How to cut down on bottles?

kellenickle · January 2009

DD will be one soon and she is still taking 4 7oz bottles a day (every now and then it's 5!). She's been on solids since 5 months and started all finger food around 8 months. She had been a really good little eater until about a week ago - she started refusing most of her solids (we're thinking that it may be a teething thing).?

I feel like I need to get more solids/less formula in her each day (our pedi said she should be getting about 18-24oz a day and she's taking 28-30+ ) but don't know how to do it. Do I start putting less in each bottle or try to cut a whole bottle out??

I feel like I want to wait until her eating gets a little better, but I'm not sure... any hints? What did you do and when did you do it? TIA

Zoe0520 · January 2009

Mason has been on 3 8oz bottles for about a month now. He eats all table foods..and he's a great eater. I was doing 5 6oz bottles a day but he was actually NEVER finishing a bottle and he was eating so well, that's when I decided to start dropping them. He gets one when he wakes up, one before his afternoon nap and one before bed. Now he finishes his bottles. I give him finger food snacks instead of the other mid day bottles he was getting.

amygdala · January 2009

Some kids seem to do really well with the "cold turkey" method. ?Mine were really attached to their bottles, so I opted for a slower approach to weaning. ?I started eliminating bottles when they were just past 1y old. ?When I started, they were getting 5 bottles a day: ?one in the a.m. when they woke up, one, immediately after their 3 meals/snacks (solids first, then bottle), & then one before bedtime. ?I started by dropping one of the bottles that they usually got after a meal (the 2nd bottle of the day). ?After I took their tray, I just got them down from the highchair & we started playing instead of giving them a bottle. ?They definitely noticed & fussed a bit at first, but eventually got used to the new routine & started drinking more water from their sippy. ?Then I dropped another bottle. ?Then another & another. ?I went really gradually, & it took us about 3m to get down to just the bedtime bottle (so they were 15m old by then). ?They are still getting the bedtime bottle at 21m, & I'm not sure how/when to discontinue it, especially since it's the only milk they drink! ?I plan to talk to the pedi about it at their next appointment. ?Good luck!

Sally J · January 2009

We switched my DD to whole milk at 11.5 months. We just stopped giving bottles and started giving whole milk in a sippy cup instead (she had four 7 oz bottles of formula a day). We also added in two snacks on top of her 3 meals to make sure we weren't cutting calories. The only bottle she gets is right before bed and that's whole milk/breastmilk (I pump extra) combo.

We realized that we were more attached to the bottles than she was. It was part of our routine, plus we saw it has her nutrients/food source. We realized that after cutting the bottles she started eating quite a bit more at meal times as well as drinking more fluids out of the sippy cup.

Married3.22.03 · January 2009

I would recommend dropping a whole bottle rather than the amount in each one. I don't think my DD would have tolerated less formula in her bottles, but when we slowly dropped a feeding here and there, she didn't even notice. The first one we dropped was the after nap/dinnertime bottle. Then it was the lunchtime bottle. Then it was the breakfast bottle. Finally, the bedtime bottle was last to go. The only one we had ANY issues with at all was the bedtime bottle, and that was not nearly as big of a deal as I expected! She had a couple of nights of restless sleep, but was totally back on track probably by day 3.

Is there a feeding that she seems less interested than others? I know my DD went from practically screaming for her bottle after she woke up from nap (around 5:00 or so), to being able to wait and be patient a bit longer, to being more interested in her toys than her bottle! Wink I took that as a cue to drop that feeding, and it worked great. We just fed her a regular dinner at that time rather than her bottle.

I've also heard of people putting the formula in a sippy cup rather than a bottle (to see if it's the attachment to the bottle itself or the nourishment of the formula they want). When doctors say they want DC off the bottle by 1 year, I think it's mostly so the actual bottle does not become an attachment and a habit that's harder to break later... it's not so much the formula that's the problem, I believe.

Also (and this is a rough one for me!), if she's still taking that amount of formula in the day, she probably isn't hungry for regular food. You may just have to give her the opportunity to be hungry so that she will learn to adjust to eating "real" food, and will eventually become hungry for that instead. It's ok to start out giving her foods you know she likes at first, but then you can move up to trying out new things.

axr8111 · January 2009

for us, the trick was moving from bottles to sippy cups. DS naturally stopped drinking so much and started eating more. Oh and he is going through the no solids phase right now. We had to stop baby food all together and move onto adult food or he won't eat. Good luck.

mrsmikey · January 2009

We started transitioning from bottles to sippies and formula to milk at 11 months. He still takes 4 sippies a day, one with each meal. We used to give him bottles first, and then solids 30 mins later. So we switched that and started giving him solids first and a sippy of milk right after he was done. He has done really well with it and hasn't seemed to mind. I put 6 oz of milk in each sippy. Sometimes he finishes and sometimes he doesn't. I would say he gets anywhere from 16-24 oz of milk a day, plus 3 solid meals and one snack.

jlw2505 · January 2009

At the time that she takes a bottle between the regular meal time, try giving her a table food snack before her bottle so she is fuller or you could put some of the formula in a sippy cup and let her take that with the table food snack. My 10 month old takes 3 6 ounce bottles and a 4oz one at bedtime (although she often doesn't finish that one). She always gets an afternoon snack and sometimes gets a morning snack. When I am ready to take away those daytime bottles in a few weeks, she will just get table food snacks and at 11 months, a sippy of whole milk.

Tess12 · January 2009

I'm having this issue, too.

Thanks for the good suggestions.

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