January 4, 2012 ~ To Bink Or Not To Bink?

When I was pregnant I was pretty much dead set against giving my baby a binky. I could hear my grandmother's voice in my head saying, "now don't go putting a pacifier in that child's mouth!" Unfortunately, those were her parting words to me and I cannot uphold her belief in anti-binkyism.

Despite my reservations on the bink, I insisted on buying one to have on hand, you know, just in case. I figured I would return it after the baby was a few weeks old and clearly happy with nipples and thumbs. I planned to toe the line of anti-binkyism.

But then again, there is the case of my dear friend. I went to see her when her baby was 4 days old. By that time her nips were so sore that she dreaded having to feed her sweet little girl. The little thing was just soothing herself and not eating, so she was constantly crying for the boob. Someone had given my friend a binky at her shower and I made her give that child a bink. It solved the problem and mother and baby were both happy.

Enter my own baby. He made it just fine in the hospital without the binky. After one day at home we could not stop his crying. We tried everything. In the middle of the night Daddy got fed up and stuck a binky in Billy's mouth. Problem solved. Well, symptom solved. It turned out I wasn't producing milk, so he was starving. So, by the third day home he was getting a binky and formula- two things I swore I wouldn't give him. C'est la vie.

Now, at 15 months Billy is throwing his binky in tantrums. The truth is that he doesn't need it anymore, except maybe to sleep. Despite the 12 or so binkies floating around our house we hide most of them from him and he spends the majority of each day without them. But...and this is a big but...when he is without his binky I often catch him sticking his thumb in his mouth. The binkies he has are designed to prevent needing dental work from sucking. Thumbs=braces later on.

So the question remains: going forward do we bink or don't we?