Dummies

If there’s one thing that keeps kids entertained it’s watching a dvd of themselves. The hours of footage from their baby days I’d had compiled onto a dvd to reminisce on in later years doubles as a babysitter by holding them enthralled.

Trouble is it’s hard not to be drawn to it yourself as the startling sight of younger versions of you and your family leap off the screen. But any depressive thoughts of this reality are quickly overcome as, with relief, I realise I now have a volume switch for the incessant crying that suddenly fills the house.

I don’t know whether it’s the surround sound amplifying the assaulting noise or just the fact my ears have become unaccustomed, for the howling duet by my beautiful baby twins sounds like a symphony orchestra gone wrong.

How did we live like that during those years?!

Oh I remember. Our volume switch came in the form of a plug – a dummy to be more precise. But while these small pacifiers bring welcome relief during the day they have the ability to make parents’ lives a living nightmare by night.

Imagine this scenario: Baby falls asleep chomping on their dummy (think Maggie Simpson-style), dummy eventually slithers out of baby’s mouth, baby wakes up and begins crying for their dummy. Repeat cycle every half hour.

This, my friends, is called dummy addiction.

Now imagine this happening all night every night and times it by two. Oh and throw in a toddler who is trying to sleep.

It’s a wonder the hallway carpet wasn’t rendered threadbare that year as we took it in turns, stumbling down the hall and fumbling around in the dark for the blasted dummy – that being a euphemised version of the many names it came to be called. It was never located in a logical place – often down the side of the cot or under the pile of blankets. But it was a race against time for fear of waking the other twin who’d probably just nodded off themself after their own dummy mishap. 

Just cut their dummies up, I was told. But I couldn’t bring myself to so, instead, this shattering tedium went on for months, and surviving on only two and a half hour’s broken sleep every night, I was a walking zombie.

Sometimes my wonderful mother-in-law would come and do the night shift, where she’d sit up and not get an ounce of sleep while we locked ourselves in the rumpus room, two floors below, shutting all the doors with the aim of getting a solid night’s sleep. That didn’t work for me – I could still hear them. As it turned out, I needed (and still do) years of training to re-programme myself not to wake. Instead I’d lie there fretting about what was going on upstairs and feeling sorry for my mother-in-law.

This torture continued until I read about glow-in-the-dark dummies. Why hadn’t someone told me about these before?! It made finding their location much easier but, eventually enough was enough. I’d steered clear of attaching their dummies to their sleep suits with a clip fastened to a short ribbon as it was a big no-no but I couldn’t see how the ones we had could be a hazard so that was what I did. They soon cottoned on that they could now easily locate their own dummies and everyone was a lot happier.

They kept their dummies (for sleeping only) until they were nearly three and eventually bit holes in them so I got them to say bye-bye and chuck them in the bin.

And that was the end of that – no one ever looked back.

You’ve probably worked out by now that it’s not a good idea getting your babies addicted to dummies. However, that’s all in the past and my three have slept through the night for years.

… If only I could.