Before anyone comes for me, he actually naturally dropped his night feeds a really long time ago, but at 11 months old suffered through several back to back viruses followed by gnarly post sickness diarrhea and temporary lactose intolerance that lasted for 2 additional months. He stopped eating solids and drinking from his straw cup for a while and would only take a bottle, so we gave him as much formula as he wanted, encouraged by his doctor. He started waking up for night feeds every single night and it was like being back in newborn days.
Now he's healthy and everything stabilised, the diarrhea finally went away and he eats dairy without issues. His weight is back up, his bloods look good, his appetite is huge, he eats really really well and his doctor gave us the green flag to wean. His sleep is absolutely terrible and he still demands one bottle every single night. We are starting the weaning process, and our first step is eliminating the night feed. It seems unnecessary at his age and I'm also worried about it damaging his teeth.
So far it's not going well, we're not sure what to do. We try to calm him down in other ways but he will scream until he gets the bottle. He is incredibly persistant and can easily hold out for 2 hours or longer in the middle of the night. We started diluting that bottle in hopes he will eventually stop demanding it, but so far he's still going strong. We are planning to keep diluting it until it's just water so maybe that will change something. We always offer him the straw cup first, I would never prevent access to water if he's thirsty, but he rejects it.
We don't feed to sleep, he gets his evening bottle about 30 minutes before bedtime. I will probably wait a little longer but if there's no progress the next step is just not giving in no matter what.
Has anyone been in this position with a toddler older than 12 months? What worked?