Kicking the Bottle – Cold Turkey

Before anybody starts to judge my parenting skills, I just want to say that I often “know” what I’m supposed to do, but quite often follow the children’s lead and stick with some things way longer than is good for them.  That being said, today is day one of kicking the bottle habit for Katie.  I should have done this bottle weaning bit about a year ago, but due to moves and other excuses, I kept putting it off.  She will be 2 years old next week and I keep holding out hope that I will get a job soon as a teacher.  With those two bits of knowledge nibbling away at my brain, I finally decided it was time.  I went through the same thing with Andy when he was around 2 years old, but don’t quite remember it being this hard.

I don’t actually remember the whole process with Andy.  I just remember we threw all the bottles away one day and switched him to sippy cups.  I’m sure he was just as mad about it as Katie is right now, but I guess time erases the screaming fits from your memory so you don’t remember the bad times quite as much.  My concern with this whole transition of course has the added worry about blood sugars.  As much as my logical part of the brain keeps telling me she’ll be fine, there is still the nagging “what if she has a low blood sugar?” part of my brain keeping me from throwing ALL of the bottles away.  So 5 hours into the cold turkey day, I sit here blogging about it, with earphones in so I don’t have to listen to the blood curdling screaming because she is so mad that she can’t have a bottle for nap time.   This too shall pass and she will eventually transition to the sippy cup when she figures out there is no other option.  Oh, God give me grace to make it through the next few days.

Note:  By the time I had finished writing this post, she had fallen asleep.  All is quiet now in the house