A Night Without Pacifiers

We kept saying we were going to do it--after she turned one, after football season ('cause you know, she's going to have to sleep at her uncle's a lot, and well...), after the Thanksgiving holidays and all the traveling and strange bed sleeping that entailed. All that, and yet, somehow, when it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and we had no more excuses, it still caught us a little by surprise. "She's still a baby!" we wanted to say. "She's not ready. Maybe after Christmas."

But NO. It was time. We were taking away the pacifiers. So, after her nap, I gathered up all the pacifiers in her room and held them out to her in a small pile in my hand. "Say bye-bye to your pacifiers," I said. "Say bye-bye, paci."

"Buh-buh, basee." (Which, ironically, is a word she only picked up last week.)

Then, while she watched, I put all of the pacifiers on the top shelf in her closet and closed the door. She continued to wave bye-bye to her "basees" for a little while, and she asked for them again while bouncing in her crib later that evening. (Yes, we let our kid jump on her bed. Don't judge. It makes her happy, and it's not like we were going to be keeping that little crib mattress forever anyway.) This was all preliminary, though. We all knew the real test was yet to come.

Fast-forward to 7 p.m. We'd brushed her teeth, put on her pajamas, read Good Night Moon (twice, I think), and she'd said good night to Daddy (meaning she said "Buh-buh" to him and waves all the way down the hallway). I put her in bed, told her I love her, and left, closing the door behind me. Then, we waited. At first, there was silence, but then the silence turned to whimpering. You could hear her (on the monitor) rummaging around in her crib, searching desperately for the pacifiers, any pacifier, so she can relax and go to sleep. Finally, the screaming started. Huge, loud, gulping sobs came roaring out of the monitor. We sat and stared at each other. After five minutes or so, I couldn't take it anymore, and I went in to rub her back, soothe her, etc.

This went on for about 30 minutes. I soothed, I left, she screamed, until finally, she cried herself to sleep. Strangely, she never once actually asked for a "basee." Perhaps she was too traumatized for words. It was heartbreaking, but we really felt like it was time to leave the pacifier behind. I've read that the older they get, the harder it gets to take them away, and at a certain point, you can screw up their teeth, and since Maddie sleeps a-lot, she technically had a pacifier in her mouth more than half the day. With this last point in mind, I insisted that we go to bed early, convinced that she would be up two or three times during the night.

Ahhhh, it's amazing what 9+ hours of sleep can do for you... I did hear her whine a couple times during the night, but she always went right back to sleep. What's more, her nap at daycare, sans "basee" went off without a hitch. She went to sleep on her own and slept her normal 2.5 hours. Last night, it was only six minutes of crying before she went to sleep, and I think that's because she was very, very sleepy. Of course, now that I've blog-bragged about what an easy-going kid we have, she'll probably take it to a whole new level tonight. Regardless, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for sweet, paci-free dreams.