Tasty Fingers

When I was pregnant with Astrid, on one of the ultrasounds we could see that her hand was close to her mouth. The ultrasound technician pushed on my belly and said, "Go in! Go on, put your thumb in your mouth." I guess he wanted us to see something "cute" but I was horrified. It might look cute when a baby's doing it, but when the kid is 6 and still sucking his/her thumb and has big, painful blisters from it, it's no longer cute but a "bad habit" that's hard to break. I saw my cousin go through it and her parents even tried putting hot sauce on her thumb to keep her from doing it. My cousin got started sucking her thumb because her father put her thumb in her mouth when she was a baby for the "cute" factor and she just picked it up from there. I didn't want my baby to pick up a bad habit in the womb.

But Astrid is in that oral stage where she discovers the world by putting things in her mouth. It's a normal part of development that all babies go through.

We were in the car driving somewhere and Uwe asked, "What's that?" I had the same reaction a week earlier so I knew what the sound was. I answered, "It's Astrid sucking on her fingers." I'm always on an endless mission to get her to stop because sometimes her tiny fingers will go back a little too far and she'll gag herself and then mommy's left with a big mess to clean up. Plus it's just plain icky to have wet fingers and a wet face and all that gulping of air leads to gas. Don't I sound like a mom?

So for now I try to distract her with toys and bibs for her to suck on and spend my day wiping tiny wet fingers and a cute wet face.