I have started to introduce whole milk to my LO in a sippy cup. He has been using a sippy for awhile but doesn't do great with it and milk ends up everywhere. I still give him a bottle of formula 3 times a day. But I think I need to take a more active roll in preparing him for life without formula and a life with him "feeding" himself. How have you gone about doing it? Did you start putting formula in his sippy cup instead of a bottle? Any help would be great. Thanks!
Re: How are you transitioning away from formula?
I gave Eli a "test" run with whole milk first. I gave it to him in a sippy and then did a whole bottle of it just to see if he'd have any reactions. I waited a couple of days before giving it to him again. No problems. When the formula ran out a couple of days ago, we went straight to whole milk. He'll be 1 on Tuesday--didn't figure I needed to buy a can of formula just for his last week of "babyhood."
Now....transitioning off the bottle, that's a different proposition. Eli drank about 4oz of cold milk from a sippy during breakfast yesterday (by himself!), and that's the most liquid he had ever drank from a sippy. He also has 3 bottles during the day. When he gets over this cold, we're going to gradually replace bottle feedings with a sippy. When I'm comfortable that he's drinking enough from the sippy, we'll lose the bottles entirely.
That probably wasn't that helpful, but if I remember right, it was like one day Samuel just "got it" and we didn't need bottles anymore. He was about 13 months old.
We're also struggling a bit with the transition to milk instead of formula. My daughter likes her sippy cup and will drink water and (very) watered down juice from her sippy cup, but whenever we put milk in the cup she'll take a sip and then just let the milk fall out of her mouth. Not pleasant.
Anyway, last night my husband tried to put some whole milk in a bottle, but at the time she was on the verge of a meltdown (extremely tired and hungry) and she didn't want anything to do with the whole milk bottle. I'm not so sure about the whole milk in a bottle thing, but I really want to get rid of formula at a year, even if I can't wean her off the bottle. So, I'll probably try slowly transitioning her bottles to all whole milk. We'll probably do bottles with some milk and some formula, and eventually get to the point where it's more milk than formula, and then all milk.