The Death of Binky

When Sassy was born I breastfed every half hour for 5 minutes at a time. She got in and out, no dilly-dallying for her. As a consequence, neither one of us got much sleep until we spoke to a breastfeeding consultant. Apparently, there is a wealth of information regarding the subject that isn't intrinsic in first time moms. We arrived and discussed my "failures" as a mom to which the consultant scoffed. Didn't I know about the sucking requirement for babies? Give her a binky and watch her eating habits improve, was the response.

Sucking Requirement. Huh.

And boy, did she have a sucking requirement. She slowly began to nurse for longer periods of time and filled in the gaps with a binky. Every photo of her before age 2 featured a binky.

As she approached 2 we noticed a trend to bite and chew on the binky, we slowly threw out the torn ones. When there was only one left, we had the conversation. Explaining that this was the last binky for Julia, we weren't going to buy any more and so if she chewed through it, she would have to throw it away. In the garbage. Her, not us.

The very next day lo and behold, the binky had developed an irrepairable hole. Again, we explained to her that now she had to throw it away. We proceeded to the garbage can, she held it over, and slowly with much sadness, released her grasp. She cried for all of 2 minutes and the binky was never spoken of again.