I didn't mean for it to happen today - I was planning on letting it go on her third birthday in June - but nap time came around and I couldn't find a single pacifier anywhere, until finally after ten frantic minutes searching I just came back into her room and told her she'd have to nap without her "mimi" today. And then once we had gone for one nap without it, it just didn't make sense to go back.
Enjoying a mimi at two months old
We first gave Beatrice a pacifier when she was a few weeks old and she loved it: it was an instant reset button, it cancelled out all her fussiness or bad moods instantly. She slept with it, she took it in the car, she chewed on it when she was teething.
Originally I had intended to take it away when she turned one, then when she turned two, but at each juncture, I figured, why? Why take away something that she clearly adores, that gives her so much comfort and happiness? I hoped she'd just gradually grow out of it on her own, at her own pace.
Beatrice at two months old
Over time, though, the pacifier started becoming a real problem. She'd lose it at night and start shrieking in the dark until we ran in and found it for her. She'd drop it in a store and it would roll away and I'd be stuck crawling around underneath the clothes racks. She'd throw it out of her stroller into a filthy sludgy gutter and I'd have to try and find some way to clean it off. And instead of becoming less attached to it, as I'd hoped, she only seemed to become more attached to it. She would have two or even three at a time: one in her mouth, and backups in her hands (reminding me of a chain smoker). And once she could talk, she was constantly begging, bargaining, whining, even lying to get it.
We tried to limit pacifier use to nighttime but it kept expanding to night, then night and naps, then night and naps and car trips and when she was sick and when she was upset - until the only time she definitively didn't have it anymore was at school, and even then she'd race back to the car at the end of the day to find it waiting for her in her carseat.
A big part of me felt like, if she needs this thing so much, why should I take it away? But another part of me felt that the very fact that she was so addicted to the pacifier meant that it had to go. Plus, on a practical note, she was starting to get an overbite.
So today after nap Beatrice and I took all her mimis and put them in a box and I told her we were going to give them to "brand new tiny babies*" at the hospital who needed them, and then I gave her some ice cream and told her she could pick out any toy she wanted at Target. All the while I felt terrible because I knew how much I was asking her to give up, and that once the excitement of ice cream and a new toy was past, she'd realize she'd given away her most prized possession and it wasn't coming back.
The idea of the tiny babies captivated her and she asked me to retell the story seven or eight times, asking questions about where the hospital was and where the babies were, and she told me that she loved the tiny babies and that she wanted to help them. At bedtime tonight, she never once mentioned a mimi, though she did drag out the nighttime ritual longer and longer - one more story, one more song - and then finally, I left and that was that. After more than two and a half years, no more mimis.
Beatrice with her chosen toy, an electronic chipmunk that squeaks and moves around
*We took Arthur's pacifiers away, too, but he never really cared much about them either way, so it was a much less dramatic send-off. Beatrice insisted he get a toy at Target, too, though, a plastic airplane from the dollar section.
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