So my style of parenting can be called gentle.............we don't do CIO but we have sleep trained our little one by letting him cry himself to sleep a couple of time while we sat there with him basically laying down the law that this is bed time and you will self soothe and it worked great....so here are some new challenges that I need advice on from like minded moms and dads:
Giving up the bottle - we can do sippy cup not an issue but the LO is now 22 mos and while we were on vacation we made the mistake of letting him sleep with a milk bottle to ease up the restlesness of being in a new environment and now he screams "bottle" before bed time.........we were previously giving him a bottle fillled with water...so now we want to go to no bottle....should we go cold turkey and just throw these out? He also sleep for about 8 hours and wakes up asking for milk, feeds and then goes back to sleep for another 2-3 hours.....I am fine with getting up but realize that the milk can harm his teeth and the bottle needs to go - how can I stop this? Should I do a step at a time.....no bottle at night but he gets one in the morning and then when he is comfortable with this stop the bottle in the morning.....this is stressing me out and any advise from experienced parents is greatly appreciated.....
Anytime I have wanted to stop anything from my children, binky, bottle, etc, we went cold turkey.
I have seen a pattern, that it takes about 4 days to kick. Meaning after 4 days, all is well and back to normal.
I know everyone is different, but that is what has worked for my kids and I.
Our little one gave up the bottle on his own just before his first birthday. We had already introduced the sippy, and he was refusing the bottle. After several times rejecting the bottle we gathered that he wanted the faster flow of the sippy. This was just good luck on our part, but maybe you can orchestrate something similar. Revert to the newborn nipples in the bottle and offer water in that or water in a sippy. Maybe he'll opt for the sippy.
Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.
Please go cold turkey. Think of it this way - if you are "gentle" and give in to a bottle of milk, you're trading for something not so gentle when your child has a mouth full of cavities and has to have dental work.
There comes a time when "gentle" is inappropriate and will result in a child being uncontrollable. Don't go down that path with your child. He needs limits and rules and expectations.
Drop the bottles. If there are no more in the house, you can't pull them out anymore. At this age, he doesn't need bottles anymore. He needs to be drinking out of a cup. It will be a hard week, but a week is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
He asks for milk when he wakes up because he likes it, but the milk is bathing his teeth with sugar, he's going back to sleep and it pools in his mouth. You aren't brushing his teeth before he goes back to sleep. No more - just water when he awakes. If he cries, too bad. He'll have to get past it. If you are 100% consistent, then he will learn the lesson.
Stop being stressed out and move him to the next developmental level. He's been treated like a one year old long enough, Mom! The next stage is wonderful too - you just have to let him cross the threshold over to it without holding onto the bottle and the milk during the night.
Dawn
Think about it this way. Milk is milk is milk is milk no matter what kind of container it comes in.
The research into tooth rot shows that it is often a child that goes to sleep with a bottle in their mouth then they sleep all night with that bottle dripping milk in their mouth is what causes the milk rot. My friend was the had of Social Services for a local, very very large, tribe and often saw many children coming in with just nubs for teeth. Theirs were simply gone, rotted away. So she had some researchers do some research into why so many of these kids were like this.
As an adult we don't run to the bathroom to brush our teeth every time we drink a sip of pop or of coffee. We go all day without brushing our teeth and they don't rot off to the root. It's because our saliva rinses our mouth out. That's part of it's job.
So if you are not totally set mentally to take the bottle away then don't. When he's ready he'll be very easy to switch.
If you are dead set and are determined to take the bottle away then just do it and be prepared for a battle for perhaps weeks.
After 4 kids (and we bedshare, BF for over a year, etc) we find that cold turkey is best and stick to your word....don't go back in a moment of weakness.
