Here is my take on it….when my oldest daughter (now 31 yrs old) was a little over one year old our dietitian told us we needed to get her off the bottle, and if we didn’t she warned us she would stay on the bottle forever. Out of fear I decided to listen and bought a sippy cup. She hated it. She cried, she hollered…..I cried and I hollered. I can still remember standing over her with the cup, sitting next to her with the cup, begging her to just try it. Nothing worked, and then the dietitian told me to start reducing her food intake. She assured me that my daughter would not starve herself. It felt wrong to me……so very, very wrong, but I did it because the dietitian is the professional and she knows what is best, right? Wrong!!!!
Taking away the bottle was one of the things that contributed to many, many, many years of frustration and fighting with my beautiful daughter. She hated her formula. She would see it and cry. She would sit at the table for hours refusing to drink it. It became one of the biggest battles we ever had to face. There were times I was sure she hated me, and would never forgive me or get past it. There were times I would go to bed at night crying frantically because I was failing miserably as her mother…..telling myself it wasn’t this hard with the two older kids who did not have PKU.
That awful experience actually taught me a lot. It taught me what not to do the next time I had a child with PKU. It taught me to stand up for my daughters and follow my heart. If it felt wrong for us it probably was!
When Erica was born I decided we would start out on the best foot possible. I decided I was going to breastfeed her and use a supplemental nursing system so she should would get formula at the breast (it never made sense to me when Breanna was a baby on why I couldn’t breastfeed, but yet had to mix infant formula with the metabolic formula….I knew there had to be a better way). I wanted her to have those warm and cozy times. I wanted her to find comfort at the breast all while drinking her formula. We did this for several months, and somewhere along the way introduced the bottle. This time around my intent was to let her keep the bottle as long as she wanted. I didn’t care if she went to school still drinking a bottle because I miserably remembered how awful it was last time and the fights that ensued. I was bound and determined to not let that happen again.
So what did I do? I let her have the bottle with formula, and would offer her a cup with her formula in it. If she drank from the cup then that is great, but if not she would just get the formula in a bottle later. No big deal. At 23 yrs old does she still have the bottle? No she doesn’t, and I never had issues with her not drinking her formula. Even as a teenager.
When my third with PKU was born we did the same, and again we never had issues with her refusing her “milk.” In fact, even to this day (she is one month shy of her 14th birthday) she will still get up, make her milk and drink it without issues. She comes home from school and makes it and then makes it again before bedtime (she likes her milk fresh made and very warm), and we have never had issues. Even over the past few months when we struggled to get her milk due to the formula shortage we offered her options, and she chose two, but we never had battles.
If you want your child off of the bottle then set ground rules…..for example, only formula in the bottle and bottle be given at a specific time (and only while at home). Then you don’t need to deal with the social pressures others will put on you. Your child does not need to follow the “normal curve” of what kids do because reality is most kids are not in the same situation. Please try to remember that many adults with PKU have stated that they can taste their milk more from a cup versus a bottle because of how far back into the mouth a bottle nipple goes.
Cut yourself and your child some slack. The formula is very important and reality is your child isn’t going to go off to college with a bottle in their mouth. They will wean when ready, and the most important thing is getting that formula in them.
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