Please talk to me about giving up the bottle...

[YourMam]

My DS is 1 and has been FF from 6 months. It's highly possible I'm going mad but I'm sure I read in a baby book somewhere that you should be looking to give up the bottle entirely after the first birthday and move to drinking solely out of a beaker. Is that right?

DS has a bottle of milk first thing before bed. For the last couple of months he has started to wake once or twice a night for another bottle. After I give it to him sometimes he has up to 400ml mind you he goes straight back to sleep.

I wonder if the reason he keeps waking up is because he is addicted to the bottle. I don't know whether I should try to water his milk down in his nighttime feeds (someone told me one way of phasing them out was by progressively diluting the middle-of-the-night feeds, so the first night they had a quarter extra water, than a half and so on). Or whether I should flat-out refuse to give him milk when he wakes in the night. He would be very upset, and would be a shame as does go back to sleep straight back afterwards. I'm knackered though! And I wonder if keeping the bottle up is getting into bad habits?

Any thoughts please?

I dropped the night feed by an ounce every few nights so that eventually it got to the stage that ds never woke for it. DD had a bottle till around 15 months but with ds I intoduced a cup for the daytime feeds from around 9 months so that by 11 months he had switched from bottles to the cup.

DS was BF to 10 months and then had a daytime cup but a nighttime bottle until around 15 months when he went onto a cow cup which he still has now (3yrs). I think it's dangerous to dilute ff. In time it would be better to reduce the amount offered but I would wait until your LO is established on solids first. At 6 months he may still need a night feed.

I believe that for as long as I gave formula I gave it in a bottle. But DS stopped getting formula at exactly one year old. Other drinks were given from cups so I just replaced the formula with cow's milk in a cup. At 1 he doesn't need formula any more with a good balanced diet. I would gradually cut down on formula and replace with milk and plenty of dairy.

You could give him water or regular milk in the night, in a cup. You can first find out if he's hungry, or just wanting the bottle, by offering his regular formula in a beaker.

With DD I took away the bottles at a year, she still had morning and evening milk in a beaker, in the evening brushed her teeth afterwards etc.

DS1 more tricky, he refused to drink it from the beaker at all, so we continued with the bottle then he started waking up demanding more milk in the night, was then drinking 2 bottles in night!!!!

At 18 months we took away the bottle and accepted that he didn't really need milk anymore... we had a hard few nights but stuck our ground (we left anyway up cup of water in his cot). After a few weeks he did drink milk from open cups at meal times.

That is a huge amount of milk. Is he eating enough during the day?