To Soothe or Not to Soothe...

That is one of a million questions parents have to ask themselves when they bring home their new baby.  Cloth or store bought diapers?  Breast milk or formula?  Soother or no soother?


Early on, we opted to go for the soother.  Despite the fact that I breastfed, and everyone and their dog told me it would cause "nipple confusion" (it didn't), and I did it anyway.  Maisie would calm down so much faster with the "soosie", especially in the early days when breastfeeding wasn't going so well (not that it ever really went well...but that's a story for another day.  Or not...).
Anyway, here we are, 2 years later and Miss Maisie still has her beloved soosie.  However, she only gets it when she's in her bed...naptime or bedtime only.  She knows that she has to put soosie to sleep when she gets out of bed, and she's been really good about it.  We started that just after she turned 1, because we didn't want her heading off to kindergarten with her soosie, and thought it would be best to break her of that habit early.  But she wasn't ready to give it up entirely yet, and we were okay with that.


In the past few weeks or so, Maisie has gone through FOUR soosies!!  I'm assuming she has been teething on one side in the molar area, because she has chewed a hole through the same side on all four soothers.  When she's not sucking on it, it's hanging out of the corner of her mouth like a stogie.  It looks pretty funny, but I slowly realized she chewed a hole through them!  So, she cleaned out our stash of soosies!
This morning, when I realized she had finished off the last one, we had a dilemma on our hands...do we tell her that soosie time is done, or do we buy more for our own sanity?  We ended up heading out to the drugstore to see what they had, and were going to decide then.  We saw some Gerber ones that were for up to age 3 (we're not alone!!  Yay!!), so we got those.  They're a different brand than she is used to, and it appears as though the rubber is stronger so it may not be so easy for her to gnaw through.  When we got home, I boiled them and gave them to Maisie as a test...she has been playing with them ever since, and seems happy with them.


Maybe we should have gotten rid of the soosies entirely...maybe it would have been a great opportunity to edge them out of our lives.  And Maisie probably would have been fine!  But I don't think Mommy would have been...between the soosie, diapers and the crib, those are the only things that indicate that we still have a "baby" in the house!  Everything else Maisie does is all grown up!  We'll get rid of them eventually...maybe not until she's 3, but definitely before kindergarten. :)