Struggling to Wean Piglet off Chewing on Cloth

For the past couple of weeks, I have been googling like mad to find baby products in India in an effort to wean Piglet from his new-found fondness for eating cotton and wool.

Cotton and wool? That’s such a strange craving right? I actually tried chewing on some of it myself (just to see what was so attractive to Piglet), and I tell you, that stuff is nasty, just nasty.

So how did Piglet get into it? Here’s how…

Piglet has always been a night owl since the day he was born. So we are used to a night-time sleep ritual that lasts up to 11 pm, with a wake-up at 3:00 am, and then a last 8:00 am good morning.

This routine was never that satisfactory to us. Snubnose needs to be up and out of the house by 7:30 am, and what this meant that every day we slept late and woke up early. After some time it takes its toll.

Out of desperation, we enrolled Piglet in a school so that he spends a couple of hours playing there and skips his morning nap. This should have worked, right? He should be pleasantly tired and sleepy earlier in the evening, right? Nope.

We often compare him to that old Duracell battery advert where the Duracell bunny powered by Duracell batteries keeps on going long past everyone has dropped out of sheer exhaustion.

Now Piglet is almost 19 months old and still we have sleep time issues with him :(.

Fortunately, he has always loved his blankies that we got for him when he was a baby. These are organic muslin blankets that Piglet loved to hold onto and chew in the nights when he was sleepy but not yet feeling ready to drop off. It kind of kept him quiet during late night story and song sessions. We didn’t mind Piglet chewing on these blankies because:

1. It’s organic
2. And there are no loose threads that he can swallow

Here’s an old photo of Piglet soothing himself with his nice little organic blankie…

Unfortunately lately, he has lost interest in these blankies. They are not very warm and so now he has turned to adult flannel blankets, which do unfortunately pill, and Piglet has realized that cotton is the closest thing to amrit/manna from heaven on earth and eats cotton and wool as though he is in starvation mode. Sigh! Yet another bad habit that I have to wean Piglet from.

Once his organic blankies stopped working for him, we tried Sophie the giraffe that was gifted to us when he was a baby…

Unfortunately, for some reason he finds her really annoying and instead uses her as a stress-reliever in the car when we are stuck in traffic. It’s actually hilarious how worked up he gets in traffic, when I hand over Sophie to him, he grits his teeth and really pummels into her. Amazing how much he resembles K at such moments :D.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand…

We are now looking for something chewy, non-squeaky, non-cheap plasticky, non-cloth (so no stuffed dolls), brightly colored toy that Piglet will like to chew on and which is hopefully good (or at least not bad) for him.

I haven’t had any luck so far finding anything. Do you have any suggestions for us?

And yeah, Piglet hates pacifiers too 🙁