Dana Obleman: Hi, I’m Dana. Welcome back. Today I want to talk about some ways in which you can teach your baby to drink from something other than a bottle. I get emails a lot from people. In fact, I just saw on my Facebook post the other day that a lot of people are still giving their child milk in a bottle at bedtime, through the night even, during the day, and are looking for some ways to get out of that habit.

The key word here it has now become a habit. There’s really no need past the first birthday for children to be drinking milk through a bottle. With my children, I transitioned into a sippy cup, really, right around the first birthday.

What I find is if it lingers much past the first birthday, then it becomes a habit. In fact, I had a client once whose two year old still had a bottle at bedtime and through the night. When I told her, “We needed to get rid of that bottle.” She said, “Oh, but Dana it’s her only vice.” I was thinking to myself, “Why does a two year old need a vice?” She has her whole life to develop bad habits and vices.

She’s two. She doesn’t need one. Certainly, having a dependency on a bottle at bedtime and through the night when she’s two is not necessary. It’s hurting her nighttime sleep. It’s causing a fragment to her nighttime sleep. We need to get rid of it.

The tricky part is, if it lingers much past the first birthday, a lot of children decide that they won’t drink milk unless it’s in a bottle. They go on milk strike. I can remember my son went on a bit of a milk strike when we moved to the sippy cup.

He just kept pushing it away until he realized that the bottle was not coming back. And, if he wanted milk, he needed to drink it from a sippy cup. Don’t be alarmed or panicked if for a few days, even a week or two, your child starts refusing milk in any kind of other cup.

Occasionally, a child will simply refuse milk period. That could be for a variety of reasons. I know a lot of breastfed babies, when you try to introduce cow’s milk at the first birthday, they don’t want any part of it. They don’t like the taste. It’s really not the end of the world.

We don’t have to be giving our children milk. There’s other ways for them to get all that good stuff that milk offers. It’s really not a big deal if they don’t drink milk anymore past that first birthday. I think the hard part is it’s a bit of a mindset shift for the parent. For all this child’s life thus far, beverage has been the main food source.

Now, beverage is a beverage. It’s an accompaniment. Food now takes center stage and milk is a beverage. You really have to shift your thinking around that.

I know from my own son my first son he loved milk so much that we had a lot of struggle getting enough solid foods into him. He would of happily drank milk all day long and eaten no food. Keep an eye on that too. A toddler only needs about two and a half cups of milk per day to meet that kind of requirement.

Everything else should be coming in food. I find that the sippy cup with the soft top is an easier transition for a lot of toddlers into a cup. Another thing to consider is there’s really no need to be giving milk before bed anymore, period.

If your child is eating well, taking in enough fluids throughout the day, there’s no need to continue on with this idea that milk needs to be a part of the bedtime experience. It doesn’t. I’d say you might consider abandoning that idea all together. Replacing it with an extra story, for example, and moving into bedtime milk free.

Thanks so much for watching today. Sleep well.

Transcription by CastingWords