Why Mothers Should Suck on Their Baby’s Pacifier

The pacifier falls from the baby’s mouth to the floor – and the mother picks it up and puts it in her mouth for a short time to clean it. A study shows why exactly this is good for the health of the child.

One moment the baby in the pram is still happily sucking on its pacifier, the next it falls to the floor. The mother picks it up and puts the pacifier into her own mouth to clean it before handing it back to her baby. According to American researchers, all mothers should do this – because a new study shows that the health of the child can benefit from it.

Less asthma through cleaned pacifiers?

For the study, mothers were asked to clean their child’s pacifier in different ways: 30 sterilized it in boiling water, 53 cleaned it with soap and nine sucked the pacifier themselves before giving it to their child. The researchers then compared the levels of so-called IgE antibodies (which play a role in the development of allergies such as asthma) after the child was born, after six months and after 18 months.

The result: At 18 months, the children in whom the mother had been sucking on the pacifier had significantly lower IgE levels compared to the other two groups. The researchers concluded from this that the risk of allergies in the child is lower if the mother cleans the pacifier by sucking on it herself. Further analysis of the data suggested that initial differences in IgE levels were already noticeable after ten months.

Why is it healthy for a mother to suck a pacifier?

The scientists suspect that healthy oral bacteria from the mother get into the child’s body via the pacifier and strengthen the immune system there. “While we cannot yet say that the principle of cause and effect applies here, we do know that the development of a baby’s immune system is affected by which microbes it is exposed to in early age,” said Eliane Abou-Jaoude. The allergy expert and study author works for the company Henry Ford Health System and presented the study at the “Asthma and Immunology Meeting” in Seattle.