He's chewing the teat, is it time to wean the final bottle??

[Tweakster]

Ok so I notice that our teats are getting quite chewed up.  I have thrown two away recently.  DH says we just buy more.  But I wonder, should we be thinking of getting rid of the bedtime bottle now?  I am not sure why he's chewing, we do the bottle while we read a book so I think he's either chewing in thought, chewing absentmindedly or chewing because of those bloody molars.

I feel that it's a bit dangerous even though we are with him, he could still bite a bit off and choke on it.

Thoughts?

[Mashi]

That's what I did Wendy - wasn't that ours were getting chewed on so much as they were just getting old.  DS was about 18/19 months. His bedtime milk was still in a bottle but all other milk was in a sippy.  Like with the switching other milk to a sippy he wasn't that interested and often had none, or only an ounce or two.  By 20 months I stopped offering it at all unless he asked for it (some nights he does, other nights he doesn't) and make up for it through daytime milk and dairy!

[Colin Macs Mom]

I think it could be a great opportunity Wendy! Will Finn understand if you tell him "oh well, these are all chewed up now and we can't use them, better throw them away..... this means you have X left and once they are gone that's that." Or something to that effect.... ?

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Have you tried taking away his bottle before? I can't remember! How does he do with a normal open cup? I was just thinking that if you do take his bottle away, maybe moving right to a real cup would sort of side-track him from the bottle just because it is something more interesting then a sippy cup which he might get all the time. At 12 months we took the bottle away from DS and moved him onto a sippy cup. Last month we switched from a sippy cup to a normal cup and he does great with it! He is so proud of himself when he is drinking from a real cup!

Just a thought!

[Tweakster]

I'm not sure he'd understand, but he does understand 'all gone'.  So we could keep it simple.

Jenn he's on a sippy for everything now, he does take a normal cup though too at times, monitored and supervised because he's a big spiller hehe

But that's interesting.  We certainly could try that.

Another teat has tiny tears in it.  We're 0 for 3 now.

[Colin Macs Mom]

I'd go for it Wendy!

[Katet]

I'd go for it, I know all the literature around here says to get rid of the bottle around 1yo... certainly if he drinks from a sippy all other times it shouldn't be an issue... at worst you get him a special "bedtime Sippy"... but TBH both mine stopped bedtime milk when they stopped BF (so 13mo & 17.5mo) & we just did a story, kept the dairy in the rest of the day.

[*Becky*]

I would def go for it!