Binky Breaking

After I posted my 4 month post talking about how the girls were sleeping pretty good through the night, it went down hill and went down hill fast!  All of the sudden I was getting up about 10x's a night to replace binkies.  The same was happening for their naps.  Both were dependent on their binkies to stay asleep although Siena more than Aria.  So a couple weeks ago both Shane and I had had it.  I seriously thought I would lose it if I had to replace a binky one more time.  So we both decided that we were done.  No more binkies for sleep and we were doing it cold turkey.  I called my sister in law Whitney for moral support since she had done it with Max the month before.  Everyone told me it takes 3 days.  So we were mentally prepared to last 3 days and get them off the binkies for sleeping.

I called my sisters that were going to babysit them this week to warn them and make sure they were committed to the cause.

The next day, I sent the following email to my family:
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To: Family
Subject: Binky Breaking Update
Since I know everyone is wondering how our night went, here is the update:

First of all, all 3 naps went fairly well yesterday.  The hardest was Siena on her last nap woke up after an hour and cried 10 mins, not that hard though, and went back to sleep.  Very manageable.

We fed the girls, gave them a little lecture on sleeping without binkies, and even sang them Lionel Richie's 'All Night Long' song.  So we put the girls down, put monitors in both their rooms and shut the doors so they wouldn't wake each other up.  We mentally prepared for lots of crying and went downstairs.  Aria was really tired because she has decided to give up her little 6:30 cat nap this week.  So she fell asleep without making a sound.  Siena started crying at 8:47.  She would cry a little and then stop, then cry a little then stop.  She never even got that loud.  At 8:54pm she fell asleep.  7 minutes...that's it....I can handle that.

We went to bed thinking it was still going to be a long night.  At 4:30am I woke up....to silence!  I was in shock.  Not a peep from them yet.  At 5:30 I heard Aria wake up, she cried out 3 little cries and went back to sleep.  I never heard a sound from Siena until we got them up at 7 this morning.  I'm hoping this isn't beginners luck and today will be worse but seriously, all I could think about this morning was 'Best Parenting Decision EVER!'  We are both soooo happy that we didn't have to get up out of bed once.

Jennifer, are you still feeling committed to watching the girls today?  Hopefully they won't cry too hard and will nap good for you....and to answer your question of 'I feel bad, are they suffering?'  the answer obviously is no...

So that's the update! So happy...
Sheri
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So Jennifer gets the girls that afternoon to watch them and here is her reply to my email:
________________________________________
From: Jennifer
Subject: Re: Binky Breaking Update

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LOL...I cracked up.  Jennifer had found the 'emergency' binkies in the diaper bag.  Ok she just did it for the picture but seriously so funny.  I also love this picture because you can see how blue their eyes both are.  And this was taken from an iphone without any editing.

Since then they have been doing great.  Naps still aren't that great and the nights aren't perfect but still is about 95% better than before.  It's heaven and I still stand by my line of 'best parenting decision ever."  However, I don't regret giving the girls binkies at all and would do it again, it was just time they learned to sleep without them.