When to take away the pacifier?
It really depends on your child and your situations. There are times that I wish baby E still used pacifiers, like when we were visiting family or when we are at church and I so much want an easy way to calm her. Or when we are at the beach and she is stuffing sand into the hole that could otherwise be filled by the pacifier.
But, at 5 months old, I felt baby E was ready to lose the pacifier because it often made her cry harder when offered and I wanted to kick the habit before she was old enough to miss it. Micah, on the other hand, always had a very strong need for sucking and the pacifier was sometimes the only way to keep him calm when I wasn’t willing to be nursing all day and all night.
Breaking the Pacifier Habit with my 5 Month Old Baby
Since I felt baby E was ok to kick the pacifier habit at 5 months old, I went for it. The pacifier was only being used for sleeping, not during awake time, so that step was eliminated. She wasn’t yet sleeping through the night, but she was still too young to get the pacifier herself and soothe herself back to sleep, so I knew taking it away wouldn’t change the night-time wake-ups. Plus, she was waking up to nurse and the pacifier just made her angry. And I’d seen her go for her thumb or her blankie at times, so I knew she was reaching an ability to be able to help soothe herself.
How’d I do it? Cold Turkey. Took the pacifiers away, out of sight, out of reach. I told my husband where they were in case he got desperate while I was at work, but I started the habit-breaking when I knew I had 3 nights off in a row. I would nurse her to sleep then lay her down. The first few nights she cried, so I would go in, pick up her in comfort her, then lay her back down. Repeat and repeat and repeat. Same thing for naps. I made sure she consistently had the same little comfort-puppy with her (SIDS warning, be very careful about items in the crib with baby) and kept her on my video monitor so I knew how she was doing. After a few nights of no pacifier, things got better and we were soon pacifier free!
Breaking the Pacifier Habit with my 2 Year Old
Micah used his pacifiers all-day-every-day when he was an infant, then we started limiting it to night time around 7 months old, but it was always a struggle whether or not to let him have it during fussy moments or crabby-momma moments. When he wasn’t quite 2, I started noticing he was wanting it more and more during the day and it was becoming the source of fits and morning fights.
How’d I do it? You guessed it – cold turkey. I picked Halloween because I was tired of the fights. I told him all day and evening that we were going to dress up and go have fun with other kids looking for candy and then the pacifiers would be gone. So we did. We got lots of candy, played hard, stayed up a little late, and the pacifiers (all the ones I could find at least!) “disappeared”.
How’d he do it? He cried. A lot. He had his bed, his stuffed animals, his blankets and we made a big show of making him comfortable and reassuring him he was safe. He was still unable to work the door knob, so I kept him on video monitor and would pop in to comfort him if he was getting really upset, but he’s a super independent kid and often needs to just figure it out on his own. Especially at bedtime, my comforting and involvement just extends the struggle. So, we did our routine, same routine we’d been doing for months, closed the door, turned on the monitor and went about our evening. I could tell the difference between his angry I-don’t-want-to-go-to-sleep cry and his I’m-freaking-out-and-can’t-stop cry, so I’d listen and go in his room if necessary.
The timing was bad because we went to my grandma’s for a night a week later and I had no way to comfort him to sleep in a strange place, which meant we all got about 4 hours of sleep total. But after about 2 weeks, he was used to no pacifier. Just over two weeks later, he found a hidden pacifier I hadn’t found and he actually brought it to me and walked away.
How to Keep my Toddler from taking Baby’s Pacifier?
Just as an added note, since I wondered this myself. My answer: I used different pacifiers for baby. She took the nipple-like round newborn pacifiers that we got from the hospital. Micah was used to the typical one-flat-side pacifiers. So, her pacifiers looked and felt different. She didn’t take his and he didn’t take hers, they were too different.
Moms, dads and grandparents: how and when did you take away the pacifier?
I like the way you did it and the fact that you did it even earlier this time I think made it easier for her as well. I remember the days with mine
My first attempt was after first birthday, I tried cold turkey, but it was a disaster. Got some guide ‘How to help your child give up the pacifier’, where I found that there is a better method called three steps, but I really liked all the methods which involves some magic like fairy, animals etc. so I decided to wait till Arthur will be older and understand more, and I’m trying to slowly introduce this idea to him. Of course I’m trying to limitate dummy during a day, but maybe he is not ready yet to sleep without it. Nevertheless fingers crossed and we will see after next 6 months how it goes 🙂
I know The Three Step Method from parental-love.com and for me it worked perfectly, but it was not a cakewalk. Fortunately I’m over it 🙂
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