- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 7
-
Sparkle (0)
When people asked me if I was going to let my infant daughter use pacifiers, I was all "Y-E-S to the YES." I gave her a paci when she was three days old and didn't take it away again until she was eighteen months old. She promptly replaced it with a Nuby cup and went along, sucking her way to sleep each night. Why? Because taking them away was SO PAINFUL.
Here's how it happens, though: I was just thinking to myself when asked to write this post, "Maybe it really wasn't that bad?" So I surfed through my Surrender, Dorothy archives for an hour or so and found this gem from August 2007:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The little angel had her first trip to the dentist this morning. She was great during the teeth counting, teeth cleaning and demonstrative twirling she did for the dentist. She was great while I got my teeth "cut" as she called what the dental hygienist was doing with the sharp, pointed stick. (I tried to tell her they were cleaning my teeth, but it did sort of feel like the woman was intentionally missing a few too many times with her instrument of torture.) Then the dentist dropped on us what I've been dreading for months: "Does she use a bottle or pacifier?"
Ah, the cup. The famed Nuby. Or, as we like to call it around here: F*cking Hell F*ck Cup.
Here's what happened when we took away my daughter's paci: Six months during which she woke up every two hours for anywhere from twenty minutes to four hours. By the end of this period, I was barely capable of working my full-time job, operating an automobile or smiling. I'd also gone on Zoloft. It was the worst six months of my entire life, and I'm going to go ahead and include Ma's cancer and my eating disorder in my life, because this was the first time I experienced months on end of three to four hours of choppy sleep with no naps, no relief, and an irritible boss. It hurt my marriage, it hurt my relationship with my daughter and it threw off my dopamine so badly I was crying at least three hours a day.
So you can guess how excited I am to chuck the F*ck Cup. The dentist seemed surprised when I promptly commenced crying right there in her open, cube-style office. "What's wrong?" she said.
"Oh, it's just that the last time..." I stammered.
"Well, just give her a reward system. Have you tried that?"
And then I killed her.
Not really, but seriously, how stupid of a question is that? No, I never have ever tried a rewards system on a potty-trained, vegetable-eating three-year-old who didn't sleep for six months of her life except during naps at daycare. Why? It never occurred to me. What a brilliant idea! Clearly, I've got much to benefit from your parenting advice. Wow, thank goodness I stepped foot in this dentist office today.
Now, of course, I'm not being fair, but seriously? "Have you ever tried that?" The thing is that these advice givers don't have to come live in my house and experience the night that goes like this:
Bed at 8:30. Screaming for paci or cup will go on for about two hours. That will put us at 10:30.
She'll wake up first at 1:30. She'll ask for the paci/cup. Screaming will go on for about twenty minutes to two hours.
If she went back to sleep at all, she'll wake up again at 3:30, and we'll repeat that session.
At 5:30, when she wakes up again, we'll go down on the couch, where she'll finally fall into a deep sleep, I won't hear the alarm, and she'll wake up crabby as hell and I'll give myself a black eye trying to get showered and to work in time. I'll slog through the day like a zombie, crying in the bathroom approximately once an hour, fall asleep in the parking garage when I get in my car, wake up, realize there's no way to get to daycare on time because it's now a full hour away, stress all the way there, and pick up a little angel who's rejuvinated from a three-hour nap and ready to do the whole thing again. If this goes on for more than a week, I'll have to add
