Addicted

Uh oh. I unwittingly hooked Baby Z on baby crack:
The Pacifier.

Sigh. It was like magic at first-- one suck on it and he was instantly droopy-eyed and quiet. It really worked! But then…

Baby Z started waking up in the middle of the night a lot more often. Usually (since we dropped the middle of the night feeding) he would wake up maybe once or twice and fuss a little then go back to sleep. Before I knew it, I was waking up every hour all night long, groping my way to his room to give him his pacifier. At first I rationalized that I could do it as often as needed as long as I wasn’t feeding him in the middle of the night. Surely a minute or two every hour wasn’t that disruptive to my sleep, right? (My husband would certainly disagree with his crabby wife on that one.)

After consulting the Baby Wise book (problem solving chapter at the back), and a friend at church, I addressed it as a hunger problem first. So, I supplemented some formula at his 8pm feeding (a bottle feeding Dad does while I pump). The amount I was pumping at 8pm had been dwindling, and he was usually more fussy than usual after the 8pm feeding, so I think he just wasn't getting enough. Once we added the formula for that feeding, we had a more content baby at that time of day and he did sleep a little better- waking up only a couple of times through the night. However, after a few days, he was still waking up from 3 to 5 times a night. Grr. As usual, I had to get to a breaking point of frustration before I was willing to really address the problem.

Following my hunch, I did some research online about pacifiers and waking up at night. Sure enough, I had been reinforcing Baby Z’s association of sleep with the pacifier. I bit the bullet and didn't give it to him at his bedtime at night (haven't pulled back on its use during naptimes yet). The first night he woke up twice and cried for 10-15 minutes (brutal!), but then the next night he slept completely through the night. I was so relieved and much happier in the morning, after a good night's sleep. It’s been that way for over a week now, and I am so thankful for the real sleep.

My life lesson on this subject is the realization that it has sometimes been challenging for me to recognize a problem when either the cause or solution is something I don't want to face. For example, the pacifier problem- my fault for starting it (hard to admit) and the solution- letting him cry at night (very hard to face). It is very humbling to think how blinded I can be by my own issues. This is just the beginning of God using Baby Z to humble me and cause me to depend on God.

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,” Philippians 1:9-10