Friday, January 11, 2013

Goodbye Pacifier

We did it. It was easy. We should have done it sooner.

We knew that Cedric was addicted to his pacifier. While we were on vacation we noticed that he had become extremely addicted to his pacifier. It seemed that every time he would get upset the only solution was to hand him a pacifier. We noticed that he was unable to self soothe, and it was effecting everyone. It became quite the task for us to make sure all pacifiers were accounted for, which ones had been in the ocean, which ones had sand on them, and where they were in the middle of the night when he decided to throw one out of the crib and scream for a new one.

There in Koh Chang we declared that once we settled back in Delhi the days of the pacifier were through.

It took two days to build up the courage to follow through. We kept coming up with excuses like "he needs to settle in for a day" and "we want to be able to spend the day with him if he has problems" and "we don't want the first day without the pacifier to be with our nanny". All excuses to delay the inevitable.

Last Sunday Cedric woke up and his pacifier was gone. We gathered every pacifier in the house and put them in the safe... just in case we didn't have the strength.

We knew the big test would be the first nap. We put him down to sleep minus his pacifier, and he screamed bloody murder for thirty minutes. We held our ground... and apologized to Ezra and our neighbors for the noise, but we didn't give in. He went to sleep. The afternoon eating and playing went fine. When the afternoon nap rolled around we knew what to expect, but he only cried for ten minutes. The last test of the day would be going to bed for the night. He cried for thirty minutes again, but still slept through the night just fine.

Monday came and went as though nothing happened. He now goes right to sleep when we put him down.

That was it... one day, and now we are enjoying a pacifier free life!

Chad

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like our approach with toilet training! Congrats on this big achievement.

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  2. I discovered your blog a few days ago, and was really happy to read this post! My daughter is a day older than your sons, and my goal had been to pacifier wean around 1 year. But then in December we did two overseas trips -- South Africa for 10 days and the US for 10 -- and then 5 days after getting back we moved (from the Netherlands to Germany), so I decided to wait until after then. A month later, and so far the best I've done is pacifiers only at night and bedtime -- no pacifiers during the day...except when we're out running errands. I really need to just bite the bullet.

    Hmmm...she starts daycare again on Monday. Maybe I'll send her to daycare without them and let them deal with getting her to nap!

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