Natalie got a bad cold that started with her vomiting the contents of her bottle all over us and our bed on Sunday morning. Yeah, we weren’t really happy about having that image in our heads, either. We thought maybe she wouldn’t eat that much, but she was hungry and actually ate pretty well that day, especially for being sick. She kept down oatmeal, peas and goldfish crackers with no problem. She was otherwise miserable, screaming “BOOGIES” every few minutes and then crying if we wiped her nose. She also had a hacking, barky cough that would make her cry, too. And she couldn’t really tolerate me being more than 1 foot away from her. I don’t think she’s been this miserably sick since 2007/2008 New Year’s.
By 4 pm, she hadn’t napped and was pretty tired, so we decided to give her a bottle, since that’s usually how she falls asleep at home (she has no problem taking naps without a bottle at Melissa’s house!). Of course, she immediately threw up that bottle, too. We think that she was so congested that the mucus in her stomach made it impossible to digest milk (cow’s or rice) or that maybe drinking the bottle so quickly caused it to come back up? If anyone has a better explanation, please share, because we found it puzzling.
So that night she had to go to sleep without her baba. And she did! I think it helped that she was beyond tired from having a rough night’s sleep the night before, being sick, and not having napped. She fell asleep around 7, slept for 3 hours, then was up until 3 am before she fell asleep again, so she actually practiced going to sleep twice without the baba. She asked for it a few times, but was easily dissuaded when I reminded her that her babas were making her sick.
The next day, Natalie was still congested and phlegmy, so we held off on giving her milk, in a baba or otherwise. And we realized Natalie’s illness had given us an opportunity we couldn’t pass up: the chance to get rid of her baba altogether! We debated about the best way to approach the issue. We decided to follow Jodi’s advice and explained to Natalie that her bottles were making her sick and so we had to sat bye-bye to them. Then Natalie helped us put all the babas in bag and throw them in the trash outside.
She seemed to take the whole thing in stride, but when it was time for bed she asked for a baba. We just gently reminded her of why we said goodbye to the babas and that they were all gone. She didn’t even whine! We let her choose which cup to have water in and of course she chose one with a soft top and drank it like a baba while we read books. But that’s fine. We’re still keeping her off milk until her congestion dies down….the trick will be to not give into her asking for milk in her sippy cup at night once she’s back to drinking milk during the day. We really don’t want to replace the baba with something else that we have to wean her off of in the future!
So far, she’s two nights sans baba. We’ve been otherwise following our normal routine and she’s doing great. She did ask for a baba this morning, probably out of habit, but was happy to have a drink of water and eat an apple instead.
Her cold is much better and she’s going back to back daycare today!