If you've been dropping in on me here for a while, you might recall that my daughter had a serious pacifier addiction. Inching ever-closer to her third birthday, we knew it was time for an intervention. (Mostly because I got tired of waking up at night to find it and pop it back into her sweet, sobbing mouth.) But how?
Lo and behold, a PTPA-award-winning product that we featured on MySweetBaby. The Pacifier B Gone system was developed in the U.S. and my emails with its creators lead me to believe there was a lot of passion behind the product. The idea behind the seven-day system is to prepare your child for the transition to life post-pacifier.
We began with a wall calendar to which stickers are applied each night for seven nights. We then read the sweet book Now I'm BIG, which describes to the child how the Binky Fairy will come and sprinkle the child's pacifier with love. Then she'll take the pacifier and put it in the child's new friend, the Sunny Duck. On the seventh day the child wakes up, sans su-su and find the Sunny Duck in her arms. Then the child gets a certificate from the Binky Fairy that confirms that the Binky Fairy thinks she's BIG! Doesn't that sound lovely?
They warned me not to adapt or modify the program, as this affects the results. But, well... I'm not so good at following instructions... I think we mostly followed it well, but the key is to make bedtime calm and well, I tend to rile the kids up (I'm a loud talker).
Lucy loved putting the stickers up and read the book each day (in fact, even big brother Nate got into it). But she vacillated greatly between eagerly anticipating the arrival of the Binky Fairy and the Sunny Duck, to crying and screaming that she did NOT want to be big! She wanted to stay A BABY! She NEEDED her su-su! Tough beans kid. I had set my mind to this project and we were going through with it!
On the final night, we waited until she was asleep and the binky had fallen out of her mouth. As I made the switch for Sunny Duck, she woke up and busted me. At that point I realized that, as with all major parenting events, it would be up to us to stick to our guns, be consistent and deal with the fallout for a few weeks.
I'm not going to lie, we haven't really slept for two weeks. Getting her to sleep has been a challenge, and she's also night-time potty training all of a sudden, which means she's getting up in the night and starting the screaming at 11. (In Spinal Tap terms not hours.) My husband has been ready to throw in towel a few times, but frankly, each night is getting a bit easier. I'm grateful for Pacifier B Gone for helping us (as in mom and dad) to transition to the idea that we could do this and making an unpleasant phase a little sweeter.
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