Hi mumsnet folk, could we get your advice please? We have a two year old who still wakes at least twice a night for a drink! Any ideas how we can break this, ideally without going cold turkey and all night crying?
A bit more context on the current situation... We give him a bath and read before giving him a 9oz milk at 7pm in bed lying down together, as this is what we've found works best (I cosleep as wife dealing with newborn in other room!). He then wakes 2-3 times a night, but can usually go back to sleep with water from a teat bottle, but occasionally demands milk, which we give watered down. He won't take dummy as a substitute currently.
In terms of solutions I know that we will need to take a consistent approach and be perserverant, and somehow decouple drinking milk and sleep. But the question is which approach (es) should we pursue?! I've listed down options I know of, and maybe best to do all the below combined? Do you have any advice which of those below or others you recommend doing?
- For any approach, pre-warning, explain what doing over a few days before bedtime
- Change to giving milk in sippy cup (both day and night) to break habit of sucking on teat
- Change evening routine so have milk on sofa then read in bed after and hopefully break association of milk/teat with sleep
- If wakes in night Persist with dummy instead of bottle so in time he can self soothe with dummy over time