Can I Sleep Train and Keep The Pacifier?
The world of sleep training has a lot of conflicting information and nuances. It can be hard to sift through all of the information and find anything relevant to your specific situation. When I was first going through my sleep training certification down in Florida, I was taught that in order for a child to sleep well through the night, we had to eliminate every single sleep prop. A sleep prop is an external ‘something’ that a child uses to fall asleep. Things like: being fed to sleep, being rocked to sleep, pacifier to sleep, co-sleeping, etc. When it comes to changing your child’s sleep environment for the better, we do need to teach them to self-soothe and fall asleep independently, but that doesn’t always mean eliminating every sleep prop.
Pacifiers have been helping babies sleep around the world since the early 1700’s. Back then, the wealthy would use pacifiers made of gold, silver, ivory, or even pearl. However, the modern day pacifier that we all know (and love) was fabricated in 1901.
All 3 of my babies have loved using a pacifier. Not only for sleep, but also for rides in the carseat, combatting daytime fussiness, teething, and a whole host of other reasons.
A pacifier was one of those sleep props that I canceled right from the beginning of my sleep consulting journey. There was no way a baby could be an independent sleeper if a pacifier was involved.
That was, until I had my daughter Maeve.
Maeve is my last baby, and my only naturally-good-sleeper. My other 2 required some form of sleep training to help them sleep better overnight. But not Maeve. Right from the beginning, Maeve wanted an early bedtime around 7pm and her pacifier. When it came to her sleeping with her pacifier, she was a baby who could cry with it in her mouth and not lose it. When she did lose it, she was able to find it with her little fingers and pop that sucker right into her mouth on her own.
She quickly learned to sleep through the night completely on her own without me even needing to night-wean her from breastfeeding. However, she had the pacifier the entire time.
I would start sprinkling pacifiers around her crib for her to find if she happened to lose one overnight.
Since I noticed how Maeve can go into her crib completely wide awake and find her paci on her own and fall asleep, I figured other babies could do it too. So, I started trying to implement keeping the paci (only with babies who loved it already) with some of my sleep training families.
The 2 ways I see it working if you keep it are:
You make your baby in charge of it.
You set them up for success.
Putting your baby in charge of the pacifier might seem silly, but having the dexterity to grab the pacifier and put it back in their own mouth is an essential skill for babies to have. It’s much, much easier for children to stick a finger or a thumb in their mouth than it is to find, grab, and place a paci in their mouths during the night. So making sure they can do that on their own is the first step keeping the pacifier.
The second step is to set them up for success - meaning that you need to give them a few pacifiers in their crib while they’re sleeping in case one falls out through the crib slats.
My daughter Maeve is now 2 and she still uses a pacifier for sleep. We give her 2 and she always wakes up with 1 of them in her mouth and the other is usually on the opposite end of the crib. Tackling “taking away” the pacifier will be our next hurdle, but not something to conquer until she’s closer to 3. For now, we’re all enjoying how well she sleeps.
If you have questions about the pacifier, post them below! If you’re interested in working 1-on-1 with a sleep consultant, please book a free discovery call to see if we’d make a good fit to work together.
