So, I love those LUVS commercials juxtaposing how a mother handles situations differently with her 1st and 2nd child (the video is below if you are unfamiliar or if you want a quick laugh). With your first child hand sanitizer is your best friend, you sterilize everything, and you wash new clothes. With your second child you are more lax because you realize that motherhood is not that serious and doing all that extra stuff for the first child was exhausting. But, this article I found about the best way to clean pacifiers blew my mind! I was doing a search on schools for my 3 year old son and I came across this article about the benefits of cleaning your child’s pacifier with your saliva. My eyes got so big and I was like “WHHHHAAATTT”! I was always the mother who rinsed off pacifiers with water if it dropped on the floor (with my 1st son I actually did the sterilization and throwing away pacifiers if they fell, not so much with the 2nd one).
So, I decided to do more research to see what other people are saying and I found out that this parental pacifier sucking/saliva cleaning is legit. Studies show that parents who use their saliva to clean their kids pacifiers are protecting their child from asthma, allergies and eczema. This saliva cleaning practice exposes babies to bacteria early on that can strengthen their immune system. YES!!! What a relief, now I can finally get off my fiance’s back about sucking our son’s pacifiers to clean it (this is one pet peeve I am glad to get rid of). In fact, I found myself engaging in saliva cleaning for pacifiers and bottles…lol! Isn’t such a relief for us moms and dads who go to the extremes to protect their children from germs. And for the moms and dads who have been sucking all along, give yourself a big pat on the back, you are the best immune boosters around!
So the moral of the story: Don’t immunize, just suck it!!! Just kidding, if you still want to immunize that is up to your discretion and that is a topic that I will write about in another post.
Now, of course there are exceptions: you should not clean your babies’ pacifier with your saliva if you have an illness, STD, or halitosis (there is no research that directly says that parents with halitosis are banned from sucking their kids’ pacifiers, but I think it should be…lol…who wants to taste bad breath…yuck).
For more information, here are some links:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/whhy-dirty-pacifiers-may-be-your-childs-friend/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 (summarized version of the research for those parents in the “having young children” struggle and don’t have time to do anything outside of parenting…lol)
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/04/30/peds.2012-3345.abstract (extensive version for those parents who may have older children and have time, for which this article may not even matter…lol)