Intervention

An intervention took place yesterday morning at daycare. It has been hard for me to cope with, to say the least. After 9 hours yesterday without a "bop," I felt like I had to at least try and continue Sarwat's work. In the past, I have given in after a few minutes of begging and pleading. I was feeling a kind of strength yesterday that I had not felt before. Maybe it was the organic salad and tofu I had for lunch or the extra vitamin I had with my morning coffee, but I felt I could actually go through with it this time.

The "bop" has been both a blessing: when it was impossible to get her to stop crying, we would just pop a "bop" in her mouth and it was instant gratification; and a pain: when it was 3 a.m. and the "bop" had fallen behind the bed and we couldn't reach it, but she had to have it to fall back to sleep. Last night falls into the pain category, but I think it was actual physical pain. Shaking, crying, whining, begging, and then finally calm... only to start the whole thing over again. This must be what withdrawl symptoms are like for people trying to beat an addiction. After a night with little sleep myself, I feel like crying for her as I write this.

Early this morning after at least an hour of whining, shaking, and begging, I let her get up. She grabbed a little piece of a "bop" nipple that the dog had chewed off and showed it to me proudly. She was clinching it in her hands over and over again as she would suck the "bop" in her mouth. I told that it was only a piece and that the dog had ruined that "bop." She held to it for several minutes and then agreed to let me throw it away. Now we are almost 24 hours without it and she is playing quietly with her Dora toys in the bed.

I am left tired, drained, sad, and asking myself, could a pacifier ever really be worth all of this?

Olivia at about 23 hours "sans bop."