Milk only in a bottle

[vuhoo]

Hi All -

I'm the new mom on the block....I have a 1yr son who has been formula fed since he was born.  I had no success with breast feeding after trying really hard.  Now that he is 1yr old, I'm weaning him off the bottle.  He will not drink formula milk from a sippy cup, only his bottle.  I would like for him to drink cow's milk but he won't do thatat  all.  Right now I am supplementing his calcium intake with yogurt but I prefer that he drinks milk.  Any suggestions? 

[me and bean]

hi, bean was easy to transition to milk & sippy cups, so i don't know if i can be much help.  but, have you tried giving him milk, same temperature as you would his formula, in his bottle first thing in the morning (ie first feeding)?  that's when he would be the hungriest, and likely to take it.

i started the sippy cup transition after he took milk.  at about 14 months i think.  i wanted him to just have to deal with one change at a time.

as for supplementing calcium, will he eat cottage cheese as well?

hope that helps you a little.

[pixieme]

Well, i may be the unusual one because my ds who is 18 months, loves his milk.  We call him the milk monster!!   I put him onto cows milk, at 12 months  but he still has milk in bottles.  i've tried offering him his milk in beakers, sippy cups etc but whilst he is happy to drink juice from them he has to have his milk from a bottle. 

To be honest I'm not too bothered about.  He has 3 bottles a day but he never uses them as a sleep prop and so I don't seem the harm.  I read another post where somebody pointed out that if he were breastfed he would still be suckling on the nipple so why should a bottle be so bad.  At this age they are still babies after all. 

[cliffrose]

I don't know about the bottle/sippy problem, but I DO know how to get him on cow's milk- I did the following:

I started giving my LO 7 Oz formula, 1 oz cows milk. I changed the ratio each week (eg, week 2: 6 oz formula, 2 oz milk, week 3: 5 oz formula, 3 oz milk...etc)

He shouldn't notice the incremental changes and will get used to the flavor of cow's milk this way. It worked perfectly for my LO.

good luck!

[Tonya]

I totally agree with cliffrose on how to transition to milk.  That's how we did it in our house, and it worked GREAT!

As for the bottles - once the milk transition is complete,  you could try a Nuby sippy cup - they have soft or hard spouts, and we had no trouble transitioning to the soft spout -a lot like a bottle still, then we transitioned to the hard spout.  They're less than a dollar each.

Or, you could go cold turkey, and put it straight into a normal cup or sippy cup. 

Another thing you could do is to water down the milk bottles until he "gives them up", all the while offering milk in a cup.

But - I would do the transition to milk first, before you do anything about the cup.

[thitz]

I switched to a straw style sippy at about 1 yr.  She was drinking warmed formula out of bottles, so I started with putting warm formula in the straw sippy.  At first she'd only drink an ounce or two but in a month or so she was downing a good 20oz a day.  Then I just went cold turkey to homo milk cause she liked that cause she was used to sneaking sips from our drinks.  I would still warm it up.  It was a few months later that I stopped warming it and now just give her the straw sippy cold.  To this day she doesn't like regular sippies that you have to tip up, too awkward for her.  I think the straw style really helped cause they can walk around and drink at their leisure and most similar to a bottle.