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The Insider Pick:
Nothing soothes a fussy baby quite like a pacifier. We've tested dozens of pacifiers over the years to find the best ones you can buy for every scenario, price, and age range. The MAM Perfect Pacifier is our top pick because it soothes babies, looks cute, won't disrupt tooth alignment, and a two-pack costs less than $10.
Binkies, doonies, pacis, soothies, bippies, buppies, hushies are all names for pacifiers. As many experienced parents know, your baby’s favorite pacifier will get you out of a lot of jams — especially when the breast or the bottle are not on the menu, and you all just need a little break. As the mother of a former pacifier-addict, I know my way around the binkie market.
Even though pacifiers have been around for hundreds of years, according to The New York Times, there has been and continues to be some controversy surrounding their use. From bizarre claims that they encourage masturbation (um, what?) to more fact-based assertions that they might cause “nipple confusion” in breastfed babies, or contribute to orthodontic issues down the road, not everybody is pro-pacifier.
That said, there are a host of positive findings about pacifier use, including their strong analgesic effect, and correlation with a lower instance of SIDS. With so many different kinds of pacifiers available on the market now, nervous moms and dads can choose the right size and shape for each stage of infant growth, greatly lessening any cause for orthodontic concerns. This good news, combined with safer, more advanced versions of pacifiers being sold, plus their incredible ability to comfort a fussy little one, make pacifiers a part of most parents’ must-have list.
All in all, most western babies use pacifiers during some stage of their infanthood, and plenty of hospitals, doctors, dentists, and other health professionals recommend them without hesitation. My husband and I purchased my daughter’s first pacifier from the lactation clinic in the hospital where she was born and where my husband is also a doctor.
Since there are so many kinds of pacifiers available now, choosing the right one for each stage and circumstance of babyhood can be confusing, but we did the research, consulted the trusted sources, and tested over a dozen kinds on my daughter.
Here are our top picks for the best pacifiers you can buy:
Read on in the slides below to learn all about our top picks for the best pacifiers you can buy.
The best pacifier overall
Why you'll love it: The MAM Perfect Pacifier is made from extra thin BPA/BPS-free silicone to reduce the risk of tooth misalignment, while the soothing shape stays in baby’s mouth.
The MAM Perfect Pacifier comes in different sizes for babies ages zero to six months, six months plus, and 16-months plus. From the moment my daughter was three months old, to the day she put her binkie down for good, MAM pacifiers were her favorite.
I basically bought them in bulk. We lost or misplaced so many pacifiers between home, daycare, baby music class, and rides on planes, trains, and automobiles, that we were continually buying and trying more brands on the go, based on whatever the nearest store was carrying. We tried probably over a dozen brands throughout her infancy and early toddlerhood, but we kept coming back to MAM.
When I was researching binkie brands for my family, I was attracted to MAM because of the company's impressive record of scientific and medical research, all of which went into product development. After reading up on the use of pacifiers the only possible negative that really worried me had been potential dental damage down the road. According to MAM's website, its pacifier design was developed with dentists and orthodontists to “reduce the risk of misaligned teeth” and was “clinically tested by the Dental University Clinic of Vienna,” which was good enough for me.
During my daughter’s prime days of binkie use she was too young to tell me exactly why she preferred the MAM brand, but I think the round, soft shape and subtly bumpy silicone texture that, according to the website, best approximates the real thing, felt most familiar to her, and also kept the point from simply falling out of her mouth while she wasn’t actively sucking. They also come inside a clear plastic storage case that can be used to disinfect the pacifiers in your microwave.
She used the MAM “original” pacifier. Recently, the company has come out with a brand-new “perfect” pacifier made from the same ultra-soft patented silicone (BPA and BPS free), which is now even thinner and softer.
The pacifier is also “…on average: 36–76% thinner, and two to eight times softer than regular silicone pacifiers,” meaning it stays comfortably nestled into your baby’s mouth without causing extra pressure. I picked one up on Amazon to see the new design for this article, and will definitely be keeping this one in the closet for my next kid.
Pros: Orthodontist-recommended design and high-quality materials make for a comfortable and soothing option with several safety features
Cons: A few moms have reported the air-flow design leaves marks on extra chubby cheeks (which is a really cute problem to have, honestly)
The best pacifier for newborns
Why you'll love it: The Wubbanub with Philips Avent Soothie Pacifier is a life saver with its hospital-recommended shape and a weighted plushie animal that keeps it from falling out.
This pacifier is actually a two-for-one product, since the ingenious Wubbanub pacifier is really two products in one. The inventor, momtrepreneur Carla Schneider, started with the hospital-recommended all-star newborn pacifier, the Philips Avent Soothie for newborns, and connected it with a wide variety of small bean-filled, and adorable plushie animals designed to rest on baby’s chest and keep the pacifier from falling out when little ones fuss.
And believe me, if you’re a parent you already know this, but if you’re doing research for a future baby, you will soon learn: The struggle to keep a neonate’s pacifier in your baby's mouth comfortably is incredibly real.
As one 5-star reviewer on Amazon wrote, “[Before Wubbanub, the pacifier] would fall out, [the baby] would cry, and mom or dad would have to get up put it in many times a night. As sleep-deprived new parents getting up every few hours to feed him, this routine got old real fast. The problem is the infant pacifier that we started using when we came home from the hospital kept falling out and down next to him. He would start to cry. Put it back in and happy baby… [The Wubbanub] worked wonderfully. If it falls out of the baby's mouth and you have the baby on the back as almost every baby sleep expert recommends, the pacifier will stay on the baby's chest. The baby can then put it back in at will.”
Before my husband and I found the Wubbanub, we took turns popping the pacifier back in our sometimes-colicky tiny daughter’s mouth all night long. We even tried kind of wedging the top of her swaddle over the edge of her Philips Avent to keep it in place which, looking back, was probably not a great idea.
I’ve heard of moms with older kids even bribing their older toddlers and kids to sit by their newborns during the and pop their pacifier back in when it falls out. The Wubbanub isn’t a 100% solution for falling binkies, but it’s much better than the unweighted alternatives when you’re a desperate, sleep-deprived parent of a newborn.
One of the only drawbacks many parents discover is that the combination of a cloth plushie with a silicone pacifier tip is rather hard to disinfect. What I did (and what many reviewers on Amazon advise) is throwing the whole thing in the washing machine occasionally, and holding just the silicone tip in boiling water as needed.
Pros: Non-invasive shape less-likely to cause “nipple confusion” in newborn infants, while the attached weighted plush toy keeps things in place when baby fusses
Cons: Hard to disinfect
The best pacifier for toddlers
Why you'll love it: The Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature Fun Pacifier has an orthodontic design that’s safe for toddlers who don’t want to give up their soother.
The Tommee Tippee brand is a well-known maker of baby bottles that are built to resemble a mother’s breast. As the product description states, the “symmetrical orthodontic nipple has been specially designed to help optimize baby acceptance and in independent tests, more babies accepted these new pacifiers the first time.” Basically, Tommee Tippee bottle bases and nipples are made to approximate the experience of breastfeeding, so that babies who use both breast and bottle won’t get confused or prematurely self-ween. Tomie Tippee's pacifiers follow the same basic idea.
Instead of a big round bulbous tip on the end like many pacifiers, the Tommee Tippee“closer to nature” design is a bit larger at the tip, but is totally symmetrical and narrows into the base without a big curve. This means that the shape and feeling of the silicone is more like a real live nipple. It won’t stay put in baby’s mouth as well as brands that have a bulbous tip, but by the time your little one is a toddler, they can handle that part all on their own.
Lots of reviewers on Amazon state that this signature nipple shape is the only one their kiddos like, with one mom going so far as to say, “These pacifiers LITERALLY helped change my life.” The silicone is BPA-free and easy to disinfect, but according to another couple of reviewers, they’re easy to clean, but can sometimes get water stuck inside the nipple during washing.
Most of the negative reviews and comments about buying on Amazon are about the fact that you can’t choose which colors you get. I understand this bothers some people, but I’m one of those revolutionaries who thinks there’s no such thing as “boy colors” and “girl colors,” so that didn’t bother me.
Pros: A BPA-free symmetrical silicone shape that toddlers love
Cons: The design sometimes allows water to get trapped inside
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