What?! No more soother?!

I was talking to the parents of a 7-month-old the other day; they needed my help with their baby who was waking up several times a night and taking short naps.

They listened intently to every step of my plan, fully on board with what needed to change to help their little one learn to sleep through the night, until I said those six scary words:

"So, this means no more soother."

I could feel the tension in their silence and see the fear in their eyes.

I smiled. I had seen this time and time again when parents first imagine the impossible task of putting their baby to bed without a pacifier.

This couple knew that the fall-out-and-replace routine with their little one's pacifier was likely the culprit in their baby's frequent wakings and short naps. But after 7 months of getting up to pop it back in every time their baby woke, they couldn't imagine it any other way.

But, like everything in life, you never know until you try. The good news is, parents can lean on the experience of countless others before them. Here's what I tell every parent who just can't see the end of popping a soother back in: a pacifier is the easiest sleep prop to get rid of. Baby after baby and toddler after toddler I've worked with has forgotten all about their soother and started sleeping through the night (and taking longer naps) within a week.

As for the couple I was speaking to the other day as we walked through their baby's sleep plan, their little one slept 12 hours straight last night. "This is like magic!" the Mom said to me in our check-in call yesterday. "We just can't believe it... we feel amazing."

While a pacifier can really help with a fussy newborn, after a while, it is almost like giving your baby a job to do insead of just sleeping. When they wake up at the end of every natural sleep cycle, as is normal for all of us to do, they cry out, looking for the thing that helped them get to sleep in the first place. So we pop it back in and encourage them to suck in order to fall asleep.

Without having an internal program for how to drift off to sleep (like we all developed as babies), they will continue to wake up and need that assistance night after night, sleep cycle after sleep cycle.

All it takes is a solid plan for how to comfort your baby without getting in the way of them developing their own internal fall-asleep program, so they can simply roll over and go right back to sleep, 5 or 6 times a night. That's what "sleeping through the night" really means: the ability to go from sleep cycle to sleep cycle without fully waking up. When we get 8 hours of sleep, that's what we're actually doing.

Once a baby learns how to do that, it's a breeze for them to drift off to dreamland on their own steam and to sleep 11 -12 hours straight through the night without making a peep. And that means you get your evenings back for you and nighttime back for sleeping, not to mention being happier parents with a thriving, well-rested baby in the morning.

In no time flat, you'll be thinking "What soother? Did we ever use a soother?"

And your little one will just be dreaming.