Baby C (not so much a baby anymore!) turns 4 and a half this week, and with it, we have hit the final baby transition milestone – ditching the pacifier.

There are tons of posts both on the blog and on the community boards about getting rid of pacifiers, so I considered not even writing this one, but decided to because 1) it has always given me comfort to hear from parents whose kids went through this transition much later than recommended (yay, validation!), and I’d like to do the same for others, and 2) because I feel like our experience was a bit unique, not only in what went through, but also in how it all ultimately worked out.

Baby C began taking a pacifier pretty early in her life, but she was using solely for sleep after 8 months or so. As I chronicled in my post on this subject over two years ago, we first attempted weaning her off right before her 2nd birthday. We failed, and then we failed over and over again for the following 2+ years. I’ve read probably every blog post and discussion on the subject of pacifiers, and have tried all the suggestions, but what always distinguished our experience from the others I read about is that Baby C never actually acknowledged the pacifier as a need. She would happily trade the pacifier in for a toy, or “give it to a baby,” and she never once asked for it when we just didn’t give it to her. But while her mind didn’t care about the paci, her body missed it. She would toss and turn and thrash around and wouldn’t be able to calm down at night without it. She would eventually fall asleep, mostly out of sheer exhaustion, but it would be hours later than usual, and she would sleep restlessly afterwards (even though she would rarely even keep the paci in her mouth after falling asleep). After a day or two of this, I would give up and give the paci back to her so that she could rest properly. I began to fear that eventually, Baby C would find her hands/thumbs to suck on, and having come from a long line of thumb suckers, I was even more concerned about breaking that habit than I was the pacifier one, so I gave it. I even asked my mom to help a few times – she has a calm baby whisperer talent unlike any I’d seen before, and a much stronger resolve, so I figured maybe she’d be able to find a way to do this, but even she said that we should just let it be.

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So, we let it be. We kept holding our breath at every dentist checkup and pediatrician checkup, waiting for that inevitable “you must deal with this asap” advice. Our pediatrician always tended to brush it off, much to our relief (again, yay validation!). When we discussed the pacifier matter at Baby C’s 4 year old checkup earlier this summer, our pediatrician said in jest “give it until her first sleepover, when someone makes fun of her for it, and it’ll disappear.” Our dentist only asked about the pacifier at the first checkup we had right before Baby C’s 2 year old birthday, noting that she has a narrow palate that could be affected by continued sucking, but every checkup we’ve had after that, it didn’t come up. So we kept occasionally trying to just not give it to her, with the same restless results, and then giving in and continuing to hope something will just happen that the paci will become a thing of the past.

Last week, we were staying at my parents’ for Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving night, my mom put Baby C to bed, came out of the bedroom, and showed me that the pacifier in her hand. Baby C had fallen asleep without it. I wrote it off to Baby C being super tired – it had been a big, active day, with lots of running around, and sensory stimulation from all the people and activities. We share a room at my parents’, so when Baby C started stirring in the wee morning hours, I gave her the pacifier, she settled down, and we moved on. The next night, my mom again put Baby C to bed without the pacifier. This time, kiddo was stirring around a fair amount, asking for us to stay with her, sing to her, lay next to her, etc. After 20 minutes of this, I had assumed she was going to need the paci pretty soon, but lo and behold, she fell asleep without it again, and not much later than I would have expected. I resolved this time around not to give her the pacifier if she were to stir at night, and it worked out just fine, though we were greeted with a 6:30 AM wakeup (much earlier than usual for Baby C) the next morning.

For the remainder of the holiday weekend, Baby C fell asleep without the pacifier, and slept solidly and normally without it. Her wakeups continued to be early, though, so I decided to see what would happen once we were back home before officially declaring victory on the pacifier. On weekends, Baby C tends to fall asleep faster and easier because she doesn’t nap, whereas on weekdays, her pre-K still has a mandatory nap time, and Baby C will nap at least a few times a week as a result, which leads to later bedtimes and longer time for her to settle down to sleep, but she’s also very difficult to rouse in the morning. Sunday night, she fell asleep with no paci, slept as she usually does, and come Monday morning, she was still asleep when we went to wake her for school. Same thing happened Monday night into Tuesday morning, and while Tuesday night was a bit rougher – Baby C was very hyperactive and had a very hard time settling down – there was enough evidence for me at this point (Baby C is/was a low-sleep-needs kid for years and that kind of hyperactivity can happen on nap days) to feel comfortable that it wasn’t a result of missing the pacifier. We are officially pacifier free!

One of my biggest takeaways from my parenting journey has been to be patient, because ultimately, things tend to work themselves out. I recognize that this approach isn’t for everyone and everyone should manage in ways that works for them, but I did want to write this post to note that in some cases (maybe even most cases), waiting does often pay off. We were very anxious about Baby C dropping her night feedings, and even though it took until she was 9 months old, it just happened. We were anxious about potty training, and it just happened. And we often talked about how Baby C was becoming such a big kid, except this darned pacifier, and it just happened that she was finally ready to be without it.