to think the 'baby WILL drink water' brigade are <ahem> incorrect *edited by MNHQ*

[StinkusMinkus]

I keep reading a lot of threads where people post about babies being given squash/juice (as they won't drink water), and insist that baby WILL drink water if not given anything else...

Well, can I personally call bullshit on that one...?!

DS (10 months) has never been given anything to drink other than milk or water. However - he is a water refuser. His poo this morning was little hard pellets, constipated through not drinking enough in this hot weather. And it's not even summer proper yet. So what do I do when it gets actually, really, hot? Keep offering him nothing other than water, and watch him dehydrate as he keeps refusing it - or try him with something else?

For the record, I don't advocate given kids excess sugar/salt etc - DS isn't even given fromage frais and has plain natural yoghurt instead, but I think this one is bloody nutty. Dehydrate your kid rather than give them squash??!

AIBU?

DS refused milk from 18 months old and still won't drink it at 4.5

He refused water too and would have dehydrated happily rather than drink it but I kept offering it in a no pressure "you never know" type way - about 6 months ago he decided he did like water and now that is his main drink.

For the parents of water refusers, have you tried offering it at the same temp as their milk? DD loves milk - I mean, LOVES milk - but won't drink it cold.

my daughter had milk fresh out of the fridge practically from birth on HV commented that that might be why she didn't seem interested in breast milk it was body temp therefore too HOT!

seriously she is 14 soon and still messes with her food till it gets cold cups of tea/coffee cold she is rather odd

yes i did try to warm the water my babies still hate it the water in my area is bitter so i can hardly blame them i wont drink it either

stinkus I quite like the doidy cup! I like the idea behind it! it makes sense to me. He seems to prefer it over the sippy cup

rooty good point. Will try that too!

Sorry for all the !s, don't know what happened there. Bloody ipad.

Neither would DS. I gave squash.

Dd1 didn't drink water. I was convinced if I did it right, got the right cup etc. then she would drink. Result was I had a large number of baby cups, none of which she'd take more than a sip out of. I never offered her squash as an alternative, so she didn't have anything to compare it with.
When she got to school she discovered she liked drinking water, and now is someone who likes to take her waterbottle round, and drinks a lot.

Dd2 downed water like she was practicing for downing a pint. She could drink 3+ large cups from quite tiny. Now she isn't so bothered as dd1, and takes a waterbottle if I insist when she's going to do sports.

I also hate this brigade. My DC is almost 3 and won't drink water either, or milk, fruit juice or squash. She will only drink fizzy juice like coca cola and lucozade.

I'm just kidding by the way, of course she will drink water. That's what she has been brought up with, so doesn't want juice etc often.

Kids won't dehydrate, or starve. You need to give your child time to adjust.

DS1 happily drinks water now but refused bottles for so long at 5 months he had to be admitted to hospital, babies can starve themselves despite what health visitors might say!

I am not sure what people mean when they say a child wouldn't take water. Not even a sip? DD1 was EBF until she was 6m, I offered no water and she was fine. When she started solids she wasn't really interested in water. She would take 2-3 sips during the meal and that was it. A cup would last whole day. At first I tried to trick her into drinking more water but then I realised that maybe I was wrong because I was measuring her water intake by adult standards while she could be having enough liquid by her own standards. She was drinking milk, that's liquid too. Then I relaxed and everything turned out fine. She is 5 now and drinks a lot of water, but it was not until probably 3 that she would drink a cup in one go. She was never constipated or showing any signs of dehydration. Some children are just slow in accepting water, in my experience those who are breastfed are more reluctant to take it. But if everything looks fine, we don't need to make them drink more then they want. Drinking is not the same as eating. I fully believe that children can starve themselves. When we stop eating, after couple of days/weeks body adapts and we don't feel that hungry any more and consequently eat even less. The same goes for children. But there's no equivalent body mechanism for liquid, because body needs it in much higher frequency than food.
It's not really that easy to get dehydrated (under normal circumstances). Thirst is not even close to dehydrated state and I say that as a parent of a baby who was ALMOST dehydrated and put on a drip because of loss of fluids (2mo DD2 with bronchiolitis, couldn't feed because of blocked nose)

My toddler wouldn't take more than one sip and pushed it away. He was constipated and needed more fluid. I expect that is the common experience of people who say their baby wouldn't take water. If there had been no constipation issue with my child then I wouldn't have stressed about it either, assuming that the fruit, veg and milk he was having was adequate.

I refused cows milk from weaning and still do so at the age of nearly 31. I have no idea what it tastes like but I can just tell it's disgusting.

DC2 refused water repeatedly from 9-18 months. I gave diluted juice as she would go days without drinking water just milk. At 3 years old she decided she would only drink water without juice. Even now a few years on she is the child picking water instead of juice/pop.

I don't worry about what others think which helped.

Both of my dc refused cows milk in any quantities that would have been even remotely beneficial to them, so we ended up putting a tiny amount of milkshake powder in cups-with straws. Totally believe, the benefits of a good amount of calcium versus a small amount of sugar is a no brainer.
Dd at 11 months old ended up in hospital on a drip, because no many how times I took her to the to the doctor telling them she was refusing to eat, plus keeping a food diary of her non existent diet AND bringing in 3 nappies full of mucus because she refused most solid food and existed purely on a small amount of fruit smoothie for about 3 weeks, apparently "babies will never starve themselves". Bullshit, totally.

Sorry OP- meant to add that they were also not big on water, a tiny bit of pure fruit juice added to filtered water helped enormously. I'm another one who will dehydrate rather than drink tap water by the way!! At the ages of 10 and 5 both of my dc still don't like tap water and will only drink filtered as well, not surprised a lot of babies don't like the taste of it :)

DD was a milk and water refuser. She had watered down smoothies and watered down juice on the advice of a doctor.

When we moved to Cyprus she started at Pre-School. All children had to bring water bottles and were not allowed juice or squash. I was told by the school (that the pre-school fed in to) that DD had to be a water drinker if they were going to accept her. I was advised to take a hard-line with her.

I stopped letting her have squash/juice/smoothies at home because "baby WILL drink water if not given anything else". I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. It was 40 degree heat and my daughter wasn't drinking any fluids - not a drop at Pre-School (that they didn't bother telling me) and not a drop at home (Despite an ice cold 5 gallon cooler sitting in the hallway).

3 days later she was in hospital and stayed there 5 days. The Cypriot Doc went absolutely POSTAL on me, and slagged off the "Stupid English" over and over - juice is not poison, water is not a magic potion, FLUID is what is important and it doesn't matter how they have it.

DD is now 9. Her teeth are perfect, her weight and health are perfect. In the last year she has started drinking water, but only bottled water and only if she is very hot. She doesn't drink anything fizzy and prefers apple juice to anything else.

I still beat myself up that I listened to those people and as a result put my girl in hospital.

I wonder if this thread is typical of the general population? - I am amazed at how many people give their kids juice. I thought it was a really unusual thing to do. My kids are much older and we lived overseas so there were no low sugar or 'baby' squash'es. Squash was packed full of crap and suger and glowed orange - it was so obviously not suitable for humans little kids so it never crossed my mind to give it to them.

I know everyone is saying their kids teeth are fine with juice but surely it should only be given as a last resort.

My 4 kids still drink lots of water as adults, just as I do.

OP - 10 months is very young to wean from the bottle? DD is 18mo and loves hers, morning and night. I asked the dentist about it and he said it's not a problem at all. If he likes it so much, I would give him warm water in a bottle. If that's what he needs to have fluids, so be it.

Another though on constipation - stewed fruit (my mum's suggestion) is very good at helping DD's, especially plums and rhubarb, and gets more liquid into them too.

deaky yes I meant at the same temp as their milk, not just warm - so if your DD likes fridge cold liquid, I would say fridge cold water.

LtEve what an awful experience. Don't be hard on yourself - it sounds as though you were under ridiculous pressure from the school.

Arky - my DCs were born in Japan and the health care workers there actually encouraged parents to start giving babies home-made juice and cold weak tea (barley tea, unsweetened, no caffeine) from three months old as a precursor to weaning.

My baby book from the time has diagrams showing how to make and filter juice from apples, and there were lots of little bottles/cartons of baby juice and tea available in the shops.

This was a while back (DCs are 15 and 11 now) so I don't know if it is still the same advice there. Fwiw, I didn't give them juice that early but they did drink cold barley tea from about six months - it's a standard drink for children in the hot, sticky Japanese summers, and seems to be more palatable than water. I guess because it is also made from boiled water it is traditionally seen as safer than just plain water.

There has been a push to get babies onto cups at 6 months hasn't there?

It always seems a bit mean to me.

I don't mean that the parents are mean, the guidelines seem a bit mean.

If you know what I mean.

Massive push to get kids using cups rather than bottles. Think it's the increasing numbers of children with tooth decay, and health professionals not wanting them to have juice etc from a bottle.

DS is not liking his cups - although he'll happily drink stacking cups of bath water (wtf??). Still no teeth though at 10 months, so not really worrying about tooth decay - and if he's got teeth anything like mine he'll be fine; 30 and still no fillings.

More rabbit poo today, so I just took him to McDonalds and gave him some coke and a Happy Meal.

I think some tap water tastes awful. I was a water refuser as a child, I drank squash instead, my teeth are a disgrace.
As an adult I got used to water by drinking Evian - it tastes soft and sweet, fortunately just like our tap water...but when we travel I find the water has an unpleasant aftertaste but I wouldn't touch squash with it's artificial flavours, sweeteners and preservatives and the dcs don't have it either....unless they are given it by someone else, IMO it's horrible chemical filled rubbish and not suitable even diluted as a regular drink.

DS is not liking his cups - although he'll happily drink stacking cups of bath water (wtf??)

Yes bath water is tasty!

Fuck weaning a baby off a bottle. Sorry, but life is hard enough. I can't believe it makes that much difference anyway. I was just reading a tooth decay thread and a lovely impressive dentist was posting there. She said it's important to limit the number of times a baby eats or drinks in a day (other than water, presumably) to 5 times. This makes much more sense to me. I also clean DD's teeth after her bed time bottle.

Marvellous dentist insight here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/a2081358-My-15-month-old-has-badly-decayed-teeth-have-added-photos-is-breast-feeding-to-blame-Should-I-stop, post at 14:54 on Mon 19th.

I have persisted with the sippy cup for day time water and she got it, it just took a few months - just like food.

To clarify: I can't believe bottle v cup is more important than what is IN the cup, or general dental hygiene.

If it didn't exist they wouldn't have it . Simply don't have any of it in the house .
Squash and juice are bad habits and in most cases constipation is blamed for their over use .
Good quality herbal tea - like pukka not shitty twinnings is a nice change and can be served at any temp .
Diet is also a factor , most kids eat far too much bready / pasta junk . These are really cloying .

When DS went to nursery at 9 months, they handed out cups of "juice". When I said that he didn't have juice, he only drank water and breast milk at home, they explained that the cups just contained water but so many babies and small toddlers had juice at home, they had to call it juice or they wouldn't drink it. They did all drink the water though.