At some point, she'll have to sleep

I often say I have a high-strung daughter.  And I do.  The kid is wired so tight that she freaks out when the doorbell rings or her dad leaves the room.  I wish I was joking.  When she was itty bitty and fresh out of the womb, we gave her a pacifier.  And, boy oh boy, that was the one thing she liked.  When it slipped out of her mouth (before she really had mouth control), oh how she'd wail.  Besides bouncing on the yoga ball, it was the one thing that calmed her...occasionally.  A lot of the time she was too wired to even take the pacifier, but when she was merely agitated it tended to calm her. 

When she was a year old, I was itching to take the pacifier away from her.  However, the feeding therapist we went to observed her and said that she didn't recommend taking it away from her yet.  Julia needed the pacifier to get back to "statis."  It indeed calmed her down when she was agitated or anxious (i.e., all the time).  Despite the frowns from the grandparents, we let her keep it longer.  But we didn't let her use it in public. 

This summer we took the pacifier away from her in the car and when she was awake.  So she was down to having it only at night and during naps at home.  At daycare she didn't use it during nap.  While she does like to suck on it, she also likes to rub it.  Her perfect bedtime is when she's sucking on one and rubbing the tip of another. 

We haven't been able to move beyond that step.  A month ago I asked her to throw one away, and she actually did (although I don't think she actually "got" it).  So we were finally down to two pacifiers since we never bought any more after she turned a year old.  

The day after Christmas we decided to force the issue.  I cut off the tips of both of the remaining pacifiers.  The first one she tried she said was, "Broken."  Then she took it to the trash can and threw it away.  Whew, one down!  Then we gave her the last one, which was a different style.  She said something along the lines of it being, "Broken," but she didn't throw that one away.  Darn.  But kind of good because it wasn't a cryfest all night.  We put her to bed like usual. 

And she didn't mention another word about it.  She still requested her pacifier every night before bed, and even though the tip was cut off, she seemed okay.  A few days later, we decided to raise the ante and cut more of the tip off.  No reaction from her.  She kept happily sucking on a shorter pacifier.  Then we cut it again.  It was starting to get really short.  But Julia managed to suck on it a bit, and she still didn't complain.  However, bed time was starting to get longer.  Whinier, and she wouldn't fall asleep as well as usual.  She was starting to take 1.5 - 2 hours to get to sleep.  Then I did one more cut.  At this point, the pacifier is maybe a centimeter long. There isn't much left of it all.  Again, she didn't complain.  But...she can't really suck on it at all.  She can rub the tip of it and maybe do one suck, but after one suck it kinda falls out.  She's basically down to rubbing it, which is AWESOME because that means she doesn't suck on it.  That's the goal!!!!

The downside is sleep hell.  It's been taking her 2 hours to get to sleep without the instant calm of her pacifier.  She doesn't stay asleep well.  She's up numerous times a night.  Thankfully she doesn't complain about a broken pacifier, but she does complain about toddler things - need a drink of water (which makes sense because the pacifier probably kept her mouth wet and she's not used to it being dry), her legs hurt, her head hurts, she wants to be rocked, blah blah blah.  Last night she fell asleep at 10pm finally, and she was up in the 1:00 hour, the 2:00 hour, and the 3:00 hour.  We finally brought her to our bed because we needed to get some sleep.  The night before she fell asleep at 11pm and woke up at 6am, which really isn't a lot of sleep for a toddler.

Due to the poor sleep, she's been a cranky beast.  Lovely. 

I put her to bed an hour ago, and she's still awake.  She's made 3 complaints already, and I made her a hot dog upon request (which she actually did eat).   At some point, she's going to collapse and learn how to cope without her pacifier, right?  Because homey doesn't do all this sleep deprivation well, particularly at the beginning of the work week.

The moral of this story is that I screwed up.  I should have started the pacifier cutting project well before Christmas so by the time we got to the little nub, I'd be on vacay still.  But the thing is, I didn't know how she would react to it.  I kinda thought it would have gone how it did with the second-to-last pacifier.  She'd say it was "broken," she would realize it couldn't be fixed, then la-di-da off to bed with some screaming about her loss.  A few bad nights toward the end of my vacay, and then she'd be through most of her stages of grief by the time I went back to work.  Hmmmph.  Didn't really happen that way, so I had to up the ante, and by the time I pushed her over the edge, I'm back at work.  Hmmmph.