People often ask me: Is it really bad to use a pacifier?
With a newborn baby and as a speech therapist I had decided not to use a pacifier with my son. NEVER! Just as I had decided to breastfeed for two years, and just as one decides a thousand things ... but along the way you have to make changes, even if you do not want. I wanted to avoid doing so because of the effects it can have on speech development and also to avoid the typical comment: a child of a lollipop therapist! Yet a few days after her birth she was exhausted, with cesarean pains, nursing, not sleeping, and caring for another child. It was too much for me and guess what? The pacifier turned out to be my salvation... I just wanted to sleep and as a last resort I gave up: desperate I went to look for a pacifier. My son accepted it and made him (us) sleep like never before. This gave me a new perspective on all that information and advice we moms get and how sometimes not following them is only related to a survival issue.
For those of you who bear the guilt of offering your children a pacifier. There's no reason to feel bad. Pacifiers are perfectly suitable for children during the first year of life. However, try to limit its use after 6 months (I only offered it at bedtime) and try to eliminate it by 12 months. One option that was easy for me was to give him along with his pacifier, a toy he associated with bedtime. In my case it was a salamander called Charlie, a stuffed animal with lights and relaxing music. The first day we removed the pacifier was Charlie who accompanied my son and told him that the pacifier would never come back. He never asked about her again.
If you have any anecdote or advice regarding the dreaded pacifier please share it with us.