Can you help me develop a plan to transition DS from bottle to sippy cup?

[Sam-n-Max's Mommy]

Hi ladies,

Hoping I can ask for your usual great help.  We went for our 15 month ped visit this past week and he said I should start weaning DS from the bottle now so that he is off of it by 15 months.  DS was late to start even using a sippy cup and even now he doesn't love it.  I introduced it early, but TBH, he is very stubborn and I probably didn't push it as much as I should have, although I always kept it around.  It is really only in the past month that he has started drinking water and juice from it after meals (although I did stop both of those liquids in the bottle a long time ago). 

He has never been one to drink a huge bottle, so he is on 3 --one when he wakes up, one mid morning, and one late afternoon.  He doesn't want one before bed so I guess that is good.  Anyway, the ped has recommended watering down the bottles all at once and starting to give him milk in his sippy.  I started doing that with his mid morning bottle.  However, he seems to really hate the idea of milk in his cup.  Every time I try to give it to him, I have to put it in his mouth so he'll taste it, and when he does, he makes a horrible face like I'm trying to poison him and cries.  The ped wants him to still be drinking about 16oz/day (but I think he gives the upper end of the appropriate range just to be safe), but I have no idea how this will happen when he is really resisting milk in the sippy.  TBH he doesn't even really love drinking water from his sippy, but I have worked hard to get him to at least sip it. 

At the same time, I think he is ready to wean because he has not been taking a full bottle at each sitting for the past few weeks.  He will drink it, stop, then want it a little again, etc.  To me, that means that he wants to drink like a regular person (unless it is hurting his gums from his teeth).

Can you help me come up with an explicit plan so I can get this to work? His morning and late afternoon bottles are 6oz each and the mid morning one is 4 oz. 

I am grateful for your help!
xx
Nicole

[Lolly]

The way that has worked well for my two is just to switch. I've never been one for gradual approaches - especially with a toddler, so I just put their milk into a sippy and gave it to them but no going back if they protest. You will get a period when they drink less milk, but at his age he doesn't really need to be getting his calcium etc from milk so you can increase the foods that contain calcium etc until he gets used to milk in the sippy.

We swapped DD's morning milk to a cup because she wouldn't eat breakfast after it so it became a mid- morning snack, we offer milk in a cup with meals and she had her bedtime bottle until 18 months when we swapped that to a cup too. After 1 milk isn't a food source like when they are babies, so it's fine to offer as a drink with a meal or snack.

I'm sure someone else may have some ideas for a gradual approach!

Laura

[Lemonthyme]

I agree.  I transitioned my son from breastfeeding to a sippy cup a month ago (he's 14 months) and I dropped each feed and replaced it with a sippy cup with cow's milk.  That was a huge change for him.  He was having a new milk and no breastmilk. 

I'm not a medical expert but 16oz sounds like a lot, I don't think it's vital that 16 ounces is the minimum.  In the UK I think the guidelines are no more than 1 pint (20 ounces) and no less than about 13 ounces and that includes cheese, milk sauces, yoghurts etc.  This website is useful: http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetails.aspx?p=114&np=302&id=1788#16

I'd just go cold turkey with each feed, as there's no bedtime feed that will help.  My son has two cups a day now (he has probably 120 - 150 ml in each of those feeds) and he has milk on cereal, cheese will feature in one of his other meals and there'll normally be a milky desert like pannacotta either once or twice a day.  I know he doesn't drink a load of milk as milk but I don't have any worries that he's not getting enough.

[Sam-n-Max's Mommy]

I can't write much now, but wanted to say thanks! A few things happened today that make me think that the cold turkey approach will work best for us now.  I'll write more tomorrow. xxxx!!

[Sam-n-Max's Mommy]

Hi ladies,
So I am thinking the cold turkey approach will work best for us.  When I gave him a watered down bottle the other day, he freaked as he knew it was different.  It just made him more agitated.  I had tried to give him the sippy with milk in it first, but he refused it and cried.  Additionally, for his last bottle, he started crying around the time he usually gets it and I didn't have it ready yet.  He grabbed his sippy (which had water in it) and started drinking.  He then threw it because I think he really wanted milk.  As soon as I gave him the bottle, he was fine and drank it all, but I think that if I had had milk in the sippy he might have had it that way.  I need to go out and buy more sippy cups though because I've cut holes in the ones we have so that the spill proof valve doesn't work anymore.  Now that he understands the mechanism of drinking from it, I think it is probably too fast of a flow to drink milk from that way iykwim. 

I think I will start cold turkey with the mid morning snack bottle and then the late afternoon bottle.  The am bottle will probably be the last to go.  My DS is highly spirited so a gradual approach may not cut it.  It is good that he loves yogurt and cheese so I can get his dairy intake up from those. I too think 16oz is a little high from what I've read/heard...we'll see how it goes!

Thanks!

[Lemonthyme]

Yeah but it's better to have free flowing cups.  We have the tommy tippee freeflowing basic cups which you can find for less than £1.50 each (I'm not sure if you're in the UK?)  They will spill but it's not too bad and it's meant to be better for their teeth to have a free flowing cup.

[Sam-n-Max's Mommy]

I didn't realize that the free flowing was better for the teeth, that is good to know.

I'm in the US, but am currently using the TT explora cups (they have the soft spout and are spill proof even though I de-spill proofed them).  It would be easier for me to use the free flow ones instead of buying more of the ones I have and cutting them.  He has only recently started to accept the sippy cup at all -- should I just stick with the ones that I have for awhile? How do you know when to move them on to a more "advanced" sippy?

Sippy cup action not going well today.  He drank water from it this morning, but screamed bloody murder when I tried to give him milk in it.  He is very spirited (and also teething so that is part of it). Is it normal to get such resistance at first and then eventually they will accept the milk in there?

[Roseii]

Hello just to let you know I went cold turkey with the bottle to sippy at 15mo (she had a sippy for water already but still bottle for milk) I was confident she was getting enough milk in cheese, yoghurt etc so her option was-milk in a sippy or no milk. I didn't make a big deal, just offered the sippy of milk and if she didn't want it then fine. She did protest for a couple of days and I think I ended up swapping the milk over to
A bottle at first but decided against that. Anyway she accepted the sippy and still has sippys of bedtime milk to this day! X

[Sam-n-Max's Mommy]

Thanks!! I think I just have to do it.  I don't know why this is so hard and stressful for me, but you ladies have made me feel better.
xx

[Lemonthyme]

My son took a while accepting milk from a sippy.  I'd do it a feed at a time.  If he has plenty of milk from other sources, why not substitute the late morning feed?  He'll catch up later if he needs to.

I was thinking about moving straight from a basic sippy to an open cup tbh.  They never had several different kinds of sippy when I was little.  My 14 month old will sip water from a glass if I hold it for him.

[Vt92009]

My daughter is 17 months and I'm having the same issue. She happily drinks water from the sippy, but was having bottles for milk. 2 days ago we switched the milk to sippies, and she refused. So now she hasn't had milk in over 2 days. How long do I let this continue before I need to just give her the bottle back? She is not drinking any milk right now. I'm giving her cheese and stuff so that she can still get her dairy. Any other tips?

[Lolly]

Don't give her the bottle back! Stick with the cups, she will get it or try open cups or straw cups or a "brand new very exciting only for milk" cup!

They only need 12-14oz of dairy to get their needs met, so keep offering cheese, yoghurts etc and what ever milk you can get into her. If you want to go down the route of flavouring that can work and you can gradually cut back the flavouring until it's just milk but that's not everyones choice to do.

Laura

[Sam-n-Max's Mommy]

Just wanted to share that we are (finally) off of the bottle! I first took away the morning snack bottle and then the afternoon snack bottle.  We dealt with a few days of crying for a short while at the time when he usually got the bottle, but then it went away and he just started drinking his sippy during the day.  I was scared to get rid of the morning bottle, but I found that when I went into DS's room in the morning to get him after waking up, he could be perfectly fine, but as soon as he saw me he started to cry and when he saw the bottle he went nuts, so I thought it might be time to break him of that.  It has been about 5 days since we stopped with the wake up bottle and he still gets a little upset, but is adjusting nicely.  After he gets over the initial anger of no bottle, he drinks the sippy with milk . 

At first he wasn't taking any milk from the sippy, but then he started to.  Don't worry, VT92009.  I thought he would never drink milk from a sippy and he does now.  As Laura suggested, keep up with other dairy sources to get through it.  Your DD will do it!!

Thanks to everyone for their help.

[Vt92009]

Ok, I'll give the straw cup and some other cup types a try and hopefully she'll get used to it...  Thanks, I'll let you know how it goes...

[Vt92009]

Tonight my daughter drank a whole cup of milk from the sippy during dinner, and then more before bed during storytime! Yay! Thanks everyone, sticking to it for one more day made the difference!!

[Sam-n-Max's Mommy]

Hooray! I understand your excitement - I almost fell out of my chair when my DS did it.  I really never thought he would LOL! Great job!