We are a little over a month now of getting Keira off of the bottle! Woo hoo! I wanted to share some advice on how we we gave up the bottle, cold turkey. I know it is scary and seems cruel to take away one of your child’s only piece of comfort since birth but in our case we had to.
1. DON’T GIVE UP! It is hard, I know. Even if it takes you several times. Just keep trying. You will succeed! Know that everything and everyone will be fine. You will be okay and so will your child. You will have to hear them cry and have multiple meltdowns and as much as it hurts you to know that you’re the one causing them the tears…know that you’re doing your best!
2. DON’T LOOK BACK! I think what really worked for me was not looking back. I literally counted the minutes that had past from her very last bottle and used that as motivation to move forward. I did not want to have to restart the whole process. I did not want to put all of us in the situation that we were before where one of us was trying to soothe her from her tears. For example, I kept telling myself “okay, we’ve made it past 12 hours” and then it was 15 and 24 and pretty soon we were two days without a bottle. This really worked for me!
This was about 12 hours after her last bottle. She was eating her peanut butter sandwich from her lunch earlier to put herself to sleep. As much as I wanted to give her a bottle…we had already come so far.
3. DO NOT FEEL GUILTY! You know your child more than anyone does. It’s okay to listen to what other parents have to say but take it for what it is. I like to say that there is a balance to everything, including parenting. There is no wrong way or right way to raise a child but a balance of everything that you know and we try to make the right decisions along the way, hoping that it is right. My point is that YOU know yourself more than anyone. Don’t feel guilty for the choices that you make as a parent. No one has the right to judge you or make you feel like you are not trying your best because YOU ARE!
Going cold turkey and taking her bottle away was the best decision for us. Please do what is best for your family! I’m just sharing what worked for us. We had tried several times since her 12 month check up to wean her off the bottle but we would give in after every twelve hours or so because seeing her sad and hearing her cry was hard! Fast forward to her 18th month check up and her labs for anemia came back positive. After speaking with her pediatrician about the results and what our options were. Again, this was the best decision for us.
