Three weeks

Yesterday, Theodore turned three weeks old. Sweet baby!

When he was born, the lactation consultant at the hospital advised waiting three weeks before letting him use a pacifier. So last night, we let him try one for the first time.

The experiment went pretty well. First, a little background:

For the past couple of weeks, Theo has been wanting to nurse for about 40 minutes at a time, especially at night. My estimate was that at least 10 to 20 minutes of that was for comfort, rather than food. That's been fine with me, but it's been tricky at night, because sometimes he'd wake up when we were done with nursing and fuss--when I'd really prefer to be sleeping. :P

For example, a couple of nights ago, he was awake from midnight until 4:15 a.m. Not so fun! (Of course, the night before that, he slept in two nice, long stretches--four hours, then three hours--which was great.)

So, last night, pacifier trial: Twenty minutes into each feeding, once he was looking really groggy and wasn't really eating anymore, I did a switcheroo. After I slipped him the pacifier, he fell asleep. I was able to put him to bed right away. In each instance, he spit the pacifier out after another 20 minutes had passed. Then he stayed asleep for two to three hours, until it was time to eat again.

Overall, then, it was a nice pattern. I've been very ambivalent about pacifiers; I don't want us to give him pacifiers too frequently and have him overuse them. I'm comfortable with the way last night went, though. Let's hope it works out again tonight!