We're in the process of weaning Evan off the bottle and pacifier. Both have turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. We were having trouble getting Evan to drink milk from a cup until one evening he was hungry enough before dinner that he drank it down in no time. Since then he doesn't seem to mind if it's bottle or cup as long as there's milk in it! He only takes a morning and night bottle now, and we've been slowly decreasing the amount of milk in the bottle. It shouldn't be much longer until he's off the bottle entirely and we can put those away for good. It's already been so nice to not worry about formula. Not only are we saving money, but time too - it's a hassle always mixing that up. I think that his bottles will be one of the few things that I don't save for the next child. We've only ever had seven, so we're always washing them and they just seem so worn out.
The pacifier has been a little trickier, but still manageable. You know how they say that typically if a child has developed a pattern it has more to do with how the parent is perpetuating that pattern...that's totally true in this case. Evan usually stirs around 4:00 in the morning and one of us will go in and give him his pacifier - he'll then fall right back to sleep. We also give him his pacifier at bed and nap time - it's become part of the routine almost. I've been afraid that if we stopped giving him his pacifier he wouldn't sleep. We've started by not giving it to him at bedtime and that's been really successful - this was our third night and he's fallen asleep easily each time. Next we'll go to not giving it to him when he wakes up and then we'll cut it out of nap time. I'm glad we never got in the habit of using it during the day - it's just one less thing to think about.
Jeff and I have been talking a lot lately about how grown up he seems. I feel like we can communicate with him more now. It seems that he understands more of what we say and he's responding back. We turned his carseat around and every time I look back there, I'm struck by how much he's not a baby anymore!
3 comments:
That is great you are having such an easy time. We are not having as much success to say the least and I can't seem to push it for some reason, even though I should be pushing more. Oh well...congrats!
I'm glad to hear it's going so well. We have been thinking about starting the pacifier thing...your way sounds like a good way to do it!
It does make Evan seem so grown up!
I'm glad weaning is going so well!! Oh, do I know about parents perpetuating things. We made mistakes with putting Thomas to sleep that we are still paying for ;) We haven't made them with the other 2 though.
Post a Comment