D.C. Area Babies
Dropping before bed milk/need bedtime routine advice
I know it's bad for LOs teeth to have milk right before bed down the road so I'm trying to think about how and when we'll stop nursing before sleep and what we'll change our routine to be.
When did you stop the before bed milk or nursing? and how did you do it?
What is your nighttime routine without it? is it just milk with dinner, brush teeth, then off to bed? DS goes to bed fairly soon after dinner but I feel like he's going to wake up hungry without that extra bit of milk...
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Re: Dropping before bed milk/need bedtime routine advice
I'm interested in this too. We're still giving milk before bed at 17.5 months in a sippy cup. We brush their teeth right after. I like to give it in case they don't eat a lot at dinner. And, it's nice snuggle time b/c it's the only time of day they sit on our laps for more than 10 seconds.
Our routine is dinner at 5:30pm, bath (every other night) at 6:15pm, PJs, milk, read 3-5 bedtime books, and then into their cribs.
Does brusing their teeth in sort of the middle of the bedtime routine wake them up at all? I feel like going from warmy cozy lap with milk to bright bathroom with water and toothbrush then back to dim bedroom for books is not going to go well for us...
I'm sure you'll get some good, varied advice on this one...I don't really have a specific plan I have followed with both girls, but I think in general with nursing, you kind of have to go with what feels right for you and your LO. In the case of DD#1, she continued to do the before bed nursing until she was 18 months and I did not make it habit to brush her teeth between the nursing and going to bed since nursing was the last step in our bedtime process. I felt okay about it mainly because I think the biggest problems come up when a kid is taking a drink (other than water)to bed with him/her. On nights that I was not there to put her to bed, we just didn't include milk or water in the routine--so it was just stories, then rocking, then bed. As it became clear that she could go to bed without the nursing, I basically just stopped offering it when I would put her to bed and instead we rocked for a few minutes. In her case the transition was pretty painless--a couple of evenings of fussing between stories and settling down in her crib and then she was fine. That was right around 18 mths.
With DD#2, it has been a different story. At almost 25 months, she is still nursing before she goes to bed, though ever since her birthday it doesn't seem to be something she wants every night. She does, however, like to have something to drink as she's settling down, so we do give her a sippy with water that she takes to bed. She gets this sippy whether she nurses or not, so I figure that in the cases where she nurses before bed, she is getting a water rinse of her mouth and the potential for cavities is minimized. On the nights when she does not ask to nurse, I just rock with her.
When you're ready to drop the before bed nursing, I think you want to either introduce an alternate soothing activity (rocking or putting the LO down in the crib and rubbing his back, etc) and/or have DH put him down so that the old routine is broken. At the age of your LO, I seriously doubt he NEEDS the milk before bed...it's probably more of a comfort thing, so as long as you replace nursing with another comfort, he'll be fine.
We do bedtime in DD's room and we brush their teeth in their too. We just wet the toothbrushes ahead of time (you don't need to use baby toothpaste at this point if you don't want to) and brush their teeth in our laps. Now that they are getting older and starting to understand toothbrushing a bit more, we'll probably start to do it in the bathroom at the sink in a few months, but I don't see even that hurting their bedtime routine. We put them in their cribs while they are still laughing, giggling, etc. so it's not like we're rocking them to sleep or keep everything dark and quiet quite like we did when they were infants.
Once we switched to giving a sippy of milk, we gave it a half-hour before bedtime. Now it's milk, then bedtime routine (bath, teeth, jammies, stories, bed).
I think nursing to sleep is fine and I wouldn't brush after that. But maybe before so he starts getting used to it (if he has enough teeth).
We still give milk before bed (straw cups) but we do when we are playing/reading books after they are already in their PJs. Then we brush teeth.
Since he goes to bed so soon after dinner, you can give him milk at dinner time. I offer it at dinner as well, but DD likes it before bed and DS will only drink a little bit.