What are ways of cleaning the pacifier (baby drops it on floor /ground) other than use water?

I’ve seen a lot of mothers stick it in their own mouth to “clean” it, especially if it’s their own fairly clean floor.

I just read a couple of days ago in, I believe it was the NY Times Online, that the best way to clean a baby’s pacifier is for the parent to suck on it and clean it with their own saliva. This not only cleans it, but it provides natural antibodies that might strengthen the child’s ability to fight infections. But for me it would depend on where the thing was dropped. Ugh.

@Espiritus_Corvus I’m going along with this article.
@livelaughlove21 How many is a lot?

Apparently, it works for the parent to lick it and put it back in the baby’s mouth. It helps avoid allergies and asthma.

Source

I hadn’t read the last paragraph:
“Still, with the threat of infection, Holberich stressed that hand washing and immunizations remain critical. He said he would not advise parents to change their routine based on the small study.” Thank goodness.

Here’s the published abstract in last week’s issue of the journal Pediatrics. It ends with…

CONCLUSIONS: Parental sucking of their infant’s pacifier may reduce the risk of allergy development, possibly via immune stimulation by microbes transferred to the infant via the parent’s saliva.

I saw this behavior on a bus in France last year & regarded it as disgusting and risky. But as usual Mom knows best!

I’ve cleaned it with my mouth/saliva depending on where it fell. Otherwise, a cloth of some kind. Or I have extra pacifiers and I just put that one away, if it’s really dirty.

There is something fishy about this story, all I’m saying. I have been around in all kinds of places, and I have never seen known anyone who sucks the dirt off. And the logic (the “study“of it doesn’t add up. Disturbing.

@flo I think the study is quite sound, actually. Children in the past couple of decades have more problems because we’re making their worlds ‘too clean’ so to speak, their immune systems are shit.

We always had a couple extras in mum’s pocketbook or somewhere in the diaper bag.

You know they are gonna drop it. Having spares of everything is good if you can find a way to carry them..

We only had pacifiers in the bed. That solved it for us. Otherwise… Rub it with a cloth?

@flo Most of the mothers I know, in fact.

My friend with three children always sucked the dirt off. She is a nurse.

There are more problems like a cold sore in the mothers mouth, just to mention one example. How can they can’t credit the absence of allergies down to that practice. It sounds like irresponsible mambo jumbo.

@flo Cold sores appear on the outside of the mouth. If there is a sore inside the mouth, on the soft tissue, it is most likely a canker sore, which is not contagious. A cold sore can be passed by a kiss, and one would hope that a mother would have enough sense to avoid mouth-to-mouth contact with her baby when she has a cold sore.

I never bothered to clean it. I just brushed it off and handed it back to her.

Okay, I understand @livelaughlove21 but it is just not only about one thing. How can they narrow it down to mothers saliva? There must be a ton of varialbles out there.

Why don’t they suggest that we all just feed them our spit routinely if that is the case? Sheesh.

One small “study”. omg. A credible research is supposed to involve many independent studies with lots of paricipants…. This reminds me of that
“study”: about Amygdala…..and….facebook.

I’ve known many moms to clean it with their own mouths. It’s not at all uncommon. That said, I never did it. Not because I was worried about my spit in the baby’s mouth, but because I didn’t want dirt from the floor in mine. I just carried spares.

There are pacifier wipes that have food-grade ingredients (and no alcohol). I had a sample pack, but my little guy didn’t like the taste. He gave up pacifiers before he started solid food, so I didn’t retry the wipes.

BTW, our kids didn’t like pacifiers (they were all thumb-suckers, like I was), so I was referring to bottle nipples when I said I carried spares.

@flo The thing is, you’re right, it’s just one study but it has many other studies attached to it in terms of what the study is about – maternal biology—>immune systems. So it’s not just one study. Even if it was, most people would react kind of like you, they’d say ‘that’s gross’ and wouldn’t change their parenting styles. Other moms who do clean it with their mouths would still do it, but not because of the study.

It is not just because it is one study, the whole idea of telling people to feed their spit to the baby, and encouraging adults to essentially to lick the floor is incredible. In this age of advanced state of everthing? omg.

@flo There really is quite a bit of evidence mounting up that we’d all be better off if we weren’t quite so clean/germaphobic. Allergies and auto-immune diseases are probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Some people’s “too clean” is other people’s too filthy.