Bye Bye Baby

Tonight is the 3rd night that Mateo has slept without his pacifier.  This is a HUGE milestone for us.  Mel and I have wanted to get rid of those horrid pacifiers for the last couple of years.  We held onto them and let Mateo continue to use them because it was his "comfort thing" and we wanted him to have it during his Fontan heart surgery.  We had originally thought the surgery would be two years ago, but it kept getting pushed back, so getting rid of the pacifier had also gotten pushed back.

 So while we had good intentions of breaking this pacifier habit long ago, it just never happened.  And I KNEW the longer we held onto it, the harder it would be to break Mateo of it.  He was a pacifier addict.  About a year and a half ago, I started noticing his two front teeth were a little.....well, crooked....so we finally weaned him off the pacifier during the day and he only got to use it when he was in bed.  He's a sneaky little thing though and would find opportunity to sneak it into his daily routine at different times.  He seemed to be very attached to it.

Mel and I hated that pacifier.  Mateo used to have 7 pacifiers that he would sleep with in his crib.  Yes....I said SEVEN.  They would be all arranged in his crib so that if the one in his mouth fell out, he would have plenty to find in the middle of the night, saving me and Mel a trip to his room to "feel around" for a paci.  But by the time Mateo graduated from his crib to his bed, he was down to ONE pacifier.  He had chewed holes in all of his other pacifiers and I was refusing to buy him any more.  However, that often meant that either Mel or I had to get up at 2am because some little 3 year old was yelling, "My PACI!, My PACI!" because it had fallen out of his mouth while sleeping and he couldn't find it.  Yes....gotta love being on the floor in his room at 2am blindly feeling all over the floor, looking for that stupid piece of plastic.....only to realize 10 minutes later it was still lying on my son's chest where it had fallen after slipping out of his mouth.  *sigh*

So, imagine my surprise when I came home from grocery shopping one night to have Mel tell me that the pacifier was gone.  Now imagine my anxiety and out-right fear that we weren't going to get any sleep because my preschooler is going to go bonkers when he realizes its lost.  Only....it wasn't lost.  Mel said it was all Mateo's idea.  Wait.  WHAT?!  HOW did that happen?

Mateo was getting ready for bed.  Part of his night-time ritual is to feed his fish.  Mel was trying to pick out a bedtime story for Mateo while Mateo stood watching his fish eat and chewing on his pacifier.  All of a sudden, Mel heard a "CLUNK" in the trash can.  He turned around and asked Mateo what he had just thrown away.  Mateo answered, in a very unconcerned way, "My paci.  I bite it." and then walked to the bathroom to brush his teeth.  Apparently, Mateo had chewed a hole in his last pacifier, rendering it useless, and then thrown it away like it was no big deal.  Say What?!

At first, I couldn't believe our luck.  Mateo is always surprising me.  The things that people said would be difficult were turning out to be very easy.  Potty-training a boy?  Ha.  Mateo potty-trained himself....seriously.  Breaking a preschooler of using a pacifier that he has been attached to since birth?  Apparently, piece of cake.  Mateo has always done these "difficult" milestones all on his own.  And to know that he had just dumped his beloved pacifier all by himself with no prodding from either myself or Mel was....awesome!

But that night, I hardly slept at all.  Sure, Mateo woke up a couple times to use the potty, but that wasn't what kept me awake.  That stupid pacifier kept me awake.  Seriously.  I could not believe that my son had just carelessly tossed away something that was supposed to have meant so much to him.  How was he going to survive?  He had treated it like it was yesterday's news....like it was worthless!  Didn't he know how much that pacifier had seen him through?  How could he just toss it and never look back?  As these thoughts kept me awake, I realized that Mateo hadn't been the only pacifier addict.  I was too!  But in a different way.  That pacifier is the last thing that Mateo still used that symbolized his "babyhood".  I know, I know.  Mateo hasn't been a "baby" in the last 2 years, but still.....it kind of kept him MY baby.  The fact that he just threw it away without thinking anything of it was significant to me...because my "baby" was all grown up.  I missed my baby! 

I was disappointed because I had planned a big "getting rid of pacifier" celebration.  Yes folks, a celebration.  We were going to designate a day (in November) as get-rid-of-pacifier day and then cross off the days together until we got to that day.  Then we were going to take Mateo to Build-A-Bear and help him say goodbye by putting the pacifier into one of the bears of his choosing....so he'd always have it but not be able to use it.  I looked forward to this entire event because I was helping him move out of babyhood and into preschooler-hood (is that a word?).  But he had done it all by himself.  And it made me a little sad.  I had thought this whole celebration was for Mateo and to help him transition.  But Mateo's decision to dump this babyhood friend showed me that this celebration was really for myself and getting ready to say goodbye to my "baby".  Apparently, I needed more closure with the pacifier than Mateo did!  And once again, this is an example of my son teaching me important life lessons that could not have been learned anywhere else.