The History of Adam's Pacifier

Pacifiers. I realize that many parents and non-parents see pictures of Adam with the pacifier and think, "the kid is WAY too old to have a pacifier." I have to say, I agree. I don't like seeing him walk around with the pacifier, I hate hearing him ask for one, I hate trying to talk to him when he has it, and I hate taking pictures when he has it in his mouth.

There are many reasons Adam still has the pacifier, and many ways that we are working on separating him from it. When he was 6 months old, he couldn't have cared less. We used it sparingly to help him sleep at night. But he still needed it occassionally and especially when he was sick. At 12 months old he had a terrible case of walking pneumonia that I'm surprised didn't land him in the hospital. The pacifier and mom's chest were the only things that made him comfortable for about a week.

When he was fifteen months old, we had gotten rid of it. And I mean, gotten rid of it. Actually, Shannon did. He went three days and nights without one. And then he got sick, like he does a lot, with bronchitis, or strep, or hand-foot-mouth, or something, and it was very bad. The only comfort he could have was with the pacifier, as many parents know, when your kid is that sick at that little age, there aren't many medicines they can take. So even if you're lucky and you do guess exactly what is wrong, there's usually nothing you can give them to really help.

It wasn't until 13-22 months old that Adam finally started getting in all of his teeth. And when he was in pain, it was either Advil or the pacifier that would help. He wouldn't take teething biscuits at that age (who would?), Oragel is the nastiest stuff on the planet and he was disgusted by it (and after I left a small drop on a nightstand and it removed the varnish and stain, I vowed never to use it again. Teething tablets work but only for about an hour at a time, and he never would take the teething rings that you stick in the fridge. So when he was in pain, I chose pacifier if I could and used Advil as a last resort. He worked HARD for those teeth.

After that, he was fully attached and understood that he had it. When I was pregnant with the twins and on bed rest, Adam was old enough to understand that something was going on but not old enough to grasp what it was, so he was stressed. I didn't even realize how stressed until after the babies were born and he went back to "normal." The pacifier was necessary when at home to keep him calm and grounded.

Then the babies came home, and while I would rate Adam's stress level at having two new siblings at the same time as maybe a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10, now they have pacifiers. And if you have ever tried to feed three babies who are hungry all at the same time, you'll understand the importance of the pacifier. The same week the babies came home from the hospital, Adam went to a new classroom at school. (Perfect timing, right?)

Because he was still getting teeth in at 26 months, we went to the dentist and I shamefully, with my head hung low because I'd heard so many other parents talk about how bad it is, admitted that he still had the pacifier and we were trying to get rid of it but we were still working on teething and it was the only thing that helped. She told me not to worry. She told me that if it was the only thing that soothed him to let him have it, it wasn't going to ruin his teeth. She told me that in her mind habits like that should be broken by the age of four. They make them so differently than when I was little - they aren't great for teeth, but they won't do near the damage that they used to.

But we do set limits.

• He doesn't get the pacifier at school, ever.
• He gets it when he's sick for short periods of time.
• He gets it when he is so wound up and exhausted that he can't pull himself out of the frenzy he's worked himself into.
• He can have it at naptime (at home only) and at bedtime.
• In the moments that he does have it, if he's trying to talk to us he has to take it out.
• If at any time he does have it and we ask for him to hand it over, he must hand it over.Or it will be taken from him.

After seeing the dentist, I quit worrying so much about it. We don't give it to him more often, and we'd like to be done with it by age 3.

But I'm tired of hearing the judgements and ignoring the whispers... and I almost laid into a pediatrician at Dr. Han's practice after he made us wait for an hour in the tiny little white room with not only a sick 2 month old and with an energetic, sick, and hungry little boy DURING NAP TIME who was begging and begging and begging for his pacifier.  I finally gave in after 50 minutes of screaming, touching things, and begging, to give all three of us some peace, and when the guy walks in one of the first things he says to Adam is, "you know pacifiers are for babies, not big boys, right?" You have GOT to be kidding me... he wouldn't have needed it if you had been here 30 minutes ago. And he thinks babies are the greatest thing ever. I hate the "that's for babies" warfare tactic. (Especially when it comes to crying. Crying is not just for babies. But I digress...)


Only now are we finally at the point where we can truly start weaning from the paci, and then, this morning, Adam woke up sick again. We are going to the ENT on Tuesday to see if he might need his tonsils out. We will get there. Eventually. He's obviously not going to Kindergarten with a pacifier (he already doesn't go to school with one).

So I do understand that there are some sideways looks, some whispers, some judgements. I understand that it's not the most wonderful thing to need a pacifier at this age. But I don't want to hear it. I don't want people telling my child something about his pacifier when it's really directed at me. It makes my blood boil when I watch an admin at his school pull his hands out of his mouth repeatedly and then look at me cross-eyed when he's chewing on his fingers because his gums hurt so bad from the teething. And I'm done even thinking twice when an older woman or a non-parent rolls their eyes when Adam has a pacifier in his mouth at the grocery store. We don't walk in with it, but sometimes, before we leave, he needs it to be able to calm down.

And because of this tiny experience, I'm much less likely to look at another parent and judge for anything that I originally, in my pre-parental state, would have said, "Oh God, I'm never doing that."