14 mo started MOTN bottle again after being sick...help me!!

chocolatechippy

About 3 weeks ado my DD had hand, foot, mouth disease and would only drink a bottle of milk for 4 days....so when she was up all night long, that is what she got. The following week we visited family, so when she got up at night (my guess still use to it from being sick), I still gave her a bottle so we didn't wake the house up. Now I created a monster. On top of this, I was trying to wean her off her 2 bottles a day she gets before nap and bedtime by slowly adding water into her bottles (now gets 2oz water, 3 oz of milk). BUT she wakes multiple times throughout the night, with one where she really means it! Last night I tried not to give her one, but we were up for an hour. Any suggestions would be great....I feel like I am heading back to newborn status!!

MNmama7112

I would suggest cutting out bottles entirely. That might be really hard for a few days, but [at least for my DS] it could be confusing to go back and forth between sippy cups and bottles especially because they're automatically going to favor bottles since they're most used to them. If you make sure she's getting dairy servings (cheese, yogurt, etc.) in while you're making the transition you don't have to worry about her not drinking milk. She will adjust. As hard as it is, you have to decide you're not going back to bottles and trust that she can adapt.

Going cold turkey might not work for everyone, so maybe others will have suggestions of transitioning more gradually. However, we went cold turkey with my son and it worked relatively smoothly. It took a few days to a week til he was drinking the amount of milk he "should," but since then he's been using sippy cups exclusively with no problems. Good luck!

chocolatechippy

I thought about cold turkey, but after that hour of crying in the MOTN it makes me nervous!! She's even having a hard time now that I switched her to having a bottle earlier in the nighttime routine. Guess I just need to bite the bullet!