No More Bottles!

This week I decided I was ready to ween Eva off of bottles. There were a couple reasons why:

1. Eva was using it to soothe herself, like a pacifier.
2. She was drinking way too much milk.
3. Because of how much milk she was drinking, she never wanted to eat much food since it was filling her up.

Monday, first thing when Eva woke up, she asked for her “ba-ba.” I told her the bottle was all gone, there was no more bottle! She went and found an empty one somewhere I forgot to put away and looked at me like, “No… here it is!” So, first tip of bottle weening, put all the bottles away 🙂 !

The first day was really rough. Especially for the first couple hours. She constantly was asking for the bottle and would throw huge tantrums when I told her it was gone and broken. I tried to give her milk in the sippy, but she wouldn’t take it (which I wasn’t surprised about, she never has like it from a sippy). I lined up all the cups and sippies out for her to choose one, thinking that would make it fun. She hated it. But distracting her worked (thanks for all the tips on Facebook!) and good ol’ fashion-bribing-her-with-candy worked too… ya gotta do what ya gotta do! It was a miracle she took a good nap that day and fell asleep at night after just 15 minutes of crying. I then cried in T.J.’s arms for a solid half an hour because I was so sad my sweet baby was growing up.

Day 2 Eva already had a bigger appetite, but was still asking for her bottle occasionally.

Day 3 was a big improvement… she woke up and asked for a sippy! I also got her to finally drink milk out of a cup using her Mickey Mouse straw!

Day 4, I really wanted her to drink milk at meals (the Mickey Mouse straw trick didn’t work), so I actually tried something similar to when we weened her from formula. When I got her off of formula, I used milk with the formula (instead of water) and then I slowly decreased the amount of formula until it was straight up milk. Instead of formula, I used chocolate Nesquik and told Eva it was a chocolate shake (to which she’d shake the sippy cup!). Of course she loved it, everyone loves chocolate milk! But now, a day later (Day 5), I barely put any Nesquik in the milk, so we are getting there!

So, here we are! It only took 5 days. Eva rarely asks for her bottle anymore, is drinking much more water, eating much more at meals, and is finally drinking milk at meals out of her sippy cup! I’m so glad we did it because I was getting so sick of bringing bottles of milk with us everywhere!