An Open Letter to MAM

Dear MAM,

I've been doing this whole mom thing for almost a year now, and amongst the plethora of parenting knowledge I've gained over the last year, one thing has rang especially true for me: MAM binkies are the best. I constantly hear from friends that they are the only binkies their children will take. This has certainly been true for my little boy from day one. 

Dayen, one week old, with his favorite bunny binky.

Now please don't get me wrong here: I am grateful for your binkies. They have saved me from a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of tantrums, and I'm not ashamed to admit that they seem to work as a literal plug when he starts crying. It's incredible. 

It's just that, and call me cynical, but I can't help but wonder: Why only MAM? Why are children everywhere in agreement that MAM binkies are far superior to other binkies? How do they know?

I don't mean to sound ungrateful here, but I do feel like I was tricked into using your product in the first place. Dayen's favorite bunny binky actually came free in our bag of stuff from registering at Target. I figured hey, free binky. It's a little girly, but whatever. I actually threw it in the bottom of our bassinet in case the binkies I was planning on using got lost. But somehow, it ended up being the only binky he would use! 

And let's not forget the time this binky appeared on How I Met Your Mother! 

We were excited for it to make a cameo, sure, but I was also starting to feel like it was haunting me.

And you know what? That much would be ok. I could handle the MAM company big-brothering me for whatever reason because in the end, I have a happy baby. But there is an undeniable flaw in your product design, something unnoticed by babies but surely I can't be the first mother to notice that nearly all your binkies are white or clear. 

I get it: it's like what shampoo companies do when they try to get us to lather, rinse, and repeat. Only suckers repeat. And only suckers buy binkies that go missing so easily!

Let me tell you, we took care of that thing almost as good as we took care of our kid. I actually dropped him off at my brothers once with the instructions, "if something happens to Dayen, I will be upset. But if you lose this binky, we are going to have some major problems."

And of course, inevitably, it happened anyway. Christmas Eve at the new Star Wars movie, Dayen dropped it and it must have dissolved or transferred to another dimension or something cause I'm telling you, that thing was gone. We had half the theater looking for it before we decided we'd better cut our losses and make it to the store for a new binky before it closed.

(When I gave him his new binky, he took it hesitantly, then smiled like, "oh good. It's a MAM.")

And even once I had a backup binky, they seemed to disappear in pairs. Dayen wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and all I have to do is give him his binky, and we can both fall right back asleep. But somehow it always goes missing. I tear his crib apart, shaking out blankets and tossing out stuffed animals, crawling on my hands and knees feeling every corner of the room for that stupid, invisible binky.

And that's what I'm really writing about. Because it's 2016. If you guys are going to be the best and somehow convince infants nationwide that those weird circle binkies that let you see inside their mouth while they suck, or the funny binkies with fake moustaches glued to the outsides pale in comparison to your binkies, then I need you to make them light up! I need them to have a homing device, and an alarm. I need them to sprout wheels and drive themselves into his mouth at the sound of his cry. I need them to be a color easily seen in my half-asleep state at 2:00 am. We've invented reflectors for bicycles and safety vests for hunters: it's irresponsible that this hasn't happened yet. 

Sincerely,

Anndee Fonnesbeck, the mom

and Dayen Fonnesbeck, who is probably going to secretly pack this binky when he goes to college.

If he can find it.