Milk, Juice, and Some Competition

My daughter is the light of my life and the one thing that motivates me to get out of bed each morning. I start this post by saying that, because boy does she drive me nuts some days!

Along with her wacky eating habits (explained in my last post), she still does not sleep through the night and must have a bottle at all times in the night. What this means for this over-worked and exhausted Mama is that every 2-4 hours K bellows her toddler moans until I go in there and give her back her bottle, that she has inevitably rolled on top of or is on the other side of the crib. I’ll be honest my husband does help and get up and do this sometimes to help me, but either way at 14 months she should be sleeping through the night. She most definitely does NOT need a bottle through the night. K has never taken to a pacifier, and believe me when I say I’ve tried EVERY brand of pacifiers out there! So to pacify herself through the night she has always wanted the bottle of formula, now milk. Well lately, I’ve tried to give her milk in the night and she will kick and cry and moan and whimper in her sleep until I give her a juice bottle. Her juice bottle is 1-2 oz. of juice and the rest water, but this is what she MUST have at all times. I have to prepare 3-4 bottles every night before bed so that they are on hand in the middle of the night. Inevitably her diaper then needs to be changed 1-2 times each night, because she is drinking so much. This is not a routine that I love, and dislike her drinking so much in the middle of the night.

I know that juice in a bottle is not great, and should only be given in a sippy cup. Well let me tell you that K will NOT have a sippy cup at night. She will gladly drink out of her sippy cup during the day, but when it comes to bedtime or nap time that bottle is what she has to have. K knows what she wants and she has the stubborn willfulness to get what she wants, at least at bed time that is. I recently have tried to soothe her in other ways instead of giving her a bottle in the night, but she kicks and crys and screams and wakes herself up, and I will be 100% honest she out wills me EVERY.SINGLE.TIME in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, I need sleep to function and to not get physically sick…so for right now she has won the bottle battle.

I would love to hear of anyone’s ideas or stories on how you weaned your little ones off the bottle at night, or if they just naturally stopped??

On another note, my amazing sister started a blog last night! She is an amazing person, I mean seriously I’m her sister! Although I know her tag line she stole a part of it from me! I remember, dear sister, mom’s house…frosting cookies…talking about blog names…you stole that perfectly imperfect line from me! I shall let this go, as I am the better person :)! Please check her out, she has been a foster mom for the past couple of years and she will be sharing her experiences and stories HERE!

-Chaotic Mama