Right after Thanksgiving this year, Brooke got really sick with Hand Foot and Mouth disease - NASTY! For 10 days, she didn't eat because her mouth was full of blisters and she had a very high fever (104) unless she had a fresh dose of Ibuprofen in her. It was awful. She was miserable. In fact, she was so sick and her mouth and throat hurt so much that she didn't even want her binky. That broke my heart, but then I realized that this was a window of opportunity I couldn't pass up.
Our binky detox for Brooke has been on my mind a lot lately. Brooke turns two in January and I decided I would cut her off on or around her birthday - but I was dreading it completely. We'd already tried to taper things off to having the binky in the bed only, but I caved anytime it worked to my advantage. So when I was holding her sick little self and saw that she didn't want her binky at all (because she realized it would actually make her throat worse), it hit me... the time had come for her to go cold turkey. So I gathered up all the binkies I could find and hid them. She didn't care for a few days, so that part was great but once she was over her nasty illness she definitely noticed the binky was gone and she was not happy about it. She gets that it is gone, but misses it when she is going to sleep. I miss it when I am running a million errands and need her to be happy for about 4 hours longer than I should expect from a less than two year old. But we haven't caved and she really is doing great.
She's been "clean" for two and a half weeks now - part of me wants to really make her Christmas special by wrapping up a binky and giving it to her for Christmas. But that would just make the day after Christmas even more depressing than it already is. I am so proud of her and of us for not caving - but I am really anxious to see what she does when she sees another baby with her preferred brand - a green "Soothie" binky. It might get ugly but it will definitely be funny. Here are some pictures of her when she was finally over her disease and feeling good again.
3 comments:
Awww... it's so hard to take away the binkie! I'm trying to figure out how to get Daxter to stop sucking his thumb!!! I wish I could hide that from him ;)
Those are the cutest picture of her. We are still trying to break the finger sucking (yes, fingers,not just a thumb) habit. I would hate to see them at the college graduation sucking their fingers. Embarrassing.....
you gotta take the opportunities as they come! The only thing that worked for us with Alex was blaming it on the dentist. It wasn't mommy and daddy who wouldn't let him have his binkie anymore - it was the dentist who said it was screwing up his teeth. Apparently when mom and dad tell him something, it means jack, but coming from the dentist - it must be the truth. Whatever works though, right? Brooke is absolutely GORGEOUS!!
Post a Comment