Today was the day that Sofia gave up her dummies.She is turning 4 this year and it was getting to the point of embarrassment.Even though for the past couple of years I have hated seeing one stuck in her mouth I admit that if I had the choice all over again I would still have used one.Sofia has always been a tricky one to get to sleep and no matter how much rocking and soothing I did nothing seemed to work.Sometimes she would scream for hours until one day I rang a parenting helpline in tears begging for help.Help came in the form of a wonderful child's nurse who assessed Sofia and said she had exhaustion and because she was so tired had also lost the strength to breast feed properly.I stayed in a facility for a total of two weeks trying to get my milk up and getting Sofia into a routine. Within the first hour I was handed her first dummy and there it stayed for almost four years to comfort her when she slept and to calm her when she had her "moments".So today we picked out two special balloons that would take her dummies that she has loved so much to the baby's in the sky.As we let them go it started to rain but we stood and watched them disappear into the clouds.
