Family Alive

This is my dilemma. It seems that both my babies are intense “suckers”. They need to suck to go to sleep and comfort themselves. Honestly, no offense to those who use them, but I just hate pacifiers. I don’t like how they look like a plug. But it takes a while for babies to learn to get their thumb in their mouths. Analise didn’t start sucking her own thumb until about a month or 6 weeks old. We tried a pacifier – in desperation – with her, but she would suck so hard it would just pop right out. We didn’t have the patience to keep putting it in, especially when we were trying to get some rest, too. She sucked on my pinky when she needed to, and eventually found her thumb.
Now, I know that thumb-sucking is a hard habit to break. I suppose we’ll deal with that down the road, and maybe I’ll change my opinion. But pacifiers seem so hard to keep track of and to keep clean (yes, thumbs are hard to keep clean too, but I feel somewhat less in control of keeping them clean… doesn’t make sense, but I can’t explain any better!).
But in desperation these past few days, I’ve been using a pacifier with Josiah. Thankfully, the hospital sent us home with 2. It’s definitely been needed, and I’m sort of resigning myself to him being addicted to it, though we have a “thumb sucking lesson” each day as I try to loosen his tight little fist to get his thumb free to suck. He prefers my finger to his. He’s grudgingly accepted the pacifier for the moment.
Anyway, the end of this story is kind of funny. (Besides the fact that God is teaching me not to make up my mind about how I’m going to do things ahead of time!) Yesterday, I found 2 tiny ants inside Josiah’s pacifier. GROSS. No idea where they came from, and it looks impossible to get in there. I’m baffled. Anyway, I wasn’t going to use it again, of course, and we had lost the other. We managed through the night, but today has been a struggle to get Josiah to comfort himself. Thankfully, Brian just came home with not one, not two, but three pacifiers. Guess we’re on board the pacifier boat for a while. I’ll keep you posted…