Monday, 17 January 2011
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How Do You Get Rid of the Bottle?
My daughter just recently turned 2. She also still wakes up 2-4 times a night, and every time she wakes up she gets a bottle. In my head I know that this is so wrong, and so unnecessary but I'm stuck in a rut. I'm obviously overtired all the time because I never get more than 4 hours sleep at a time and it's just so hard to kick the habit. It's pretty much been this way since she was born, except that the first 3 weeks I was breastfeeding and it was every hour, hence the switch to bottles. There was also about a 6 month period where a walked her to sleep every other time she woke up but that was killing me in that I was getting about 3 hours less sleep. Now I know I should have sleep trained her and established a good routine where she fell asleep on her own, not depending on a bottle.
That is completely my fault. I was thinking about right then and right then I was tired and wanted sleep. I was not thinking about a year later where she would still be waking up as if she were an infant and me still giving in to the bottles. Did I mention that we still co-sleep as well? Yeah, it's that bad.
My husband is fed up with it, he wants those bottles gone and fast. I honestly don't blame him, none of us are getting what we need, especially not our daughter. Here is the difficult part, how do I get rid of them?
We have made tentative tries, none that really deserve results but I guess we were just hoping it would be easy, obviously that's not going to happen. I have talked to her about throwing away her bottles or giving them to new babies that needed them more, that got me tears and a whole lot "No mommy, mine's baba". I spent one one day telling her periodically that she only needed one bottle at bedtime and then none until the next day. She agreed just fine with that until that night when we tried it. The first time she woke I told her she couldn't have one but instead sang a few lullabies and rubbed her back, that was fine until she realized I really wasn't going to get her another bottle. She cried off and on for 3 hours before I gave in and gave her a bottle.
A few weeks before that my husband had made an attempt, he thought she would go back to sleep for him since he doesn't usually get up with her. He spent 20 minutes in her room with her before he brought her to our bed, no bottle. She spent the next 20 minutes talking away to us, without any response other than "close your eyes and go night-night" before he got up and brought her a bottle. We seem to have a real problem sticking to what we say we are going to do.
Her bedtime routine is pretty good. She has a bath and then she gets her jammies on and we stay in her room doing light play. Then she climbs into her bed (with her bottle) and I read her 2 books, turn out the lights, sing 2 lullabies and leave. She usually wakes about for the first time around midnight and comes to our bed.
I really need a good plan before I make an attempt to take her bottle away again. Any ideas or suggestions for kicking the habit, hers and mine?
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- From: SaveYourEyes@xanga
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Comments (33)
I am so thankful I did not have to deal with this. Our little guy was 18 months old when he decided he did not want his bottle any more. So we bought him the Playtex insulated cups and those became his "night night" cups. In one night he was done with the bottle and onto his cups. Even going off formula (we had to keep him on it until he was 2 and then go onto a nutritional supplement for toddlers until he was 2.5 due to medical concerns) he has never given a fight.I wish toilet learning was as easy.. gr.
I did not have it so easy while being a stand-in-mommy to my friend's daughter. She was 2 and it was time to kick the bottle, she was only getting water in it anyway. So we took all her bottles and put them in a box, buried them in the back yard, and had a bye-bye-bottle ceremony. Her dad took her to the store to buy some big girl cups, and she also insisted on getting big girl under pants, and a potty the same day. While they were gone, we dug up the box and took the bottles to the 2nd hand store. Two days later she was begging for her bottle, and so her daddy took her outside and they tried to dig them up. But when they only found the empty box and the thank you note from the new babies who got the bottles she was happy.
It sounds like you and your hubby have to make a plan, and stick to it no matter how hard it is. this is not something I would start on a Monday, wait until you can go a couple of days without sleep. And you might just have to deal with a long hissy fit. But once she knows you are not giving it (and getting every last bottle out of the house when you want to start is a good idea, because then you have no option but to stick to the plan). What is she getting in the bottle? Maybe try just giving her water and she won't want it any more. And if she starts complaining that she is hungry make sure she has a good healthy snack less then 15 min before bed.
Yeah, you have to get rid of all the bottles first. Then stick to your word. That seems to be your biggest hurdle.
I think the other thing that makes it so hard is she's two. Two year olds argue with everything anyway. So she's gonna fight this one as hard as she can. I started dividing my son's formula up between the bottle and a sippy when he was probably six or seven months, so by the time he was around a year, he didn't care about a bottle at all. Starting young is key, but since it's too late for that, just throw the bottles out and be a mean old mommy for a few days. We all hate it but sometimes it just needs to be done. :)
You're going to just have to throw them all away. There really is no way to just gradually take them away. It is going to be hard but it is part of being a parent. By keeping them you have something to fall back on because they are still there. It will be rough for a few nights and because she is older it will be harder than if she were 1. You can't cave if there is nothing to give her. I took my son's away at about 13 months. He didn't need them anymore. He had been drinking water from sippy cups since he was 9 months old but he was pretty stubborn about the fact that only water should go in them. He wanted his milk in a bottle. It took a few days of tears but my son eventually got that if he wanted milk it would have to be from the cup. I threw all of his bottles away so that I wouldn't have them to fall back on if and when he cried and I felt like caving.
Just a slightly un-related word of encouragement on breastfeeding, if you decide to have a go at that with the next one (if you do decide to do it again after all the sleepless nights) ;) is it does get easier. the "every 1 hour" feedings don't last long. my son went through that as well when he was a newborn, because newborns are constantly growing and breastmilk is easier digested than formula. So hope that is somewhat encouraging to you if you do decide to go that route again. And hey it's better for the baby and free, so why not, right? ;)
I wish I had some advice for the sleep issue. My son is 14 mos now and WILL. NOT. SLEEP. Naptime, bedtime, whatever, he just plain hates sleeping. Hubby and I have tried everything and are at our wits end and just in survival mode now. I don't remember the last time I slept more than 4 hours in a row... and even 4 hours is a huge accomplishment. *yawn* zzzzzzz
@LadyGwenivere@xanga - She is getting homogenized milk in her bottle but she will drink it out of cups sometimes too. We stopped the formula shortly after her first birthday.
Thanks for the advice, it's going to be so hard.
wow. i have no idea how to help you. when my son turned 1 we took away the bottles and gave him a sippy cup, he loved it and never asked for a bottle again. i cant imagine having to wake up that often with a toddler...
@SaveYourEyes@xanga - you'll make it :) Just stick to your guns (as my mom would say) and persevere. One thing I find works really well is to keep yourself as calm and upbeat/positive as possible. If she feels you getting upset, she will keep pushing until she breaks you. Just don't give her any other option.
BAN THE BOTTLE! :)
give her a big girl sippy cup and have a going away party for her becoming a big girl and saying goodbye to the bottles and let her throw them in the trash it will help her let go. when she wants a bottle give her the sippy but not at night to keep, getting her in her own bed where she can throw a fit untill she falls asleep is gonna be the hardest part for mom. normally after a week or two they forget about the bottles in that time avoid taking the cart down that isle in the store to prevent reminders.
oh and if your planning another keep the bottles in an clean trash bag and help her take it out to the big cans then go out later or have daddy go get them and box them up, possible hide them so you cant find them, lol not having the option at all will resolve the issue for mom and baby pretty quickly.
What can I add, cluster nursings are the way that baby builds up Mom's milk supply. After a week or two, Mom has increased production and baby goes further between feedings. Newborns, especially boys, seems to need to nurse almost nonstop.
I agree, that a sippy cup is a good alternative to a bottle. My kids never liked bottles. Bedtime badtimes are still a struggle with us. Good luck.
@reanimated_corpse@xanga - I agree. My son was actually off the bottle a couple weeks before he turned one.
But i think your best option is just trying to push the sippy cup. Oh and throw away all of her bottles, so you aren't tempted to giving in. She'll hate it for a while but it's in her best interest so she won't be getting baby bottle mouth. And let her know that she's such a BIG girl and you are proud of her.
To those saying give her a sippy cup instead : Isn't that like replacing one evil for another? I mean what's the difference between giving her a bottle of milk at bedtime to giving her a sippy cup? She would just transfer her dependency from bottle to sippy, which does get rid of the physical bottle but not the spirit. Milk is the ultimate goal, water in a bottle isn't the same. Unless you mean throughout the day, but she drinks from regular cups during the day, she only gets bottles at night. I'm a little confused as to how this might help, can anyone explain?
well she wakes up 2-4 time and she gets a bottle. Start slowly. Give her a bottle 3 times a night and work it monthly. it be hard at first but it get easier. after a month give her two bottles and then work it down to one and after that it work it to 1/2 bottle and so on. you could try that and instead of milk give her water. that way it doesn't hurt her teeth. :)
I was lucky enough that my daughter never had that, she just went from waking up to pretty much sleeping through the night. :)
@SaveYourEyes@xanga - sippy cups for one arent as bad for your teeth as bottles (its a different type of suck), for two bottles can be a security blanket of sorts for some babies.
I doubt she's waking up because she's thirsty. And if she is, give her a sip or two of water from a regular cup and then take it away. She can make it through the night without anything to drink.
Yeah, I kind of have the same problem but not really. My daughter is almost 18 months and still wakes up once a night to drink out of her sippy cup. Some people say that most toddlers are not hungry at that hour, but honestly if there was a sandwich next to her, she would eat that and then go back to sleep. She is kind of a big girl, so I can understand how she could be hungry its just annoying. If anyone has any advice in this area, let me know! I hate waking up once a night and carrying her to the kitchen and sitting in her high chair while she nods in and out waiting for her sippy cup. I already have a REM type sleeping disorder so its really a pain.
Sorry, but the only advice I could give is just throw them all away or give them to a second hand store. Im more of a mean mommy, so I could do without all that. But you seem to give in to your daughters cries... which is not good. Take the bottles out of the house for yours and her sake. If shes hungry she will get use to a sippy cup.
I started giving my boy sippy cups when he was 4 months old ~ the ones with the soft spout and chunky handles so he could hold it himself. When he was 8 months old, he was off the bottle entirely. He's three years old now, and he still mostly drinks from a straw cup, but one of his favorite things to do is drink from those little Dixie cups we keep in the bathroom.
In your case, I would suggest throwing away the bottles and giving your daughter a cup with a straw. It's not terribly different from what she's used to already, and when she gets used to the idea of drinking from a big-girl cup you can give her a regular cup.
supposedly the only thing my mom did was told me that barney thought i was too old for bottles, and apparently i didn't want to disappoint barney... that was the end of bottles.
my family used a sippy cup for the transition
I don't know when I started using it, but I remember getting a brand new one when my sister/parent picked me up from preschool.
My mum told my brother that she needed to give his bottle to Santa for all the little boys and girls that can't afford them. Worked like a charm.
I had to deal with 2 difficult habits when my daughter was that age. First, she was still using the pacifier and she was also waking up at night for a bottle. It really hit us hard when we brought her to the dentist and he advised us to try to get her off of it soon otherwise we'd be dealing with years of expensive dental work. To much surprise, she was a lot better than we had imagined and we were the ones feeling guilty about it. She was also the same way when we removed her from her bottle.
i can remember when they were taking my bottles away i would steal my little brothers lol. I had one favorite bottle i could usually sucker my grandma into giving me it have a huge oval hole in the center that made it easier to hold with two hands and little hearts and flowers on it. The fact that i know any of this means my mom waited too long she was just lazy with baby #2 and spoiled my little brother.
Maybe baby steps. First work on ending the feedings in the middle of the night. You are just going to have to let her cry it out....it's hard, but it will happen in a couple of days or less.
When we decided to stop the bottle, we found these nipples that went with out bottles and made them sippy cups. It was more of a transition to sippy cups, though we also offer and he used regular sippy cups. I have to say, that was harder than the night feedings. It was almost two weeks before he accepted that the bottles really were gone. He would still drink, just not much milk from the bottle. Once he got accustomed to the bottle, his milk intake increased a lot....back to pre-sippy cup amounts.
Once we got good with the sippy cups, we worked on the bedtime routine. We have a small bottle while we read book, brush our teeth, and then go to bed. It was about a week where he would ask for his bottle during tuck-in, but he's okay without it now.
We are currently transitioning from the sippy-cup bottle to nothing but sippy cups. He is almost 2 and has initiated the change himself and we are responding to his requests.
Ya'll have just got to be tough. You are the parent. You are in control...just make sure you keep that control.
Good Luck!
Yeah, I just took away the bottle and incorporated the sippy cup. It wasn't hard, and if he does get up in the middle of the night, then he gets a sippy cup with either water or juice in it (depending on how much later it is in the morning, since juice throughout the night could cause tooth decay.)