Tag Archives: pacifier

Dirty Habit

Remember when you had your first child and his pacifier fell out of his mouth at the park?  You wouldn’t dream of letting your precious peanut place the plastic plug back in his mouth after it touched the ground.  Not a chance.  Rather, you likely pulled out a fresh binky and let your baby resume sucking on it. Then, you had baby number two.  When his pacifier fell to the ground, you picked it up, brushed it off on your sleeve and stuck it back in his mouth without thinking twice. Looking back, I bet it’s hard to tell whether … Continue reading →

Panic Attack

My baby is dehydrated. Every single morning, since the day she was born, she has soaked her overnight diapers. Literally drenched them. Not usually enough to get her clothes wet, but sometimes. If they were cloth diapers, I could smell the ammonia aroma from a mile away. If they were disposable, the things weighed about 10 pounds. It made sense. During the day, I changed her diaper every two hours or so. All she consumed in the way of “food” was breast milk. She was a healthy, growing, well-hydrated little pumpkin. Of course her diapers were going to be full … Continue reading →

Old Enough to Talk, Too Old to Breastfeed?

There was never any question in my mind as to whether I would breastfeed our children. I always knew it was the perfect food for a baby. The more I read about it, the more I was amazed at just how many benefits there are for both baby and mom. My mom breastfed my siblings and I for about a year and a half. That sounded like a pretty good number to me before I had kids. Now that I have a baby and am loving breastfeeding, I realize that I might breastfeed much longer than that. Before becoming a … Continue reading →

Why Dad is Important in Weaning

You’ve made the decision to wean your baby. But weaning isn’t always easy to do. Dad can play a very important part in the process and help make the transition away from mother’s milk smooth and easy for both baby and mom. Here is how dad can help. Successful weaning can depend on two strategical techniques. One is distraction away from the breast and the other is substitution of other forms of emotional nourishment. Breast feeding provides both nutrition and emotional comfort. You need to address how you will handle both when you wean. Here is where dad can really … Continue reading →

The Cons of Using Pacifiers

Yesterday, I started discussing the controversial subject of using pacifiers to sooth babies. Pacifier use may seem second nature to some, but there is a lot of negative opinion as well. It is important to know all of the information, so you can make the best decision about using pacifiers. Also, know that you can decide to create your own plan for pacifier use, such as using them for the first six months, only after a few weeks, etc. If you missed yesterday’s post on the pros of using pacifiers, you can click here to check it out. Con Can … Continue reading →

The Pros of Using Pacifiers

Whether or not to give your baby a pacifier can sometimes be a controversial subject. Many parents are for it, and many are against it. How can you sort through al of the opinion to make the best decision for your baby and your family? Maybe I can help. I have three children. When each was young I introduced the pacifier after a few weeks. My oldest son took it happily until the age of about four months when he then spit it out and wanted nothing to do with it afterward. My middle child, a daughter, was interested more … Continue reading →

A Dangerous Pacifier Practice

I recently learned of a dangerous practice that involves pacifiers. What makes this practice even more scary is that in the past, there were pediatricians that were actually recommending it. It is dangerous and doesn’t make much sense to me. What is it? Read this post and find out! Some parents are taking interesting measures to wean their children from pacifiers. One practice involves cutting down the pacifier a little bit each day until there is nothing left of it. The thought is that the child won’t notice the absence of the pacifier as much, and as it shrinks, it … Continue reading →

What Child Led Weaning Looks Like

In my last blog, I talked about what child led weaning was not. In our culture it is not that common to breastfeed for more than a year and definitely not more than two years. Consequently, many of the things that we do actually encourage weaning when maybe that’s not our goal. Child led weaning usually takes place well after the child’s first birthday and occurs when the child is both nutritionally and emotionally ready. This means that he/she is drinking from a cup well, eating plenty of solid foods, and is at that stage of development where he’s ready … Continue reading →

What Child Led Weaning Is Not

We’ve recently been discussing how old is too old to be breastfeeding in the forums. As a result of this discussion, I’ve realized that there’s lots of misinformation regarding child led weaning. Since we were already talking about weaning in the baby blog anyways, I though it would be helpful to start our discussion with what child led weaning is NOT. It is extremely rare for babies to wean themselves before one year of age. I would actually go so far as to say it is not the norm for babies to wean themselves before 18 to 24 months. Yet … Continue reading →

Don’t Offer Don’t Refuse

Long before bloggers took their little break and I went on vacation, I promised that I would start discussing weaning your baby. So far we’ve gone over abrupt weaning and some of the intense consequences there are for weaning your child abruptly. However, it must be said that generally, mothers wean abruptly because of uncontrollable circumstances like illness, or an emergency. While it’s not best for either baby or mother–it simply cannot be helped. For the purposes of this article, we are going to assume that the ‘baby’ in question is over a year old. Babies under a year who … Continue reading →