My son, now 7 months old, went from having to be rocked to sleep, then walked to sleep, then held to sleep....sigh, i finally got something i can handle and its good, but BAD, When he gets too cranky i lay him in his crib with his bottle and within 5 minutes he is out, i know its bad to give him formula but i sometimes do, is it bad to give water, that cant hurt his teeth, can it?

Water is much better, as long as you don't add anything to it, formula will eventually cause cavities if it continues in the future. I hope you have good dental insurance, kids that get "bottle mouth carries" (caused by falling asleep w/ the bottle), are usually too young to have cavities treated by regular dentist and have to see a specialist who will put them to sleep and do it under general anasthesia. Besides being expensive it's a big procedure.

So save yourself and your son a lot of grief and change to water.

If you are feeding him by hand and removing the bottle as soon as he is sleeping this can't hurt him. With ds #1 we use to lay him in his crib, hold his head up a little and feed him for a few minutes until he was out. It worked like a charm! :)

With all three of our children I either nursed them to sleep or fed them to sleep and with our DD (our third) we got into this habit as well. We have never had a problem. Our children are 18, 15 and 6 and only the 18 year old has ever had a cavity. He has had two. What we did was to always take the bottle away as soon as she was asleep and with all three we were diligent about cleaning their teeth and gums daily from the time they were about three months old. What you can also do is to slowly start diluting that bedtime bottle with more water and less formula every few days. Eventually it will be all water or almost all water and you won't have to worry about it. Just be sure to clean the gums (and any teeth your baby already has) daily. That I think is the most important thing.

Nancy

yes i watch him, and as soon as i think its ok to switch from bottle to binky i do it, he isnt completely asleep with the bottle

I put my son down for a nap with a bottle. He drinks for 5 minutes, goes to sleep, and I remove the bottle. The problem is when you leave the bottle in there all night, and they wake up every now and then and drink from it through the night.