Bottle or beaker?

[Wintersun]

Ds is nearly 11 months and I want to stop bf by the time he is 12 months.
He has never had a bottle but should I introduce cow's milk to him in a bottle or a beaker?
I'm just thinking about the comfort factor that a bottle gives.

[laundrylover]

Go for the beaker! My friend is a speech therapist which makes us all very anti bottle!
I was reluctant to stop Tilly's bedtime bottle but she now has a Bob the Builder mug and loves it!

[Miaou]

My ds is 6.5 months and breasfed, and I've been giving him water in an open cup for about 6 weeks (now he is getting a bit more grabby we sometimes put a spout on it). Today I went to work for the first time so dh gave him expressed milk in his cup. He looked very puzzled but he drank it!!

Deffo go for the cup, not the bottle. Introduce it now for drinking water/expressed milk and he will get used to it fine. If you introduce a bottle you are giving him something else you will have to wean him off before too long.

[LucyJu]

Personally, I would go straight to a beaker. If he's never had a bottle, I don't know if he would derive the same comfort from it as a baby who has had a bottle for a long time. Also, some parents have a hard time weaning thir babies from bottles later on. Official advice is that babies should be drinking from cups by 12 months. I think (but am not sure) that this is because drinking from a bottle for too long increases the chance of tooth decay and may also lead to babies consuming too much milk at the expense of solid food.

[hester]

My dd is four and a half months, and I tried introducing a bottle unsuccessfully. she will, however, take a beaker. It seems easier for her to adapt from bf to a beaker than to a bottle. I don't know if this is generally true.

I'd go for the beaker. Aren't they supposed to be off bottles by one year? And if it does have comfort factor, won't you need to be weaning him off it again fairly soon?

[Wintersun]

Thanks everyone.
Ds does drink water from a beaker already so I think he will be fine with it but I'm really aprehensive about his night time feed.
I think I've got my work cut out for the next month or so.....

[laundrylover]

I bet he will suprise you with how much milk he can take from a free flow beaker at night time!
I did BF, then mixed, then bottle only at night but with this bump I aim to do no bottles if I can. The advice is 'no bottles after a year' but I failed!! Bottles can also affect speech development (as can dummies) but we are talking about some long term use here as in 3 and 4 years old all day long.