My 12 month old needs a bottle to fall asleep and still wakes 2-3 times per night

[FlyingMachinePanda]

So my 12 month old bedtime routine is dinner at 6:00 - 6:30, followed by story/play time, in bath by 7:15ish, brush teeth, get dressed for bed and then bottle feed 120ml formula. He falls asleep in my arms drinking the formula.

he then wakes 2 times per night and drinks another 120ml each time. He has clearly developed a habit of needing to be sucking on a bottle and drinking formula to fall asleep.

he does not always need to feed to fall asleep during the day for nap times. For falls asleep at nursery in his bouncer or other places without being bottle fed sometimes and also fall asleep in the car without being bottle fed.

How should I go about breaking this cycle.
what should I do first?

• move formula bottle to before bath?
• water it down?
• swap bottle to straw cup?
• still feed him to sleep but when he wakes just rock him in my arms?
• Swap to whole milk slowly?
• still feed to sleep but just reduce the amount of formula slowly
• a combination of this stuff.

any help please
thank you

My 18 month old just dropped his bedtime milk in the last month. I slowly swapped from formula to whole cows milk over a couple of days. I would start to wean your little one off of formula milk now.

I would keep a bottle of milk going at bedtime but when he wakes during the night I wouldn’t make him a bottle unless he really needs it. I would focus on rocking him to sleep and slowly self soothing.

How does your little one drink their water? I moved the milk into a little cup which made it easier for dropping the bedtime feeds as it wasn’t a cuddle and bottle feed time. Instead now we just have a quiet cuddle to get him to sleep.