I think the hardest part of parenting so far--harder than cleaning up atomic-explosion diapers and harder than keeping Noah out of Einstein's food bowl--has been trying to wean Noah from the bottle. You see, Libby and I made the grave error of letting Noah become dependent on the bottle to go to sleep.
Noah likes his sleep. But he has become accustomed to a bottle of milk any time he wants to go to sleep. For the past year, any time we've put Noah to bed, it's been with the comfort of a bottle; any time Noah has woken up in the middle of the night, it's been a race to soothe his midnight cries with a bottle. And it's always worked. I'm an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" guy, and like I said, the bottle has always worked. It still works. But it's time to fix it.
We actually tried to wean Noah from the bottle a few weeks ago, and it lasted all of one hour. We put Noah down without a bottle, and predictably, he cried. We went in a little later to give Noah a sippy cup and to try to get him to sleep, but no go. After about 45 minutes, Noah got angry. He started really crying. And yelling. Basically in baby-speak Noah was telling us this.
We gave in to Noah, but we were wrong. So, we're starting the process again today. We're going to update you every day on our progress (or lack thereof), and we'll call it Project Big Boy. Updating you every day serves two purposes: first, it holds us accountable to follow through with the weaning, and second, it means you'll be suffering with us. Because we will be suffering.
Everything we've read and heard from people with experience says that cold turkey is the way to go when weaning from the bottle. So that's how we're going to do it. Your prayers are appreciated. No, seriously, pray for us this week. It will be rough, but God will help us through it.
Since Libby says that posts without pictures are boring, I'll leave you with this one. Noah loves to play peek-a-boo, and he just laughs and laughs when we play it with him. I'm going to take a minute to just stare at the picture, because it may be the last smile I see from Noah for a while. Feel free to join me in staring.
Ok, I guess that's all for now. Have a great Sunday! We'll be back with an update tomorrow.
2 comments:
Good luck! I know this must be hard! I am still nursing Hutton to sleep at night which my Dr. said would be fine for a little while longer. {she said we would reevaluate it at his 15 month appt.} We are rocking him for naps and he does great 99% of the time. I can't wait for updates!
You are in our prayers. We love the little fellow dearly, as we also love both of you.
You can do it and I know the Lord will bless you in your efforts. Just remember that you love him and it has to happen sometime. Since you think now is the time, GO FOR IT!
We love you all,
Pa
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