Why drop a bottle?

[cwolff]

I'm wondering what the reason would be for trying to drop from 4 to 3 bottles before a year old.  The reason is just simply because I like the routine of bottle/breakfast/nap/bottle/lunch/nap/bottle/dinner/bottle/bed.  My DD has no teeth, so isn't eating a huge variety of finger foods, so I wouldn't know what to give her that would be as nutritious and filling as a bottle.  Also, try as I might, my DD will only eat what she wants to eat/drink and nothing more and she will sometimes wake in the middle of the night hungry.  I cannot get her to eat any more than she feels like eating, and she isn't consistent about when she will wake up hungry.  So I'm afraid that if I mess with her bottles, I'm asking for more hungry middle of the nights.  Anyone else have this experience?  Or should I really be trying to transition her down to 3 bottles.  Also, when are you supposed to wean them completely off the bottle?

[*Natasha*]

The only reason i transitioned to 3 bottles was because my DD was fussing with 2 of her 4 bottles and getting in total 24ozs sometimes less. When i changed her to 3 bottles she would almost always finish all her bottles totalling 24-26ozs a day. If your DD is happy at the moment with 4 bottles and eating solids well then don't worry about it at this stage. However at around 12months food is the most important part of their diet and the amount of milk they require becomes less when transitioning to cows milk. As for weaning off the bottle most try to start getting rid of the bottle at around 12months however some are happy for the babies to continue on a bottle for a while longer. I think Tracey recommends to have gotten rid of the bottle by 2yrs old. I plan to have gotten rid of my DD's by 12months as she happily drinks milk from a cup at this stage.

[tylersmommy]

I never had a reason to drop Tyler from 4 bottles to 3, so I didn't. We were both happy with our routine and he always took his bottles without a problem. We got rid of them when we introduced whole milk at 1 yr, but like Natasha said, Tracey recommends getting rid of them by 2 yrs. When Tyler turned 1, we gave him whole milk in a bottle for one feed for a couple of days just to see if he liked it, and he did, so we started dropping bottles. We'd drop one, give his appetite several days to adjust, then drop another. Since we went pretty slowly, he never had a problem with night wakings from hunger. And in the beginning, he barely drank enough from the sippy, so we made sure to give him lots of other dairy foods during the day to make sure he was getting enough.

[cwolff]

Yeah, I guess I'm just afraid she's not going to get enough nutrition.  I thought until 12 months of age, at least 24 oz of milk/formula was recommended and I'm not sure Rachel will eat more solids to make up for a dropped bottle.  I suppose they do adjust their appetites to suit their needs.  She's also not that great with a sippy cup, and since she's been teething she really just wants to chew on it.  So I'm afraid that once we do whole milk, or even if I switched to formula in a cup, that she would dramatically drop her intake.  I would like her to eat more foods, but I was always so afraid that it would interfere with her milk that I have really kept the portions down.  Also, if I do drop a bottle, I would say our least favorite bottle is the late afternoon one.  So would I offer her a snack instead, and then dinner?  And how do you know what snacks to feed them, and how much?  We could sit and eat finger foods for a half an hour at least, and I think she does it because it's fun long after she's finished being hungry so I don't know when to cut it short.  I know these are a lot questions and I really am surprised that almost everything so far from babies to toddlers has been such a mystery for me.  Thanks for the help.

[tylersmommy]

I'd say that if you dropped the mid afternoon bottle, you'd offer a snack there instead. It's hard to figure how much of a snack to offer so that the next meal isn't down the tubes. Maybe half of her normal meal portion? It might take some guesswork to figure out, and you might even learn that snacks don't work for her.