Moira & her soothie over the last two years.
There was no two ways about it – Moira was a baby with a strong need for a soother. She was sucking her thumb in one of her ultrasounds and started teething at 3-months old. However, as her dependency on it grew and the teeth stopped coming (because she has had all of them but the two-year molars since before she was a 1.5 years old!) the time had come to say goodbye.
Oh, if only it were so easy.
I tried a couple times to just take it away from her but the whining and crying and begging just drove me nuts & I will admit it – I’m not that strong. If she hadn’t started chewing on it so vigorously and wrenching it between her teeth to hear it pop it might not have bothered me. If she didn’t have a melt down every time it strayed from her line of sight for five seconds she might still have it but her ability to cope without it was waning. “Nap! Bottle! Soody!” She would yell out when getting tired or stressed. We had gotten to the point where we told her soothie could no longer be taken in public but she still asked for it all the time.
Finally on Tuesday night – after a frantic pre-bed search for it (of course!) I found that she had managed to chew through another one: there was a big crack in the silicon. Not in the mood to deal with it I gave it to her and went to bed. Wednesday morning I cut the chewed bit off and told her “soothie is broken.” She could still hold it but I kept reminding her not to put it in her mouth (it wouldn’t stay put anyway). All day we talked about soothie being broken but she mostly left it alone. She wanted to hold it while she slept and attempted to suck on it but with no luck. Wednesday we told her she would have to say goodbye to soothie. Today I asked her if she was ready to throw it away and she did.
“Bye-bye soody,” she said rather tearfully.
Getting her to sleep for her nap today and at bedtime tonight was more of a trial than usual but so far so good. Of course, we now expect her to find all the ones that mysteriously just disappeared in the apartment over the past almost-two years. Hopefully if we can get her to go six-months soothie free it won’t be such a struggle preventing her from stealing her sibling’s soothie.
Yeah, more photos in which we can see her beautiful smile!
Georgia still uses a dummy. It’s only when she sleeps but we keep saying we are going to get rid of it (them – we have to have a whole bunch in case we can’t find them). Anyway, we keep pushing the date forward for getting rid of it and currently her second birthday is goal (what a great birthday present for her!). More important than getting rid of the dummy we have to get rid of her bedtime bottle which we still give her on our laps. She isn’t a baby any more and we have to accept that I guess – which will probably be easier than her accepting it
Even if she does end up going back to using one, you can rest assured that she will, someday, give it up of her own accord.
Sarah: If Moira only used it to sleep she would probably still have it right now and I probably would have just let her give it up herself – but she wanted it All Day Long and was getting to the point where she would freak out without it. She still gets two bottles a day: naptime and bedtime – I’m less worried about those right now since they aren’t hard on her teeth.
good luck!
Inspired by your soothie intervention, I decided, on a whim, that I was going to deploy stage one of the Suckyvention. Kale is now only allowed his sucky in his crib or in the car. We decided on the car because there is nothing less conducive to safe driving than a screaming toddler. The first day I was ruthless ad he cried pitifully every time he’d ask for the sucky (making his little hand sign for it furiously). I kept at it and now he still asks for it, almost half heartedly, but doesn’t really complain much when we reply “at sleeping time, wee bean. Later.”
I’m not sure at what point we will move to full on Sucky Free, but for now, we are content.
Well that kind of lets me off the hook then!
We also let G have her dummy in the car on longer journeys when we want her to sleep but it’s kind of hard explaining to her why she can’t have it for shorter journeys.