I love my Eli. I love that he is goofy and enjoys a good laugh more than anybody else I know. I love that he still vigorously enjoys peekaboo and demands tickles and pretends to read his favorite books to me at bedtime. I love that he loves bagels and "Wheels on the Bus" and vehicles of all kinds.
But I hate his pacifier.
Our family affair with the pacifier is long and storied. Before Eli was born, when I was going to do everything right and establish the perfect breastfeeding relationship, I decided we weren't going to introduce bottles or pacifiers for at least a month. When my mother tentatively inquired as to whether we had any pacifiers in the house, I self-importantly told her that I hadn't purchased any, because we weren't going to be needing any. Just boobs for my kid, thanks!
(She later took it upon herself to buy some pacifiers and thrust them on me "just in case." Thanks Mom!)
As a newborn, Eli was jaundiced (boobs were not enough for my kid, apparently), so he had to go under the bili lights at the hospital. There are few sights sadder for a new mom of an otherwise healthy baby than your tiny infant with a big black mask over his eyes under those scary lights. (Remember when Scully did an alien autopsy on The X-Files? It's like that.) Apparently Lenox Hill is not one of those "baby-friendly" hospitals you hear about, because at some point a nurse gave Eli a pacifier to comfort him. (They also gave him formula, at which point I had a total breakdown.)
When we were packing up to leave the hospital, we strapped Eli into his carseat. He started crying. Phil and I looked at each other. Suddenly Phil disappeared and, in a flash, reappeared with a pacifier he had apparently begged off a nurse in the hospital nursery. And just like that, our obsession with the pacifier was born.
Newborns have a biological need to suck. It's comforting. It's soothing. (That's why the British call pacifiers "soothers.") Some parents take their kid's pacifier away after they've mostly outgrown that need but before it becomes a major addiction, around the time they recognize that they're getting up multiple times a night to reinstall it in their kid's mouth. Not us! We persevered through that stage until Eli could find his mouth with that pacifier blindfolded, and then we bought pacifier clips to ensure that it would never be more than six inches from him anyway. On Eli's first day of daycare at 10 months old, I brought him into the classroom with his pacifier clipped onto his collar. "You're going to need this," I told his teachers.
Once, we brought his school pacifier home for a weekend to wash it and forgot to send it back on Monday. His teachers literally gave him the empty cap to a bottle to suck on at naptime.
Now Eli is 2 years and 4 months old. He's getting to the age, in other words, where we really should think about losing the pacifier. He is theoretically only supposed to have his pacifier for sleeping (which in our laissez-faire parenting attitude also means the first hour after he wakes up and sometimes the last hour of the day before bedtime). He knows he's theoretically only supposed to have his pacifier for sleeping, so when he wants it he pretends he's going to go to sleep and lays down on the floor just so he can take a hit. But he also likes to have it in the car, sometimes in the stroller, and when he's watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood on TV -- when he's bored or relaxing, in other words, like his pacifier is a glass of wine or a good Scotch. This often means it feels like I'm battling with him to give up the pacifier: "No pacis during playtime," or "You may have your pacifier back if you want to get into your crib with it."
One of the parenting philosophies I became interested in after Eli was born is something called Resources for Infant Educators, or RIE. RIE is also called "mindful parenting" and it's based on the idea that we should be respectful and authentic in our interactions with children. (Sounds good, right?) There's a lot about RIE that I think is over the top and untenable -- RIE parents, for instance, don't believe in placing their babies in any position they can't get into themselves, so they don't do tummy time, babywear or even put their babies on swings at the playground (since they can't get up there themselves). That's a little much, right?
But one thing that does ring true for me about RIE is the idea that we should respect our children as autonomous beings. And I have to be honest, it feels a little disrespectful for me to poke holes in all Eli's pacifiers and claim they broke, or for me to encourage him to leave his pacis for the paci fairy, or to tell him that pacifiers are for babies and he's not a baby anymore so he doesn't need one.
(Except I know of people who have done these things and guess what? Their kids don't have pacis anymore and they're not pulling their hair out while their kid wails, "I want my paaaaaaci!" for the millionth time, so who am I to judge?)
And also hypocritical, because in the past few weeks Eli's also become enamored of a little blue blanket (which I'm 99% sure happens to be the blanket he was wrapped in at his bris) that he calls "Soft Blankie," and I have zero problem with him taking Soft Blankie places, so why do I have such an issue with the pacifier? I sucked my thumb until I was 6, why should Eli have to give it up now?
And also, if I'm being honest with myself, kind of selfish. Because when Eli is damp from a bath and runs off to find his paci and Soft Blankie and then crawls up into my lap with his pacifier in his mouth, it reminds me that he's such a little boy, that he has the rest of his life to grow up. It's not affecting his speech. He's going to need orthodontia anyway. Why not allow him this comfort? No one ever went to college with a pacifier, right?
Last week we read Leslie Patricelli's Binky, about a boy looking for his lost pacifier. "How would you feel if you didn't have your pacifier anymore?" I asked Eli.
"Crying," he said.
"Why do you love your pacifier so much?"
He sucked thoughtfully. Then he said, "Because I have to go to sleep!"
This weekend we had one battle after another about the pacifier; I must have said the words, "It's not pacifier time now!" a dozen times. In my frustration I thought, maybe it's time. Maybe it's time to take all the pacifiers away.
The truth is, though, I couldn't do it. It's a big, bad world out there. We all need a little something to help us cope.
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