The Paci Problem

When I was in Nevada a couple of months ago, I kept asking my sister when Carolyn would be old enough to keep a blasted pacifier in her mouth - instead of spitting it out every 30 seconds.

I longed for that day.

I thought her being attached to her paci would be fan-freakin'-tastic.

But not anymore.

At Carolyn's last doctor's appointment, the doctor told me to cut out Carolyn's 3am feeding since she's now old enough to go at least eight hours at night without eating. 

How hard can that be, right?

Wednesday night, she woke up at her regular time, so I ran in her room and popped her paci in her mouth.

She went right back to sleep.

Score one for me.

Thursday night, she woke up at 12, 2, and 3. 

She hadn't done that since she was two weeks old.

She'd lost her paci.

All I could think was, "This cannot continue.  I can't get up three times a night to replace a pacifier."

After getting some sound advice from my cousin's wife, I decided that last night, I'd go ahead and start letting her cry a little bit to see if she'd put herself back to sleep.

I put her down at 8:30.

At 10:30 she started to cry.

She put herself back to sleep in less than 2 minutes without a pacifier.

Score one for me.

At 2, she started to whimper.

I thought I'd give her 15 minutes to see what happened.

It escalated.

About five minutes in, I knew I was going to have to go to her.

And then magically, it stopped.

Huh! Boo-ya!  We're so good at this cry-it-out stuff.

No problemo.

I can't believe anyone complains about how hard this is.

Then out of no where, Husband crawled into the bed (he'd fallen asleep on the couch downstairs watching a movie).

I said, "Did you go in there and give her the pacifier?"

"Yes.  I did good."

"No, baby, I'm trying to teach her to soothe herself to sleep without it."

"Oh.  I did it so you wouldn't have to get up.  I was trying to help!"

"Ugh.  This is never going to work."