When I was pregnant with my first child, I read all sorts of conflicting opinions about the use and abuse of pacifiers. I had seen mothers easily pacify a crying newborn in church, but I had also seen toddlers running around the grocery store with pacifiers plugging up their mouths.

It seemed to me that there was a time and a place for pacifiers, but there was certainly no definitive authority that I could find. I was not even sure I wanted to use one. Then my mother-in-law gave me what turned out to be excellent advice about pacifiers: "Associate the pacifier with sleep."

When my daughter was first born, she refused a pacifier. I didn't mind; she slept and ate and cooed. But at ten weeks, she went through a rough period of waking often during the night. I nursed her constantly in a vain attempt to get her back to sleep. Consequently, she would burp up what seemed to be an entire feeding. I realized I was over-nursing, but I was at a loss of what to do to get her to sleep. So I pulled out the pacifier to give it another go. It worked beautifully, allowing my baby that little extra sucking time she needed, without filling her up more than necessary.

A pacifier is, after all, a convenient substitute for the mother's breast. Or, to take it one more degree, a pacifier is a substitute for the bottle, which in turn is a convenient substitute for the mother's breast. The breast or bottle provides more than nourishment; sucking provides comfort and soothing to the baby, which the pacifier attempts to replace. As such, the pacifier should go away when the child is weaned from breast or bottle, or sooner if possible. After weaning, a pacifier is superfluous. And long-term use is associated with orthodontic and speech problems.

My mother-in-law also said that the first child is for practice, so we learned quite a bit about the proper use and abuse of pacifiers with our first-born. I remember explaining to my daughter that her "packy" was going away. We actually had a conversation about it. At eighteen months, she was too old to have one. Way too old. Granted, she never had it in the grocery store, but still. With my second child, it vanished at six months. He never knew the difference.

So here is a summary of a few common-sense tips in the use of pacifiers:

1. Keep the pacifier in the crib. You will always have it within reach if it is kept in its original place, instead of being transported with the baby. Associate the pacifier with sleep by taking it away from your baby when he awakens.

2. Keep other pacifiers only in places where the baby sleeps, like in the car or the stroller. Keep one in the diaper bag for those times when quiet is necessary, like when you are in the audience of a school play.

3. Do not automatically plug your baby at nap time or bed time. Have the pacifier available to use, but first see if they can go to sleep on their own. Whenever possible, remove the pacifier from the mouth of a sleeping baby.

4. A good time to consider phasing out the pacifier is when you introduce a sippy cup. (If you nurse long-term, decide that the pacifiers will be gone before your baby's first birthday.) The best way to phase out pacifiers is to just throw them all away. Then you won't be tempted to give them back.

The appropriate time and place for pacifier use is to associate it with sleep, until the child is weaned. Of course, there are times when the pacifier makes a convenient mute button. As long as those times are rare and not abused, a pacifier can be one more useful device in the toolbox of parenting.

Learn more about this author, P. Constance Smith.
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