For those who know Lucas or follow us on Instagram, you KNOW how much Lucas loves his pacifier. Lucas weened himself off the boob at exactly a year and before then had little to no interest in any kind of soother other than mama. I mistakenly continued to try and give him the pacifier after we finished breast feeding and the love affair with his bobo quickly commenced. I look back and seriously don’t know what I was thinking or why (whyyyy) nobody tried to stop me. For 2 long years Lucas has been fiercely attached to the thing. The type of addiction that causes you to break out in a sweat when your child starts screaming for his bobo and you check all your pockets, dump out your bag and realize it’s nowhere to be found. Then you find yourself running into the nearest Duane Reade or bodega making yet another pacifier purchase (to add to the hundreds more you have strewn all over the house). Yes. It’s really that serious. The funny thing is that he wouldn’t ask for it during school hours. He would go the entire day without it (including nap time which is huge!) until he laid eyes on me at pick up. Within seconds of leaving the classroom I knew what he was going to ask for and I always came prepared with a spare bobo in my bag.

The last few weeks I found myself growing increasingly frustrated with the situation. I tried explaining to him that he was a big boy and pacifiers are for babies. Our conversations would go something like this:

Are you a big boy Lucas? 
Yes! 
Big boys don’t need bobos. 
Then I’m a baby! 

I vented. I text friends. I complained. But in reality I was doing nothing to break the pacifier habit. The only thing I had done was stop buying new ones. He was down to his last four and I refused to spend another dollar on the enemy. We started taking baby steps and were able to get him to leave the bobo at home for our “adventures”. He started telling us “the people don’t like the bobo” and he’d leave it in a safe spot before we would leave the house. Next baby step was no bobo while he awake and playing. The bobo was only for sleeping. So for a few days when he would wake up in the morning or after a nap we’d ask him to give us the pacifiers (plural because he slept with three of them at a time..) and he was surprisingly pretty chill about it.

Fast forward to Wednesday when he slept over his nana’s house. I get a call at about 10pm and I could hear Lucas crying in the background. My mom has called to inform me that she has refused to give Lucas his pacifier and if Ivan and I were willing to stick this through she would sacrifice her sleep for the night. Well thanks mom for putting the parentals to shame. And seriously thanks mom for being a FUCKING ALL STAR. The second night was rough. He screamed, his body was shaking, and I seriously debated sticking a pacifier in his mouth and making it all stop. It is just awful knowing your child needs something that you could easily give them. But 30 minutes of singing lullabies, rocking him, and whispering it was going to be ok (I think I was whispering this to myself at this point) he fell asleep. The next two days got progressively better. He ONLY asked for the bobo right before nap and bed time and fell asleep relatively quick.

So there ya have it. Almost one week later and we are pacifier free! HURRAH! I would say three days is the magic number here. If you can make it to the three day mark the rest of the week is cake. The hardest part for me was knowing how much Lucas wanted his pacifier when he asked and standing my ground. Ivan and both made sure we were firm but gentle and compassionate when saying no. We wanted to make sure he knew how proud we were of him! My apologies for this being so. so. long but I was terrified and I seriously thought my kid was going to head off to middle school with a pacifier in his mouth. I really hope this helps even one other mama out there with a child riddled with a paci addiction and seriously – you can do it! I truly thought I’d never see the day where Lucas would be paci free but here we are. About to be three and truly a big boy!