Ditching the pacifier

We have been making some big changes in the recent weeks. Much to my surprise we managed to get Delilah to give up her pacifier in just a few days!

It was actually an accident that we ended up getting rid of her paci, or pacifier. It all started with me gradually losing them. When we sized up to 9-12-month pacifier, I bought four initially. Slowly but surely, we lost them – one in the grocery store, another at my dad’s house. We were down to two pacis that we rotated with Delilah.

One day, another one was misplaced somewhere in the house and we were down to just one last paci, which fell behind the bed one morning as we were getting up for the day.

We weren’t really trying to wean her off the pacifier but we had been cutting back to only giving it to Delilah at naptime and bedtime. I had a chat with the doctor at her 9-month Well Baby Visit about when to phase out pacifier use. Her doctor wasn’t concerned and said it would be okay to wait on weaning from the pacifier while we focus on getting Delilah to sleep on her own, which hasn’t happened yet.

After the last pacifier fell behind the bed that morning, we went on with our day as usual and completely forgot that the pacifier all together. I don’t know what it was, but Delilah just seemed not to miss it.

I went to work for the day and left Delilah with my mom. When I got home my mom had told me that Delilah had taken both naps earlier in the day without needing a pacifier. So, when bedtime came around I had to decide whether to retrieve the lost paci or see if Delilah could go overnight without a pacifier. I was very nervous to try because I had to be at work at 6:00am the next day! I wondered if this random day was the right day to wean Delilah from the paci.

I decided to go for it even though I was nervous. When bedtime came around I gave her a bottle like normal but instead of giving her a paci after the bottle, I waited to see what would happen. And it went great… at first. She fell asleep so quickly and nicely and I was shocked!

Once she was deeply sleeping, I took her to our bed so I could get some rest. I think I fell asleep fairly quickly, but I noticed that Delilah was moving around a lot in her sleep.

I figured maybe she just wasn’t in a comfortable spot so I moved her a little to see if it helped and it did, long enough for me to fall asleep, but it didn’t last. She was restless all night. I didn’t know how often it really was but it felt like I was waking up every ten minutes to calm her down. She never started full blown crying but she was very fussy.

Then, at about 2 or 3 in the morning, she decided she was just awake. I got up and made a bottle for her and turned on some cartoons because she hates the dark. Eventually it worked because she fell back asleep but only until about 20 minutes before my alarm for work when off.

Luckily for us though that night was the worst of the weaning process. It wasn’t 100% smooth sailing after that, and there were times when she was teething that I contemplated giving her the paci just so she could calm down enough to fall asleep, but we stuck with it. It’s been about two weeks now and she doesn’t seem to miss it at all. But sometimes I feel a little sad that we’ve already reached this point where my little baby doesn’t need her pacifier anymore!