How important is it to stop bottles at one?

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DD turned one last week and we swapped her to cows milk about 4-5 oz three times a day in her bottle. Now we did try a beaker but she was screaming and wouldn't take any.

DH has been trying today with her breaker and is worried about her teeth but she has wailed for about half and hour as he tried.

As the title says how vital is it we get her off them?

IME, not vital at all, though advice may have changed in the last 20 years. DS2 had a bedtime bottle (and dummies!) well past that age and at 21 has lovely, white, even teeth (no orthodontry involved) and very few fillings.

Not at all really. How important do you want it to be? Try moving one drink only to a different type of cup to let her get used to it as a regular thing so everything else is familiar still, say biscuit and water at 11am or something silly thats easy for you to do too. A doidy cup is brilliant as it is angled so they can see in it as well. I bought mine off amazon.co.uk Or a Tommy tippee one with handles as my dd preferred waving it around for weeks before drinking out of it very much.

Now she's 14mths and drinks out of anything we ask her to. Straws etc to. I still use bottles before bedtime feeds.

Both dentists and speech and language therapists will tell you that it is important for teeth development, eating and speech development. Children use an immature sucking action to drink from a bottle which will disappear/change once they move on from using teats - this is why adults can't suck from a bottle easily.

There are many children who have used a bottle or dummy well beyond a year old without any problem but I used to see lots who did have speech and eating immaturities and who were still using them (I am an slt).

Having said all that my oldest dc was about 14+ months when I chucked all his bottles in the bin (don't tell anyone! ). I think he was down to only one bottle of milk in the evenings by then though and had been using a lidded cup for water for a while.

Of course it is up to you but the advice (and it is just advice) is there for a reason.

you could do it gradually rather than stopping all bottles at once. I started by offering a small amount of milk in a beaker along with a snack while ds was in the highchair. Once he got the hang of taking the milk from the beaker i started gradually replacing bottle feeds too. I had a different cup for milk than for water so he would know what was coming

My dd1 loved her bottle of milk at bedtime until she was nearly three. She's been to the dentist with me for a check up and apparently she has excellent teeth.

I really wouldn't worry about it.

Been a mother 18.6 years, all older children have very good teeth, no fillings, and DD3 (2.5) currently still has all her milk from a bottle. If you're brushing teeth and making sure she isn't sucking on bottle or dummy all the time I can't really see the problem. They don't go off to school with a bottle. My analogy is always that if they were breastfed in line with WHO recommendations they would still be getting their milk at 2+ from the same receptacle as at birth- nobody switches magically at 12 m to spouty-cup nipples.

Excellent point there, duchesse!

But bottles and breasts are used in different ways duchesse. With bottles, the milk can pool around the teeth whereas the nipple goes to the back of the baby's mouth.

OP would appear to suggest that she's been bottle-feeding anyway. So long as she also brushes teeth, not a big issue imvho. Cups etc can be intoduced over the next wee while (soon) but not overnight.

Thanks for the advice still in a quandry she still wakes in the night regularly 2-3 times a week and only settles with a bottle so will be in meltdown and awake if we try and change that

maybe we should work on the night wakings first as i am not worried about the bottle too much if it is twice a day and we brush her teeth at bed time and morning it is just the fact some night she is having milk in the night and we are not brushing afterwards