Sleep training?

Cajun_gal

Dylan sleeps through the night and sometimes takes good naps (sometimes 30 minutes, other times 2 hours), but my problem right now is it seems that the bottle has become his crutch.  I'm fine with that for going to bed for right now, but I want to fix this for naps.  He used to do eat-wake-sleep just fine, but now that he's becoming awake longer but still getting hungry at the same intervals, when he gets tired, he's also hungry and just cries until I give him a bottle, then he falls asleep on the bottle.  Any advice or books you can recommend to fix this?  At what age is a lovey appropriate? 

I tried for 45 minutes this morning to get him to take a nap and finally gave in to the bottle.  Part of that was letting him cry, part was trying to rock him, all to no avail.  This is a fairly new problem, so I'm hoping I can nip it in the bud pretty quick.

MMS2007

can you feed him his bottle a little before his nap, so he won't be hungry?  maybe then he'll just go to sleep for his nap.  or i know this may not be a popular suggestion, but what about a pacifier?  both of mine use/used pacifiers and it was not too bad breaking my dd of hers.  took a couple of weeks.

good luck and congrats on your new coming little one.  mine are almost 19 months apart and my dd loves to mommy her little brother.

Cajun_gal

Thanks for the advice.  He already uses a pacifier.  He just spits it out and cries when it's time to take a nap.

Thanks!  I hope he does well with a little brother or sister as well.

kat.in.the.hat

Honestly, if it's working to let him fall asleep with it (and you aren't leaving it in the crib with him) I'd just let him continue to do it.  I try to stick with the philosophy of if it's not broke, don't fix it!

horn_jm@hotmail.com

They go through phases.  You could give it another try in a couple of weeks.  Don't stress... it will all work out!

STDCAM13

My daughter did the same thing!  She used to take the Gerber pacifiers that are rubber.  I switched her to a silicone pacifier which seemed to do the trick.  He might be teething.  Hylands teething tablets work great.  If Dylan is doing well with a sippy cup you might want to try giving him a sippy cup with some water.  Sippy cups come in silicone too.  Ask his peditrician first.  My daughter is off the bottle during the day and only takes a bottle at night and she's 11 months now.  She gets her formula in a sippy cup now.  Another thing that you could try is putting ice in a mesh bag.  They sell the mesh bags in the baby department and you can put fruit and veggies in them too.  I think it's a product made by Munchkin.  Hang in there mom!!