Weaning - to a bottle or a cup?

umdbride · January 2012

DS is approaching 1 year so we're starting to think about weaning from EBF/pumped milk in a bottle during the day to WCM. DS drinks water pretty well from a straw cup with meals, so I'm wondering if we should make the switch to WCM and cups during the day at the same time. What do you think?

I'd also like to continue nursing in the morning and before bed if my supply keeps up, but I'm nervous it will disappear quickly (it's already takes quite a bit of work to keep up). If my supply disappears after 12mos, would you substitute nursing with WCM in a bottle or in a cup during those feedings?

Any experience with this or suggestions? FWIW I have put BM in a cup and he drank it ok, but I feel like the cup wastes more than the bottle so I haven't done it often.

WinesNotWhines · January 2012

We went straight to a cup, because I wanted to get him off bottles and I wanted him to associate cow milk with a cup. Some kids are really attached to bottles, so if your kid is like that, you may want to do a slower transition. M really didn't care about giving up the bottle, but it still took us a couple of months to get him to drink milk from a cup. We gave him a lot of yogurt when he was on his milk strike. Other kids have no problem and take to it right away.

amh_navyblue · January 2012

Go with a cup. As pp said, he may reject it initially, but he'll get it eventually (and you can supplement with other items in the meantime if it goes on for more than a few days) and you'll be happy to transition to just sippy/straw cups and not worry about the bottle. Yes, the waste factor may be high initially, but at least it will be WCM and not the liquid gold you have spent precious time pumping...

As for the nursings, my guess is you'll be fine keeping that up...my supply definitely varied in when I was trying to keep up a supply with pumping, but when I went down to the 2 feedings (same ones you refer to), it was not a problem to maintain. But if your LO starts to lose interest in those nursings, I would not necessarily replace them with a bottle/cup feeding. Breakfast in the morning will probably take the place of your morning session and there's not necessarily a reason to maintain some sort of "feeding" before bed. In fact, for the health of his teeth, unless you incorporate teeth brushing after the nighttime session, you really don't want him in the habit of drinking anything other than water in the long run before bed. I do still nurse DD#2 before bed, but if she asks for anything after that, I give her water. With DD#1, when we stopped nursing before bed, we did not replace it with anything, we just changed our routine adjust for the lack of a nursing session.

DCtoLowcountry · January 2012

DS loved bottles, so we eventually had to make a production of putting all the bottles away and switch to cups cold turkey. It took about a week of sippy tossing before he accepted it.

FWIW I had really low supply and I was surprised that it held up when I dropped to just first and last feedings of the day. I had to wean intentionally.

umdbride · January 2012

Thanks ladies - you said just what I needed to hear

I wanted to go for the cup for all the reasons you mentioned but wasn't sure if there was something I was missing.

Thanks for the boost of confidence on the supply issue too!

Sofka · January 2012

go straight to a straw cup! do not use a bottle, do not use a sippy.

2vthokies · January 2012

If he's not attached to the bottle, go to the cup (straw or sippy). With DD1 we had to do bottle then cup because she loved the bottle. With DD2 we went straight to straw/sippy cup. Both times my supply was fine for 2-3 times/day bfing. Bfed DD1 till 17 months and still bfing DD2 at almost 16 months.

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