Bottle Weaning a Toddler! Yes it is possible.

As your little one starts losing his baby fat and all that chubby cherubiness and starts taking the motor skills world by storm, "bottle feeding" becomes that sword hanging over your neck! It becomes worse when he has crossed his first birthday and crossed into a bossy opinionated where-did-my-cute-angel-baby-disappear. If at all it has continued even after turning 2, it may have become the best kept secret within your family!

Doctors ask at every meeting whether you have weaned him yet and you sheepishly look here and there hoping he will just drop it. Okay I'm sure they mean well. But honestly! I always felt the risk of tooth decay, milk anemia and milk / bottle addiction is a tad exaggerated (seriously? It's just milk! I was NOT shoving down chocolate bars down his throat every night!) and not a big deal compared to the nice soundless sleep he drifted into after that one bottle of elixir!

No rotting teeth yet!

That one bottle with magical abilities was what we pinned our hopes on every night and it would always come through. Like a best friend we never had! Dependable and thoroughly reliable!

Why did we use a bottle to begin with? Well that's a whole different story that is explained in my previous posts on exclusive pumping. There wasn't any choice. Weaned him off breast milk and nightly wakings when we was 1.5 y.o. But even after that he didn't let go of that one bottle of normal milk as a bedtime ritual till last week (28 months to be precise!)


I've written about how he was plagued by cold and cough ever since we shifted to Pune. Cold and cough seldom came without its chaperone: vomit. The big trigger was that damn bottle of milk. Yes that means that all of it would be out without any notice and within a fraction of a second requiring Edward Cullen like swiftness to avoid massive spills on the bed, couch, pillow, duvets... although I use an excellent rubber sheet to protect the mattress, and the duvet can be washed in the machine, cleaning up all this PLUS the child was quite a task. Esp when I was all alone!


One fine day after a vomit I suddenly realised how stupid I was being. F*** tooth decay and milk anemia! The #1 reasons to bottle wean should be vomit cleaning!!!


And that fine (gloomy, utterly horrid) day, the first thing I did after bathing and changing him was take all the effing bottles from every nook and corner of the house and throw them in the garbage. Before I could change my mind!!


He HOWLED for an hour the first day. When I said the bottles are gone he insisted I go and buy new ones. Well whatever. One time-out stopped his howling and all that screaming had left him way too tired to stay awake anyways. The schedule was a bit diff the next few days so the question of bottle didn't arise. The 4th (or 5th) day he remembered again and screamed for about ten minutes. Subsequent night for perhaps 5 mins…

See? It wasn't so hard.

Note & reminder to self: toddlers are MORE adaptable to change and MORE likely to put a habit behind them than us adults!

Confused about which Breast Pump to buy? Read Here.

This post is shared at these Link Ups

Until later! Stay in touch!

 Sign Up  |  Twitter  |  Pinterest | Facebook 

Night-Time Weaning from Breast Milk

I wish my 1.5yo tiny tot would self-wean BEFORE the breast milk supply ran out. But it seemed nowhere close to happening as he still gulped down 4 bottles of milk every night- like when he was a baby!

“Gentle weaning techniques” wouldn’t have passed my mind if the supply wasn’t dwindling. Was already supplementing with cow’s milk – yeah the 4^th bottle he drank an hour before waking would be cow’s milk. And in a few months I would have to resort to only cow’s milk. 4 bottles of cow’s milk at night? That would be plain ridiculous. Needed an action plan ASAP!

I figured there are two important aspects of weaning: (a) Reducing serving size & (b) Reducing no of wake ups. (a) wasn’t that difficult. His usual 120 ml came down to 80ml. He didn’t notice the difference. He didn’t ask for more milk once the bottle was empty. (b) was the slow, difficult part. Or so I thought.

Confused about which Breast Pump to buy?

Choosing the right pump can seem as complicated as choosing a new brand of Bra. Before baby came and before I had any clue about any of the baby equipment, I stood in front of the breast pump aisle for at least an hour wondering what this high tech equipment was all about. The shop assistant opened a box to explain but I had just landed in Indonesia and I didn’t understand a word of what she said. It was as if she was explaining the functioning of a robot in robotese!

But after having pumped round the clock for 1.5 years & used manual, electric, Pigeon AND Medela pumps (Yes I have cumulatively purchased FOUR pumps, let someone dare say breastfeeding is free and I may just be ready for some strangulation!), I think it’s time to pass on some valued experience! Because really, when it comes to choosing a pump, it boils down to only these two things:

Travelling with baby : uninterrupted breast milk supply

pic: yes your pump is loud, but not to worry about in an aircraft!

This blog could be useful to you're an Exclusive Pumper, or chose to pump on travel days.

Being an "Exclusive Pumper"

Benefits of EP, anyone can feed baby!
heres a pic of his friend lending a helping hand :)

Thought I would share this exerpt from my diary, written around 5 weeks after my son was born, as this was the first and biggest challenge as a mother! He's over 15 months old now, and I'm still going strong with my pumping schedule, so here's where it all began :)