Buh-bye ni-ni Baba!

Monday kicked off 'get-rid-of-nini-baba". Madeline has always gone to sleep with a bottle in her mouth. I didn't really like it but it is what she is used to. (Not flaming our foster family, at all). Recently at bedtime she would wake up 2 & 3 times in the first TWO hours of going to sleep.. because the bottle was falling out of her mouth. So I'm giving her a bottle before we go up for naptime ni-ni, and leaving it downstairs. As for bedtime, I read to her while she drinks her bottle, then I hide the bottle. So technically she's still getting her bottle, just not while she is falling asleep. Monday & Tuesday night we had some tears, today at naptime, we had some MEGA tears - and it took me about an hour to put her to sleep. I refuse to give in though. Since doing this she is sleeping much, much, better! Our plan with the bottle is to keep her on it until she is 2. But in all honesty, I am not really in a hurry to get rid of it - or push her when she isn't ready. The important thing to remember is that even though Madeline is 18 months, my relationship with her is only 7 weeks old. So in attachment thinking - she is a BIG 7 week old baby. I may even keep her on it until December since that will be a year since we got her. We'll see. No decisions need to be made yet.

Attachment wise, Madeline is improving from her regression 2.5 weeks ago. In the past two to three days, Daddy has become a wonderful person in her life again. Even though she is improving, we are still planning to hold off on all visits for now. We need her world to be small, because as we saw 2.5 weeks ago, she's still fragile. When we are ready for visits, we will start with small 1-hr visits.