The Binky Blues

     Are you trying desperately to get your child to give up their pacifier?  I once was too, and I'm here to tell you that there is simply no easy way, unless your child is some freak of nature not completely attached to it the way most toddlers are.  Well, here's my frustrating story.
     I really never wanted my daughter to have a pacifier.  I was originally worried about its side affects on breast feeding and her possibly becoming dependent on it.  Remember when I told you I was living with my parents when my daughter was first born?  Well, both of them wake up early (we're talking before 6 AM early) for work, and my sister still had to get up for school.  Unfortunately for my sister, my father and I had decided to place Julia's crib along the wall that separated my room from my hers.  When Julia would need her diaper changed in the middle of the night, she would cry during the entire process.  As a new mother, I wasn't the quickest draw when it came to diapering.  Truth-be-told, Julia's bottom was the first I had ever changed.  My mother felt it was her duty as a grandmother to come in when Julia cried for more than a few minutes and offer some help to me as I was exhausted insist that I try a pacifier.  
     Two days after being home from the hospital, my aunt and her boyfriend arrived from Florida to check out their first great niece.  The family had decided to go hiking up a nearby mountain trail.  Originally I assumed that this was going to be one of many things I now could not join in on, since I had no babysitter.  I jokingly voiced to everyone that I wished I could go.  Mom immediately offered to stay home with Julia.  I was thrilled that I got to join in on the hike up the snow and ice to the beautiful winter views.  Yes, two mere days after giving birth naturally with very little pain killers, I felt the urge to show everyone that I was not defeated by my pregnancy and being a mother.  I'm the self-proclaimed most stubborn person in the world.  So we had our hike, and I'll admit I was exhausted, but I completed it right alongside everyone else.

Pictured here is my father in the infamous "Cousin Eddy Hat"
and  you can see me climbing down from a higher spot on the path

Myself in front, sister on the left, and aunt on the right at the overlook of Harpers Ferry

     Upon returning home, my mother insisted that everything had been fine.  Julia had cried only once, and my mother had attempted to give her a pacifier.  Needless to say, I was furious.  I don't remember what I had said at that time, but I remember saying it calmly unlike I would normally be.  To my delight, Julia had refused the pacifier.  Score: Mom 1, Grammy 0.  

     By the middle of that night, I wasn't as much against the pacifier.  I didn't know it at the time, but my daughter had begun to suffer from acid reflux.  After being up several times for courses of over an hour each waking, I would do anything to console her.  I tried the pacifier, but she refused.  I offered it to her again and again until finally she took it.  After her next well appointment with her doctor, Julia was ordered a regimen of medication to help with the acid reflux.  After only a few days on the meds, it was like I had been given a new child.  There was no more need for the pacifier, but by this time it was too late.  She had grown dependent on it, as I had previously feared.  Over time, I simply learned to forget about it, and allow it not to bother me.  It caused no issue with my nursing, and plenty of other babies had lived normal lives while using a pacifier.
     Fast forward almost two years later, and we are finally binky-free.  I had waited and waited for her to simply give it up on her own.  Luckily, she only ever used it at bedtime and in the car, but she had begun to ask for it more insistently.  My fiance and I decided that it was time.  I tried to tell her that the binky fairy was coming to take her binkies, and that she would give them to the new little babies that needed them.  She insisted that she still was a baby, but I quickly reminded her that she was a big girl since she was using her big girl pants.  She agreed that she was a big girl, but still said the binky fairy was not welcome to her favorite night-time soothers.  

     I realized that this was going to be far from easy and take a lot of dedication and firmness.  That evening while Julia was playing, I took a lap around the house and gathered every binky I could find.  I went through my purse and her diaper bag, even going as far as to take the play binky from her baby doll.  I hid the toy binky as well as a binky I chose to keep for her keepsake box.  The rest went straight into the kitchen trash can, making sure that I couldn't retract my decision.  
     The first night, she amazingly went to bed easily and only fussed for a few minutes.  After she was silently sleeping, my fiance and I did our happy dance in the kitchen, which I now believe to have jinxed us for the rest of eternity.  The following day, Julia cried for an hour before taking her nap and sobbed herself to sleep, which took a whopping three hours of her calling for "binky" as if it could hear her calling it from its grave under the half eaten poptart she'd had for breakfast and the day's junk mail.  Some people would say that this is abuse, but I had previously discussed this topic with her pediatrician.  Each day became easier for her, and it took her less time to pass out from exhaustion.  By the fourth day, she had stopped asking for the binky and simply cried.  
     Her FOB came to pick her up the next morning.  I told him to toss out his binkies and explained that we had made extreme progress on it.  It sounded like he was on board and was going to go along with our method.  For a few weeks, Julia continued to make more and more progress until she no longer cried at all. She uttered not a word about her binkies.  About the third week after a five-night visit with the SOB FOB, she asked for her binky upon getting into the car when we were picking her up.  My fiance and I looked at each other, as though one of us would tell the other that we were mistaken, she was only showing us her pinky, but neither of us offered that relief.  We both looked away and pretended as though we had not heard her.  The rest of the ride over to the mall to visit with Santa, we were as silent as if a gun was pointed at each of our heads in fear that she would suddenly burst into tears.  Isn't it amazing how a one-year-old can have so much power?
     Over the next five nights, I was stuck in her room for anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, reading to her and singing her to sleep because she had begun crying for her binky again.  All of our progress had been completely flushed down the toilet.  She had no access to binkies with us, so the only conclusion we could come to was that her father had allowed her again to have them.  My fiance was enraged.  He was ready to go off and call her father.  I simply didn't care anymore.  It has taken me a long time to realize it, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about the way Julia's father decides to raise her.  All I can do is make simple requests of him and pray that he complies.  I knew I had to continue with my decision on the binky battle and  just take the hits as they came.  I used to compromise my parenting methods with the way she is raised in her other home, but now I raise her the way I choose to.  She's going to hate me when she's a teenager, no matter what I do, so I might as well enjoy her early years the way we choose to.  If I'm right, she'll understand when she's older why she has rules here and not there, and she will appreciate us for it.

The Beginning

            I have always loved to write and do so in all-too-often short moments of me time.  My sister-in-law to be has peaked my interest in blogging.  She blogs for a big-name entertainment blog (not really my cup of tea).  I have been reading her work for months now in envy, waiting to make my move.  I finally mustered up the courage to ask for her advice.  She explained to me about mommy blogging, and I fell in love with the idea.  While I have no experience, I have the passion and drive to be successful.  I have plans to write about what it is like to go through with split custody with a child of a young age.  It is hard for any parent to go through, and there are not many voices on the web sharing their experiences in this area.  So here goes.

            My daughter’s father and I had been separated for the final two months of my pregnancy.  We had never been married or engaged, simply “partners”, as he like to call us.  To me, that would be a good term if we had both agreed never to wed, but he was the only one with the goal to remain single for eternity.  We had very limited communications, but I had promised to call him upon going to the hospital. 

I had moved into my parent’s house, since I could no longer work to support myself.  My mother also wanted me to be close, since this was, after all, my first child.  I had been having contractions for two weeks prior to going into full labor.  Honestly, the last few days beforehand, I was trying almost everything to induce labor.  I took a light jog around the house, did squats – I even tried nipple stimulation.  Alas, nothing had worked until we went to one of those chain restaurants that use a piece of fruit in their logo.  I only got halfway through my plate of boneless wings when my extreme exhaustion set in.  That must have been my body’s way of preparing itself.

That night, I could not sleep even if it were to save myself from the brink of death.  Five AM rolled around, and I finally realized that my contractions were no longer for warms ups, but the main event.  My parents took me to the hospital, where we found I was already six centimeters dilated.  How had I not noticed the intense pain so many women gripe about? I had never noticed being less susceptible to pain prior to this of all occasions.

The first round of phone calls was made.  My mother called my grandmother (who my child is the namesake of), whilst I called the F.O.B. (father of the baby), to which I received no answer.  I then tried my sister.  You have to understand that at the time my sister was a senior in high school, living up her last few days of winter break.  She answered with a groggy salutation and said she would be right over to the hospital.  An hour went by of nurses hooking me up to IVs and monitors and going over information, and still no homegirl.  When I called her again to make sure she hadn’t been in an accident, she reassured me that she had “only fallen back to sleep.”  I only wished I had let her continue to sleep on whatever couch she had surfed for the night because when she arrived, instead of providing helpful words of wise encouragement (she was, after all, my cheerleader), she instead sprawled out on the fold out couch and did not push her restart button for some hours. 

My parents left me in the trustworthy hands of my dear younger sissy, and went home for a shower and a bite to eat.  A nurse came in shortly after and found that I was already eight centimeters and completely effaced.  The FOB arrived post-vaginal examination as my sister frantically attempted to reach my parents.  They made it back just before the pushing stage engaged, but I will spare the details of the birthing process.  My daughter was born at 3:42 PM on Sunday, January 2nd, 2011.  She was a mere five pounds and fifteen ounces, measuring at nineteen inches long.

Everything was typical of a baby's birth until dinner time.  My sister was the first to leave, followed shortly by my parents who were figuring that Julia’s father would stay overnight with me.  We talked briefly about where our relationship had gone wrong.  We caught each other up with where we each were in life, and after a few minutes of silence, he began to gather his things.

            “Are you leaving,” I asked in surprise.

            “Uh, yeah,” he replied nonchalantly as though I’d asked him if the sky was blue.  What a jerk.  I had just given a new life to the world, and he couldn’t even stay one night.

            With that, he kissed the baby on the forehead, and left the room.  And so began the lifestyle in which we would raise the child together but separately.  He was there when it was convenient for him and pawned her off on some other family member when he tired of her caretaking.  Meanwhile, as she got older, I had to readjust the way I truly wanted to parent to coincide with him in a manner that she would learn right from wrong without sacrificing my relationship with her by becoming “mean mommy” as she now puts it. 

Shared custody has no manual and little information otherwise, especially in cases of infants and toddlers.  I have had to fly by the seat of my pants most days and hold on for dear life through all the tantrums, teething, and the tossing away of the binky.  From court cases and child support, to missed visitation and recalled car seats, we’ve seen a lot.  We have even helplessly watched Julia grieve for her teddy bear that was lost on Black Friday by my careless consort.   Through all of my efforts to put my child’s heart in my corner, I’ve come to realize that I simply have to live my life and allow her to form her own opinion on how she has been raised on both sides.