Help! I am Worried that My Baby is Using Me as a Pacifier!

Sometimes well meaning family members or friends see a new mom once again nursing her baby.  They feel for her and want to help her, so they tell her that maybe her baby is using her as a pacifier.  If the mom feels tired and overwhelmed, she might start wondering the same thing.  

However, what exactly is the purpose of a pacifier?  The purpose of a pacifier is to soothe and comfort the baby and to provide the non-nutritive sucking they crave.  It is also a mother substitute.  

Just as the Theology of the Body describes the covenant relationship between husband and wife, there is a similar relationship between the mother and her baby.  The mother not only cradles and protects her baby in her womb for nine months, but her body also nourishes and comforts the baby at her breast for months or years after birth.  Sheila Kippley writes in her book, Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing, “The baby truly needs her presence, and no one can replace her.  Babies thrive on maternal intimacy, of being one with their mother. A mother usually provides the best comfort for her baby.”  If you are interest in reading Sheila’s book, send us an email.  We mail out her book as a gift to nursing moms.

If your baby or toddler nurses often and you are wondering if it is too much, remember how much time you see babies with pacifiers in their mouths when you are out and about at Mass, grocery shopping, and at the park.  Babies very much need oral soothing, so it makes sense that they need to nurse sometimes every hour! 

I understand how tempting it can be to use a pacifier even though in your heart, you would rather not.  All my labors started during the night and my babies were all born between 2 AM and 9:30 AM.  After I had my babies, I would be hungry and all wound up from the excitement and the hormonal changes.  Of course, it was always daytime at that point, too.  Then by nightfall, I was always wanting to go to sleep but my babies wanted to nurse constantly.  The hospital beds were uncomfortable and not set up like my bed at home.  Boy, that pacifier in the hospital room looked awfully tempting at midnight! 

As you may already know, avoiding pacifiers and bottles is good for your milk supply, good for baby’s mouth and jaw development, and helps extend the natural infertility due to breastfeeding (it is one of the Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding).  Plus, it helps foster the special bonding between mom and baby. If you were a baby, which would you choose: a plastic pacifier or your mother’s breast while you taste her sweet milk, smell her special scent, hear her heartbeat, and look up adoringly at your face? The next time someone tells you your baby is using you as a pacifier or you are simply feeling that way, think of that image I just described and nurse your baby.