Question regarding weaning from formula to cow's milk

babystella08

Hi Ladies,

My DS will be 1 in just a couple of weeks and I wanted to start weaning him off the bottle and formula and on to cows milk and sippys. He takes a sippy now and will drink water or juice from it. They do give him a sippy at daycare in the am with formula and he does drink that. He currently takes 4 bottles a day. One when he gets up, one for lunch, one mid afternoon and one before bed. My question is what did you do to wean DC from bottles and formula to cows milk and cups. My pedi told me at 1 year he should start having cows milk with breakfast, lunch and dinner and have water and or juice during the day.

TIA for any advice you can send my way!

Patti

soontobecapek

honestly? we put milk in a cup and handed it to him lol cold turkey lol

pea-kay

we swapped out one bottle at a time, for a few days. it wasn't too bad. i never give them anything but milk in sippies. they don't really drink anything else. hmm.

FSUSammy

We tried to slowly wean him off of bottles but that did not work for us. So finally we did it cold turkey and he figured it out immediately. We started with the straw cups because he couldn't tilt at a year but he quickly figured out how to tilt so now he uses regular sippy cups. He now only gets 3 sippies of milk a day, with each of his meals, and water and juice for snacks.

brittneycc1982

DD weaned herself a couple weeks ago from her morning bottle.  I just give her some milk in a sippy with her breakfast.  We started on milk at 11 months because she refused to drink formula.  She's not quite one yet, but we will start gradually taking bottles away in a few weeks.

neverblushed

Actually, it was no biggie.  If you are currently giving a bottle with a meal, such as lunch, give a sippy instead.  I'd also give a sippy at breakfast instead of the formula bottle in the morning. 

If your child is currently sucking a bottle to fall asleep, then you may meet some resistance with sleep if you try to end bottles.  But, I'd say now's a good time to ditch the sleep-time bottles -- you'll never have to deal with them again!  I'd get rid of one at a time, starting with the one that the child seems least dependent on. 

I just cuddled my kids in the rocking chair and let them sip on a sippy of milk to ease the transition.  After a few days of that, we just rocked and read a story or sang a song before bed or nap.  By this time my kids were being put in the crib awake, so it was no problem.

Also, one year olds need FAR fewer calories per day than a baby does.  Their growth slows.  So right now you are thinking of milk as a big food source for your child.  It's normal for them to cut back to FAR less milk and replace those calories with varied intake of solid food at this time.  But one year olds seriously don't eat much compared to babies -- this is completely normal.

axr8111

We at first tried to give him some cow's milk instead of formula but that didn't really work. He wouldn't drink the cow's milk and would just go for the formula, until we had no formula left and so then we cold turkey. It was fine. The first bottle I had to warm up for him to drink it all but then after that he took it without any issues. For us, once he realized this is what he was getting, he took it with no problem.

trickytrice

We went cold turkey. Just gave her a cup a milk over the weekend to test it out for her daycare. She drank it and we never turned back.

Her caregiver had planned to do it over a course of a month. For the first week she'd put 2oz of milk with 6 oz of formula. The next week she would do 4 oz to 4 oz. Then 6oz to 2 oz and then finally 8 oz. I don't do weaning very well so I just went cold turkey. I took away the bottle at the same time too.