Bottle Weaning

The time has come to finally say bye to the bottle. We usually try to have kiddos wean from a bottle sometime between 12ish and 18ish months. Coinciding with when kids start getting enough teeth that if there is a bottle or a pacifier in the mouth, the teeth will start to bow out of the way of the bottle nipple. It is often easier to gradually reduce bottle use rather than getting rid of it cold turkey, as we often suggest for pacifiers, as bottles not only provide comfort but also a pretty good amount of nutrition and hydration for the toddler. 

I usually recommend starting to get rid of the bottle during the daytime first, while keeping the morning and before bedtime bottle feeds. Then once we get rid of the daytime bottle feedings, the next to go is often the morning one. The morning one is usually easier to get rid of than the nighttime one. If you plan well, you can just have an awesome breakfast ready to go or briskly whisk the kiddo off to a cool brunch spot right when they wake up for a few mornings in a row to have them just not need/remember the need for the bottle. After the morning bottle is eliminated, then we go for the often painful weaning of the nighttime bottle. The nighttime feed is usually much more adhered to the soothing aspect in the toddler’s brain than any of the other feeds, as it is pretty much a relied-upon habit for kiddos for the first 12-18 months of their life if they have had a bottle around.  

The two methods that we recommend for getting rid of the bottle at night is the rip-the-Band-Aid-off method where after 4-5 days of prep (i.e., telling the little dude or dudette, “Hey. Friday there is no more bottle at night cuz you are such a big kid, and we are going to do a new awesome thing for the 5-10 min before bed. It’s gonna be awesome!”), just get rid of the bottle that day. There will be crying, kicking, and screaming for a night or two, but after that, all will be good. The other method I like is the scavenger hunt method where you decide when the bottle is gone, and you toss them all in the dumpster never to be seen again. When little dude or dudette goes looking for the bottle at night, you act like you don’t know where it is and say well let’s look for it as a family. You go on a fun scavenger-type search around the house, and you end with a new lovey or blanket that can be taken to bed instead of the bottle. Again, there will probably be a couple of nights of crying and screaming, but at least you have a new soothing mechanism that the kiddo associates as being similarly comforting to the bottle, and its replacement for the time being.