will not take bottle - but likes the cup!

[gossifer]

my 7 month old is still bf, i am returning to work in a month & have been trying to get him to take a bottle of formula once a day, no joy! when he has his meals he takes water from a plastic cup; yesterday i tried milk from the cup & he took it; the only prob is i don't know how much - lots gets spilt!
anyone have any experience of this? advice?
thankyou

No experience of this but just bumping for you.

I wouldn't worry too much about ammount! (probably get shot down for that!)
Offer it in a cup. None of mine had a bottle ever. Once they reduced their feeds and increased their solids drinks were only offered in a cup. Somedays they had very little others they drank quite a bit!

Forget bottles, and just use the cup and baby will soon master it..

thanks! sounds like we're going to be a bit damp then!

My ds was very pro a cup froman early stage.
I did bf. Then formula from bottle.
Suddenly he went off bottle and only wanted cup.
Don't worry, just go with the flow- flow being operative word !

You can roughly judge hom much he's getting, right ?

Out of interest, what cup are you using ?
We used tomee tipee - its good - if you tip it up practically nothing comes out -not a free flow - and encourages different tongue muscles compared to breastfeeding.
Hope that helps.

rachd, thanks, you're right, i can kind of gauge what he's getting
when i say cup i mean plain plastic beaker
i have tried a tomme tippee cup with suck thingy and to spillage - doesn't like that either!

DD (9 months) will only drink from a cup, we gave up on bottles as she wasn't having it. Gradually I persuaded her to drink from a spout as well instead of straight out of the cup (it does go everywhere!) but it took a while. She was better with a free flow spout rather than one that required sucking. Sucking is only for breast feeding apparently!

Stick with the cup definitely. Are you planning to still bf morning and night? Because then he would be getting lots of milk from you plus he's on solids so doesn't matter that much how much formula he takes in the day. Keep going with the cup (maybe try different ones eg smaller hole if he won't do no spills) and I bet in a month he will have got it if you're persistent. Babies are quick learners.

My DD didn't have a bottle from about 6 months, I introduced a beaker for water then, it was one of the cheap Tommee Tippee ones free flowing no valve, at first it went everywhere, I only gave her it to practice if I was completely changing her afterwards.

She eventually got the hang of not spilling it all down herself after a few weeks. We moved onto giving her cows milk at 12 months from a beaker too no problem.

I would give him the formula in a beaker once a day to let him have a play just now, he'll get the hang of it and don't worry about how much he's taking once he's got the hang on it he'll be fine.

bozza, yes i am going to carry on bf morning and night
i think i'm gonna go out and look for a free flow spout type cup thingy today, what we're doing at the moment is v.messy!
thanks all