Weaning off the bottle

milwaukeej · October 2013

I thought I'd read some time ago that babies should switch from bottles to transitional cups around 1 year old because bottles are bad for their teeth. I can't seem to find any good information or guides on this, though. When do you recommend transitioning to sippy cups? Any good resources out there on how to handle it?

kjsmith9 · October 2013

I think switching around the 1 year mark is pretty common. The sippy cups are also not great for teeth/oral development/language development, though. We're going right to straw cups (DD has been drinking from a straw since we offered it at 6 months) to avoid the sippy's altogether.

Right now (10 months old tomorrow) she's drinking breast milk from a straw cup at lunch time at daycare, and then her other 2 feeds there are from the bottle. She has 4oz offered to her, but is typically only doing 2 or 3oz from the straw. Once she starts drinking her lunch milk more consistently, I plan to switch her afternoon bottle to a straw cup as well. Morning bottle will be the last one to transition.

I would go cold turkey if she was a year old and was already switched to cow's milk, but I don't want to waste breast milk so I'm being more careful for now

I'd be happy to take the bottle away if she wanted the cups though - I'm SO over washing bottle parts...

kerbear135 · October 2013

Our pedi told us they wanted DD off the bottle by 1....she drinks from a sippy cup or straw cup if it's offered, but it takes her a lot longer so I usually feed her by bottle except on the weekends when we're not in a hurry (I usually only give her the 1st and last bottle during the week) and my Mom (who keeps her when we're working) switches between the cup and bottle depending on where they are and DD's mood (if she's sleepy, giving her a bottle helps get her to sleep faster)

jessican08 · October 2013

I've been giving them sippies w/ water for a month or two now for practice but I still give formula in a bottle, mainly because sippies take them forever and they tend to get more easily distracted with them. Plus they think it's cool to hold the cups upside down by the handles and drip formula everywhere :S

I'm planning on ditching the bottles at 1 year and switching them to milk. They've been on Soy formula b/c they had dairy allergies but they've been tolerating yogurt and cheese OK here lately so I'll be doing half formula / half WCM and see how they tolerate it and then phase out the formula completely.

milwaukeej · October 2013

Thanks for the tips! I actually saw her pediatrician today for her 1-year checkup and she said pretty much what you all told me: ditch the bottles cold turkey now that she's one and switch to whole milk, so that's the plan! She had a bad day today since she had 4 shots today and a finger poke, so we'll start tomorrow

beccalee721 · October 2013

We're still on BM because my LO's 11 months but we just completed the switch to the sippy cup. We didn't go cold turkey, we did a slower transition, but once she was about 80% transferred over every once in a while she would have a cranky moment and only get half way through her milk before she would break down crying and I'd swap it back to the bottle. So my advice is to stick with it and always offer the cup first, but don't necessarily make it a fight every time. GL!

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