“My 11-month-old goes to bed with a bottle and wakes for a bottle in the night. How do I break him of this habit?”Good question! When you put your baby in bed at night, it is perfectly fine to include the bottle in his routine. You could start with a bath, and then pajamas and then his bottle and a story or two. Or if you don't bath every night, perhaps some quiet play and then the pj's and his bottle and a story or two.
What you really want to avoid is giving him the bottle until he falls asleep or putting him in his crib with the bottle. This creates a bad habit that only gets harder to break the longer it goes on. To be clear - I have worked with families in this situation more than I can count and no matter how long it has been going on we resolve it, it can just take some time and as they get older the habit has been around longer and their willpower has increased!
You want to avoid the association of bottle and sleep going hand in hand. You do not want your baby to fall asleep with a bottle in her mouth because if she wakes up in the middle of the night she thinks she needs that bottle again to sleep. If you then come to her with a bottle and either feed her to sleep or put it into the crib, she sucks herself back to sleep with the bottle. This becomes a repetitive behaviour that is no good for anyone involved. Her sleep is being disrupted and so is yours. It is very damaging to her teeth coming in, not to mention if she is on 3 meals a day it can have an affect on the solid food intake.
So, maybe start the bottle a little earlier in your routine. You can have a bath, then her bottle, then brush her teeth and then back for some stories, but you should be putting her into the crib awake and without a bottle.
You don’t have to leave the room; you can stay with her if you like, but she really does need to start connecting the steps that are involved in putting herself to sleep independently so that she is not relying on that bottle! Otherwise, she will most likely keep waking for that bottle. It could go on well into the second year so you really want to make sure you break this habit now.
If you are worried about how to make this happen without too much stress and worry - I will take the guess work out for you. Call me and we can discuss a few strategies.
Happy Sleeping!
Time To Sleep Consulting
Carly Wintle
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