A long long time ago

My daughter use to self sooth. I know there are now a new crowd of people out there who do not believe in self soothing and feel you are training your child to do something that is un-natural, but me personally? I liked it. N always had one of two ways that she used to get herself to sleep, she'd suck her tongue (quite an interesting sound) or her fingers. It was really nice to be able to bath, feed, read her a story and then put her in her crib and have her instantly start crying.

While we were in NB, we started the 'habit' of giving her a pacifier to sooth herself. I do not know quite why we started to do this, I think she was having a tough time adjusting the first few nights due to the time zone change and we used the pacifier to help her, and then we got into the habit of giving it to her nightly.

I really did not consider it a big deal, she's still little and the only time she ever gets it is at naps and bedtime, we did not give it to her during the day or to just suck on. We even went so far as to go back into her room once she was asleep and take it out. She never woke up, and it was definitely a habit we did not want, her to lose it out of her mouth and wake up crying for it at 2am. Up until the last couple of days, I saw nothing wrong at all with giving it to her for naps and bedtime. She was happy and asleep in 10-15mins which meant no crying and Owen and I could spend some time together, not tons of time soothing and trying to get her to sleep.

The problem now is that I've noticed in the last few days when we are out in her stroller, or in the car or what not and she gets tired, she whines and whimpers and and sort of cries a bit. I know she's tired, she knows she's tired, but unlike before, when she'd just fall to sleep, she now wants her pacifier. I'm not quite sure why it bothers me, but it does. I really can't pull the truck over on the deerfoot to get out her pacifier ( we keep 1 in the diaper bag for emergencies) and I don't want to give it to her at the mall.

Now, I could be totally off on this. Babies sleep habits/patterns change as they get older, more alert and more aware of stuff going on around them, but my gut tells me it's the pacifier. This afternoon I tried her afternoon nap w/o it and was semi successful. She only cried for a few minutes. For bedtime, not so much. She cried off and on (I kept going in to re-assure her and calm her down) for 30 minutes before she finally settled to go to sleep.

Maybe I should just let it be and let her have the pacifier? I think I'm expecting too much from my 8.5 month old.