The Umba Research Paper

What is the Umba?

I think it was my first foray into parenthood that brought me to the reality that there are more important things than food to a baby. As a young parent I was under the impression that if you had a baby bottle and diapers, you were okay and safe from the ever present crying baby. It was my mother who taught me the meaning of keeping a baby happy when my wife was not there. I did my share of calling mom in panic mode and not knowing what to do because I couldn't get the baby to quit crying. She felt that the easiest way out of any given situation was "THE UMBA", the preferred word in our family for pacifier.
Day to day activities is quite the chore with a child if you don't have all the necessary tools and accessories. Case in point is the Umba; The Umba in our house is what we call the pacifier or as my children at pacifier age would call their life line. For the past 12 years I have spent countless hours looking under furniture, in the backyard or even toy boxes for the ever elusive Umba. I can't count the
number of times that I made emergency late night runs to the local grocery store or 24 hour pharmacy replacing the lost pacifier. I have received all kinds of questions and crazy looks when I have walked into the 24 hour pharmacy or grocery store at 3:00 AM and bought a package of pacifiers. The oddest question ever asked while on one of my late night runs, was, are you going to rave? I just had to laugh and leave in a hurry home to make a baby happy. Who really knows what mysteries that the Umba really holds. It appears to hold a special power to calm a baby when upset or hungry.
I started thinking of all the times and situations where the Umba has been a lifesaver or just there to settle him down for the night. I can recall a time when the family decided to take a trip to Disney World while one of my boy's was only 11 months old. It felt like most of the preparations were centered on the Umba. No one wants to be around when a baby loses his pacifier much less a place where the closest store is about an hour away. So we made sure that we would take about a half dozen extra Umba's in pockets, diaper bags, camera bags, or purses. This way we always had an extra one available at any given time. I'm not sure how pacifiers are lost, but I'm pretty sure they are together with those socks that get lost in the dryer. There must be a magical place where lost pacifiers and socks go that we don't have access to. Not only do I believe in the sock stealing elf, but am convinced that there is a black market for slightly used pacifiers. And the sock stealing elf may have his hand in it.
My youngest child has been the worst to date regarding the dependency of the Umba.
He will walk around the house calling for his Umba if he does not have one in his mouth until he finds one or has someone else cater to need. The funny thing with him is he can never have enough of the Umba's at one time. There was one instance where he had one in his mouth and was carrying around 6 others in his tiny hands. Weaning a child off a pacifier is a little easier than weaning a child off sucking a thumb. We have some friends of ours that asked us for advice of how to get their child to quit sucking their thumb. Unfortunately we had to tell them we had no experience with that because all of our boy's were pacifier kids and when it came time to get them off. We just started to cut the ends off a little bit at a time until there eventually nothing to suck on. That's when we would tell them that it was time to just throw them away and they
would.
In hindsight, the pacifier is called all kinds of nicknames and has different uses in today's society. I have seen young adults wearing them as necklace charms and music personalities in videos. Overall the Umba in our family has been up to now, the single most important baby accessory you can own. Remember not only does the pacifier provides comfort for the child, but also for the adult in times when nothing else works.