Schedule Change

Alisa used to go to bed at 10 PM and sleep until 9 or 9:30 AM. We decided to try to get her to go to bed earlier so we could have more time to ourselves in the evening. We put her to bed at 9 PM with little problem. Then, last week she was sick and wasn't napping well so she was really tired around 8 PM. As of right now, her new bedtime is 8:30 PM.

The few times she's gone to bed before 9 PM, however, she has woken up after an hour and a half to 2 hours and cried. One time she fell back asleep on her own, but the other times we had to get her and calm her down because she wasn't going to stop crying anytime soon. The first time we gave her a bottle because she had an early dinner and was still adjusting to the 3 meals a day routine (instead of 4 bottles a day). Last night, I got her out of bed but kept the lights off in her room. She was still crying when I was holding her. I put her down on the bed next to me to see if she wanted to crawl around and she screamed/cried so loud and hard that it scared me for a second and she was kicking her feet towards me (she's done that before but it freaks me out every time because she's SO loud). I didn't know what was wrong. I picked her up again and she cried for a bit but then laid her head on my shoulder. Her music was still on so I held her and swayed and then rocked in the chair until she got really sleepy and I could put her down without a fuss (half an hour later). She went to bed right at 8:30 PM tonight so we'll see what happens.

Alisa has a 6-oz bottle of formula in the morning plus solids and then solids for lunch and dinner with an occasional snack. We offer her whole milk and water in a sippy cup throughout the day but she only takes a few sips. We are almost out of formula and not sure how she's going to handle that. The pediatrician said she's supposed to drink 16-20 oz of whole milk each day. Since she's not even drinking 1 oz it seems that she will become dehydrated. The pediatrician said not to put milk in a bottle because we need to wean her from the bottle. She said once the formula is gone to only use sippy cups. I guess eventually Alisa will like to drink from a cup and will be thirsty and do so. Other moms have said their kids don't drink much milk from a cup yet and also that their pediatrician didn't mention the 16-20 oz guideline. So, I try not to worry too much. I just need to get her to eat plenty of foods with calcium until she does drink more milk.