Pacifier Paradise
By Tiffany
Lewis
The two most valued commodities
in our house these days are sleep and pacifiers, because
we seem to lose a lot of both.
We go through pacifiers
like disposable diapers and infant tube socks. Brand-new,
nautical-themed, silicon-tipped, fresh-out-of-the-package
one minute, gone the next. I’m convinced the crib swallows
them whole. Once in a while I’ll pull out the mattress
and find an entire graveyard of crusty, dusty pacifiers.
We lose a lot of things
in this house, but the loss of a pacifier is a serious
matter.
Two-fifths of our family
is pacifier dependent, and when the pacifier reservoir
runs dry we all feel the ramifications. There is weeping,
wailing, and gnashing of itty-bitty baby teeth. We
call in reinforcements for an all-out hunt: on countertops,
under couches, hidden in the folds of blankets. I have
had numerous pacifier prayers answered.
There was a night I will
never forget when I was alone with three children and
ONLY ONE PACIFIER. I kept running back and forth between
cribs, carrying the precious piece of plastic and sticking
it in whatever orifice happened to be crying at the
moment.
My infant is so pacifier
dependent he learned how to stick it back in his mouth
at six months. His sole motivation for learning to
crawl was to retrieve the pacifier that got kicked across
the room.
My 2 ½ -year-old is also
pacifier dependent, a fact that was met with a severe
frown at our last doctor’s appointment. (Like we mothers
need another reason to feel like The Worst Parent In
The World.) But the weaning thing is tricky. The American
Academy of Pediatrics now says children should have
a pacifier, but not right at first, because that will
lead to nipple confusion, and not after the first year,
or you’ll be living with bucked-tooth beaver. This
leaves a small margin of time for babies to love it
and leave it.
We have given the weaning
thing a valiant effort. We have, at various times,
lost it, hid it, cut it, or confiscated it. At the
suggestion of a cousin, I almost left a plate of NUKs
for Santa Claus, but began to imagine the Christmas-morning
trauma that might result from Rudolph and the gang stealing
away in the night with my kid’s pacifiers.
The truth is, I’m the one
who needs to be weaned, weaned from the convenience
that comes with the pacifier. My son takes really great
naps and is our best sleeper: He will beg to go to bed
because he values his sleep, but also because he knows
that blessed pacifier, like an old friend, is waiting
for him, nestled among the blankets. It’s also invaluable
on long car trips, during sickness, on the airplane
and in sacrament meeting. Plug ‘em up and keep ‘em quiet.
But I still have options:
Easter is coming up, and I don’t feel much of a need
to have my kids emotionally attached to the Easter Bunny.
And if that doesn’t work, there’s the Fourth of July.
We could take the entire ancestral line of pacifiers,
set them on fire, and send them across the water like
a hundred Japanese lanterns.
It would be magnificent.
And only a bit traumatizing.
