies not scratch themselves. And yes, they do, but the scratches heal so fast.

And hand sucking is supposed to be positive - it is a way for the babies to self-soothe themselves and it is true: Julien gradually stops crying once he gets to suck his hand and he falls asleep doing that sometimes too. And for this purpose alone, the hand beats the dummy hands-down, since it doesn't fall off and requires picking up... which means no wailing baby if he is reliant on it!  If you have an irritable baby, anything that helps to soothe the baby is a winner with the mummy! And you will have one, when they start teething and sucking hands does seem to soothe their itchy gums.

But more importantly, babies start sucking hands at this stage, because it is apparently part of their exploration of their hands, now that they discover they have hands. And that makes me worried if I keep them hidden in the mittens, Julien will miss out on this developmental stage. So, we are cautiously letting those hands out of the mittens and hoping that Jules will not scratch himself so often.  And I have to say, now that the hands are out, I am reminded again of how long and beautiful they are. Hopefully, Julien will finish this hand-sucking phase soon. I dread thinking of how to wean him off it!