18 month old bottle issue

[JKDcot]

Hi

Hoping for some advice please. Our 18 month old son has always had a bottle before bed, we haven’t moved to a sippy cup yet. But recently he has started to use the bottle as a soother / dummy and will just keep sucking it until he’s asleep. If we try and take it off him when he’s finished his milk he just wails.

Now the issue is he wakes up in the night and the only thing to settle him is a bottle to suck. Even with no milk left.

I don’t know how to stop this habit? Should we offer a dummy or help him to suck his thumb? He must want something to suck to soothe but the bottle is just not practical.

Any advice please? Thanks

When I was sleep training DD to not fall asleep on the boob, one of the most important things was to separate the last feed from putting her down - so we did feed, book, sleeping bag, bed. She now has a bottle, but it's before her bath so no chance of it becoming a sleep association. So I'd start by changing the sequence so there's some activity (bath and book?) between bottle and bed. As for the soothing - no experience of sleep training at this age and of course they're all different, but you might find that if you do things in a different order and put him down with no bottle he fusses a bit and then gets himself to sleep. If not I'd try a stuffed toy or comforter over introducing a dummy this late in the game (this is based on zero experience, we're lucky so far in that DD doesn't seem to need anything but if her sleep does take a turn for the worse I'm planning to see if she likes having a comforter or her teddy in with her)

Thank you for the advice @Etherealhedgehog

Anyone tried introducing a dummy at 18 months? Or is it madness!?

Don’t introduce a dummy now , just stop using bottles at all and put up with a few disturbed nights until he gets it . Whatever you do don’t encourage him to suck his thumb .

Just to add that the wanting to suck something in the middle of the night is most likely because he is falling asleep that way at bedtime, so if you can crack bedtime you shouldn't have a major issue in the middle of the night. I would tend to agree with PP - put up with a few tough nights and he will get used to it. He's old enough and introducing a dummy now will just give yourself more challenges when you want to get rid of it down the line

Agree with pps deffo the way to go is to change when he has his bottle. I had to do the exact same with my son. He was a little older so I really explained to him that this is his bedtime bottle and he won't have anymore after. Then he did ask for it once in bed but I reminded him he already had it. If he was a bit younger I would say all gone. He may be a bit upset but he might surprise you!