bed time

[bugsymalonemumof2]

so its quite possible that DD has ASD, she is 2.5 and is stuck in a myraid of waiting lists but health visitor seemed fairly sure that there is something alone those lines.

Anyway, she always religiously has a bottle of milk just before bed and one at 2am. i have tried every single way I can think of to get her off them but she will scream until she is sick and then scream some more. tried for a 10 day run at one point and I just can not get her off them. Considering if there is ASD then how do I get her off the milk?

Assuming she's eating fine during the day and it's not causing you massive problems, I'd probably carry on until she doesn't ask/expect. Loads of breastfed toddlers still feed before bed and at night. I guess my view would be don't stop it because you feel you should (eg because you're getting pressured) but if it's making life harder for you then maybe find a gentler way to do it.

The usual advice on here is to water down the milk slowly until it's just water and then they stop waking hungry. Might that work?

We ended bedtime milk by introducing a huge bottle of warm milk a bit earlier in the bedtime routine, before we went upstairs. Then I offered him bedtime BF as usual, but at the same time DH was reading one of DS's favourite books aloud across the room. DS latched on briefly for about 3 nights but with a full tummy the story quickly won out, and then started going straight over to DH for story. He never BF again. It was his choice, albeit heavily engineered by us. Change is ok when on his terms :) Admittedly he still had milk but it was earlier, and we gradually merged it with his tea.

I'm not sure about the 2am bottle. If she feeds to sleep now, you may find that just breaking that association stops her waking in the night.

I should say we weren't particularly thinking ASD at the time, we thought he was just angry and speech delayed, so this wasn't an autism specific approach. It was just something that seemed kind and worked with a child who is now extremely routine driven.

Why do you want to cut the bottle out? I let both my children at that age (one ASD, one NT) have a bottle before bed and another during the night if they woke crying. They eventually grew out of it.

it didnt bother me but she is anemic from iron deficiancy and the only thing we can think of is that she is having 3-4 pints of milk a day which can effect iron absorbtion!

That's true, and that's a lot of milk! I would probably try to reduce daytime milk first as it might be easier to distract her, none of us are at our best by bedtime and in the middle of the night. Formula is fortified with iron isn't it? (Isn't that one of the marketing ploys of growing up milks?).