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D.C. Area Babies
Transitioning from bottle to sippee
We are trying to transition C from bottle to sippee before bed. We fill up the sippee in front of him and tell him that it's his milk. Once we get up to his room, he pitches a fit when we try to get him to drink from the sippee. He pushes it away, screams, arches his back, etc. The past week, after he freaks out for a few minutes while we try to coax him in to drinking from the sippee, whoever isn't doing bedtime, brings in an empty bottle, and pours the sippee milk in to the bottle, in front of C, trying to get him to conceptually see that it's the same thing, just a different vessel. He eagerly reaches for the bottle and drinks it down.
Are there any tricks to make this transition any easier? We have a few different sippees that we try - the Tommy Tippee, the Nuby and the Playtex. All are very different from a nipple - should I look for a sippee that has a nipple type spout?
ETA: He takes a sippee just fine in his highchair and during the day. It's the bedtime routine that he's having a hard time with.
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Re: Transitioning from bottle to sippee
Just go cold turkey. We switched from bottles to Nuby around 13 months, and DS would not take a sippy if there was a bottle in the same zip code. We made a big show of putting all the bottles away so he knew it was sippy only from then on. We had one week of drama where a lot of sippies got tossed around, but then DS decided he liked milk more than drama and made his peace with it. We introduced straw cups a few months later.
Oh, and we also moved the bedtime milk to about half an hour before bedtime to further break the association between bedtime and the bottle.
it was 15 months for us too when we did the cold turkey. we had tried the gradual introduction starting around 8-9 months and she was having nothing to do with it.
Now, I have learned- everything with her is cold turkey. Gradual does not work on anything :-)
I would skip the sippy altogether and go straight to a straw cup; one less thing you'll need to wean off later.
You could also just not give any milk before bed. If he is drinking enough milk the rest of the day, he doesn't need it.
My 3yr old still has a cup of milk before bed. She does brush her teeth after she drinks it (and she knows the rule - no milk after brushing teeth) but I think if she didn't drink that milk, she wouldn't wake up so wet. She is fully potty-trained during the day, including naps and car rides, but wears pull-ups at night.
We did a straw cup. It took DD a while to get the hang of it and at her 12 month appt I mentioned that she still really liked her bottles. The pedi said not to worry, so until 15 months we kept offering her the cup at meals but a bottle in the morning and before bed. At 15 months we went cold turkey. It took 2 or 3 days, but that was it. At 12 months she just wasn't quite ready.
ETA: The big thing about a bottle that the pedi mentioned is that because kids like to comfort suck, they will often fill up on milk. That's why she suggested the cups at meal times, and if we did a bottle to do it after she ate. We also reduced how much we put in the bottles, because DD would usually finish it whether she was really thirsty or not.
This... I don't see a rush it taking away something that gives them comfort when they need it. I, even w/ DS at 21 months, am not ready to switch completely to sippys. He does fine during the day, but he has a bottle at 5:00 am when I drop him off to daycare and he goes right back to bed, one when I pick him up from D/C (we tried switching this one to sippy and big time FAIL for the 45 minute car ride home), and then one right before bed.