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Our 14 month old is sleeping pretty well these days (last night down at 8pm, woke at 7 for a drink, still in bed with mum when I left the house at 8am!)

However we do have a problem with him losing his pacifier overnight.

For a start we only use the pacifier as a cue when we feel that he needs to chill - so it forms part of the night time routine. Pacifier, cuddle, story, bed, sleep.

Works pretty well. Often he will not have the pacifier in his mouth when we check on him before we go to bed.

Trouble is, if he wakes in the middle of the night and the pacifier has gone out of immediate reach, then he will cry and wake us up. Returning it to him and he will generally fall straight back to sleep.

We feel that if we could stop using the pacifier then perhaps we would get better sleep.

(He will sleep in the car and being cuddled without one, just registers it as a cue to settle down when not completely exhausted)

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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

At the age of your child we were sticking to Dubs' idea of dumping multiple pacifiers in the bed. While there were still times he would knock them all out of the way and we had to go help it did severely cut down on the number of times we had to get up.

By age 3 we were ready to cut them out altogether (it was only a night thing, like you). He expressed interest in some mid-priced toy ($15-20 USD, something like that) so we offered to buy his pacifiers from him for the price of the toy. Made it an impulse decision for him right there in the store. We got home and collected the pacifiers, he enjoyed his toy. At bedtime he asked for his pacifier but we reminded him of the deal he agreed to and the cool new toy he got - did the trick. Over the next few weeks he asked about pacifiers a few times, and we may have had one or two fits that he couldn't get them back, but it never impacted his sleep.

May not work for your child at the current age, but it may be a helpful idea later in life or for others who find this question.

Note -- I wouldn't encourage any sort of bribery as a regular part of parenting, but I think has a place in encouraging/rewarding major changes in a child's life.

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I have three boys, with my youngest still using a pacifier.

What worked for me was cutting a triangle-shaped notch out of the end of the pacifier and then giving it to my toddler son. If done correctly, the notched pacifier will look like a forked tongue.

My son would immediately spit out the damaged pacifier with a confused look on his face. I'd say, "Uh-oh! It looks like it's broken! You'd better go throw it away!" I even had him place it in the trash himself.

The first night without it was pretty rough -- some crying throughout the night -- but other than that it was no problem at all.

Note: In the mean time a solution to the "lost pacifier" is to dump 4 or 5 pacifiers in your baby's crib at night. He's bound to find one of them.

Hope this helps!

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Two ideas, Number one let him cry it out in the middle of the night (if you are comfortable with this) Number two to get rid of the pacifier all together start cutting of a bit of it at a time to make it shorter and shorter until it is gone. This way your child will get used to not having it in a slow manner. (this worked for us!)

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