If you asked my mother about the most annoying quality I had as a child, it was (and, if you ask my husband, probably still is…) the fact that I never let anything go.  She laughs about it now when reminiscing of the days where I would bust into her room with, “…AND ANOTHER THING…” just when she thought the discussion was over.  I have grown up, but I need to pull that quality out of the bank this week and continue, just for a few more moments, to talk about being your baby’s pacifier.  I feel like I wasn’t quite complete after last week’s blog.

I know we’ve covered it before, but being your baby’s pacifier is not a bad thing.  A pacifier calms and relaxes.  The official definition is “someone who tries to bring peace.”  Not such a bad thing, right?  But what about other types of pacifiers?  Like ones you can buy in a store?  Being realistic, many moms use them and have no problems with reading the baby’s feeding cues and the babies have no issues with weight gain, pees or poops.  The concerns arise when the baby is not doing any of the above; when we’re popping the pacifier in and the baby is truly hungry.  The “risks” of being your baby’s pacifier don’t compare to using an artificial one.  If you’re concerned about nipple pain, no worries…if the baby is latched on well, you won’t feel pain (perhaps a little tenderness), but there are easy remedies for that: saline soaks, lanolin or other nipple balms.  If you feel like you’re losing your sanity and you have a very “sucky” baby who will never leave your breast; you feel like you JUST fed for hours on end and there’s “no way this baby is still hungry”, bundle that baby up and put him in the stroller for a walk around the block.  If he knocks out the moment the fresh air hits his face, he wasn’t hungry.  If he screams his way around the block, time to greet your couch again.

The rewards of these marathon feedings do exist.  You bond so beautifully with your baby and he earns a great sense of trust.  And, like I said last week, these crazy times where you feel like you’re at your wit’s end, they’re gone in a flash.