Monday, May 24, 2010

3rd Mommy Mondays

Pacifier Weaning!
My son is almost 17 months old and we've been working on weaning him from the pacifier hard core the past month. Before that we were just trying to only give it to him during nap times. Now he's been doing great without it for naps; still working on completely getting rid of it for bedtime.

One thing I 've noticed that's really helped with the transition was giving him a stuffed animal and a pillow (I never wanted to give him a pillow because I was scared of the suffocation thing, but he's been doing great with it and the pillow has stayed in one spot the whole time). The pillow has helped more so maybe because he's seen us sleeping on pillows.

Our little setback: he got sick around Mother's Day. I hate when I'm weaning him and he gets sick. I just think it's unfair to take it away when he's sick.


He's slept through the night once without the pacifier last week. Last night he didn't quite sleep through the night; he did wake up once, but cried it out. He slept from 9pm-6am without it, but that's waking up early! He has gone more than 24 hours without it so I think I'm to that point that I'm going to throw it away. It's so hard for me to stay strong especially when he hasn't been sleeping through the night. I get way too grumpy some days and then I have no energy to get anything done around the house like today. I like to do things slowly, get both him and me used to it. I'm not good with cold turkey. But I've made up my mind that the pacifiers are gone- garbage! Hopefully this will end soon and I can sleep again so I can have enough energy to be pregnant again soon.

So any tips from you Mommies or Daddies? How long will it take for him to be used to it and get back to his normal sleeping schedule (His naps have been somewhat shorter and he hasn't slept through the night more than once without the pacifier)?

2 comments:

Michele said...

I'm here from Meetup Monday! I don't have much advice about the pacifier considering my 21 month old has yet to stop using hers. At her daycare they said that they just take it whenever she puts it down, so that she gets used to not having it. Taking it away directly leads to screaming. So we've tried that at home, but some days I'm kind of lax on it. She definitely insists on using it at night. A friend of mind couldn't get her son to quit until 2 1/2, but at least by then she was able to have a conversation with him and it was easier for him to quit. I'm not sure if any of that helps :) I do kind of think of it like thumb sucking though, as I've heard pediatricians say, you don't see a thirty year old sucking their thumb do you? Eventually they quit :)

Deb K said...

My granddaughter had her's until she was 3 years old! As when they tried to take it away from her she screamed at night.They finally just cut all the nipples on them and we told her they were Icky and then she didn't want them after that.

Sounds like you are doing a great job:-)

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