Bye Bye Bottle Day!!!
Ready or Not, James... Here we go...
Micah has been off the bottle for ONE WEEK! Now that there's no one else on the bottle (for James to see), it's HIS turn too! We tried to do them together, but James is VERY resistant. He'll be getting checked out early from school tomorrow and home on Fri for a long weekend with Mom and Dad to learn how to get his nutritional needs met in some way other than an infant bottle. After all, Monday he will be exactly 4 1/2 and that's plenty old to be sucking on a bottle ;).
We also see GI tomorrow morning for Wesley, so I will ask him about any suggestions he has so we can avoid tube-feeding as the alternative to bottle feeding. I *hope* it doesn't come to that, though!
What ideas do you have for saying "goodbye!" to the bottle??
He's probably too old for this one, but my mom cut the nipples of several bottles so they didn't work and said, "uh-oh, it's broken!" when we were kids. Apparently we never thought that maybe she could go get new ones and gave up after a few tries.
ReplyDeletehummm Iam not sure at 4.5.. usually let the kids give it up on there own but we done the removeing the bottles till there wasnt any..but iam not sure..have you tried blankies??my kids were big on blankies.
ReplyDeleteCan he suck from a straw? That was the prerequisite for getting out little one off the bottle. She takes the majority of her calories through pediasure and cannot drink easily from a cup. Once we got the straw drinking down then it was cold turkey off the bottle. It really wasn't as tough as I thought and she was about four when we did it this summer. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThe broken bottle trick always worked for us... cut the nipples on a few bottles so that the liquid comes out too fast and tell him they are broken. Good luck...I have a feeling you are going to need it!! :)
ReplyDeleteAs I remember my mom made up a nice little story about a bunny needing it for a bunny/baby. ...now you are such a big boy and there is this little baby/bunny?? that needs this bottle... I think we had a little ceremony and left it out in the back yard with some carrots in a basket. The next day there may have been a thank you note from the bunny and small present in the basket.
ReplyDeletehow about those sippy cups that have a nipple like spout, then transition to the hard spout. Give him whatever he'd have in the bottle in the new sippy??
ReplyDeleteLike this may be a good first step go get him interested in a sippy like shape??
Does he have any other means of drinking besides the g-tube? Does he eat food? If he will drink from a cup or straw at all I'd go cold turkey. Serve the cup with the meal and that is that. If not, it's a different story.
ReplyDeleteKara
Take him shopping for a new sippy cup of HIS choice? Celebrate packing the bottles in a nice box with some ceremony? and then a small but valued gift for the new "big boy" ?! The way I weaned my Dd from nursing was to give her a wonderful brand new doll of her choosing, and she got to keep it as long as she didn't nurse. She knew she could give me the doll and then get to nurse and I'd keep the doll till the next morning. She toyed with the idea but never wanted to give up the doll even for a short period of time, so weaning was pretty tearless!
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