Ditching the bottle

Michaela still has a bottle of milk before her afternoon and night time sleeps and also first thing in the morning.  She only has about 100mls in the morning and 250mls before her sleeps.

I've decided it's time to ditch the bottles for various reasons.

1. The bottles we have are getting old and if you believe everythign you hear they may cause cancer.  I'm too much of a cheap ass to replace them.

2.  She's doing really well with her potty training and I'd like to get rid of the bottles now so that if she regresses due to the change it's not a big deal for us because we're still prepped to deal with accidents and also because I don't want her having a bottle at bedtime when we start night training at some point down the track.

3.  I checked her teeth the other day and it looks kind of like some of the enamel is chipping (I may just be seeing things but I'm so pedantic about her oral hygiene and I think sipping the bottle at bedtime isn't helping).

I've already decided it needs to be done cold turkey rather than slowly weaning (mostly so DH and I aren't tempted to give in and let her have the bottle).  D-day is this Saturday since I'll be home over the weekend to deal with any fall out.

What did you do to prepare you bottle (or dummy) addict?  Did you use the 'fairy' technique and how well did this work?

Thanks for your advice ladies.

I'll definitely get Michaela to throw out the bottles herself and cut the teats, I think that's a great idea - thanks Mel.

Michaela has several sipper cups but drinks from normal cups during the day now.  I do like the idea of buying her some kind of treat to "replace" the bottle but wonder if she would see using a sipper cup as a step backwards.  What do you think?

She is totally bottle reliant when she's sleepy, partly because DH has always used it to get her to sleep and partly because it was the only way to get a decent quantity of liquids into her for several months while she was anal retentive and although we could see it leading us to bottle addiction the immediate issue was sorting her BMs.

We have been talking about how baby's drink bottles and big girls don't and she actually rejected her bottle this morning (although it wasn't until after she'd drunk half of it).

Maya wrote: Maya was 22 mths, we left hers out for Santa on Xmas eve and he left her a My Little Pony cup in it's place which she had her milk out of after that. It wasn't a sippy cup, just a normal cup.

Good idea, I might pop to kmart and see if they have any novelty cups she loves Dora the Explorer atm (and Ice Age the movie - I get her to brush her teeth by asking her if she wants big strong teeth like Diego, the saber tooth tiger)