Phasing out Bottles

[kateh2o]

My twins will be 1 in a couple of weeks. We are currently down to a morning bottle and a bottle before bed. The other bottles have been easy to phase out, but I am a little nervous about phasing these two out! This is what our day looks like:

7-wake and bottle
8:30-breakfast
10-nap
11:30/12-lunch
2-snack
2:30/3-nap
5-dinner
7-bottle
7:30-bed

When I drop the AM bottle, do I move breakfast earlier? I am assuming they will be hungry sooner for breakfast if they aren't getting their bottle. With the PM bottle, do I try to add a snack in after their nap and push dinner back? I don't want them to go to bed hungry Is it ok to offer them milk in place of the AM/PM bottle. We haven't tried milk yet, but they have no problem drinking water from their sippy cups.

[*Kara*]

Personally, I wasn't quick to swap milk for formula... my doc actually does support using formula until the age of 2 since toddlers are still teething creatures and will be rather dodgy in terms of diet until at least the age of 2 most often. 

That said, you could try offering formula in a sippy with meals for now... and same with the morning bottle - swap it out for a small serving of formula (4 ozs) and then offer breakfast sooner. 

Or, you could drop the bottle and serve breakfast right at wakeup (depends how keen you are first thing!).

As for the bedtime bottle.. no harm in keeping it for a bit yet.  We just dropped DDs final bottle (BT) at 25 months.