Goodbye to the Soothers

Bess has become adicted to soothers. It has gotten so bad that she has to have on in her mouth and two in her hand. Getting her to eat has even become a struggle because she has to be able to see a soother at all times, and sometimes has to alternate between soother and bites of food. Well, to day I put an end to it.

Yesterday was rough. This morning I was tired and not encouraged by Bess getting up at 6:30. But thats fine. I got up and fixed her her usual breakfast. We sat down at the table. I reached across and took out her soother for her to eat. She screamed, smashed the table with her hands then had a melt down. I was not impressed. At. All. I had had it with this soother addiction. It frustrates me even more since she never once took a soother until she found one sometime around her first birthday and never looked back.

While Bess played out her tempertantrum I went and found all the soothers and hid them. Thats right, Bess went cold turkey today. After eating breakfast and realizing all her soothers had magically disapeared she sat on her bedroom floor and kind of cried and kind of shook. All I could think of was a person going through drug withdrawl. This lasted less then a minute and she carried on with her day. There were a few times where she cried and had mini meltdowns because of lack of soother. But she is a toodler, she does this anyways. She even had no problems going down for a 2 hour nap without the soother.

Then the afternoon rolled around and her nickname lil'monster could not have been more fitting. Scratching, hiting, climbing, meltdowns. It was fun, but I did not give in (and again she does these things when she has a soother). However in the end I lost the battle. Bed time did me in. After her crying to the point of hyperventilation and that very depressed cry that breaks my heart and makes me cry I gave her a soother. But thats okay. We made it through the entire day without one, and we will do it again tomorrow, and hopefully, eventually, we can ditch it at night too.

Here are some pictures of Bess's soother subsitutes today:

And this next one is from a couple of days ago. She is trying to push her habit on to JJ.