12m - stopping EBM in a bottle without adding cows' milk?

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DD is currently 11m and has three small (ie 3-4oz) bottles at nursery interspersed with three small meals, and is bf on demand at home (usually morning, bedtime and at least one night feed, sometimes at 5pm as well).

However, once she's 12m and walking, and def before 18m, nursery will move her up to the 'toddler room' where there are (apparently) no bottles, to protect their teeth.

DD's keyworker also intimated that giving milk in the sippy cups currently used for water for doesn't work too well as the children associate those with water not milk.
She suggested just gradually dropping milk feeds so that by the time DD moves up she is having no daytime milk at all, and she'll get everything she needs from morning and evening feeds plus cheese, yoghurt etc in her food.

This made me as I imagined babies would carry on having eg a cup of cows' milk with elevenses for quite some time.

Any ideas?

Most bfed babies over about 7/8 months will easily go all day without breast milk if they are away from their mum. At this point your boobs will usually be able to cope with not having to express during the day and will adapt magically on days when you have your DD with you and want to do more than just morning and bedtime feeds. However I don't understand why the nursery don't want to give milk to drink - it is not unreasonable to expect a toddler to have a cup of milk IMO. I would just be giving cow's milk already BTW!

My kids drank milk, juice and water from free flow drinkers and coped fine.

This sounds odd to me.

My daughter (aged 2) still has milk on an ad-hoc basis (from a cup) throughout the day.
At 14 mo she was having 3 bottles a day. When I swapped her onto cups she still had milk very often.

The idea that a child will associate cups with water and so can't have milk in them is odd IMO.

You're the parent; they should give milk if you want them to.

Hmm, interesting
Of course they will give her milk if I ask them to (cf her having EBM, cotton nappies, finger food etc - they are v accommodating) but I was interested to find out the status quo before I started making special requests - after all they have looked after a lot more babies than I have...

I find it is quite useful that DD2 has different cups for water than for milk as she can hold up the cup to tell me what she wants to drink!

at my dd's nursery they are routinely offered a choice of milk or water to have along with their snack so I would find it odd for them not to offer milk at all during the day. They drink it from an open cup - dont know if it is the same cups they use for water though. (ds (1 1/2) goes one morning a week when I go to a parenting group at the nursery and he always takes milk if it is on offer and drinks it from the open cup)