I have a feeling it is very early in the process to start talking about this, but yesterday was day 1 of weaning Lana from the pacifier. Cold turkey. Go big or go home, kids.
I didn’t think we’d have to do this until much later, but she had gotten so dependent on it to fall asleep recently that I’d finally had enough. Multiple nights in a row of being up for almost 2 hours with her in the dead of morning, getting in and out of bed, replacing that stupid plug in her mouth to calm her cries, whipping the sheets off my legs harder and harder each time in frustration, were the straws that broke this camel’s back.
I didn’t mind the thing for awhile, since it really did settle her instantly in her fits of wailing. Like magic. I soon realized why so many people use them. We never did with Della, but this kid’s just different. And she only needed it when trying to fall asleep, never if it fell out once she was sleeping or randomly during the day.
Lately, however, it was taking longer and longer for her to get to sleep with the damn thing, since every time it would fall out she’d immediately get frantic searching for it. She would take super long naps with it in her mouth, but I was willing to sacrifice that “free time” for me in order to quash her growing addiction. I had also noticed that she just liked having it in her mouth during the day to be quiet and look around. Nope, not happening, my dear.
Plus it had become a wicked game at night. Bedtime was stretching to a good hour or more until she would go in her crib without waking up, which of course meant I was always up later than I should have been. Then the nightly feeding was all but torture. I would have to play the dreaded find-and-replace game way more than I was willing to in order to get her back to sleep, by which time it was usually almost time to get up for the day anyway. And she had begun throwing in a bonus wake up sometime in the midnight hour, just in search of that obnoxious pink pacifier.
I was quickly reverting back to the walking zombie state. Our new Keurig definitely helped remedy that situation with a horribly convenient caffeine stream, but that’s not the healthiest solution either.
So yesterday I just said f— it. Sorry, baby girl, but I’m done playing this game. You’re losing your suck privileges on that little piece of rubber. And so it began…
Her usually solid 2-3 hour morning nap was diminished to a 5 minute attempt and then a half hour sleep spell a little while later, but both were done with no pacifier. She got another half hour nap in the boppy mid-afternoon, a 45-50 minute nap on her giraffe playmat around 5, then a quick 20ish minute snooze in my arms at 8 before getting ready for bedtime. Overall much less nap time than normal and each sleep except the one on her playmat was induced by being bounced/rocked in my arms, but the pacifier was not used once.
Then came bedtime. And I was fully prepared for an all-out battle and a night of severely abbreviated sleep.
Bedtime actually went much better than I had expected. I changed her, swaddled her, fed her, and started the arm bounce between 8:30-9, and there was very little fuss. Her eyes got heavy sooner than I’d imagined, and it only took a handful of repeat bouncing rounds before she was totally asleep. So I put her in bed between 9:30-10, which is definitely in the scope of a regular bedtime for her. I also left 1 arm out of the swaddle for the first time, in case she needed to get that little hand in her mouth for some suckling.
I then went to bed at 10, heard a couple rustling spells during the night but no all-out cries so paid little attention, then finally sensed her waking and getting ready to squirm and cry. Ok, what time is it going to be – midnight, 1, 1:30?
Dudes – it was 4:30! She had just slept for 7 straight hours, and since I actually took advantage of that I slept for 6.5!! That probably sounds like nothing for a 3 month old, something that occurs regularly, but I cannot tell you the last time she pulled that one off. I’m not kidding when I say I felt as if I’d had a week’s worth of sleep when I got up to feed her at 4:30.
It was our own little Monday night miracle, my friends.
A baby sleeping the best she has in weeks on the first day of not being allowed to have her beloved pacifier? I’m calling it a miracle.
Maybe it was because she was worn out after not napping as much during the day. Maybe it was because she was more sated after having eaten more often during the day due to said lack of long naps. Maybe she just didn’t really need the pacifier anymore anyway, and we had simply become slaves to it on our own.
Who knows. And I don’t really care why. I just hope it continues! I actually feel rested this morning and have some energy to tackle things around the house. I feel like I won’t just drag through today like I have for the past couple.
Oh, but I still visited my friend Keurig first thing…