I am losing my mind

[DorsetJo]

My son, Jamie is 17 months, never been a good sleeper.
He goes to bed beautifully with a bottle at 6.45/7 and sleeps, usually til 3-4am when he cries, gets another bottle then sleeps til 7.
Recently he's been waking more and more so we've been trying to not give him a bottle (as he's just waking more and more frequently, and draining pints of milk!)
He's going insane. He cried for an hour between 12-1 and then woke again at 4.30' and I gave up at 5.30 and got up with him. He refused milk out of a beaker when he gets up.
What shall we do!?! We are all exhausted, especially Jamie who's behaviour is just getting worse and worse in the day as he's knackered and pushing boundaries.
He naps well, for 1-2 hours at nursery (going down without milk) but will only go down with milk at home. (We've tried without, resulting in 2 hours of screaming)
Help!

Assuming you have ruled out anything else bothering ds at night? Teething, temperature drops? If so sounds like bottle is a sleep prop for your ds at home. So everytime he goes to bed and wakes up during night he has come to expect this. You have a couple of choices 1. Ride it out and continue to provide bottle (maybe with smaller amounts of milk or water?). 2. Go cold turkey and ditch bottle completely so ds self settles to sleep without this sleep prop.

Sounds like ds can settle himself at nursery without bottle so you know he can do it. At this age the screaming is a protest thing.

How do you feel about doing controlled crying ie. 5, 10, 15 min checks/reassurance but not taking ds out of cot? I chose to do this for ds2 around 14 months as his night wakings were becoming frequent and his sleep prop was rocking to sleep. By the third night I saw a drastic improvement. He is 2 now and an amazing sleeper. If you are consistent it does work but you cannot send mixed messages by giving back the sleep prop at certain times but not others.

You just need to throw the bottles away really. Lots of toddlers have a bottle of milk but in the cot to fall asleep is a negative sleep prop (as you well know as you're experiencing it!), as well as a choking hazard and terrible for his teeth.

Throw them away, offer a cup of milk then brush teeth, storytime and bed. He will kick off but as long as you don't give in it will get better very quickly.

You know the answer really, you possibly just want another solution!