My husband and I have differing views on pacifiers. He feels that they are a necessary newborn item and will be used in our home with our LO. I feel that they can be avoided and personally don't care for them for a few reasons. I was wondering what Mom's with older little ones thought and how they worked in their family. I am also curious what FTM are going to do. I don't want to this to be a controversial or judgmental thread, either. And so far in our BMB, I have not seen any pacifier discussion. So, will you or won't you be using them and why??
Pacifiers: yes, no, and why 158 votes
Re: Pacifiers: yes, no, and why
I have also heard they are recommended for another SID prevention.
If we choose to use one this time it will be the same kind we used last time. I highly recommend them !
I avoided it at the beginning because of not wanting to interfere with breastfeeding. I then offered it to him about 6-8 weeks and he didn't want it. I was happy that we wouldn't have to use a paci at all because I was never a fan of them. Then around 4-6 months, we were having some sleeping issues and tried it and he took to it immediately and still uses it for sleeping at 21 months. He is completely obsessed with it now, we have to hide it during the day because if he sees it, he wants it but we try and reserve it only for sleeping and maybe long car rides.
I don't mind him using it for sleeping because it is a comfort item for him and it helps when we are in new situations. I also have a niece that didn't use a paci, instead she sucks her thumb and they had a very, very hard time breaking her of it. She is 5 now, and still will suck her thumb when she thinks no one is looking. I am not excited that he still uses a paci & less excited about weaning him from it, but I do prefer it to thumb sucking.
As others have noted- it's better than thumb sucking. You can take away their pacifiers but you can't take away their thumbs.
I plan to have some pacifiers on hand for DD. Once we've eatablished breastfeeding, I have no itention of being a human pacifier. I'll wean her off the paci early, though. Maybe she'll take after big brother.
I used to babysit two year old twins, and one of them was so addicted to her pacifier that she would talk with it in her mouth. I can't imagine that being good for speech development. I have nothing against infants using pacifiers, but toddlers, no.
I would just break the habit by one. That's where you run into problems with teeth and speech development. If they always have a pacifier in their mouth, they won't have much opportunity to use sounds babbling or using words.
We introduced pacifiers after about a month or so, and only used them for sleep. We will probably introduce again after 1 month and see whether he likes them or not.
This little one will be offered one as well.
My first took one for a little while. But, he also sucked 2 of his fingers. He's almost 7 and *still* sucks the same two fingers. It definitely is hard to break that habit since he's literally been doing it since he was in the womb! (Seriously, I have an ultra sound picture somewhere of him with these two little fingers in his mouth!)
I tried with my second but he didn't like them. He also sucks on two fingers and I'm sure it's going to be hard to break him of that, too.
I hope little girl will take one and opt out of the finger sucking. We've tried everything we can think of to get our oldest to break the habit. Even having him talk to the dentist hasn't helped!
My girls both only got them for sleeping (never while awake) so it was not an out of control habit in our home.