About a month ago Michele and I decided to start weaning Rachel off of the pacifier. We figured as she neared two she was getting too old for one. Now, I know this is a sensitive topic for a lot of people and what is stated in this post is only my and my wife’s opinion. If you feel this is way too early, that is great; we all have opinions. This is what is working for us.
Now, with that stupid disclaimer out of the way, on to the post.
Normally, before we started limiting the pacifier, we would just hand her one whenever she didn’t have one. Sometimes she would go on a hunt and find four or five of them. It was always funny to see her try and figure out how to get all those in her mouth. She resorted to switching them out every so often.
We started off pretty simple, we just did not offer it. If she asked for it, we’d let her have it. This didn’t quite work; we only taught her she had to ask for it. Our next step was to hide them all and only let her have them in the crib. At first this was really rough and Michele and I took different routes.
Michele would try to reason with her, telling her she can have it as long as she wanted, but she had to stay in her crib. If she wanted out, she’d have to relinquish the suckie. This may have helped, but resulted in a lot of crying in the crib.
I took the direct approach. I just picked her up out, took her suckie and put it back in the crib. I would then carry her into the living room where I could distract her and she’d forget about it. Less crying, but she may not have known why we were doing it.
At first, Rachel would throw a huge fit when we would pull her out of the crib without her suckie. It was hard to not give it to her; especially when she said, “Suckie. Please.” But we kept with it and after just a short time you could tell she was thinking it over. She would usually cry a little still, but she was working it out in her head.
Now, when we go in to pick her up, she puts it down!
I think it’s gone pretty good so far. For how badly she always wanted one, she took to no suckie pretty easily. She would always go get one, if she saw it, even if she already had one (or more.) It was not uncommon to see her sitting with one (or two) suckie(s) in her mouth and three or four in her lap/hands.
The last step would be to try one bed time without the suckie and see how it goes. I’m not overly eager to try this. It’ll probably end in a long, tired fight through the night and a very cranky baby the next morning.We have some time, but we want to have sometime for Rachel to forget about them before our second child is born. We want Rachel to not need pacifiers so she won’t still the baby’s.
Cross your fingers!
