Going cold turkey with my 14 month olds night bottles…

[littleoranges]

from the age of 12 weeks - 8 months old my DS slept through the night.. every, single, night. (Oh the good old days) since he started nursery/ crawling / walking / babbling/ sleep went downhill… I wouldn’t say he was awful but he would wake for a bottle mostly once, maybe twice….. until now. We’ve hit 14 months and he’s now waking every 3 hours for a bottle and I’ve decided that’s enough and going cold turkey tonight.

please can I have some positive feedback from doing this, I am absolutely exhausted. I have filled his bottle with water as I’ve read lots of people doing this.

does this method actually work or am I going to be even more exhausted??

It may be that he's waking due to teething pain and wanting the comfort of milk. If that's the case, he's still going to wake because his mouth hurts but won't have the comfort, which seems quite harsh. I'd probably give him some ibuprofen on his first wake (assuming he's already asleep now) and a bottle of milk and see how the rest of the night goes from there.

If you’ve given him a bottle every 3 hours in the night it feels slightly extreme to cut him off entirely. I would reduce slowly so he naturally eats/drinks more in the day to compensate as you withdraw night feeds.