fanny
In May’s fourth month of life, I decided to break her crippling addiction to pacifier.
Her grandma thought I was insane for even coming up with this idea. Because her daughter Kathy sucked her fingers until she’s become so big, and she had to amputate Kathy’s hand to stop her sickening habit. She had a hard time understanding my intention and thought that I just woke up one morning and decided to go,”Hey, let’s take away Maya’s pacifier today. It will be a lot of FUN to watch her scream.”
And the reason why I started this was because she needed the pacifier to go to sleep. When you woke up in the middle of the night with her pacifier slipping out of her mouth, she became one pissed baby, like someone had stolen her last pack of cigarettes. And we had to take turns to climb out of bed, walked into her room, and put that pacifier back in her mouth like handing her a cigarette and asked, “Do you need a light?”
For those few weeks of her detox, nobody would understand how much I wanted to pick up that damn pacifier and plug it into her face to stop her screaming, it would have been so freaking easy! Her father tried so hard to persuade me stop being so mean and let her suck it for a little to make the transition a little less painful. But we’ve both gone through quitting smoking, we knew it wouldn’t stop at a couple puffs. You would want a little more and more until you give up quitting.
So, Maya cried more in those few weeks than she has to for the rest of her life. She had used up all her crying. And the carrying and holding! Both her father and I had to take turns to pick her up and comfort her ALL THE TIME! Now all the babies in the universe shouldn’t be carried anymore, because she had been carried enough for all of them!
But you know what, after those distressful weeks, she went completely binky-less! She doesn’t don’t need that to go to sleep anymore. Sometimes we just put her down in her crib and let her soothe herself to sleep. And she rarely wake up in the middle of the night. Now I know I will not be seeing my daughter sucking a pacifier like chewing a bubble gum when she’s 15. Also, I know that during her first night at College, she will not be calling me just because her binky falls out and she needs someone to put it back in.
P.S. This picture was taken when Maya was six months old. It was when her crash slimming program started. She is still working on it.