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Sunday, December 4, 2011

Wither goeth the bottle?

Mj is about 2 years and 3 months of age.  And she still uses a bottle.

I feel like this is confessional.  And that I'm getting many a side eye.

She falls asleep with her bottle every night.  And for every nap.

More side eye.  Tooth decay!  Oh my!

In truth, she falls asleep with a bottle of water.  So no tooth decay.  She started doing this a very long time ago (in toddler time; maybe at about 7 months of age?)  She no longer wanted her pacifier, just her bottle.  And with it she slept.  So we ran with it.

But for how long?  Every night I ask myself this question.  But she NEEDS that bottle.  It soothes her.  It calms her.

But it rolls out of her bed now, sometimes a couple times a night (and sometimes not at all).  So I would really like it to be gone.  Or at least, replaced by something that doesn't fall out of bed.  Though, on the upside, I can hear the loud THUMP when it hits the floor, indicating it is time to go root around in the dark until I find it.

Why aren't there manuals for these children?  Much as I begroan the automated help line you get when calling some companies, I would really love one of those for children.

But goodness is she a strong willed child.  I KNOW this would be a huge battle.  Is it worth it?  To remove something we know soothes her and makes for easy bedtimes?

(Only 4 days in and already a day behind.  I was never good at doing anything cold turkey, always much better at the gradual approach, so starting daily blogging cold turkey may have been a little much.)

2 comments:

  1. Confession, my kid, same age as MJ, still uses a glorified bottle. It "looks" like a sippy, but really, it's pretty much a bottle. (Nuk brand, the packaging says it's a good transition cup for 6M+, HA!) He pretty much won't drink milk out of anything else, and panics if we try to put it in anything else.

    And he drinks a "cup" (err.. bottle essentially) of milk before bed. So I am actually doing the tooth decay thing.

    We've tried, oh we've tried, but he is also SO strong-willed, and a notoriously crappy sleeper as it is, so I don't want to mess with anything bedtime/naptime related. And I am very much a "pick your battles" kind of mom, so for now. Eh? Whatever.

    Thank you for this confession. My family of course is in on this glorified bottle situation, and they don't really care, but I admit to being REALLY embarassed about it with other moms. And I totally don't tell my doctor. ;)

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  2. This actually makes me feel a lot better... It's always nice when you realize you're not the only one.

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