The Illusive Pacifier | Why I Chose to Use One

The illusive pacifier in its natural habitat likes to hide in dark corners and camouflage itself to its surroundings.

But seriously where the hell do all the pacifiers go?? I think we own at least 15 of them and I currently only know where 3 are at this exact moment.

And then all of a sudden they all seem to reappear at once, turning up everywhere I go!  Who else has this phenomenon happened to?!?

TO PACIFIER OR NOT TO PACIFIER

Before my son was born I had seen a lot of information  discussing why you shouldn’t start your child with the pacifier- become too dependent, thumb is easier to wean, teeth issues down the road and things like that.  I had decided to try to go sans the pacifier for as long as possible.   I very quickly backed out of this conviction the second night home from the hospital during a 3 a.m. diaper change.  My husband and I were both once again trying to wrangle our screaming newborn out of his dirty diaper and into the new one, his screams piercing our overtired ears.  On a whim, I pulled out one of the pacifiers sitting in the drawer beneath the changing table and popped it in his mouth.

Silence.

We both let out a sigh we hadn’t even realized we were holding as his little body relaxed and he became somewhat peaceful.  That was the day my son started using the pacifier and still does at 8 months old.  At this point, it is really only needed to get him to sleep but he will still use it throughout the night at times too.   And guess what- he’s still okay!

YOUR CHOICE

I can’t tell you how many times I was grateful to be able to pop a pacifier into his mouth when he gets cranky, either before bed our while we were out in public or just whenever.  This is not an advocate piece for the use of pacifiers, in fact if your child doesn’t need it then that’s great! But what I do want to say is if you do end up using a pacifier because it helps your child soothe, then that’s okay too.  Sometimes I think people take these little topics and blow them way out of proportion.  I hate to break it to you but people have been raising babies for thousands of years, we aren’t the first ones and they didn’t have pacifiers.

I can’t tell you how many times I have had people tell me how much they wished their child would have taken a pacifier but instead were fussy.  So I choose to be grateful that I can plug up the crying and give both of us a little peace.  It is my personal opinion that everyone should do for their baby what works best and not care for one second how other’s feel about the topic.  Below are the Mam and Avent ones we used and the soothies are also a great option!