Requiem for the pacifier

On one of the last nights of 2015, I put my 3-year-old to sleep with his pacifier for the last time.

Last known pacifier photo: Dec. 27, 2015

 I didn't know it then — isn't that the way it always is with lasts? We'd been working up to it for weeks (or was it months? years?): dropping subtle hints about how the pacifier might be infecting him with germs, talking about when he'd feel ready to go without it, 'practicing' the art of sleeping with no paci ("And then I'll tuck you in, just like always," I'd say soothingly as he snuggled under his fleece blanket, pretending to be sleeping).

But we hadn't yet pulled the trigger: We hadn't yet called the Binky Fairy, or poked a hole in the tip, or pronounced it "lost," or taken it to Build-A-Bear to insert into the heart of a stuffed animal, or attached it to a balloon and launched it aloft, or hung it on a tree in Borough Park, or visited a friend's newborn to give it away, or done any of the hundred other things parents suggest you do when you're ready for your kid to give up his pacifier.

Because the truth is, I thought Eli wasn't yet ready to give it up. I knew how much it comforted him when he was sleepy, or sad. I knew he hadn't gone to sleep without it at night since he was literally 7 weeks old. If it were a blankie (he has one of those too), or a stuffed animal, I thought, I wouldn't try to take it away. How could I do it with this?

 For Eli, the pacifier seemed like a drug, one he'd take a hit off to function properly at stressful times of the day. In the midst of a tantrum he'd run back to his room and pop it in his mouth, sucking at it contemplatively while he scrubbed the tears from his face with his blankie. (This is exactly as pitiful a sight as you're imagining.)

So, like a drug, the pacifier became something secret, a hidden shame. I tried to impose rules: The pacifier is only for sleeping. The pacifier is only for your bedroom. And maybe your carseat so you can chill out when I'm driving instead of screaming like a madman. The pacifier is only for use three times in a day when not sleeping, then you have to put it away. On and on.

I wasn't sentimental about switching Eli from a bottle to a cup, or from diapers to underwear (well, I guess no one is really sentimental about that one). But something told me I was hanging on to his pacifier as much for me as for him. It was the very last thing left that signaled "baby," literally the only constant that had been with us from birth. For three years I'd listened to the sound of that squishy sucking noise when Eli slept. I'd fished pacifiers out from under dusty beds and from under car floormats, from the crumby depths of my purse and the crevices of the stroller. I'd produced pacifiers in strange hotel rooms and in doctor's offices, on long car rides and on long runs, in the middle of crying fits and in the middle of the night.

On our last night in Lancaster over winter break Eli announced that he would be going to sleep without his pacifier. "I don't need it," he said. "Just my soft blankie." As we read books, sang songs and cuddled in his hotel bed I actually felt my heart hammering. Was this it? Was it really going to be this easy?

Then, as I headed for the door, Eli stopped me. "I want my paci," he whimpered in the dark.

Phil accused me of being soft for giving it to him. But was a hotel room in Pennsylvania really the best place to try a paci-free night for the first time?! Instead, when we got back home, we practiced. And then after several nights of simulations, Eli got sick. He was so tired and so congested that for two nights straight he drifted off to sleep without his pacifier  — something he had literally never done before.

It was like a fever had been broken — the detox from the pacifier drug, if you will. And on the first night of the new year, he went to bed healthy, but without a pacifier, for the first time.

When you're a brand-new mom, you're so eager to keep track of all the exciting firsts: the first rollover, the first smile, the first steps, the first word. It's only later that you look back and realize you've missed all the lasts: the last time you swaddled him up in the Miracle Blanket, the last jar of puréed baby food, the last time you read "Where is Baby's Belly Button?" before he tore all the flaps off. As I reflected, a little numbly, about Eli's sudden departure from the land of pacifier addiction, I suddenly realized that without his beloved pacifier he might very well not ever take another nap in our apartment. At the thought of that I burst into tears like a cartoon character.

The next day, Eli decided it was time to "do my work," which somehow translated into moving his bed away from the wall and clearing out everything that had fallen behind it. In the rubble I was grimly entertained to see not one, not two, but FOUR pacifiers. I rushed to snatch them up before Eli could notice them and pop one back in his mouth, but Eli was too fast for me.

"Pacifiers!" he laughed. He gathered them up and deposited them into my hands. "Here, Mom," he said casually. "I'm not using my pacifier anymore."

It hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. The other day, in the midst of a morning meltdown, I heard Eli retreat to his bedroom and sob, "I want my paci," like he was realizing afresh the pain of saying goodbye.

Because even though he must know perfectly well where all those pacis have ended up (he's spotted them in the kitchen drawer), he hasn't asked for them back. Not once.

I don't think I'll miss the pacifier in our lives. What I will miss, though, is the sweetness it represented, the simple contentment of being able to bring peace and joy to my child with a teeny plastic bulb. It's no longer so easy to soothe his broken heart. But then again, growing up isn't easy, either.