Shortly after the birth of my first daughter, my husband and I hemmed and hawed about whether to introduce a pacifier. We worried that our daughter would have nipple confusion or become addicted and we’d one day have to pull it and go through a torturous withdrawal process. Well, no nipple confusion, but she did most definitely fall in love with the pacifier. This love affair ended up being such a great thing for her and getting rid of the pacifier was so much less painful than we had imagined.
So, when our second daughter was born this summer, we quickly reached for the pacifier as our trusty soothing device. Much to our dismay, she spat out each and every one and would only suck on our fingers. We tried and tried and tried. On one particularly bad night I ran to the internet looking for the pacifier that would allow my daughter the sucking for soothing she clearly needed that was neither our finger or my breast. And I found it. It’s called the Gumdrop Pacifier.
I am a firm believer that babies need to suck for soothing and that this is one way to trigger the soothing reflex. If you are one of those parents who worries that there is something wrong with using a pacifier, I would argue that you could be doing your child a big favor and could find yourself having a more contented baby.