Bye bye B

Goodbye B.
You were such a friendly pacifier. We all loved you dearly and you served us well. Alas, your time has come. We no longer need you. Farewell, friend ...

We took the cold turkey approach at the suggestion of many friends. It worked well with the bottles, but the addiction to the pacifier seemed to be so much MORE. I suppose we are like most parents who think, "sure, lots of kids are addicted to the pacifier. But our kid? She must be the MOST addicted of all time."

We had discussed which weekend might be best (i.e. anticipating some napless/sleepless days - better have reinforcements) and the Huz just decided we should do it sooner rather than later. I mostly agreed, minus the immunizations on the same day of paci-dropping. Oh well. Timing isn't everything.

It started out reasonably promising. Girly got her paci ("B") in the morning and for her shots. She had it for her nap, which just happened to be POOR. She threw the sole remaining pacifier out of her crib on the floor when she woke up crying (as per usual), so I casually kicked it under her crib into nonexistence. Before her nap, I told her: "When you wake up, we are going to throw your B's away. You are a big girl and you don't need your paci anymore". I'm certain that she didn't know what I was talking about, but I felt better giving her some kind of warning.

It was a beautiful day, so we took full advantage and went to the park after her nap. (Key #1: do something a little out of your routine to keep minds off pacis). She asked about it only once or twice all afternoon and was easily distracted. I just said, "Sorry, no more pacis. Your B's are all gone. You are a big girl and you don't need them anymore."

I had also removed all visual cues to the pacifiers (key #2). We used to keep them on the bottle drying rack in our kitchen window. The rack and pacifiers were all put away during her nap. At bedtime, we used to keep spare pacifiers in her bookcase. Now, that area is replaced with a basket of loveys and stuffed animals.

Bedtime was a little different. She got whiny and asked for her B. I just calmly told her there were no more B's. I offered her a stuffed animal instead to take to bed, which she begrudgingly took. She cried for about 15 minutes while she figured out how to fall asleep.

I told Huz that it was kind of sad. I'm clearly not opposed to crying it out - but, I felt like this was something we had forced on her (I should use 'force' lightly - she was a big fan of the paci from the start) and then took away.

The first night was great - not a peep during the night, which was a pleasant surprise since I feared she might wake up and not know how to get back to sleep. The next day's nap also took about 15 minutes of crying, and was extra sad because now, instead of just crying, she can yell out "mama, mammaa, MAMA!!!!" Ugh. Saturday bedtime was about 10 minutes of crying, then Sunday nap was just a few minutes and Sunday bedtime was just a whimper and then to sleep. Or, that may have had something to do with her fever. Again, timing isn't everything.

She continued to ask for B here and there, but we just told her "the B's are all gone" and moved on with our business. I am proud of her and proud of us. I saved all the pacifiers up in the cabinet and I was prepared to give it back to her (restricted to bedtime) if we ran in to a disaster. I'm glad I had the contingency plan and I'm extra glad we aren't going to use it.

I'll tuck away a couple of the B's for memory's sake, but I'm glad they are just that ... a memory.