help -- how to phase out night time bottle

tfinn29 · September 2014

My little guy has aways had a bottle to bed. He passes out on or right after the bottle and than we place him in the crib. He is good about sleeping through the night and if he wakes he almost always puts himself back to sleep. I know the bedtime bottle isn't a good habit and will eventually have to come to an end when we say goodbye to bottles. any suggestions on how to begin to eliminate it? or suggestions for a new routine?

Thanks!

TeacherMom210 · September 2014

We started giving DD a cup of milk before bringing her upstairs for her bedtime routine. When we got rid of the bedtime bottle, she didn't seem to notice/care.

Stormytucker · September 2014

TeacherMom210 said:
We started giving DD a cup of milk before bringing her upstairs for her bedtime routine. When we got rid of the bedtime bottle, she didn't seem to notice/care.

This exactly, it's more of a habit when they are sleeping through the night I would just switch around routine and do bottle or cup before bath, reading or rocking whatever your normal routine is. You may be pleasantly surprised that he doesn't mind either! Good luck

LEMSA · September 2014

I think I may try warm WCM in a sippy instead of a bottle. But we are in the same boat, nighttime bottle puts him to sleep right away.

TrueBeliever925 · September 2014

LEMSA said:

I think I may try warm WCM in a sippy instead of a bottle. But we are in the same boat, nighttime bottle puts him to sleep right away.

This is what we did. We just warmed up the WCM a little bit and put it in a sippy. But he also kind of transitioned himself into having the "bedtime" bottle about an hour before he went to bed. He just started fussing earlier so I gave it to him earlier. He also just transitioned himself this past week to sippy cups at meals, nothing after that (just water). He just did it on his own. I figured we'd still be using bottles and having bedtime bottles by the time he was 18 months. Guess not!

nittanygirl28 · September 2014

We just weaned off the bedtime bottle last week. Read this in a book and it worked for us. Night one, normal bottle-for us it was 7 oz, then night two 6oz, then keep reducing by one oz until you get to 2oz. That would be the last bottle. They said never do 1oz cause it's too much of a tease. I was very dubious but we did this in conjunction with sleep training since our LO started having trouble sleeping through the night after 10 great months. It only took us 6 nights and things are back on track with sleeping through the night and he is now off bottles. Hope this helps.