Bottle Battle Ends

Today the Battle of the Bottle has officially ended, after about 16 days. We decided on Jan. 1 to begin phasing out the bottle, and it was tough on Courtney. I had been advised by the pediatrician at Courtney's 12-month appointment to make sure Courtney was completely off bottles by the time she was 15 months old, but I put it off for more than a month because of the holidays. She was getting such constant attention from visiting family members, plus our schedule was disrupted by traveling, so I admit I wussed out. But I decided New Year's Day to start the process. For the first 4 days we only offered sippy cups full of milk, and she completely refused them, going so far as to throw them on the floor. During the same time, she was drinking lots of juice and water out of these same cups - she just did not want to drink milk from them. On the 5th day, I broke down and gave her a morning bottle because I was starting to feel sorry for her. For the next 8 days or so she only had a bottle in the morning and sometimes at night. One day she and I went to Babies R Us and picked out some special "milk cups," which didn't help at first. So during these 16 days she went through the following: she would point to the bottles on the countertop and cry (I put them away after that); she would walk around and whine; she continued to throw the cups on the floor; she started pulling her own hair in frustration and saying "ow," which really broke my heart; on about day 10 she agreed to drink milk from the milk cup for the first time; and then by day 16 (today) she was taking the milk cup with no problems at all. It has not been very fun for us, and I don't think it was fun for her, but it's over. Until the next battle. Whew.