Suggestions on Weaning off bottle

tracelini

We're just now begining this process and I'm looking for any suggestions of things that worked well for others to help give us some ideas. My original plan was to start to add a little milk into his bottles in place of the water for the formula (right now we're doing 1 ounce milk + 3 ounces formula) and then just phase it out to all milk eventually. I was thinking of doing that plus take away his mid morning bottle and going to a cup for that one and once he takes all of that cup, slowly progress through the other bottles...is that the best approach? Any other things that worked well for you all?

TIA!

bobsbride2006

Zoe was never very picky about food or bottles. She'd already mastered drinking water out of sippy cups, so when it was time for milk, we just switched her cold turkey. Milk in sippy cups. Only she wouldn't drink milk out of a sippy, just water. We tried a straw cup (which she'd had water out of already) and she chugged it right down. Now we just use the straw cups, which is nice since she can do that at restaurants, too. GL!

QCBride06

The straw sippy cups work best for us!

I really have no suggestions past that..... Up until Thursday Will still got a bottle of milk in the morning.  But at 2 years I figured it was time to be done with bottles once and for all 

kimilane

What's worked for us is giving Frankie her milk in a cup with a straw. However, I have found that if she expects her bottle at 1pm, I have to start feeding her solids earlier than 1 so that she's getting food to her tummy by 1. I suppose it's because formula can fill her up faster than solids since she can drink it instead of eating spoon by spoon. We're down to just a morning bottle now and I'll be working on getting rid of that one this week. I only want one child using bottles at a time.

MrsHughesNC

I would start by dropping bottles, one at at time. Start with a daytime bottle, and replace it with a snack. Try to get him to the point where he's eating 3 meals a day of solids, if your'e not already. You not only want to wean him off of the formula, but also the actual bottle, so I'd try and use a sippy as much as possible. We did also gradually mix milk into the remaining bottles, even though some people advise against that. So there were times we had a milk/formula combo in both a bottle and a sippy. We got her off of all daytime bottles first, and the bed time bottle was the last to go. We eventually transitioned to giving a sippy of just milk at bedtime, just as we'd usually do a bottle. We stopped doing the milk at bedtime at about 18-19 mos.

My bit of advice is not to stress too much over it--just follow his lead. I had it set in my mind that Holly HAD to be off all bottles and formula the second she turned a year old. I really wish I would have stressed less about it. Once I quit stressing, and just went with the flow, we just followed her lead and it was a lot better. I think she was 14, almost 15, mos before we dropped the bedtime bottle entirely.

tracelini

MrsHughesNC:

My bit of advice is not to stress too much over it--just follow his lead. I had it set in my mind that Holly HAD to be off all bottles and formula the second she turned a year old. I really wish I would have stressed less about it. Once I quit stressing, and just went with the flow, we just followed her lead and it was a lot better. I think she was 14, almost 15, mos before we dropped the bedtime bottle entirely.

That has been my mind set for the past month or so...but now that it's only 2 weeks away, I'm beginning to realize it's not going to happen that way haha...thanks for the advice!! It helps a lot!