The day Tish turned a week old( technically, the night ) , she cried and cried and cried herself to sleep .
She cried 6 hours non-stop , where her frenzied parents tried everything from feeding,burping,changing, applying aeosphetida,crying along with her ...but nothing worked.
Next day someone dropped in at home ( you know, one of those people who have an opinion on everything under the sun)and suggested using a pacifier.
"Our cousin uses it , and her baby is the most well -behaved baby you ever saw"
Not bothered about well -behaving ( I never was well -behaved,why expect it from my child?)but seriously short on a shut-eye, I asked my hubby to get the miracle pacifier.
What he brought in looked like a colorful nipple.
"This is exactly whose idea of a pacifier? Is my child so dumb that she will take it for a breast?" I wondered aloud.
So when the witching hour arrived and baby started to wail, the pacifier was dutifully put into the her mouth and we closed our eyes, waiting for dreamland to engulf us.
All I could hear was gulp,gulp gulp.
I opened my eyes and looked at our baby. She looked like an angry waif who had been gagged forcefully ... I could almost swear that she would have cried ,if her tear ducts would have been functional.
"This dosen't look right " I said
" Don't feel guilty , she just needs to suck on something. That calms her.Thats why its called pacifier."
I looked at our baby, the anger in her eyes escalated;she spat the pacifier out and cried at the top of her voice.
" I told you she can't be fooled." I said drily, but that angry and helpless look kept hovering in my mind.
Next night ,even though my mind protested, we tried with the pacifier again and succeded.
In the morning, I woke up with a bad dream where I had gagged my child and she was crying for help while I slept unawares.
That was when I decided that the spurious nipple would never again go into my daughter's mouth . If she needs to be calmed, we will find another way .
Meanwhile, the said cousin visited our place.The way she kept putting pacifier back into her kid's mouth made me feel like it would be better if she surgeried it to his face.
Everyone sees a successful mother in her, whose child is never in the lap and never cries.
What I see is a child devoid of his mother's arms' security, his emotions curbed with a fake boob.
My child clings to me.If that's bad behaviour, I don't care . Like I said earlier,I wasn't very well-behaved but my mum loved me anyway. I will do the same.
She cries . I am human enough to understand that sometimes she might cry of boredom, but most of the times its for a reason.So I try to understand what's ailing her
Anyway, the good news is that she has learnt to self -soothe herself. She puts her whole hand in her mouth for a few seconds. So I think the war against pacifier can be continued.
