Dropping bedtime bottle

We will be stopping the bedtime bottle at the end of this week (if all goes well) and I'm just nervous about them getting up in the middle of the night because they're hungry. My boys, to begin with, are not great sleepers. One son had been getting up every night at least once at random times and had to be shushed or rocked back to sleep. Rarely, he needed to get a bottle but sometimes he did. Now, it's the other son. (Weird.) But the past few nights he's been getting up at random times, etc, while the other one slept through. So my question is should I give them something in place of the bottle?? If so, at the same time they would've gotten that or a little earlier? If you did this, then what did you give your LO's? Any suggestions? TIA

 

Hi! My girls are 14 1/2 months. I swithced to a sippy cup at a year but we still do the same schedule we were on at that time. We have our evening meal around six, a bath, then they have a sippy cup of milk around 7:30 - 8:00 and then they go to bed.

 

In the evening our kiddos get dinner around 4:30-5:00 pm. They get a snack around 6, milk sippies around 6:30. We add carnation instant breakfast to the sippy for extra calories. Do they get bottles in the middle of the night? Could you try a paci or a lovey for overnight?

 

We still do a sippy of milk and cheerio snack at night right before bed. We eat at or before 6 and they don't go to bed now until 8. I think we added the cheerio snack with the later bedtime around 18 months. We've done the sippy all along after bottles.

 

The do get paci's AND loveys (loveys are as of recent to see if that would help them soothe themselves .. I don't think that's working!) What time do you LO's ones go to bed that they get milk at 6:30? We do dinner between 4:30-5:30 and they go to bed around 7:30-8. So it's a long time between dinner and bed.

 

So is your sippy pretty much then "in place of" the bottle? Do you give that to them RIGHT before they go to bed? Sorry for all the questions. I'm sure it will be fine and I"m probably just freaking out over it more than they will )

 

Yes, to answer your last question. I still feel I haven't dropped the "night bottle" since the sippy of milk basically replaced it. Mine eat dinner around 5:15 and then its bath around 6:15 and a sippy around 6:45, they are in bed by 7:00 pm. They only have a few ounces but at 1 1/2 I'm still not brave enough to put them down without the sippy.

 

I stopped giving them night time bottles when they started sleeping around 12 hours at about 4-5 months. I just made sure they got all their required nutrients and vitamins throughout the day and they would sleep uninterrupted through the night. At around 5-1/2 months, Cameron woke up in the middle of the night. I thought he wanted a bottle. For a little over a month he would get a midnight bottle. My bad. I had to make him cry-it-out once I realized he didn't need it in the first place. He was going through a developmental growth spurt. I only had to cry-it-out one night and then he was back to sleeping through the night again up to 12-13 hours.

They still have their bad nights, but they have their pacis and lovey in bed with them to help soothe themselves back to sleep. If that's not enough or they have a nightmare or Kiefer has another night terror, I'm there for them and will help comfort them back to sleep. But, they do not get more bottles, nor have I ever put a sippy cup in their crib. It works very well for me. I will admit, I do sometimes like going back in there for another cuddle, but if they don't wake up needing that extra nighttime cuddle, I just wait for the next night that they do need that extra little cuddle. It's rare they need more than one extra cuddle anyhow.

 

We eat dinner at around 6:30-7 most nights, and the boys go to bed at 8. We let them run around after dinner to burn off energy, then go upstairs for jammies and diaper changes. After that we give them sippies of warmed milk to drink while we read stories, then brush their teeth and rock for a few minutes with their evening "pep" talk and lullabies. They will wake and murmur in the night often, but rarely fully wake.

Good luck with the transition!

 

we just went through this a couple of weeks ago and things went surprisingly well. we weren't ultra strict about it, but got them off the bottle in a week. we first started giving them milk in a sippy cup at bedtime, then giving them juice in a sippy cup, then they weren't really drinking it so we took it altogether and now they sleep without anything. it really was easy!

 

Like others, I switched to a sippy of milk about 1/2 hour before bedtime around 14 months or so. They don't drink a whole lot, but they are good eaters, so they have usually had a good dinner before that. I think it's more a comfort thing, and I'm fine with that. So, we haven't eliminated the small amount of milk around bedtime, it's just in the sippy.

 

When we dropped the last bottle (nighttime) at 12.5 months, we just made the last milk of the day be with dinner at 6:30pm. Their sleep was not disrupted at all.