I've been struggling for months on how to separate Little Man from his pacifier, which he loving calls his "nunie". With all of the chaos, there just hasn't been a time where I felt like I could add that stress to his life. Sometime this fall he realized that when I gave him the pacifier in the car, he would fall asleep. Since he hates going to sleep, he would throw the pacifier and tell me, "NO, nunie". About a week after we moved back into my parents house he started throwing it out of his crib at naptime, then at bedtime and now he won't take it at all. He's gotten rid of the pacifier all by himself, thanks to his stubborn, independent streak. (No need to comment on where that comes from.) I was so happy that this has gone fairly smoothly, but now I'm noticing the downside to the transition.
1. Volume Control - This is really only a problem at church, where the pacifier helped to keep the volume down while he's playing with his trains or cars. If he does take it at church now, he sticks it in the side of his mouth and talks around it.
2. Self-soothing - When Little Man would wake up in the middle of the night he would find his nunie and go back to sleep. If not, it was easy for me to go in, give him his nunie and tell him that it was still sleepy time. Most of the time that did the trick. Now the only way to get him back to sleep is to bring him into bed with us, something I HATE to do because then he's the only one who sleeps. Part of this could be our living situation as well. It stresses me out to know that he's waking up my mom when she gets up at 4am for work. But weeks of waking up at 3am and only sleeping off and on after that are starting to take their toll on all of us.
3. Fingers - He is now addicted to his fingers and they often in his mouth and ALWAYS chapped, no matter how much carmex or lansinoh I put on them. He doesn't show a preference as to any one finger or hand, sometimes getting four in there at a time. Sometimes a few fingers from either hand.
Any suggestions or helpful hints would be great.... Maybe I was more attached to that pacifier than he was.
3 comments:
I'm not ready to take away the "be-be" from Yaks yet. I do want to try to wean him off of it during the day as a soother, though. Could you do the same and have it just be a special night-night and church treat? As for the fingers, we started using a product (sold at drugstores) called THUM for Boo. It's concentrated Cayenne pepper and citruc acid that you apply to their fingernails and it tastes NASTY. It seems a little mean for someone as young as Little Man, but if you're really worried about it, you may want to give it a try. It's nice he's weaning himself, though!
That's how we started too. He's only been using it while he's sleeping for a few months now. I think he finally realized that the pacifier meant he was going to have to sleep and that was the end of it. I'm not so worried about the fingers (yet), especially with the baby coming. I figure we may even have to go back to the pacifier for a little while if he sees the baby with one. I'm more worried about the sleeping... teaching him how to self-soothe without the pacifier. So we can all get some sleep.
Our little guy is a finger-sucker. As I type, he's in the corner reading a book to himself--one hand on the book and one in his mouth.
Things I hate about it: it looks crummy, he picks up lots of germs and it's impossible to "take away."
Things I love about it: his fingers never get lost, we don't have to replace them and it calms him considerably.
Of course eventually I'll be worried about the dental affects, but since he just turned one, I figure there's not much we can do about it. Maybe in a few years, I'll be asking Amy where I can find that THUM product.
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