Weaning from Bottle to Sippy Cup - Oceanside,CA

To be honest, my daughter will be 16 months old on Thursday and she still takes her milk from a bottle. I tried to take away the bottles at 12 months, and she threw a fit. She'll drink water or juice from a cup, but not milk.

What I have done is to put her sippy cups in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, where she can reach them. When I offer her a drink, I tell her to pick out which cup she wants to use, and she'll open the drawer and pick out one (usually two!). I stopped pumping last week, and so I took most of the bottles off of the counter. My plan now is to put the bottles out of sight, and offer her a cup. I'll keep the bottles if she insists on them for a few more months, but I hope to have her off of them by the time she's 18 months.

So I'd recommend putting the cups where your son can reach them, let him pick which one he wants to use, and offer the cups first instead of the bottle.

2 moms found this helpful

Transition to the sippy requires patience - I found I had to offer her milk in the sippy many, many times before she decided it was cool to drink milk out of anything but a bottle. For this reason, I would advise waiting until he is on cow's milk instead of formula. Formula is so much more expensive! I didn't feel as bad about dumping regular milk that she wouldn't drink, rather than formula.

As for bedtime bottles, I eventually had success with the Nuby spout. Honestly, I don't think it's all that different from a bottle, so if he still needs/prefers a bottle at bedtime, I don't think there's any reason to take it away. Anything that works to get them to sleep, I'm all for!

Good luck!

Hi L.,

Do one bottle at a time - do the mid day bottles first then the morning bottle, then the bedtime bottle - because the morning and bedtime bottles are probably most comforting to him. You may have to keep the bed time bottle going for awhile because you don't want to mess up night time sleep. If he's still taking that bottle at bedtime until he's almost 2 - it's not a big deal and by then he should be on sippy cup the rest of the day.

When you switch at bedtime it will probably be the hardest - make a big deal of it - "You're such a big boy, let's pick out a bedtime sippy" - that might help.

Good luck! My boy is 6 now. You have a lot of fun times to look forward to!

Babies need to suck. He is still a baby. What is the rush?

My daughter was about 11 months when I took her from the bottle. If he can already drink from a sippy cup, then he is ready to be taken off the bottle. Just start putting his formula in the sippy cup and take the bottles away. It worked with my daughter. Maybe get a cup with his favorite character on it to help.

Good luck.

my daughter took to the Nuby BPA free no spill sipper. she was breastfed, but took bottles of BMilk, then rice milk after she turned one. i used the sippy the same way i'd BF her or give her a bottle, and i think the silicone spout really helped.

Hi L.,

I started with snack time like you are doing, but try giving him formula/milk with the snack. This will give him a heads up that milk comes in a tippy cup. Then, try taking the bottle he least desires, and begin weening one at a time. With mine, he didn't mind giving up the other bottles during the day as long as his meals were regular and fulfilling and he had his milk with his meal. The nighttime is the hardest, but by ridding the daytime bottles, he'll begin to see that they are slowly moving out of his routine.

Hope this helps and have a fabulous day!
A.

I was a breast feeder but I was able to wean my son to a sippy cup immediately when he was 1. What I did was sit him down like I was going to breastfeed, but instead offered the cup. He took to it right away, and transitioned very easily from there. It's worth a shot!

I started the weaning process at 1 year going from formula in a bottle to milk in a sippy cup. I switched one bottle at a time, waiting 4 days or so before moving on to switching the next bottle to a sippy cup. The last bottle to go was the bedtime bottle. Your bedtime ritual sounds similar to ours. We finished with snuggling and reading a book while he had the bottle. I can't remember if we just stopped including the bottle, or if we gave him a sippy cup with water while we read the bedtime book, but he never missed the bottle. I was nervous about his reaction, but we just continued the same routine as usual (the only thing missing was the bottle) and he never gave us any indication that he was upset about not having a bottle. It was almost too easy! This was with my 2nd baby. I had planned this weaning process with my 1st baby, but he flatly refused the bottle himself at 11.5 months, so I never had a chance to start the process. I wouldn't complain, but I was a little sad because I missed the snuggle time with the bottle and I thought I had another couple of weeks to enjoy it.:) Maybe my babies were just extra easy-going, but getting rid of the bottle was no trouble even for my 2nd baby. I think it may be easier because they're so young. It seems like it is usually older babies that I hear of having trouble getting rid of the bottle.

Just to warn you, neither of my babies drank nearly the same quantity from a sippy cup as they did from the bottle. It worried me a lot, especially with my 1st, but they seem to drink what they need. And I had to alter the usual "routine" a little and offer the sippy cup throughout the day, rather than at the same set time they used to have the bottle. Neither of my babies ever drank a full sippy cup at one sitting. They "sipped" and would only take a little at a time, so I would offer the cup throughout the day, give sips during playtime, etc.

The Nuby sippy cups worked great in the beginning because it is very much like a bottle nipple, not the hard spout that most sippy cups have. They are not great because they do leak, but that helped my babies get used to sippy cups. I believe it is Playtex who also makes a beginner's sippy cup that has a spout very similar to the hard ones, but it is slightly softer to help them make the adjustment.

I hope this helps! Good luck!

We went cold turkey when my son was 14 months. Starting on Saturday I told him we didn't have bottles any more and that he only had the sippy cups--I don't know if it was because he was so young, but he really didn't complain and by Monday, he wasn't looking for the bottle any more.

I would also recommend that the sippy cup that holds the milk be different from the cup for the water---he seemed to like that he could tell which one was supposed to hold the milk or the water.

Good luck!

why aare you rushing it ? givehim ime to grow a little a bottle is much easier for you to deal with than a cup. give him time raised 4 allwrown with children of their own good luck mom fro mom in no hills