How to wean from bottles

I need some advice. My twins are 23 months and still taking 3 bottles per day. DS takes before nap, one after bath, then one before bed. DD takes one before nap, one after bath, one before bed and one in the middle of the night. We have dropped daytime bottles one at a time over several months, and it was painful everytime a bottle was dropped. BUT - I feel like they're too old to be drinking bottles. They won't take milk from a sippy, only water and they drink a lot of water. We water down their bottles 1/2 and 1/2 so they are only getting 12oz (DS) of milk and 16oz (DD) of milk in total. Pedi says 16oz is max. I keep hoping that soon they'll be old enough to understand "No Bottles Anymore - Bottles All Gone". I'm delusional, I'm sure. Any suggestions? I am reluctant because of the impending tears - theirs and mine. Does it get easier to break the habit in a few months? HELP

 

Um....at this point the longer you wait, the worse it's going to be. The ideal time to drop bottles is around 1 year to 18 months, because they are too young to really remember them and they adjust pretty fast. Now, by the age of 2, they start to retain more in their memory, and they are going to remember using the bottle the day before. Kinda like a bandaid, I think just stopping immediately would be the best option.

Since they are already using sippy cups I would drop the bottles completely and substitute sippy cups in the bottle slots. The during the night bottle isn't necessary unless there are low weight issues. Use water only overnight. Instead of giving milk all day, give milk at meal times, or before bed, and water or watered down juice the rest of the time. (I water their juice down 1/3 juice 2/3 water still, and my twins are over 3).

 

This is pretty much what I was going to say, too. My kids were only a year when we swapped bottles for sippy cups. The first couple of days, they drank hardly any milk from the sippy cups, but then they adjusted. It will be rough for a few days, but I'd just do it at this point. A few days of low milk intake won't hurt them, and you can substitute things like yogurt and cheese to be sure they are getting plenty of calcium and protein.

 

Hi, mine were still on 3 bottles a day at around 19 months or so. I started by dropping the morning bottle first. I found it was important to have some of their favorite foods ready to go as soon as they woke up. If I didn't, they would cry for the bottle. First thing, I would plunk them down in the high chair and have several options of finger foods. If they started eating right away, they didn't seem to care much about the bottle. Mine refused to drink milk out of the sippy, and they were mad. I found it was much better to not focus on encouraging them to drink the milk from the sippy. I just put it out on the high chair tray, and ignored it (didn't show any anxiety about them needing to drink it). I also placed straw cups of water around the play areas, so they could drink whenever they were thirsty. I did explain what we were doing (no more bottles when we wake up in the morning.) since their receptive language is pretty good at this age.
Next, I dropped the bottle prior to naps, and last we dropped the bottle at night time. I think the night time was the hardest since they used it to soothe themselves. We had to find a new routine that was comforting for them (snuggles, reading together, favorite stuffed animal)

Anyway you choose to do it, they will be fine

 

I think we dropped bottles around 15 months and we just did it all at once. May be bad for a little bit, but why drag it out and make it harder?

 

My boys were over the age of two when I finally dropped the bedtime bottle. I got the book you listed above. I read it to them. One of them actually got up, took the book, threw it across the room and informed me that they did not like that book. So I waited another month. I just one day decided that was it. I got the book out again. Read it to them. Told them that we were packing up the bottles to send to babies and that we would go pick out special milk cups at the store. Got out a box. They helped me pack up the bottles. We dropped them off at goodwill on the way to the store. I let them pick out new sippy cups. And we never looked back. It took a long time to finally give up bottles because I had one who was absolute hell from 3 months until he gave up naps at 2 years of age to get to sleep at night. And when I say hell I mean it. I was terrified but there was no looking back after dropping the bottles at goodwill. I was happily surprised at how well they did.

They are almost 3 1/2 and still remember packing up the bottles for the babies. Every once in a while one of them will ask about it.

 

We have one girl that loved loved loved the bottles! she fused a few days when we started our bottle dropping.
We staged our bottle dropping at 18-19 months: we dropped the eve bottle 1st, then the night time bottle , then the nap bottle. The evening bottle was hard the 1st 3 days, but then once our girl used to the new routine, the following bottles surpringly got dropped with less resistance.

For my bottle addict, I held her when she took the evening milk sippy ( I was thinking that she was using the bottle as comfort object so I was hoping holding replace that needed comfort from the bottle.)

We used the book too, and they didnot show much interest in the book at first. But after they dropped the bottles, they like the book more - esp my bottle addict.

With summer heat, I would be worry about dehydration. Perhaps you can do diluted juices in sippy to get them take sippies to assure that they have enough fluid on the day they refuse sippy during bottle dropping.

 

At this point, the longer you wait the harder it will get. We started phasing out bottles at 11 months, and they had their last bottle at 12 months. It was quite honestly a breeze.

I had a binky girl, and at 15 months she was down to nap and bedtime only, but I didn't fully take it away until she was almost 3. We went the binky fairy route, but it was really tough and, yes, there were tears and crying. If I had it to do all over again the binky would have left with the bottles. It was way easier when they were young.

I think you are just going to have some tears, no way around it. But it won't get any easier waiting.

 

This thread gives me hope!