Bye Bye Pacifiers

EDIT: I added the missing footnotes. My bad.

The boys are on their way to mastering sippy cups. It’s been a couple days since I’ve had to resort to bottles, and they’re drinking entirely from hard spouted sippy cups.* Now that they don’t scream as much during mealtime, I’m ready to remove another crutch that will make them scream: Pacifiers.

Our kids were never addicted to pacifiers like those kids you see who have to remove their pacifiers to talk. In fact, Abbie quit using pacifiers several months before she started talking, which is the best possible spin I can put on her linguistic skills. She would occasionally take a pacifier when unhappy as a baby, but she’d usually spit it out and continue screaming until I inserted something better in her mouth, preferably a bottle though my finger worked as well. Today she likes pacifiers more than ever now that she’s learned to tear things apart with her teeth.

Abbie’s propensity for chewing on any pacifiers she sees is part of the reason we never encouraged the boys to take a pacifier. Another reason is the potential harm a pacifier can do to developing teeth and mouth muscles. Most importantly, the boys were usually happy so I never felt the need to try pacifiers because I would gladly pay for braces in 12 years in exchange for a little less screaming now. The only time we encouraged the boys to take pacifiers was during sleep times because the pacifier helps calm them to sleep. It reinforced our habit when we heard that pacifiers at sleep time could reduce the risk of SIDS; we figured the pacifiers would cancel out the blankets we’ve been giving them since four months of age, also because they helped them sleep.

As we approached the first birthday point when all pacifiers are supposed to go to the great garage sale in the sky, I noticed that taking them away could be tricky. Specifically I noticed that whenever a boy would scream before falling asleep, it was likely because he had dropped his pacifier on the floor.

A couple days ago I decided it was time to end the pacifiers, that the boys were old enough to learn to fall asleep on their own, and the transition would only get harder the longer I waited. Plus I couldn’t find where Tory’s pacifier rolled to after it fell out of his crib and we’re out of spares.**

The first nap went okay. They complained for several minutes, but it was more of the “why me?” complaining instead of the “I hate you all” complaining. Eventually they fell asleep and I celebrated the first step of our multi-step process, though they didn’t sleep as long as usual.

The next nap was tougher, partly because Abbie needed to take a nap in the same room at the same time, and partly because the boys were extra cranky from having not napped as long as usual that morning. I set the boys and Abbie down for their nap and left the room. Almost immediately the screaming began, and this was the “why have you forsaken me?” screaming. I ignored it, promising myself that I’d give it ten minutes.

Slowly the screaming subsided until, after ten minutes, I could hear nothing from their room except Abbie complaining. I figured Abbie was old enough to deal with the trauma of naptime, and went about my business, which at the time was taking a nap too.

A couple minutes later, Abbie’s complaining accelerated into screaming, and this time Ian joined her. I walked into their room to find Abbie naked and in Ian’s bed.*** Ian was angry about having been woken up, and Tory was starting to stir from the commotion.

I gave up at that point, clothed Abbie, fetched pacifiers, and left the room again. Ian took a couple minutes to calm back down even with pacifier access, and Abbie was still wound up from her naked adventures. Eventually Ian drifted to sleep and Abbie realized I meant business, and I heard nothing from their room again until Abbie woke up. After everyone woke up I confiscated the pacifiers, washed them, and put them into storage. Hopefully I’ll never see the pacifiers again until the boys are old enough to climb on the counters and swipe them from storage.

* Amy: Thanks for the recommendation, but we already have some of those sippy cups with the silicone spouts. I stopped using them because one of them leaked around the spout and soaked Tory. Apparently I need to do my shopping in Louisiana because the stores around here sell them for $1.74, not the $.99 you bought them for.
** I still don’t know where his pacifier is. When we move, we’re going to find enough pacifiers to entertain octuplets, plus a few left over for their older sister to destroy.
*** And I thought I had a few more years before I’d have to worry about Ian having a naked girl in his bed.