Dear Diary
It’s me Monty. It’s been a while since we last caught up. If my memory serves me correct my last entry was back in 1996 when I was 16 years old. In that gripping instalment I intimately detailed my first open mouth kiss with a boy called Mark Towson.
Fast-forward 15 years and I have decided to take up diary writing again. This is because I’m about to embark on something that terrifies me as much as Mark Towson’s wiggly tongue, so I need a loyal outlet. You see, my son is a hardcore dummy junkie and its time to get him clean.
For a while it was a fabulous way to mute him, although now he cleverly spits it out and wails like a banshee until I pop it back in his gob. As much as I enjoy attending to him up to nine times a night, a part of me thinks that SLEEP might be a far better option. So over the next few days I am committed to weaning him off his mouth-heroin in hope of encouraging a little ‘self settling’ and a happier mother. Wish me luck.
MONDAY 9:35PM
Dear Diary,
Wean week has begun. I figure the only way to do this is to go 100% cold turkey. To ensure I won’t chicken out, I gathered every dummy in the house (24 of them), put them in a plastic bag and briskly walked them down the street to a public bin. If I put them in my own bin, at 2am I’d give them a quick rinse and my child would relapse. I gasped as I let the bag full of baby silencers drop and sulked off petrified for the detox that lay ahead.
The day consisted of a my mini man carrying on like a pork chop (As my mum would say!) During his day naps, the total amount of shuteye he had was a whopping 17 minutes. I didn’t quite realise how addicted my son was to the colourful rubbery goodies. This is going to be hard yakka! The sun went down, and after one hour of screaming bloody murder he finally drifted off to sleep. My boyfriend begged me to race to the supermarket to purchase a secret stash “just in case”. I was terribly tempted, but stayed strong.
Does Motherhood Define or Redefine You?
This Glorious Mess
Top Comments
Perfect timing for my dummy detox!
We told our 3 year old that when Santa left presents, he would be taking all the dummies for the baby reindeer. She willingly went along with this and left out dummies along with the carrots and water on Christmas Eve.
To stop me back sliding, I gathered all the dummies I could find and threw them into the bin that night.
Because Christmas Day is such a full on day, she didnt have time to ask about the dummies. It was only as she sank into exhausted sleep that night that she called for the dotty. When I reminded her that they had gone, she simply turned over and went to sleep.
This also worked with my older child and bottles. The only tricky bit with dummies is that they will keep turning up EVERYWHERE for at least six months. Under cots matresses, under the lounge, in the vegetable crisper....you have to be vigilant and ready to swoop.
both my kids had dummies until 2 yo and getting rid of them was not that hard.
we were v strict about when the dummy came out, which was when we put them to bed, and if they were screaming in the car.
All other, times, we had to deal with whatever was the problem.
When i see kids with dummies in their mouths all the time, I shudder a bit at how hard it will be to wean them.