Bottle & Pacifier...oh my!

DavidStamps

We have a 17 month old who is becoming very spoiled and stills has his milk out of a bottle and the paci often. We need to wean him off...mad suggestions? We are 4 1/2 months pregnant with twins and his new preschool for the Fall does not do bottles or paci....so we have 4 months to get in gear. First timers here, so any and all suggestions are welcomed. Thanks!

nanabanana06

I did cold turkey with bottles. I just put milk and water in straw cups and stopped giving bottles. Took about 2 to3 days and we had him broken. We did something similar with my daughter and her binky. We just "lost" or "forgot" her binky for like a week. She adjusted and never looked back. We're about to do this with my son. It's kind of like ripping off a band aid. A couple days of unpleasantness and problem solved.

kjsmith9

We did cold turkey with the bottle as well.  At 11.5 months, I knew she was fine drinking from a straw cup, and I was sick of washing bottles.  Daycare said she didn't even bat an eye (she rarely did bottles at home because she was/is BF).  

We still have the paci at bedtime, but took it away at naps and in the car around 12 months.  It was rough for a week, then it was no big deal.  Every time I think "time to get rid of the paci at night" she gets sick or has teeth coming in, and I want her to sleep well so I postpone... I need to bite the bullet and just get it done though.  I usually find the paci under a stuffed animal or stuffed between the crib mattress and the bumper, so I don't think she's using it much anyways...

Anyways, my vote is cold turkey.  Do the bottles now.  If he adjusts without an issue, do the paci to and just get it over with.  If the bottles take some work, wait a week after he adjusts to give him some normalcy, then do the paci.

Heyjordynhey

Yeah I agree with pp cold turkey worked best for us. We just switched from bottles to sippy cups. It took about a month to get fully off the bottle but that was more us than ds. For the first few days he didn't drink much because he was used to the bottle but once I got the mind set of ok no more bottles just sippy cups he was fine. I would assume it's the same for a paci, I'm not sure tho because ds doesn't take one. Good luck!

mb314

DS doesn't handle cold turkey well, and he was still getting four bottles of milk at daycare at about 14 months.  Each week, daycare would switch one of the bottles to milk in a sippy, so after 3 or 4 weeks, all of his milk was from the sippy. 

DavidStamps

Thanks! I purchased new sippy cups to replace the bottle. DS prefers water out of the sippy and milk from a bottle...so now milk will come from the new cups. Wish me luck, I'm going in this week!

greyt00

Here is my paci story.  I wanted to limit paci to sleep only before tossing it, but that just did not work for us.  DS2 got worse and worse, wanted the paci ALL. THE. TIME.  I wanted to make him not like it anymore, so I started poking holes.  That did nothing.  Still LOVED his paci.  Then I snipped the tip a tiny bit.  Nothing.  I snipped it more.  Still no effect on him other than massive amounts of drool.  On day 2 of drool-o-rama, I snapped.  I cut more to make sure he'd hate it.  Finally, he threw it on the floor.  He was OK for a few hours.  Nap was slightly wrecked, but bedtime was fine, miraculously.  In the morning when he woke up, though, he was pretty distraught.  That went on for a few days.  The following weekend (he goes to daycare full-time), nap was wrecked again, but I let him cry this time, and he didn't cry for very long, and went back to sleep.  Two weeks later he still goes to where we used to keep the pacis, and reaches up, when he gets very upset, but overall, I've been very happy about how it went.  And I was VERY AFRAID when we started!  We started the process on a Sunday so we didn't have to suffer the whole weekend.  For us I think that was a good move.  He did great at day care and by the next weekend was mostly over it.  We started shortly after he turned 18 months.