any advice on establishing drinking from a cup?

[Moulesfrites]

My ds is 23 weeks and showing signs of readiness for weaning - sitting up, reaching out and putting stuff in his mouth and has lost the tongue thrust thing. For the past 2 days we have given him some mashed veg (carrot, butternut squash) - (I really love the idea of blw but dh and I have decided to go for more of a mixture of mush and finger foods).

Alongside this we have tried to get him to drink from a cup - he is ebf and has had about 3 bottles of expressed milk in his whole life, so I didn't want to use bottles for water, just thought I would go straight to cup. We have 2 cups - a doidy and a tommy tippee free flowing one and I don't really think he has got a lot of water from either of them tbh, but is probably been more successful with the doidy - he just bites down on the teat of the TT cup. I am worried that he is not really having much water along with his solids, especially as his first poo since having solids was very thick.

Do I have to experiment with other types of cup? I have read that ones that they have to suck on are bad, but is it more important to make sure he gets water? I realise it has only been two days, so perhaps I am worrying prematurely, but would appreciate any tips!

I was told that they don't need huge amounts of water before they start having a fair amount of protein at a meal. So for now just keep going with the ones you've got and see which you and he prefer and don't worry if he's not drinking much.

ds was ebf and blw. I think as long as you are bf on demand and not using formula i wouldn't worry too much about the water. It takes a while for them to get a taste for it ime, and bm contains 88% water (plus lovely laxative things). I found ds's consumption of water increased along with his solids intake, it just took a while.

We used a doidy. Next time i'll just use any open cup. I love the fact that you don't have to take a special cup with you, any glass or whatever will do. Also the opening of a normal water bottle is just like a tiny cup and ds was able to drink out of these quickly.

Moulesfrites, DS (10 months) has a doidy cup and 3x Tommy Tippee free-flow cups. We offer him water from the TT cup at each meal and snack; at first, he didn't really drink a lot, but eventually he began to drink more, and now he can hold the cup while he drinks from it. He can drink from the doidy cup too, but only if we hold it for him.

Just to add, DS became constipated when he was weaned onto solid food, so do keep an eye on that end of things... His GP prescribed him lactulose, and it cleared up quite quickly. I think it can take some babies a little while to get used to solid food.

they do get quite a bit of water from breastmilk, so it should be okay to not give water separately.

My DD (now 9 months) had been v reluctant to take water from her sippy cup, despite repeated attempts to introduce it. In the end I resorted to putting a bit of formula milk or heavily diluted juice in there. Once she found out there was yummy liquid in the cup she went for it all the time. Now she happily drinks water from the cup too.

When DS was that age I used a small, plastic egg cup that he could pick up easily and put just a couple of mouthfuls of water in it to start with, so that he didn't get a drenching every time he tried to drink from it. As said before, they get enough hydration from BFing at this age so it's really just for practice.

HV suggested giving DS a doidy cup to play with in the bath. They drink plenty of the bath water anyway so it won't do any harm.

I can count on one hand the times DS drank from a bottle. It was frustrating at the time but at least it was one stage we could miss out when it came to weaning him onto cups.