The two biggest challenges in using a pacifier as part of the daily life of your baby is to find one that she likes and then keeping track of it. The quest to find a pacifier that your infant likes to have in her mouth sometimes hours each day requires more persistence and research into the right pacifiers to meet mom's tough standards. But with some consultation from other moms and your pediatrician, you can sort that issue out in a week or so and hopefully without buying too many pacifiers that your baby doesn't like.



But on a daily basis, the biggest problem you face concerning the pacifier is keeping up with where it is when you need it. A pacifier is a small piece of molded plastic, which can easily fit in the palm of your hand. When you are getting ready to take the child on an outing, this is just the kind of item that very easily slips to the bottom of the diaper bag. Then when your baby suddenly begins to cry in the car because she wants her pacifier, finding it can make you want to pull your hair out.

But once you give the pacifier to your child, the task of keeping track of where it is does not go away. Babies are very good at spitting the pacifier out if they don't want it even for a little while. Every mom and dad have gone through the game where the baby spits out the pacifier for a moment and then cries because she wants it a minute later. This cycle can go back and forth for many repetitions and those repetitions can wear down the nerves of even the most patient parents.

Many solutions have been tried to make sure you always have a pacifier ready when the baby wants one. The "golf ball" approach is to simply acknowledge that you are going to lose a few pacifiers and just overstock on them each month. This approach turns the pacifier into a commodity item like tissues and baby wipes. It really isn't a good solution because it is wasteful. Before long you start finding pacifiers everywhere because you never took the time to keep track of them and that becomes a nuisance cleaning up old pacifiers and putting them back into the system.

You could carry the pacifier in the pocket of your pants but then you give up a pocket and unless you put the pacifier in a baggie, it will get dirty with the lint and dust from your pants. So the only real solution is one that many stroller and pacifier makers have accommodated and that is to get a pacifier that can be secured to the baby with a clip or a holder. If the pacifier is attached to a flexible chord to a clip on the baby's top, she can drop it all she wants and it is never far away. Before long even the baby figures out that the clip will keep the pacifier nearby and be capable of finding it and putting it back in her mouth.

You should shop for clips or holders with the same eye for safety that you use for all products that impact your baby. But this is a slick and simple way to solve the age-old problem of keeping track of your baby's pacifier. It can reduce the frustration of being the mom of a newborn and that is a noble goal.