A Thursday Soliloquy

To binky, or not to binky: that is the question.

Whether 'tis smarter in the long run to suffer the cries and screams of an unsettled baby, or to take measures against a sea of tantrums, and by pacifying, end them?

To pacify, to sleep; no more; and sleep to say we end watching Nick @ Nite and the thousand sleepless hours that we have become heir to; 'tis an outcome devoutly to be wished.

To binky, to sleep; To sleep: perchance for more than four hours; ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of binky-dom, what bad habits may come?

So, we recently started using a binky. Sometimes, at night, I have to use it to get Katie settled. She's recently decided that she doesn't want to go to sleep at the designated bedtime of 10pm. She wants to stay up and catch the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The problem with the binky is that while it does settle her down, it actually ends up waking her up too.

Here's how it goes down:

She will suck away contently until she closes her eyes. She'll get into this trance like state. She's asleep, but sucking at the same time. The problem comes when she begins to fall into a deep, deep sleep. Her mouth relaxes and the binky starts to fall out. Then her brain remembers, "Hey, I was sucking on something!" This thought provokes her to startle herself as she throws about both arms, kicks out both legs straight and sucks the binky back into her mouth. It's the same thing that happens to an adult when they are trying to stay awake and find themselves drifting off. You "jump" back to a wakeful state when your brain tells your body, "HEY! NO SLEEPING!" After this "jump", she promptly starts to cry loudly (and hysterically) until I can calm her once more. This pattern repeats itself about 4 or 5 times until she can actually let that binky go and stay asleep or I come up with some other trick to get her to fall asleep. It's quite a process.

So, it's a double edged sword. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Hmmmmmm. I have no idea how to combat this. I WANT the binky to fall out when she gets into that deep sleep, but I don't want her to scare herself.

I tried waiting for the exact deep sleep moment when the binky is about to fall out and then grabbing it myself. That just woke her up even faster.

Then there is the whole question of her getting addicted to it. What happens if we can't break her of the habit and she NEEDS the binky to sleep and calm herself. We become slaves to the binky. I guess it might be better than thumb sucking or finger sucking though. At least, when we think it appropriate, we can take the binky away and not have to worry about the potential for orthdontics down the line. I would wish that fate on no man, or baby.

Sigh. What a quandry.