Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of The Sleep Sense Program. If you’d rather read than watch, I’ve transcribed the text of this video below.

This week’s question is from Alicia, the busy mother of a 15-month-old twin boys. She writes:

“ I have twin boys who are 15 months old. Each one wakes about five times in the night to drink a bottle. My boys love their bottles. They would not sleep without them. I have tried not giving them the bottles at night but they cry too much. What can I do?”

Wow, five times! That is even more than a newborn so you must be exhausted! Really, there is no reason why any 15-month-old should be waking, even once for a bottle, so five times is too much. I suspect that they probably do not eat very well during the day because they are getting a lot of their calories through the night. It’s time to get rid of the bottle. I would suggest that after the age of one, parents start steering away from the bottle altogether and start using a sippy cup or even a soft top sippy cup. Otherwise, what can sometimes happen is that an association is formed between milk and bottles. If you let it linger much past one (I see it all the time) the child might not drink milk at all unless it comes in a bottle. I would start steering away from the bottle starting with bedtime. The best learning takes place at bedtime.

Start a consistent bedtime routine. Give them a bath, get them in their jammies and the you can give them a sippy cup of warm milk while they look at books. Even if you wanted to keep the bottle, which I don’t think you should, just make sure they do not fall asleep on it. Then you have to pull the bottle out of their mouths when you see heavy eyelids or tickle them or talk to them, keep them awake through the bottle. They really need to lose the connection that the bottle and sleep have anything to do with each other. So they go into their cribs wide awake and start learning skills of falling asleep on their own.

You did mention that you tried to let them cry in the night and not give them bottles. If they are used to falling asleep on a bottle then, they are definitely going to protest the change because that is what they are expecting. It is just like that for any of us if we were going to change habits surrounding bedtime. We would definitely resist that. But they can certainly learn to fall asleep without a bottle. I would suggest that you follow the stay in the room method that is outlined in the Sleep Sense Program so that they learn the new skill but are not alone in doing it.

I always say that if I am teaching my children a new skill, I am going to do all that I can to make sure they are successful. I am going to get them lessons, encourage them and be there to support them but the actual learning of the skill is all theirs. I cannot learn it for them so you really cannot learn this for them; they are going to have to learn this on their own. Once they have learned it, they are going to start sleeping through the night because if they do have a wake up, there is nothing that they need from you. They do not need a bottle in their mouths, they do not need a pacifier, and they do not need anything from you. They just might have a little wake up, roll over, grab their teddy and go back to sleep. It is really going to be the only way you are going to get these boys to sleep through the night and I think you really need to do it.

I wish you the best of luck. Thanks for your question. Sleep well.