Hi Stephanie,
You didn't tell how you trigger pause/play with those 'buttons' - since you are on CP6 or later, use shape buttons that can be put on the master slides or timed for the rest of the project.
http://blog.lilybiri.com/why-i-like-shape-buttons-captivate-6
http://blog.lilybiri.com/toggle-shape-buttons
If you use a simple action (using the Action accordion), another possibility besides the excellent event-handler widget (only for SWF-output) is to replace it by a standard action: http://blog.lilybiri.com/why-choose-standard-over-simple-action
Lilybiri