So if you don’t want to use a pacifier but want to reduce the risk of SIDS, you want other methods of maintaining lighter sleep — which include co-sleeping, and more frequent waking. That’s right, sleeping too long might mean your baby is sleeping too deeply. Babies are supposed to wake frequently, it’s quite possibly a protective mechanism until their brains are developed enough that SIDS is no longer a danger. So instead of despairing and complaining over the lack of sleep, be grateful that your baby is awake and alive — this kind of positive outlook on it can help get through those late-night (and early-morning) interruptions, without having to resort to plastic.

And of course it should go without saying that nursing to help sleep is preferable to plastic imitations. It always astounds me how certain “experts” maintain that you shouldn’t let your baby get used to nursing to sleep because then they become “addicted” to it and you’ll “never get them off”, but there are no similar warnings for using pacifiers to help sleep! All a pacifier is, is a “trick” to make baby think that he is getting the comfort of nursing without actually nursing.

Another disadvantage I’d like to see mentioned, is that parents all too often become overly dependent on the pacifier as a cure-all for their baby, rather than dealing with whatever the actual problem is. Baby fusses? Stick in the binki. Baby spits it out? Stick it back in.

I’ve even seen MANY times when baby wasn’t even fussing at all, and parents stick it in there… why? Just because babies are SUPPOSED to have one in their mouth all the time? I wonder sometimes if some parents have that perception. Little wonder it becomes so hard for these poor kids to “break the habit” as they get older.