How to wean 19 month old off an early morning bottle feed?

Question

My 19 month old is given a bottle twice a day. Once in the evening to get to sleep which is fine. The second bottle is given to her about 60/90 minutes before she finally gets up. She tends to wake up at some point between 0600 and 0700 and then the only way to get her back to sleep is by giving her another bottle. She is then able to sleep until around 0800 which gives her just the right amount of sleep she needs. We would like to encourage her to sleep all the way until 0800 and to not require the early morning bottle at 0600/0700. However the danger with making any changes here is that 0600/0700 will become her new get up time and this would be disastrous for all of us.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of this morning bottle and still get her to sleep throughout the morning until 0800? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

This may not come as a surprise, but I would just slowly increase the amount of time your little one goes without milk. When they wake up at 0600, let them cry it out for about 15 minutes, before going in with the milk.

I speak as I am going through the same issues with my 13 month old. It seems to be working fine. He is adjusting and just waking up a bit later (my guy was waking up at 0430).

Also, it is good to switch off a bottle (if you have not already). Using a sippy cup or some sort of alternative. This (in my mind) removes them from the breast soothing paradigm.

Sorry, I feel like this is not really an excellent solution, but it did work for us!

Answer 2

I think you need to just stop giving her milk from 6am-7am completely. One morning stop coming to her until 8am. Give her lots of milk then. Over the next few days she will probably stop crying out earlier and go back to sleep after whining for a while. If she does this, reward her with more milk at 8am. Eventually she will stop whining at all until 8am. Though it will be very hard to hear her whining and crying for quite a while, and losing sleep, sometimes you need to give tough love. Another suggestion is giving her more milk in the evening so that she sleeps longer, though I doubt whether that'll work.

Answer 3

One of the easiest ways to get the child off a bottle is to limit the amount of bottles around the house. Offer a cup with the bottle every snack and meal. Dont let it bother you if the child dosent take the cup use a straw if that helps. Over time offer the bottle less and less.