How Do You Transition Off The Bottle?

[preschoolteacher]

I have a 9 month old who has three 7 Oz bottles here, one every 3 hours. Parents are interested in increasing table foods. She eats finger foods very, very well. She loves it! She is not able to use a sippy cup yet or hold her own bottle.

Thus is new territory for me because my son was exclusively breastfed (he rejected bottles), and he eventually just started eating more and nursing less. I've never done this with a baby on a bottle schedule.

What would you do in order to get her off the bottle by 12 months?

[Heidi]

I would work on the sippy cup with meals, followed by whatever formula she didn't drink in a bottle.

So, if she eats ok, help her with the sippy. Lets say you'd really like her have at least 4 oz of formula per meal. So, let her eat, help her, and put what ever is left in the cup into her bottle so she finishes enough.

As she gets better at the cup, you can skip the bottle altogether.

I am in the same process with a 9 mo. Quite honestly, the last 9 mo I had was almost off the bottle, and could already manage a sippy very well. But, I'd started helping him with it at 6 months.

After she gets the sipping part down, hold it just above her reach, and say "use you hands". Most kiddos will grab whatever you hold in front of them like that. Then, it's reminders to "use you hands" and "up, up, up, goes the cup, cup, cup!" (tipping it up).

I like Tupperware bell tumblers because they do not have a valve. The milk comes out faster (and thus can be a little messier), but it's more like drinking from and open cup.

[Michael]

Some more threads on Transitioning to Bottle: https://www.daycare.com/forum/tags.p...ng+-+to+bottle

[grandmom]

I would just wait till the child is a year. By then holding the sippy cup is much easier, and the bottle just disappears when the birthday cake arrives, never to be seen again.

[KSDC]

I start offering a sippy cup around 8-9 months with meals. But, I don't worry if they drink much, or any, at first. I still do full bottles with morning nap and afternoon nap, so they are getting their nutritional needs there. The lunchtime formula is just to introduce the idea of cups. By the time baby is a year, they have the hang of drinking from a cup and the bottle goes bye-bye.

[TickleMonster]

We typically don't offer sippy cups until the child turns 1. We start teaching them how to hold it by only filling it a quarter of the way and then laying them down on the floor and placing their hands on each side of the cup. Slowly they learn to hold it on their own. I don't offer sippy cups at meal times as we want them to fill up on actual food instead of drink. Once they get the hang of holding the cup, we start cutting out the bottles one by one by offering the sippy cup first.

[nannyde]

I wouldn't work on it. I love the ease of bottles when they can hold their own. I am in the camp of "food before one is just for fun" I wouldn't work on transitioning to more table food. I would stick with the small minimum servings for that age and let parents do the table food and sippy cups.