A little background:
Little Man has ALWAYS been built like a linebacker! He's been in the 95th percentile for his weight since he was 4 months old! So at a year old, his pediatrician told me that he needed to give up the bottle. Okay... (I guess this is the new recommendation based on oral health.) Well, thankfully, he did it on his own around right around that time. He still had a binkie (pacifier) that he used until he was about 2, so I wasn't worried.
Now, for Princess. Well, since she was a preemie, it took her a while get the whole "suck, swallow, breathe" thing. She also had a binkie, but gave that up around 6 months old. I think she began to associate it with getting poked (poor kid! Too much sweet-eze and the binkie, I guess). So I wasn't about to take the bottle away from her at a year old. Plus, it helped that her nutritionist wanted her to stay on the formula until she was a year adjusted (one of the FEW things we've EVER done by her adjusted age!). So after she came off the formula, a year ago, I went ahead and let her keep having her bottle of milk at bedtime. It seemed to help her calm down. Yeah, okay, I know you're technically not supposed to let them do that, but you know what, my kid was a NICU baby. It took her long enough to figure it out. I'm not about to take it away from her!
Well, the other night, she was taking her bottle and she was just about done, when she puked it! Oh how I hate puke! Yeah, most people hate puke, but I especially hate puke. Why? Well, it's simple. We've been told by Princess's nephrologist, that if we were ever thinking about giving her Pedialyte, to just go to the ER and have them run a saline drip. Okay, so essentially that means that if she gets ANY KIND of stomach bug, we need to go to the ER and get her electrolytes checked. Thankfully she hasn't need any IVs yet. (She was a SUPER HARD stick in the PICU!) But puke from Princess typically means going to the ER and having them look at me weird. I usually have to drop either the phrase "her cardiologist said..." or "her nephrologist said..." before the nurses start taking me seriously. Otherwise I get looked at like I'm some panicky new mom.
Okay, so back to the bottle. Yes, she puked. I got her cleaned up, changed her sheets (that I had just washed!) and then the poor kid didn't want to sleep on her bed! Why? Because it was blue and not her "Doc Bed." Oh the joys of having a verbal 2 year old! So I got her to sleep, FINALLY, and found pajamas for me that were at least not my clothes just in case I was going to be up all night at the ER with her. Surprisingly, she slept all night and didn't puke any more! Yes, there were prayers of joy that morning. But, I certainly held my breath when she ate her breakfast. Hooray! It stayed down! In fact, everything else the rest of the day stayed down! I was so thankful! I REALLY didn't want to text J and tell him that Princess had a stomach bug and he needed to watch for it and apologize like crazy! (Hey, he's got kids on his list that have more serious issues than Princess and REALLY couldn't handle getting sick!)
So that brings us to bedtime. I asked her if she wanted a "baba" and she said "No more baba." Okay... If you say so kid! Well, even though she had only taken a 20 minute nap, it still took her like an hour to fall asleep because without the bottle, she didn't know what to do! We tried reading. We tried snuggling. I tried the "I'm going to go put your brother to bed and be right back" (which used to work) and she just came out of her room! Eventually she fell asleep on the floor. That was Wednesday night.
Thursday night I asked if she wanted her baba and she again said "No more baba!" Okay, so we went to bed at 7:30. We read two books ("Hippos Go Berserk" and "Giraffes Don't Dance"), snuggled, and eventually she wanted to be "upside down" on my lap on the floor and wanted me to rub her tummy. She eventually fell asleep after an hour and was out enough for me to move her to her bed.
I don't know about last night, as she was at her dad's house, but I've washed the bottles and will be putting them up. I don't think I'm going to throw they away JUST yet. I'm probably going to hang on to them for about a week, THEN toss them. I don't think she's going to use them anymore. She's a BIG girl...um, Diva.
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