Bye Bye Binky

The time has come for Claire to say good-bye to her binky.

(aka: the pacifier, the paci, the plug, etc.)

We took away Kate's right after her 1st birthday because she got a cold & couldn't breathe through her nose. As a first time mom, I was nervous that she wouldn't be able to breathe at night if she had her pacifier in her mouth. She was miserable with her cold & runny nose, so I decided to get rid of the pacifier at the same time.
(Wow, looking back, that makes me seem really harsh & not caring)

Anyways, Kate didn't even mind that we took her pacifier away & it was a really easy transition. At that point, we had only been allowing her to have her pacifier in her crib during naps & nighttime. I liked getting rid of her pacifier at such an early age because she wasn't really attached to it. It was not a big deal when we took it away, totally smooth, she didn't even cry that night.

Fast forward to Claire.
Claire has always been fixated with putting things in her mouth.
We have to be very careful with what is left around the house because she WILL put it in her mouth.

When she was 7 months old, I thought she was going to be a thumb sucker.
Remember our thumb war?
I am happy to say that I won that & she never became a thumb sucker (that was a close call)...she was content with the pacifier.
At 9 months, I started to "wean" her from the pacifier and only gave it to her when we were in the car or during naps & bedtime. At 1 year old, I only gave it to her during naps & bedtime.
I was going to take it away permanently around 13-14 months, but I never got around to it because I knew it was going to be a hard transition.

Claire is now 16 months, so this week, I decided it was time to take the binky away.
(I know this seems mean to some of you, but my thinking is that the older she gets, the harder and harder it was going to be to take away the pacifier...especially because Claire has become quite opinionated & stubborn since she turned one.)

This picture is from one of the last nights that Claire got her binky.

She was all ready for bed & then just to see what she would do, I took the pacifier out of her mouth.
She didn't mind for the first 2 seconds:

But then, I didn't give it right back to her.....

Claire didn't like that...

She didn't like that AT ALL..
Then she started to scream...
And started reaching frantically for the pacifier that I had in my hand....
(this whole series of pictures was LESS than a minute!)

Claire was so easy to put down at bedtime, I would read her a couple books, give her the pacifier & lay her down in her crib. She went right to sleep & woke up 12 hours later. Heaven.

I knew taking away the pacifier for good was going to be a little rough.
(see pictures above for confirmation of that)
But, even though I knew it was going to be a rough few nights, I knew I needed to bite the bullet & do it!

The first night I THREW AWAY the pacifiers because I knew I would cave in if they were still in our house.

I did the normal bedtime routine with her & when I laid her down, instead of giving her the pacifier, I gave her a sippy cup of water to keep in her crib.

I thought the sippy cup of water would be a nice "replacement" for the pacifier & she would accept the sippy cup.

Yeah, she was *less* than thrilled. She cried. A lot.
She woke up in the middle of the night. A lot.
She kept throwing the sippy cup out of her crib.
Naptimes were not a breeze anymore.
The first 3 days/nights were ROUGH.
And, it doesn't help that her eye teeth have broken through. Poor baby.

But, tonight was night #6 of no pacifier & it was the 2nd night in a row where there was NO crying from Claire when I put her in her crib. She fell right asleep. And, last night she slept 12 hours straight. Holla!

Keeping my fingers crossed that this continues...No more binky's in this house!

P.S. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Claire getting mole removed to get biopsied. We got the results back last week & it came back benign! Praise God!