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The pacifier is an innocuous looking little bit of plastic and rubber, but the British English term seems more indicative of its less-than-ideal nature: the dummy.

The pacifier is a substitute — no one denies that. When an infant is whinny, colicky, unable to sleep, there’s nothing like the instinctual sucking motions of all infants to calm them down. Yet a baby cannot feed indefinitely, hence the pacifier — the dummy nipple.

It’s an easy, logical answer: all the comforting sucking without the overeating. Yet, it seems akin to using the television as a babysitter. It’s an easy answer. And so, as parents, we all have to make the decision as to whether or not we’ll use one with our child.

With L, we experimented with one briefly when she was upset, rooting, and yet definitely fed. To our relief, L would suck on it for a moment, then either spit it out or allow it to be taken out.

“So a pacifier works,” we thought. A bit of a relief when you have a colicky baby.

Then I did a little reading and found that it’s not a good idea to use a pacifier with a baby who’s breastfeeding, at least until the baby is a month old and has mastered nursing (a skill both mother and daughter have had to learn, but that’s an entirely different story). The sucking motions are completely different, and using a pacifier sucking motion on while feeding results in underfeeding — not a good idea when the baby hasn’t even returned to her birth weight yet.

And so, we put the pacifier away for good. Yet that leaves the question, how do you calm a panicky, colicky baby? We’ve found a few things that work with L — any suggestions?