Giving bottle before bed = bad habit?

wandafeet

DD is EFF. We've been giving her a bottle right before bed, regardless of when she last ate. She'll eat as much or as little as she wants and rarely falls asleep while drinking. I'm just wondering if we're creating a bad habit? I don't want her to get into the habit of needing to have a bottle as part of her bed time routine or to go to sleep.

ETA: She's a little chunky monkey: 99th percentile for weight. So it's not like she needs the extra calories

someflower6

i don't know, but i do it.

soldiersgirl78

I don't know many babies who don't have a bottle before bed.  My DS sure does, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

There are soooo many bad habits and worse habits out there, I'm not concerned with feeding him before bed.

JillAly

My son would only go to sleep if he had a bottle at bedtime when he was a baby (he was also a big baby- 90th percentile).  I wish I hadn't done it.  He's 3 and still has to have milk before bed.  It's such a fight every night between us.  If he doesn't have it, nothing in the world will get him to sleep.  One night I fell asleep and he was still awake begging for milk at 1am.

I am trying to do things differently with dd but it's hard.  If a baby is screaming, I don't know how you can stand there and not give them milk.  So I don't have an answer for you.  I just wanted to let you know you're not alone!

Tippy05

We do it.  If he just ate an hour or two before, we only give him a few oz.  I don't give him the bottle to take to bed with him, but it's part of our routine.  Bath, massage, bottle, rock, bed.

someflower6

JillAly:

   He's 3 and still has to have milk before bed.  It's such a fight every night between us.  If he doesn't have it, nothing in the world will get him to sleep.  One night I fell asleep and he was still awake begging for milk at 1am.

Question: why is this a problem? like, does he just need a glass of milk before bed, or does he need it with a bottle? not intended to be snarky, i'm just curious.

PinkPeony6210

someflower6:

i don't know, but i do it.

PinkPeony6210

someflower6:

i don't know, but i do it.

This.

LJR 84

I don't know, but we do it too. My thought is that it will help her sleep longer! Whether or not this is actually true, I don't know.

snansley

We do as part of our bedtime routine. We will probably drop it when he starts eating more solids.  We only feed a few ounces anyway.

Dreamsicle23

DS only gets 4 bottles a day now so one is right before bed.  Once he's 100% on solids I plan on dropping it.

ougrad1

I still wake Hudson and Landry before I go to bed and "dream" feed them both.  They're little bits though.  At six months, neither one of them are 15 lbs yet.

 

JillAly

It's a problem for a variety of reasons.  He has teeth so drinking milk (in a sippy cup with a straw) is bad for his teeth - he won't drink THEN brush.  He brushes his teeth and then wants the milk.  Second, he is almost fully toilet trained but drinking before bedtime creates issues with him either peeing in a diaper or me having to get up at 3am to take him to the potty.  Third, my son won't eat food because he'd rather fill up on milk.  He drinks WAY too much milk and we have been trying to cut down his milk intake.  He drinks about 40-50 oz of milk a day.  The doctor said it shouldn't be more than 24oz a day.  The bedtime milk is usually the 6th sippy cup he drinks.