August 4, 2013

Kicking the Bottle

Most parenting books and magazines urge you to wean your baby off the bottle at 12 months. The suggestion is that baby goes from boob to sippy and it's easy as pie. In our case, we introduced the sippy cup around 9 months but that didn't hep our case when we tried to take Lily's bottles from her. The day time nix of the bottle was easy - we made daycare deal with it. If we didn't send one, she didn't get one. Now THAT is easy as pie.

I've been pushing dropping the night time bottle and knock on wood we are going on week three of no bottle before bed. This one hasn't been easy as pie. We'd go a couple nights here or there where she just wouldn't ask for one and other nights where she'd scream her head off and Mike would cave and hand her one which would end in us arguing about what was best. Once we finally decided to get on the same page, I ended up caving one night and giving in. I started searching mommy blogs for kicking the bottle methods - rub the nipples in vasoline, have her throw them in the garbage, fill them with something she doesn't like. To my horror I found that several of these children were four and five years old and still hadn't given up the bottle. I decided Lily wasn't in all that deep and Mike told me to CTFD. And then - just like magic - she gave it up. Now we just need to drop that morning bottle (which we're a little opposed to doing) and we'll be all set.