Pacifiers
There are lots of tried and true soothing mechanisms for babies and young children. All those s’s, right? Swaying, shushing, swaddling, and sucking. The majority of kids are primarily oral soothers, and that is where pacifiers come into play. Pacifiers have gotten a bad rap over the past 15ish years. But in practice, if your baby is programmed to be primarily an oral soother, they will figure out how to be that oral soother with or without a pacifier. And in the long run, it is harder to get a kiddo to stop sucking their thumb than it is to one day just get rid of the pacifier.
I always hear parents saying that after baby is born they can’t give the baby a pacifier due to nipple confusion, or they don’t want to start a bad habit for baby. Again if your kiddo wants to be an oral soother, they will find a way. Your baby is also way smarter than you give them credit for. They know after 2 seconds of sucking on a pacifier that nothing is coming out, and if they are really wanting to feed, they will spit that thing out and start crying. No problem. For babies who are primary oral soothers, I will often have families come in for the 2-week visit gleaming, telling me they have not given their kiddo a pacifier yet. But then when I ask how long feeds at the breast are going for, and they tell me, “Oh, they are a really good feeder. He will be at the breast for an hour or more. They will often fall asleep there during a feed.” And then I have to inform them, “Well, you are the pacifier then, aren’t you.” When your otherwise normal feeding baby is doing all of their nutritive sucking in the first 10-20 minutes, any time after that is pacifier time, and you are the human pacifier with super sore and chapped nipples and with an increased chance of thrush for both you and baby.
So again, don’t fear the pacifier if your baby really likes it.
Now the other thing no one tells you about pacifiers is that a kiddo picking a pacifier is very Goldilocks and the Three Bears; every kiddo has their preference. So don’t be discouraged that your kiddo doesn’t like the one you bought. There are sooooo many shapes and sizes. I always have families go to a baby store and buy one of each shape they can find. Flat nipple, round nipple, short, long, squishy, hard—one of each, and out of those your baby is sure to like one of them. If not, they are most likely not an oral-soothing kiddo, and we start working at finding which one of the other s’s they prefer.
Now when do we get rid of the pacifier? Well for me, it is gone in 2 stages. The first is reducing daytime use when we are starting to say our first words. If we have a kiddo using the pacifier all day, not just for naps or new situations for comfort, then it is tough to practice talking with one of those things in your mouth. Then the next stage is the end stage with no more pacifier at all. Most pediatricians and dentists want the pacifiers gone by 18 months of age or when the kiddo’s molars are making their way through the gums. This is usually the time when kids start getting enough teeth that if a kiddo is sucking on a pacifier all the time, the teeth will start moving around to make way for the pacifier. This can cause a lot of future orthodontic bills for their parents.
There are sooo many fun and clever methods for getting rid of pacifiers if you Google it or look at the message boards. Here are some of the ones I stick to:
The “What Pacifier?” Method - Kids love to drop things on the ground at the worst times/all the time. Who says you need to pick up everything every time? (I mean, you do need to pick up and throw out trash. Don’t get me wrong. But you don’t need to pick things up and immediately give them back.) If you are out and about and little Jenny drops her pacifier in a fit of rage or for whatever reason, we can just pretend we didn’t see it and go about our day. Over the course of the week, you will notice that you can’t find any of the pacifiers anywhere. And all those times they dropped them in a fit of rage and you didn’t immediately replace it, they will have slowly learned another way to soothe without the pacifier.
The “Scavenger Hunt” Method - With this strategy, you basically pick a day that you throw out all the pacifiers. And by throw out, I mean like in a gross dumpster or any trash receptacle that is so gross you won’t go crawling through it at 2 in the morning when little Johnny is screaming for a pacifier. Then when Johnny is looking for their pacifier for bedtime, you say you don’t know where it is, but let’s go look for it. You look all around the house with Johnny’s help, and then at the end of your search, he finds a new (or not played with for a long time) stuffed animal or something similar that is now the new nighttime buddy to help calm and soothe. Johnny will still whine about not having the pacifier; however with this method, you are set up for success with a new soothing mechanism that he will grow out of, and no one is to blame for not knowing where the pacifier is.
The “Cold Turkey” Method - Like it sounds, you just pick a day when the pacifiers will be gone. For the week leading up to that day, you let little Johnny know, “Okay on Friday, in 3 days, no more pacifier. Even if you cry or get mad, it is time to get rid of the pacifier.” Then on that day, boom! No more pacifier. (Again, throw them away somewhere that will not allow you to chicken out at 3 AM, find them, and give them back.) They will cry and whine for a couple of nights, but it’s clean and simple and life goes on.
And when it is gone, keep it gone! If you give it back due to tantrums or whining, then Johnny now knows If I just keep the whining going for long enough, I can have whatever I want even if those tall humans say no over and over again.