Bedtime milk - before or after bath?

[cameron09]

My LO is 1 yr now.  Currently he has a bottle of milk (hopefully one day sippy) after his bath in his PJ's, we brush teeth, read book and off to bed we go.

However, because he drinks 8 oz, I find he is very wet in the morning.  He will leak through a disposable and if I use cloth diapers, his bum is super wet.

I'm contemplating moving this evening bottle to just before the bath.  This way he has a chance to pee before I put him in his diaper for night.  However, I feel I might be disturbing his bedtime routine.  In the long run, is this better though?  Eventually do Lo's have milk earlier in the evening?  I figure one you start potty training, 8oz right before bed would not be a good idea!

Just curious when others give the last bottle/cup of milk?  And if anyone else has a heavy wetter problem like me.

[jess, lukeys_mom]

hi, both of mine get their milk right before bed. believe it or not luke still does, even at 3.5. (he is not potty trained yet though but that's another story!). we did have the wetting problem a little too, though it helped to go one size up in his diapers.

can you give less than 8oz at bedtime? that seems like a lot to me and at 1yo he doesn't need as much nutrition from milk as he does from the rest of his (solid) feedings. can you try 6oz?

of course though, doing the bottle before bath would be good too if that works for him. for mine it has always been too close to dinner time (we do bath immediately after dinner), so they have no interest in drinking then.

[mmom]

We give milk before the bath.  Once my LO is in the bath, we brush his teeth and really get him ready for bed.

[LizzieN]

I would just give it a go sweetie, you can always go back to the old way if you find it doesn't work   I do bottle straight before bed, and put our LO in a disposable now (as cloth wasn't holding him) - he gets about 250mL and is just over 2.  I would def try a larger size disposable too, seems to help here
xx

[Tweakster]

We've done it both ways and Finn and your LO are similar.  We have mixed it up purposely so that he doesn't 'need' the milk to go to bed.  I would just do it following your LO's dinner, he'll probably not drink all of it, and if he gets upset you can always give the rest that is leftover in a bottle at bedtime.  We do that too sometimes.  The paed said think of milk as a drink not a meal or whatever. 

It's what we are working towards anyway :-)

[cameron09]

Quick update!

I fed my LO his bottle last night BEFORE bathtime and he didn't even blink an eye over the change in routine.  He still took the whole 8oz.  Also, I gave him his bottle with handles on it and put him is his recline toddler chair, and he fed himself.  I then just offered him a sip of water before bed.

I think I will continue to try this and I suspect it will make a change to sippy cup a bit easier too.

Only thing different that happened is he woke up at 6am instead of 7am and was hungry.  Not sure if this was a coincidence or not.

[mmom]

That is great that he adapted so easily!  I would think that would be coincidence.  I don't think a 1 hour difference would make your LO wake earlier.