Before Darius was born, Catherine and I told ourselves that we would not want to give pacifiers to him, as we were concerned that it would be difficult to wean him off after that. It would also look ugly for a toddler to have a pacifier stucked to his mouth, and might affect the growth of his teeth, despite the availability of orthopedic pacifiers. 

Still, we ended up giving Darius his first taste of the pacifier when he was just 2 weeks old, after attempts to soothe him down failed (see The Necessary Evil?): -_-|

The pacifier looked so huge on his face then...

One month after that, the pacifier became less effective as he would start pushing it out with his tongue (see The 4 (Not-So-Effective) Methods to Pacify a Baby). Eventually, we would still need to hug him close and rock him to sleep.

It then progressed to even more spitting out of his pacifier, making it a chore to keep it in his mouth. The irony to this was that he still needed the pacifier to calm down and fall asleep, yet he kept pushing it out with his tongue (see Daily life with Dar):

Just after passing his 2-month-old mark, Darius started to put his hands into his mouth, momentarily replacing his needs for a pacifier (see Darius’ Discoveries of His Hands). Not sure if this was for the better or worse, since his hands would always be readily be available for him to suck, unlike an pacifier which could be administered only when necessary:

Probably around this period, the only time he would require a pacifier was when he was feeling sleepy. During other times while he was awake, we would need to carry or sing to him to pacify him.

When he was 4-month plus old, we discovered that drinking sips of water could calm him down too (see Water & Training Cup). In fact, he loved water more than milk and we had to stop him from drinking too much water.

As he became 5-month old, we could make him sleep without rocking him in our arms anymore, though a pacifier was still required to let him fall asleep without kicking a big fuss (see About Sleep – Part 2). We were not in favour of letting him cry himself till he fell asleep as he might get colicky after that.

Notice how the pacifier looks smaller on him now?

Faster forward to the present, he had managed to take naps in the daytime without a pacifier. However, at nights, a pacifier was still needed to make him fall asleep peacefully.

Instead of spitting the pacifier out, nowadays he would sometimes be ‘playing’ with the pacifier in his mouth, fiddling with it using his hands and then taking it out. He would try to put it back but failing to do so (which is so most of the time), he would cry out and we had to clean the pacifier and put it back in his mouth again. Sometimes this would go on and go until we had to raise our voices slightly to stop him from continuing.

Just a few weeks back, we tried not giving him a pacifier before his sleeping time at night, and he just cried non-stop for around 30 minutes. In the end we felt this could be bad for his throat/colic so we relented and gave him his pacifier.

One compromise we do now is to remove the pacifier from his mouth after he falls asleep with it, so that we can gradually make him less dependent on it.

At times when he cries out in his sleep, we will first determine what was his reason for crying. Most of the time it he is wanting to pee (which we will bring him to the bathroom or put him on a potty) or he was feeling hungry.

Only if his cries are not due to these two reasons that we will give him the pacifier to calm him down and return to sleep.

When out in his stroller, it’s seldom that he will need a pacifier as he falls asleep on the moving stroller quite easily, especially after we had bought a comfortable cushion for him to sleep on. However, if the surroundings are too noisy or he has difficulty falling asleep, we will still need to provide him with the pacifier and rock him a bit before he will calm down and close his eyes to rest.

So for now, the pacifier is still an essential backup for him to get to sleep, especially at nights. On the bright side, he does not look for it during other moments so the chance of him growing up with a pacifier in his mouth while walking around is very minimal. Hopefully we will be able to completely eliminate pacifiers from his life before he reaches 1 year old.

Related posts:

1. Getting Rid of Darius’ Pacifiers We first introduced pacifiers to Darius before he was one...