Breastfed 6 month old - introducing beaker or bottle?

[Celia76]

DS3 is 6 months old and ebf with solids three times a day. DS 1 and 2 were on formula from 2 weeks so I have a few questions about beakers/bottles etc!

I would love DS3 to take fluid from something other than my boobs! We have tried bottles with expressed milk, but with no success - and we haven't persevered with bottles after that.

Would it be easier to focus on beakers, or persevere with bottles? In my experience DS1 & 2 never drank that much from beakers. Does anyone's babies take a full feed from a beaker? I'm going back to work in 3 months so need to get this sorted!!

I've been told by a friend who works in childcare to go to cup at 6mo. I've given up the fight with the bottle with my 5mo going to take a month break from expressing!

Go straight to a cup, ideally a freeflow one. My DS never had a bottle and loved being able to give himself water - I never tried milk though.

I would go straight for a beaker, getting on to a bottle then off one in a few months doesn't seem worth it. My dd1 was like your son, she never took a bottle, but went onto a beaker straight away. Don't worry if you are getting nowhere and work is looming, it is amazing what a baby will do when they need to. She wouldn't drink from anyone except me when I was around.
My twins are 6 months and they do seem terribly little to be giving a beaker too, but lots of people do, and as they eat more solids, they need less milk. To begin with dd was better at taking water than milk though, and I gave her lots of dairy in her feeds.
Good luck with it!

Thanks for the responses. My gut instinct is to go straight for a cup/beaker, but my worry is does a night time milk feed work from a cup? If I ever manage to have a night out, and he wakes for milk, would drinking from a cup at say 10pm work? (He is also a dummy refuser so don't have that to fall back on).

I've got a Tommee T cup with a soft spout which I think I'll put some expressed milk into and just let him play with it.

thingamajig you are right, he is having much less milk now he's on solids. Since we started solids I have felt a huge sense of relief that he can take nourishment from something other than me. We are demand feeding and the feeds have dropped a lot, so I'm expressing 6oz a day to add to his food as I'm aware that he still needs a lot of breastmilk. He is HUGE though (I had a previous thread about my concerns about overfeeding an ebf baby) so definitely isn't going without!

just popping to ask why a freeflow one is better?

I have one of the cow cups

I started giving the cup to DS around about 6 months and he can use it himself now but does have to suck a bit to get it out.

The non freeflow ones are like bottles. Try one yourself and see how hard it is to get milk out. For a baby that doesn't get bottles, he might not get sucking hard on a spout. You can use either a freeflow or a doidy cup.