Pacifier sizes

[Anonymous]

My first child never took a pacifier so I never had any experience with it before now. My 6 month old now uses it to help fall asleep. Lately, she's been spitting it out a lot and my daycare provider asked if maybe we needed a bigger one. I know they come in different sizes. This may sound like a stupid question, but am I supposed to buy a bigger size now that she's a little older????

[Anonymous]

I don't know what you are supposed to do. But I replaced mine at about 6 mos just because we had lost some and the few left were getting pretty chewed up. But the older kid pacifiers have a bigger bulb at the top and they seemed to stay in DS's mouth longer.

That said, there is no good way to keep a pacifier in a child's mouth while sleeping. Many have tried, but they fall out and the babies are too young to find them in the dark and put them back in. We reached our limit on pacifier replacement and took it as a sjgn to wean off the pacifier. It took a few days at 9 mo. I hear it gets a lot harder as they get older and more assertive.

[Anonymous]

We weaned our DD off the pacifier by not getting a bigger size. She had the 0-3 month size and after about 3 months, it didn't fit and she eventually quit using it. She didn't move on to her finger or thumb either.

[Anonymous]

Around that time we upgraded to the 6 months + size. I thought it may be a safety thing -- bigger pacifier so children don't swallow them. (Not that it seemed like a huge risk to me, but they were easy enough to replace.)

[Anonymous]

OP here - Thanks for the feedback. I'd love to just wean her now but she seems to really need it to fall asleep. She doesn't need it in all night - just to actually fall asleep. I guess I'll try the bigger size.

[Anonymous]

Good luck. If you do try to wean the pacifier, at this age it is not as hard as it looks, especially if your child has other sleep cues (like getting into a sleepsack, or reading a story, etc.) I started practicing at naptime, so the consequences weren't as bad if we had a rough go of things. It took two days, and then we cut it out of the bedtime routine.

[Anonymous]

Pacifiers do come in different sizes, they range from newborn to 18 months. My child is 17 months old and we are getting ready to upgrade his pacifier to the 18 month size. They have the different sizes not only for the childs safety but also to help the mouth develop correctly. Good Luck

[Anonymous]

The different sizes strike me as odd b/c my nipples and the nipples on 10 month old DD's bottles have never increased in size! But that said, I bought the 6+ month size recently when the old pacis seemed worn out, and although DD still likes her paci, she doesn't care at all when we pull it out of her mouth and she doesn't care that she doesn't have it anymore just for roaming around the house (only at sleep times or during diaper change). I think the bigger size is actually a little big for her mouth so it's not as satisfying - we're keeping the bigger size b/c I think it's helping her wean. While she wants it for sleep, when she wakes in the night she only needs the paci about half the time to fall back asleep - making progress.

[Anonymous]

We just switched to 6+ this week. DS is 8 mos, and we honestly just switched because we only had two pacis left (I didn't want to replace pacis as they lost/wore out b/c I was hoping to wean him. Then he got a cold and started teething and well...) The bonus was that he seems to prefer the new size, probably because the bigger size and nubby texture make for a good teether?