My two year-old has a drinking problem.
All three of my girls have had heated love affairs with their bottles. Avelyn held tightly to hers well past the 2.5 year-mark, Karenna gave hers up just after her second birthday, and Brinley, who is 2 and four months, is still madly in love with hers.
Prior to the holidays we had her down to just having a bottle of milk at nap time and bed time (I know, I know, call the Dental Police. We are officially FAILING, and we’re cool with it). But when we packed up and spent a week at the cabin on the ski hill with 14 people all sharing the same space and had to keep Brin quiet when her little cousin was napping, or needed a break from the mayhem, we would give her a bottle.
Basically, she went on a Christmas bottle bender.
We’re talkin’ juice in the bottle, EGG NOG in the bottle, water in the bottle, milk in the bottle, anything she could convince anyone to pour in there for her.
And now that we’re home, back to reality, she has a white-knuckled grip on the thing. She doesn’t really want to eat food, just chug her calories via the bottle. We have created a monster.
Brinley doesn’t know it, but she has a New Year’s resolution: to give up the bottle, cold turkey.
Come January, all of the bottles will disappear and we’ll be moving to Sippy Cup City, whether she likes it or not.
Did any of your kids have a bottle addiction that you had to work really hard to break?
My oldest loved her bottle at naptime and bedtime – with soy milk (don’t ask, it was weird but she loved it) and she had pretty serious tooth decay problems with her baby but not adult teeth – not sure if it’s related but just to put it out there 😉 Don’t remember how we got over the bottle love (LOL, so funny what you remember and don’t remember).
What I do remember is my youngest and her boob addiction (I hear ya, Sara!). She loved to nurse so so so so much, and by the time she was 2.5 I was seriously done. I weaned her down to nursing only to go to sleep, and then I tried to stop that – in the end she fell asleep on top of me for months, with one hand in a death grip on my boob since I wouldn’t let her nurse!
We did a two-phase withdrawal, first making bottles only for bedtime so there was still that comfort factor, but then after a bit we started filling them only with water, which made it way less appealing, and then eventually we switched to the sippy of water on the night table. It might help!
I had the opposite…. the boob addiction…. Let us know how the resolution goes…I love that she has one that she doesn’t know about!
My son drank bottle after bottle with milk and at 13 has beautiful teeth. No need to sweat that. He did love his bottle and didn’t give it up until I was pregnant with my 2nd – btw, they are 3.5 years apart! We just said that the bottles were now going to the baby…not that she ever drank from one…but by the time she came along he had forgotten anyway. He helped pack them up. We had 2 days of asking and then nothing. However, he still drank everything, all the time…just from a sippy cup 🙂
Happy New Year!
Kaylie had a bottle of milk at night till she was THREE AND A HALF. And she has perfect teeth and has never had a cavity ever. Fluke? Maybe.
Liliana was never really attached to the bottle (she never ever had it in bed)(she’s a strange child), but was to her soother. We quit it cold turkey (by accident, we lost it), and it took about three nights to get her to be okay with not having it.
Here’s hoping your resolution goes well! Let us know how it goes. Good luck!