Bye-Bye, Night-Night

Recently Ever started waking up once in the night crying for her "night-night" (pacifier).  Sometimes it was right by her head, and she apparently just didn't really look for it.  Sometimes it had fallen out of the crib.  Jim usually slept through these episodes, but it really interrupted my sleep.  I stopped going to her, and I let her work it out herself.  After a minute or two she'd generally go back to sleep on her own, but I hated being awakened by her crying.  Then she woke up screaming for her night-night at 5:45 A.M. on Wednesday.  It was close enough to her normal wake-up time that her sleep was wrecked for the morning.  So I decided I'd had enough, and the night-night must go.  

Wednesday's nap was a little bit of an ordeal.  The night before had been really short (I think I got her to bed abnormally late, on top of the early morning), and then we had a midday outing that made her nap late.  She was exhausted.  She grabbed her night-night off the changing table when I was changing her diaper, so I told her she could have it while I changed her and read to her, and then we were putting it away before she went to bed.  She fell asleep while I was reading to her.  She woke up when I put her in her crib, and then I had to take the night-night out of her mouth.  She cried and cried and cried, and it was sad because I knew she was just so tired.  I think Jim or I may have ended up going in to calm her down, and then she eventually fell asleep without a night-night.  She's been pacifier-free ever since.  We gave her a sticker each time she slept without a pacifier for a couple days.  She never really cried again, and she  hasn't woken up in the night.  She seems to be falling asleep pretty quickly now without it.  I'm thrilled that the whole thing went so smoothly.  Hooray for breaking the dependency on night-nights for sleep!