Overwhelmed turning one soon

Wishing35

I'm so excited about my girls turning one next month but I'm also overwhelmed with the thoughts of figuring out meals, weaning from bottles etc. I have just started giving them some "real" foods the past few days, they only have their two bottom teeth and never seemed intersted until recently. They dont like sippy cups and in fact for the most part we still hold their bottles and feed them! Right now our schedule looks like this.

630-7 am wake up and have bottle

8am breakfast ,usually a shared yogurt or the last few days I've given them either some scrambled egg or a 1/2 peice french toast each cut up small

9-10 nap , or at least I attempt one!

1030 bottle

12 lunch 1 jar of meat veggie combo each , also have tried the last few days a few slices of bananna or pieces of watermelon, a little bit of cheese or small bit of turkey

1-230 nap

230 bottle

5pm 4tbs oatmeal mixed with formula and 1 jar fruit each

6 bottle before bed , sleeping by 630-7pm

My questions are how do I ween them from bottles to cups and what is a typical toddler meal/snack plan? The bedtime bottle is such a part of their routine do you just eliminate that and they have nothing after dinner? Also when I give them their food do i just cut it up and set it all before them or do I hand them one small peice at a time? Im so used to my routine and I may be overthinking things but I want to make the transition for them and us as easy as possible and I'm finding this all very overwhelming.

 

carrotcake06

My boys turned one last month, so we just went through all of this. Your schedule looks similar to ours - 730am wake up and nurse, 830am breakfast, 1030am nap, 1230pm lunch, 3pm nap, 6pm dinner and 730-8pm nurse and bed.

We did mostly BLW w a few purees from 6-9mo, so the meal aspect has been pretty prevalent for a while. Don't offer too much at once but I was really surprised at how well they did w BLW.

I started offering milk sippies w meals while still offering a bottle/to nurse. That way they got used to the sippy without the pressure of actually drinking from it. The twins got the hang of it in days. My oldest took a couple weeks but that's prob bc he never really took a bottle and the sippy was a new concept for him.

Once sippies were going well, I just stopped offering bottles/to nurse. None of my kids have been overly attached and don't offer/don't refuse has worked really well.

I don't have advice on the am/PM bottle - we bf and I choose to keep those sessions until they self-wean. As it is, one of the twins has refused to PM nurse for the better part of the week so I just rub his back and sing while nursing his brother and he just chills and lays w us.

lc&jw

Take it one step at a time and remember that nothing magical happens at 12 months. You don't have to accomplish all of these milestones overnight.

We started by transitioning from formula to milk right around their birthday. Around that same time we also made sure we were offering 3 meals and 2 snacks, with the understanding that they were still learning to eat so their intake wasn't always going to be fabulous. Many foods will initially be rejected but if you continue to offer them, you may find that your LO's get used to them.

Our pediatrician told us at our 12 month visit that we should work on transitioning away from bottles but it didn't need to be immediate. He said we could even keep the bedtime bottle until 18months. Like you, we were still holding bottles for DD and DS most of the time. We had introduced sippy cups with water at meals around 9 months so they would have plenty of time to adjust to them without the pressure of having to get their milk that way (we still were giving 3-4 milk bottles per day). Around 14 months we picked a weekend and decided to ditch the bottles. We kept the bedtime bottle for 1-2 nights while they were transitioning, but once we got through a rough couple of days with the daytime sippy cups of milk, they gave up even the bedtime bottle and haven't looked back. We still do a sippy cup of milk at bedtime, but it's not a bottle.

One other note about sippy cups. My kids would drink water out of them just fine, but when I tried to put milk in them they looked disgusted when they would taste it and refused to drink. I eventually realized they had come to associate those cups with water only, so I bought a different type of sippy for milk and they accepted that much easier.

Wishing35

Thanks for the good ideas! I have a few differnt types of sippy cups they don't seem to like them I'm going to try one of the straw types next. I do wish I had started earlier to get them used to it, seems like from what I read a lot of babies their age have been using cups and eating more than just purees for a while. I think I will try the cups with meals and still do my normal bottles and see how that goes, I'd really like to have all but the night bottles at least done with by the time out new baby arrives in October.

KDR1979

They sleep 12 hours overnight? That is amazing! Our DD just starting STTN at 26-27 months after a sleep study a month ago and starting liquid iron daily. My twins were 36 weeks and I had stocked up on formula, so they kept getting formula bottles (+ some breastfeeding) until we ran out of formula around 13 months. I started giving them water in sippy cups around 11 months. When we stopped formula, we switched 100% to sippy cups and they did fine. They got a sippy cup of milk at bedtime until 18 months when the pedi said they didn't need it anymore. Our kids could feed themselves their bottles before 11 months though-maybe around 9 months? I would put them in the high chair and recline it back so they could drink their bottle. They took 2 naps/day (Longer morning nap and shorter afternoon nap) until ~17 months. Then changed to an after lunch nap. @ 2, now they sleep ~8:30pm and wake up between 6-8am. They nap 2-4pm. I can't imagine adding a 3rd baby to 1 year old twins!! Good luck!!

Wishing35

KDR1979 said:

They sleep 12 hours overnight? That is amazing! Our DD just starting STTN at 26-27 months after a sleep study a month ago and starting liquid iron daily. My twins were 36 weeks and I had stocked up on formula, so they kept getting formula bottles (+ some breastfeeding) until we ran out of formula around 13 months. I started giving them water in sippy cups around 11 months. When we stopped formula, we switched 100% to sippy cups and they did fine. They got a sippy cup of milk at bedtime until 18 months when the pedi said they didn't need it anymore. Our kids could feed themselves their bottles before 11 months though-maybe around 9 months? I would put them in the high chair and recline it back so they could drink their bottle. They took 2 naps/day (Longer morning nap and shorter afternoon nap) until ~17 months. Then changed to an after lunch nap. @ 2, now they sleep ~8:30pm and wake up between 6-8am. They nap 2-4pm. I can't imagine adding a 3rd baby to 1 year old twins!! Good luck!!

Yes we are very lucky with their nighttime sleep ! Naps are hit and miss nowadays they would rather play and I watch them on the monitor giggling and reaching through the crib bars to try and touch each other. I know they are capable of feeding themselves with the bottle because they start off doing it and then start the game of playing with it, they will shake them turn them upside down , throw them on the ground etc. I just wind up feeding them because it's easier which is my fault. I'm really hoping they take to the sippy cups but they seem to want to play with them too!