Thanks!

Thanks to everyone for their comments. After offering Isaac the sippy cup all day yesterday and having him only take a few sips here and there all day, I picked up one of those Nuby cups with the soft top, thinking that might be a better transition for him. When we got home from the store and I pulled out his new cup, my Grandma told me that Isaac had been drinking from his sippy cup fine since we went to the store. So, I guess I’ll be returning the Nuby cup. That’s good, though – one less transition to worry about. He drank from his sippy cup fine today too, so I think the Bradshaw household ise officially bottle-free (at least for a few more months). :)

Help

Does anyone have any good suggestions for switching a baby from a bottle to a sippy cup? I switched Kolby over to a sippy cup when he turned 1 year old, and Eli and Camden each switched at about 10 months old. All of the other boys made an easy switch – I usually gave them their first few drinks in the sippy cup with the valve taken out so they got the idea of drinking from a cup before I put the valve back in and then they didn’t take long to get used to the sippy cup.

With Isaac I tried to switch him to the sippy cup at 10 months, and he wasn’t interested at all. He put it up to his mouth a few times, (and I tried pouring it into his mouth too – so he knew that it had his formula in it), but he never really took any sips on his own. I tried formula and water in the cup. He ended up crying all day long, and I decided I would just wait and try again later, since he wasn’t a year old yet.

So, now that he is going to be 1 year old on Thursday, I want to get him off the bottle. So, I started trying again this morning at breakfast – first giving him with cup without a valve (and having formula run all over the place whenever he lifted the cup up or dropped it on the floor). He didn’t really get much to drink, besides the few sips that I gave him as I held the cup up to his mouth. Around lunchtime he started to fuss a little, so I gave him the sippy cup again (but this time with the valve in it). I saw him put it up to his mouth once, but couldn’t tell if he really got a good drink from it.

Isaac seems pretty attached to his bottle. I just want this to be a quick and easy switch like it was with all the other boys, but I’m thinking he’s not going to let go of his bottle that easily. So, do any of you have any good suggestions that worked for your kids?
Thanks!

Sleepless in Milwaukee

So, last week Isaac woke up right as we were going to bed at night and wanted a bottle, and then he got up about an hour earlier in the morning than he normally does. That was unusual, since he has been sleeping through the night for quite a while now. (And a little inconvenient because Michael has started into his surgery sub-I this month, so he has been getting up around 4am to get ready to go to the hospital each day and then being ready for bed by around 10pm, and I have been trying to get up with the boys if needed so Michael can get some more rest). Well, the next night Isaac slept just fine, but Camden woke up in at 4am and wouldn’t go back to sleep. Michael had already gotten up and given him a drink of water before I even woke up. I got up and changed him and tried to get him to go back to sleep in his crib, but after he cried a while I finally brought him into bed with us (around the time that Michael had to get up to get ready for work), and luckily he actually slept in bed with me for a couple more hours before Kolby and Eli woke us up. Camden hasn’t had a problem with waking up for a really long time. The next night Isaac woke up around 1am and wanted a bottle. He was starting to get a little stuffy, and since his problems with his nasal airway when he was born he can breath well, but if he gets a little cold he sounds so stuffed up and he just wakes himself up a lot at night. I fed him, but he didn’t fall asleep quickly like he normally would have – he was content to stay awake for another half hour after eating before I finally just put him in his swing and went back to bed – he must have fallen to sleep on his own. The next night I was so tired, and luckily Isaac did better. Around 2:30am, though, Michael rolled over and told me that one of the boys was crying. I asked who it was, and he said it was Eli and then rolled back over and went back to sleep. I went in and was glad that all Eli wanted was for me to pick up the stuffed animals he had dropped on the floor, and then he quickly went back to sleep. (I gave Michael a hard time the next morning for waking me up on a weekend after I had stayed up with the boys earlier in the week, but he had no memory at all of waking me up or any of the kids crying the night before, and it was ok since I wasn’t up for long). Then last night Isaac had such a stuffy nose and he couldn’t even keep his pacifier in his mouth. He had woken up crying four times in the last half hour before we went to bed, and after I had to get up two more times to help him, I brought him into bed with us [that was the second time this week I had brought one of the kids into bed with us, and I have a pretty strict rule about not bringing them into our bed -- but sleep deprivation makes such "rules" not seem to matter very much]. He was snoring so loudly, and after half an hour of that I put him back in the swing and was very glad when he slept through the rest of the night (he even slept in until about 9:30am, which is much better than the 6 or 6:30am waking time he had been averaging last week). Unfortunately, one of the kids at church yesterday must have had a little bug or something, because around 2:30am this morning Michael woke me up and told me that Kolby had thrown up in bed. I found him in the bathroom, his clothes were just covered, and Michael stripped the bedding from his bunk bed while I took off his clothes, bathed him, and got him dressed again. We set him up a little ‘bed’ of blankets on our floor next to our bed and tried to get back to sleep. Fortunately, Kolby seems to be feeling better today and I am crossing my fingers that he is over it. Isaac has been sleeping pretty peacefully so far in his swing this evening, and we are just waiting for the last load of laundry to finish drying before we go to bed too. It sure makes a big difference when you are used to your kids sleeping through the night and they all decide to become nocturnal all of a sudden. Maybe tonight we will actually be able to sleep until morning.