My 15-month-old still having bottle at 5am

[MrsVBurgess]

Hello fellow baby whisperers,

I am a massive fan of Tracy and her book became like a Bible since my LO was born. I have found this forum recently and this is my very first post!

We followed all of Tracy's advice on sleep. Jake falls asleep on his own since he was tiny. He has a little Bunny toy that he brings to bed with him and has a dummy.

But we have fallen into the trap of giving him milk at 5am when he was about 8 month old (he used to sleep through the night before then) and we can't get out of it (he is now 15 months old)!! We have tried to just take it away but he would just cry until morning. 

I am getting pretty desperate and I am not sure what I should do to try and stop this.
I think he is actually hungry because he drinks the whole bottle. He doesn't like milk when he is awake and he wouldn't EVER drink it unless he is half asleep.

Has anyone had a similar problem and how did you resolve it? 

Any help would be HUGELY appreciated!

[anna*]

I stopped the 5am breastfeed when my daughter was 18 months old. Yes, the first night she cried until morning. The next two nights, she did actually fall asleep (at, like, 6.30am the first night and 6am the second night). After that, she stopped waking. For a few weeks she was waking earlier than usual in the morning (like half to 1 hour earlier) but that gradually lengthened out until she was back to sleeping her usual full night.

[MrsVBurgess]

Thanks Anna!

Do you think going cold turkey is the only way to do it? Simply stop one night?

Thanks a lot.

[anna*]

sure, or you can try watering down the bottle so that it is more and more dilute each night - maybe he will stop waking for it? Or you could water it down until it is quite diluted, and then stop cold turkey from there. Whatever you like!

[Lolly]

The other way to do it is to reduce the bottle by 1oz every 3 nights so he will adjust to having less in his tummy then when you get to 1 or 2 oz just offer a sip of water and resettle. He probably is hungry - but he's learnt to be hungry at that time, if someone fed me every time I woke at 5am I'd learn to expect to be fed at that time IYSWIM!

Laura

[MrsVBurgess]

Hi Lolly,

You're right. And that's why I feel bad just stopping one day to the next. Because without wanting it, we have actually trained him to be hungry at 5. 

Reducing every 3 nights seems like a good strategy. His tummy might get used to have less milk at that time and when we get to a small amount, we can then stop.

Thank you so much for the help!

[Buttonbobs]

Just stopping by to add support. We used Lolly's suggest method to drop night feeds and it worked really well for us. Good luck x

[MrsVBurgess]

Thank you Buttonbobs,

We will start tonight dropping 1 oz. Fingers crossed! ;-)