Sucking on an empty bottle

[hellokitty1]

At first I thought this should this post could go in the Feeding post, but since it's about my DD drinking a bottle and continuing to suck on it long after the milk is gone, I guess it doesn't count as "feeding", huh?

So does anyone else's baby do this? DD wants no part of a pacifier (though we haven't tried sticking one in her mouth in a couple months) but will gladly suck on an empty bottle and will get upset is you take it away before she's ready. Is this okay, by the way? Any harmful effects? And also, why don't the shape of pacifiers look anything like a bottle nipple?

TIA!

[Kimberly H]

Vivian, no help here, just another mom to commiserate. Mia sucks on her bottles sometimes until the plastic liner is sucked up into the nipple so tightly I have to tug hard to get it out.

Lately she's much less interested in her "ma" (don't ask, I don't have a clue) and doesn't go to that extreme but she she did it again tonight so who knows?

[jamsmu]

DS is the same. Hates the pacifier (I tried the thermometer pacifier for the first time today, he spit it right out) but loves to suck the bottle. Cries when I take it, too. Bad news, though. This leads to airbubbles. If you have a spitter, a baby with reflux or one with a lot of gas, this may be what is causing it, or making it worse. As DS has reflux, we have to remove the bottle as soon as we hear that high-pitched suck of air.

[boys2enough]

Gabriel does the same thing, and he didn't want to have anything to do with pacifiers from the beginning. :)

I believe when they are young babies, sucking on empty bottles will create air bubbles and possibly cause tummy ache. Maybe because Gabriel is older (15 mo), he doesn't seem to be affected by this.

However, he sucks on his empty bottle at night when he's sleeping, and it is very very bad for his teeth, because of the milk deposit in mouth... (I am going to rectify this situation when we come back from our trip). I wonder whether during the day, the milk won't do as much damage? Do you think DD will accept an exchange for a clean bottle (maybe even with water?)?

Thank you for posting this, nice to learn that Gabriel is not the only one sucking on empty bottles while rejecting pacifiers. Lin

[hellokitty1]

Unfortunately, this is our only sure-fire way to get her to bed and naps unless she is totally, totally exhausted. We have to work through this method of falling asleep but it's been hard. The other night, after falling asleep eating, DH tried to put her down and she screamed so he put the empty bottle in her mouth and let her suck. I was kind of upset about it but at the same time I knew that it would be a nightmare otherwise trying to get her to sleep any other way. I did have him go take it out and he did agree it wasn't a good thing to do. But we were both exhausted.

FWIW, I think I was a cute baby but my to 2-3 top baby teeth were black and plagued with cavities. It's in all my pictures. Of course they fell out and I'm fine now but maybe my parents let me sleep with the bottle too much. This is one of those things that I don't think parents used to wory about.

Anyway, I attempted a sleep method discussed in Parenting magazine this month. But it didn't work. She screamed at the top of her lungs for quite some time.

[KMommie]

Kiki does this too, it's always been a battle to take the bottle away (crying, upset). Her new thing is she will only let us hold her for about 1/3 of the bottle, then she's squirming to get down. She's still hungry, though, and if we don't give her back the bottle, she gets upset. So, the past couple of days we've been letting her crawl/cruise while sucking on a half empty bottle. She'll pause every once and a while, tilt the bottle back to have a few sips, then it's back to the empty nipple. Even after it's empty, it's never away from her mouth. But she's always been this way. We always had to take the bottle away when there wasn't anymore left. Now though, she's strong enough and holding on, and she's using her teeth to hold on, too.

She's let go of several big burps, but other than that she seems content. I am washing the nipples more carefully, since she holds the bottle with her teeth, and I'm worried that she might tear a hole in the nipple one of these days. I do worry that she might get into the habit of falling asleep that way, so we don't let her have the bottle at night to go to sleep. I'm also worried that this might delay language development, since she could go hours and have the bottle in her mouth, with no sounds being practiced. As soon as I take the bottle away, she starts to babble again.

Jeannie
mommy to Kiki 4/03

[boys2enough]

Hi Vivian, I hope you didn't think I was criticizing you when I said that it's bad for their teeth. I didn't know your DD does this before she goes to bed. I thought Gabriel was the only one who's doing this at night. I was just expressing my frustration and, mostly, guilt... :)

Some evidence of comfort: My now 6 yo had a bottle before he went to bed as well, AND he had a bottle or two in the middle of the night until he's over 1 year old. His teeth have been OK, and in fact, he just had his first dental check-up and NO cavities! :)

I eventually got him to drop the midnight bottles because I needed sleep. I did that by gradually "watering down" the bottle. Eventually it was just water, then he lost interest and stopped waking up for it.

Of course, the second child tends to be more difficult. lol. I tried to give Gabriel a bottle of water in the middle of night when he woke up, NOT GOOD. He screamed and then totally woke up. Took me an hour to get him to fall asleep again... I am doing 50% ratio right now, but I know everything will be turned upside down when we are in Taiwan b/s of the time difference. So I am going to seriously try this when we come back.

With my older one, I felt it was ok because he took the bottle, and then fell back to sleep. He never wanted to hold the bottle, or suck on an empty one. I figured that's not going to do too much harm to his teeth... I am stressed out now by Gabriel's habit more because of the fact that he wants and holds the bottle with a death grip in the middle of the night. And I suspect that he sucks on it off and on throughout the whole night... That's why I am freaking out.

Sorry for yet another rambling long post. Just thought I should try to make you feel better and not be too stressed about the whole situation. Cheers, Lin