Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: pacifier

To pacify or not pacify

Yesterday my little peanut turned 4 months old. As I was taking copious amounts of pictures of her yesterday morning I asked myself where the heck the last 4 months went, it was as if we just brought her home from the hospital the other day! When hubs and I found out we were pregnant we did all we could to read and educate ourselves on babies, sleeping babies, crying babies, being parents, etc. We (or at least I) had this vision of the type of parents we would be. I imagined that we would be an “organic” household, be a pacifier free family, and be the family that is always on the go. And then reality set in and we brought our little bundle of joy home. While my hubs will tell you that I’ve always been a bit overbearing and anal about some things, I don't think I've ever been too over the top. Well that changed dramatically the moment little A was born. Most of the things I thought we would do went right out the window and I began to obsess over what to do, what was right, wrong and up and down.

First and foremost was the “pacifier free” zone. I had had this vision that our baby wouldn’t cry (yes, I imagined that we would have the perfect child, dont all parents say that?) and even if she did we wouldn’t need to use a pacifier. Hubs and I talked it over and he agreed. So needless to say once little A was born, I was rather irritated with how easily the nursing staff was to stick a pacifier in her mouth. I swear every time I turned around I found another one stuffed right in there. It hit an escalating point when on the third day, right before we were scheduled to be discharged, and we were having pictures taken of A. The photographer wanted to take some uber-sweet shots of our little one but we had to strategically swoop in and take the pacifier out, snap a few pictures and rush it back into her mouth before she started crying. I was rather irritated to say the least. I swore that we were going to “fix” this immediately.

Off we went as a new little family with the determination to let go of our pacifier fetish. The same day my in-laws arrived in Colorado (they drove all the way from the mid-west to meet their newest granddaughter!). And hence comes my first mom-zilla moment. I don’t know what day it was or what had happened but I remember vividly that A had started to fuss just a little and grandma was closest to her, grabbed the pacifier and immediately put it in A’s mouth. No, I don’t know why a pacifier was right next to her but it was. I must have turned and given my hubs the look of death because he immediately said to his mom that we were trying to not rely on the pacifier and took it out of A’s mouth. I’m hoping I was discreet enough to not glower at my husband and make it obvious to my mother-in-law but let’s be honest at that point I was light on sleep and I probably could have cared less who saw. To my mother-in-law whom I know will read this blog eventually… Sorry! I know I was and still am one of those crazy first time moms! After about a week of trying to not use the pacifier we gave up on that and said hey if we feel like we need to use it lets use it but let’s not obsess over it (I know what you are thinking… Me? Obsess? NEVER!). To this day we still use it at nap time and bed time and occasionally during a car ride. But we are lucky that our little one is truly a great baby and while she has her moments, the tough ones are few and far between and WHO CARES if we have to use the pacifier every so often right?