Sippy Cups, Daycare, Sleeping, And Milk Transition w/ Reflux

beautiflaw

So I have a lot of different questions but I didn't want to make a new post for each one. Thanks for reading and taking the time to reply. Sorry this post is so long.

 

First, DD does not want to take a sippy cup. We have been trying since she was 6 months old to get her to use a sippy and she just will not do it. We have tried every kind there is, every type of spout, every brand we can find. We've spent a ton of money trying to get this kid on a sippy and she simply refuses.

Most of the time she treats them like toys, but sometimes she will throw them down and have a screaming fit. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I offer it to her very casually, I've tried showing her how to use it, praising her for when she does sort of manage to get something out of it. I try not to make her feel pressured because then she really freaks out. I've even tried sneaking it between her sips of the bottle (a friend of my suggested it), that made her super mad.

I think the main problem is that she can't figure out how to drink from them and it frustrates her. With the soft spout she will sit there and teethe on it and sometimes liquid will come out but she doesn't know that she has to suck on it while biting down. With the hard spout she just teethes on it and doesn't even try to suck the liquid out, so she ends up never getting anything from it. I have no idea how to get her to realize that she has to suck on the spout in order to make liquid come out. I've tried to demonstrate and explain every way I know how but... ugh. It was suggested to me that I take the valve out of the sippy to show her that liquid comes out of the spout, and I did that several times but so much liquid came out at once that she started choking and sputtering. So I stopped trying that. 

I eventually just gave up a few weeks ago and decided that we'd just teach her to drink from a regular cup when the time came and we'd use bottles until then or something.  But now at her daycare they are ready to switch her over to the one year old room and they don't allow bottles in that room at all. Only sippy cups. So now we are on a deadline to get her to switch. 

 

My next question is about sleeping. At her daycare in the one's room they all sleep on cots and they all go down for a nap at the same time. DD has NEVER gone down for a nap easily. She is not the type of baby that you can just stick in a crib and she'll lay down and sleep. She is the type that needs a bottle and then rocking for half an hour and then lullabyes and then bouncing and so on until she is so worn out that she can't hold open her eyes any longer. So when I was told about these cots I was like, "Um, no." because DD is the type that will totally just get right back up and start walking around the room. But the DCP said that all the babies learn to go down for a nap in about a week. Somehow they miraculously do this. I don't know. I hope so.

BUT I know babies act differently at daycare than they do at home so I am wondering if once she is napping like this at daycare if she will do it at home. Will I be able to put her in her crib, say nighty night and expect her to go to sleep? We've had the same night time routine since she was born and it does work (she sleeps through the night great, and she has good long naps, its just that getting her to that point is difficult) but I know that at some point she is gonna have to learn that she doesn't NEED to be held in order to fall asleep.

So now what? If/when she gets the hang of the napping at daycare do I start doing the same thing at home? Should I try to keep her on the same nap schedule on days that she's at home? Part of me isn't ready to give up the snuggles (I like that she thinks she needs me and wants to be held and all that) and part of me wants the quicker bedtime routine, so I'm not sure... Is this even normal for her age?

Also if she is sleeping on a cot at daycare, does that mean that its time to turn her crib into a toddler bed? She had reflux and still sleeps on an incline, do I need to do this with a toddler bed? When is that supposed to happen? When do you start doing pillows and blankets and whatnot?

 

Okay last one. Milk transition. Her ped has been over this with me and I know what I'm supposed to do about mixing milk and formula together until she is taking a bottle that is just milk. But the thing is that she has reflux and I thought that the reflux was caused by the dairy being too hard for her little system to break down or whatever. So when we start her on whole milk, is she going to start spitting up again? She is on Enfamil Gentlease and it works for us really well, so when we start phasing it out is her reflux going to get worse? I should have asked her ped about it but I didn't think about it. I'm going to talk about it with her for sure when we go to her 12 month well check but I also want to hear from moms who have kids with reflux and know from experience.

I talked to her ped about the Enfagrow Gentlease instead of whole milk and she pretty much said it was not recommended. She said it hasn't been tested enough to be proven better than whole milk. So of course I want to go with what the ped says but I also don't want DD's reflux to start acting up again.

meganjoey0728

My next question is about sleeping. At her daycare in the one's room they all sleep on cots and they all go down for a nap at the same time. DD has NEVER gone down for a nap easily. She is not the type of baby that you can just stick in a crib and she'll lay down and sleep. She is the type that needs a bottle and then rocking for half an hour and then lullabyes and then bouncing and so on until she is so worn out that she can't hold open her eyes any longer. So when I was told about these cots I was like, "Um, no." because DD is the type that will totally just get right back up and start walking around the room. But the DCP said that all the babies learn to go down for a nap in about a week. Somehow they miraculously do this. I don't know. I hope so.

BUT I know babies act differently at daycare than they do at home so I am wondering if once she is napping like this at daycare if she will do it at home. Will I be able to put her in her crib, say nighty night and expect her to go to sleep? We've had the same night time routine since she was born and it does work (she sleeps through the night great, and she has good long naps, its just that getting her to that point is difficult) but I know that at some point she is gonna have to learn that she doesn't NEED to be held in order to fall asleep.

So now what? If/when she gets the hang of the napping at daycare do I start doing the same thing at home? Should I try to keep her on the same nap schedule on days that she's at home? Part of me isn't ready to give up the snuggles (I like that she thinks she needs me and wants to be held and all that) and part of me wants the quicker bedtime routine, so I'm not sure... Is this even normal for her age?

Also if she is sleeping on a cot at daycare, does that mean that its time to turn her crib into a toddler bed? She had reflux and still sleeps on an incline, do I need to do this with a toddler bed? When is that supposed to happen? When do you start doing pillows and blankets and whatnot?

 

1. Can't help with the sippy cup sorry, but I don't think its a huge deal if it takes her a little longer. Tell the DC she is still working on it.

 2. I think it is too soon to move to a big girl bed. She is just mastering walking (i assume) and could fall out, climb out frequently in the night. For her safely I think it would be better to have her in a crib still.  As for pillows I'm not sure, but we already use a blanket and LO is 9 months. I would probably follow the DC schedule just to make it easier on your LO as long as it works during your day. As far as bedtime/ naptime, it will probably be easier in the long term if you do sleep train her now to not need you.

 

Good Luck! 

alstumb@gmail.com

I work in the toddler room 1524 months of a daycare. It might seem crazy that she will learn to sleep on a cot, but he will! We don't just tell them to lay down and go to sleep...we lay them down, sit next to them and rub/pat their back...whatever it takes. I agree, it does usually take about a week to get them used to it, but eventually a lot of the kids do learn to fall asleep on their own. Yesterday we had 14 kids asleep in less than 10 minutes!

beautiflaw

alstumb@gmail.com:

I work in the toddler room 1524 months of a daycare. It might seem crazy that she will learn to sleep on a cot, but he will! We don't just tell them to lay down and go to sleep...we lay them down, sit next to them and rub/pat their back...whatever it takes. I agree, it does usually take about a week to get them used to it, but eventually a lot of the kids do learn to fall asleep on their own. Yesterday we had 14 kids asleep in less than 10 minutes!

 

That sounds like a miracle! Now I know why we pay so much for daycare! Thanks for letting me know. 

katie4253

1) Breathe.  Seriously.  You need to settle down  a bit.

2) Your LO will mat train just fine.  It will change nothing you do at home.  Just let them roll.  

3) If you haven't tried this cup or this cup do it.  We had a TERRIBLE time with sippy cups.  Seriously, we tried at least 15 different kinds of cups.  We use the soft spout sippy now. The avent cup taught him how to tip, and the Nuk cup is what he now drinks out of. 

4) They might have a policy of no bottles in there, but ask them was you are supposed to do if she doesn't.  I find it hard to believe there are no exceptions.   Especially since it is a 12 month change.  If it was 15 months, I could see it more, but a lot of babies just aren't ready at 12 months. 

blu-eyedwife

I don't worry too much about naps or milk transition - things just work themselves out.  But for the sippy cup - we never used them.  We went right to a straw cup.  DH and I both use reusable straw cups ourselves (harder for babies to knock over, easy to drink while nursing) so he saw us with those from birth and wanted in.  We got him a straw-cup around 6 months (playtex lil gripper) and he picked up on how to use it immediately.  The other kids in his daycare use sippies, but he uses his cup.

Bonus - he knows how to drink from a straw so we never have to worry at restaurants about bringing a cup.

Soon2BMrsN

That was a lot of questions... but I won't judge too much since I was probably the same as a FTM.

A couple of things...

I worried about the exact same thing re: naps when DS1 moved into the 12-18m room at daycare.  Somehow, though, they got him to nap on a mat.  I don't know what they did or how they did it, but it happened.  And YES, trying to follow the daycare nap schedule at home will save your sanity.

Cow's milk isn't the only kind you can offer to a baby.  If she truly is sensitive to dairy, try almond or soy milk.

beautiflaw

katie4253:

3) If you haven't tried this cup or this cup do it.  We had a TERRIBLE time with sippy cups.  Seriously, we tried at least 15 different kinds of cups.  We use the soft spout sippy now. The avent cup taught him how to tip, and the Nuk cup is what he now drinks out of. 

4) They might have a policy of no bottles in there, but ask them was you are supposed to do if she doesn't.  I find it hard to believe there are no exceptions.   Especially since it is a 12 month change.  If it was 15 months, I could see it more, but a lot of babies just aren't ready at 12 months. 

Unfortunately they do have a strict sippy or straw cup thing at her daycare. Its kind annoying that they don't want to be flexible with us but yeah. They said the older kids will see a younger kid with a bottle and then will pretty much snatch it away, and then throw fits because they can't have one, so now they don't do any bottles at all in the ones room. They pretty much told us that she can't switch rooms until she is on a sippy cup. She can walk and she is big enough for the toddler toys and I think they really want her out of the infant room because she is one of the biggest kids in there, so really they are just waiting for her to get on a sippy so they can go ahead and switch her. My husband took her in there to see how she liked it and she LOVED the ones room so much more than the infant room because the toys were more challenging and there was so much more room for her to play. I don't want to hold her back so we are trying to get her in the ones room because he said he could tell he liked it way better.

I love the idea of the natural drinking cup. she likes to drink out of a 'big girl' cup but she gets it EVERYWHERE so maybe this will be better. Thank you so much!

bumpuser4307348

It seems like you already have some great advice on cups and sleep, so I'll just comment on the reflux.  My DS was suffering from silent reflux and on meds. My pedi said that they usually outgrow reflux by one year old.  We took LO off of meds at 9 months and the reflux symptoms never returned.  Maybe your LO has outgrown it, too and you are giving the Gentlease all the credit! She may transition to the milk just fine.  Good luck!