Weaning from a bottle

[lemonyfox]

Hello. Could I get some advice or tips on how people have weaned their toddlers from a bottle? I don't mean weaning from milk, I mean physically from a teat bottle.

My son is 19mo and I've tried 2-3 times to stop the bottle but each time he becomes hysterical and I'm not sure how to manage it. Do I wait until he's older? Or am I meant to be the stubborn one and persevere a few nights, and send him to bed without milk, until he accepts another cup/beaker etc? I know he doesn't physically need milk at this age before bed. He also has no issue using beakers/straw cups for water or juice.

He's very very very attached to his dummies too (only for sleep though, not during the day) so I know the bottle is also an associated comfort thing.

I'm conscious I'm meant to have moved away from a bottle long before this point!

I’ve heard of people doing ‘the bottle fairy’, where they put the bottle in a special place before bedtime and in the morning it’s been replaced with a cup/beaker or a little toy and the parents maintain the story that the fairy has taken it and it’s gone for good.
With dc1, I was stubborn and just said no more bottle. With dc2, it was easy as she wanted to be ‘grown up’ like her big brother and gave it up herself.

Do you brush his teeth after? Is he taking the bottle to bed? If so, you could try getting the bottle further and further away from bedtime bit by bit (other side of PJs, other side of the bath), and then in a few weeks have an "oh no, all the bottles are dirty, we'll have to use this special cup instead" moment.

I got a soft tipped sippy cup, started using it at food time, then progressed to it.

We did bottles around 14/15 months as she wasn't really having any bottles anymore anyway, we never did a bottle before bed past 12 months.

Dummy we did dummy fairy at about 2.5, she only had them for night time by then so wasn't too bad

I just gave them a sippy cup and they stopped drinking milk for a while.

It's a good idea! I just think he's a bit too young to get that concept yet, but worth thinking about in future

Yeah we brush teeth afterwards, he has bottle downstairs then upstairs for teeth and bed 😊

Yeah I think we'll probably try the dummy fairy or giving the dummy to Santa etc when he's older and we can reason with him a bit more! Bottles I'd like to knock off earlier though

Oh okay interesting. Did you just keep offering in a sippy cup and they restarted again? How long?

It took about 3 weeks for my DD to stop crying for her bottle. She was 16/17 months when we took it away and replaced it with a sippy cup of milk in the morning and at bedtime. In that time she just had no milk - it was tough all round, more so than I expected! Then one day she just decided the sippy cup actually was worth a try. Now she has a cup in the morning before nursery and a cup with her evening snacks before bed.

You just have to stay strong and persevere. Good luck!

Oh Christ, 3 weeks!! That's really useful experience though, thank you.

Forgot to say we upped her cheese/yoghurt intake in the meantime, to try to mitigate the missing milk from her diet. Although a few weeks won't make a difference in the grand scheme if you don't manage that, I'm sure.