Pacifiers - yes or no?

I have a love/hate relationship with pacifiers. 

They can be amazing tools to provide newborns with the opportunity to meet their needs for non-nutritive sucking and also help reduce the risk of SIDS.

Fabulous. 

But what happens when the pacifier becomes a crutch and is no longer the tool it once was?

How do you know when a pacifier is a problem? 

Pacifiers become a problem when the baby needs the pacifier but cannot put it back in their mouths themselves. As I see it, once baby is old enough to put the soother back in (around 6 months old), you have three options:

1. The first is to buy a pacifier clip (with a string that is substantially shorter than your child’s neck to avoid strangulation) and clip it to their sleep sack or pajamas.

2. The second is to buy multiple pacifiers and sprinkle them around the crib so baby can always find one at night. (I did this with my third baby and it worked like a charm!)

3. The third option is to get rid of the pacifier.

While the third option may seem harsh, in most cases, it is the only way to get the baby to learn self-soothing techniques. 

But what is self-soothing? 

Everyone - adults and babies alike - go through periods of deep and lighter sleep followed by very brief periods of wakefulness.These wakefulness periods are so brief we may not even remember they happened when we wake up in the morning. For babies who do not know how to self-soothe (ie. those that rely on a pacifier to go back to sleep), they cannot complete the sleep cycle and return to sleep without the use of their pacifier. By removing the pacifier, you are giving the baby the opportunity to learn how to settle themselves to sleep without the use of a sleep prop. 

When the baby has self-soothing skills, he/she will no longer need you to put the pacifier back in once, twice…ten times a night! 

Is it time for you to get rid of your baby’s soother? Need help? Send me a note :)