They Never Used Pacifiers or So We Believed

Our kids never used Pacifiers.  You would think that by that statement we really accomplished something, at least that is what I thought.  Until I realized, Yes they don't use pacifiers but they do pacify themselves with something.

For M it was her puppies.  My younger sister gave M this sweet puppy within the first year of her life.  We affectionately put this puppy, that will be named "Lady" later, into her crib.  Well I guess somewhere she started to pacify herself with her tail.

With the fear of losing her puppy we added more to our family.  Just like a pacifier we did not want to be caught without one of her puppies.

 It continued on until a month before her 5th birthday.  We realized she would not stop until these puppies were gone.  Just like a "pacifier" we had to throw them away.  She was very attached to these puppies.  I could not see taking away her best buddies and companions. 

So one day we talked about growing up and how she was going to go to Kindergarten.  A few weeks later she agreed to cut the puppies tails off.  So we found all of them and together cut them all off.

Then together we sewed them all back together.  Unfortunately the relationship and the amount of time played with these puppies dramatically changed once they had no tails.  It was kind of sad but great to see that she would not be in High School using the puppies to pacify herself.

Now to E.

When he was born.  He was also not hooked to a pacifier.  I do remember in NICU he actually took the hospital pacifier better then the cute ones I bought.  Being the vain Mom that I was kept pushing my pacifier on him.  In the end he just did not want it.  I was glad and disappointed all at the same time.  

When E was a baby he would sometimes spit up in the crib.  Probably not the best thing but somewhere in there Chad started putting E to bed with a burp cloth behind his head  (which was actually a cloth diaper my Mom doctored up with cute fabric).  Then as with with M, E started using the burp cloth as a pacifier.  I looked through all my pictures and these are the only ones I can find of him.  Unlike M where her dogs are in every picture with E his burp cloths are no where to be found.  Vain is what I call that. 

With M it was easier to just to cut off the tails.  Though with the burp cloth it has been a whole different story.  E started pulling the dirty ones out of the laundry and using those.  So what did Chad do?  Chad took half of the disgusting looking ones and threw them away.  

We soon realized he was still pulling them out of the laundry.  So we had hand (my hand that I pretend to make talk) tell E that it was disgusting to use yucky burp cloths.  We started taking each burp cloth after he woke up and having "hand" tell him it was yucky.

Now when I come into a room and he has a (yucky) burp cloth he tells me,  "Mom here, this is yucky, I don't want it."   We feel like this is a big step.  Hand keeps telling E that one day he will not use them at naps and then later no more at bed time.  E tells hand okay and listens to him.  We now stick the burp cloths in a cupboard above the washing machine after each bedtime and each nap.    We were very pleased when he went to my older sisters home for an unexpected going to sleep and she offered E a burp cloth from her baby and E turned her down saying, "Oh, it's okay that is her burp cloth".  

So yes, our kids never used real pacifiers.

We will continue to work on weaning E from his burp cloths.  Hopefully he is not scarred for life with "Hand" but E listens to "Hand" a lot better than his parents in regards to his burp cloths.