Pacifiers

They are the devil's advocate. Sure, they seem innocent enough, but inside them is a Pandora's box you can live to regret. Look how cute the baby is sucking on her pacifier, isn't she adorable? Ohhhh... what a cutie there. Oh yeah. She's adorable alright, no doubt. Wait till she can't get at that damned thing and see how adorable she gets.

We give our children pacifiers because the motion or action of sucking releases endorphins, theoretically. So, if they have a pacifier, they're cool. That's right, with almost no exception. The problem is, once you give em the pacifier and they get a taste of those endorphins, they get addicted to that rush (yeah, stole a line from an old hair band, sorry). More accurately, they lose sight of how to soothe themselves (if they ever had it); they rely on the pacifier to provide the soothing. It's not unlike booze really. We would rely on an external force of some sort to make us feel good, right? Well, pacifiers are the 90 proof for babies. Without the mind altering drunken side effects, that is (or really any side effects for that matter). But, just like anything, it can be overdone, and left to run unchecked, can run amok. YEAH BABY, I used the word amok!

Joy is now over a year old. Sometime around 6 months old, my wife and I ganged up on her and made her go cold turkey on the pacifiers. It was a few cranky nights, but at 6 months old, she was off the pacifier! Man I felt like a king. I felt I could do no wrong. I mean, who else but perfect parents would have already weened their 6 month old off pacifiers? Nobody. But. Us. Heh. Funny thing happens from anywhere to 8 to 12 months... Teeth. Suddenly my accomplishment wasn't really, so much. I don't know how it happened, but pacifiers got back into Joy's mouth. It probably seemed unnatural for a baby who was still crawling to NOT have a pacifier. My wife and I kind of point the finger of guilt back and forth, but I know it was her and she knows it was me. We're probably both right, and both wrong. Bottom line though, we have to endure the pacifier weening again. Or should we?

If you ask 10 "experts" on this subject, you'll get 12 answers. By the way, if you ask 10 "experts" just about anything about any subject, you'll get 12 answers (at least), so really spend a little time reading, a little time googling, but spend the most time thinking, and come to your own conclusions.

I spent a LOT of time thinking about this, from a strategic standpoint, and usually about timing. When would be a good time? 6 months worked out great, until teeth came along. So, now when do we do this? For the past 2 months or so, I've been plotting, and re-plotting, and re-re-plotting etc etc. I could not come up with a good strategy. Every time that came close to being a 'good time' turned out to be a bad time for any one of a million reasons (read: excuses), some mine, and some belonging to others, but all excuses. I mean, reasons.

Lately Joy has been having bad dreams. Her little brain is growing every day and learning every day and absorbing literally everything it can. When we have a demanding day, we gotta vent, right? She doesn't know how, so all she can do is process her day in her dreams. I feel for her, I really do. How can I tell her that something she saw today that scared the shit out of her is really some cute cuddly thing and is not to be feared? I can't. She reacts oddly to the oddest things. Case in point: her gramma bought a big stuffed pig that wears a santa hat, and when you squeeze it's paw, or hoof or whatever pigs have, it grunts out "Jungle Bells". The first time she saw it, and heard it, it scared her so much she fell over. Talk about tugging at your heart strings. As we all played with it, she got to enjoying it and even danced to the grunts. But there was an initial response that was fear and anxiety and probably a whole bunch of other bad stuff I will never know about until her therapist tells me. Her brain has to process all that, and that kind of stuff happens 50 times a day. Imagine how you would feel...

So we're having bad dreams. She needs a pacifier to fall asleep, and sometimes throughout the night, when she wakes, she can find it again, and scoop in into her mouth and mom and dad get to sleep all night. That's been the exception rather than the norm lately. Usually what happened is, she would push it out of the crib and on to the floor while sleeping, so when she awoke, she couldn't find it, and started to cry. I can't even count how many times we've had to get up and "re-plug" as we call it. Last night, she was having bad dreams, and having a really rough night (read: nobody got any sleep). I would get up, re-plug, change diaper, and my wife would get up, change diaper, re-plug, etc etc. We would do this several times before realizing the other was doing it too. Joy got to the point where she was so upset, only holding her tightly and rocking her would calm her down. Even the pacifier didn't work. She pulled it out of her own mouth and threw it on the floor herself!

So, being the opportunist I am, I took the opportunity to un-pacify that girl.Last night, I took a pair of scissors and snipped off the very end of one of her pacifiers (I read about that method on some baby site), after she threw it on the floor. I had rocking duty, so I held her tightly to me, and rocked, and rocked, and rocked until she was about to fall asleep. Notice she still does not have the pacifier. I put her in her crib, and placed the modified pacifier within her reach. She grabbed it and stuffed it into her mouth. She was immediately so pissed off I thought she would jump out of that crib and yell at me. But about 15 maybe 20 minutes later, after a good bit of fussing, and me wanting to kill myself for torturing my child, she fell asleep. It was 4:00 am. I went to bed.

That was last night, and aside from about 30 minutes or less of having to pacify her because we were all out at a concert today, and she was well into 'nap time', we have been without. Bedtime tonight was interesting. She usually goes to bed at 6:30, and tonight she didn't until close to 8:00. Other than the pacifier, our night time routine was the same. She needed a little rocking to fall asleep, and I waited in her room with her until she did (I won't do that for very much longer), but it's now a little past 10, and she's still sleeping quietly. I'm so damn exhausted I can't clearly see the keys on my keyboard, and I have to think how to type. I'm going to bed and sleep while I can. I'll report more in the coming days.