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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

tips on weaning from bottle to cup, please!

4 replies

ExistentialistCat · 31/05/2010 11:48

DD is nearly 11 months old, has always been bottle-fed (expressed breastmilk for first 4 weeks, then formula). She's doing reasonably well on solids now, has 3 meals a day and milk feeds in between (first thing in morning, mid-morning, mid-afternoon and last thing at night).

HV has been quite adamant that I should wean her on to a cup by her first birthday. DD drinks water from a free-flow cup during the day with varying rates of success (depending on how thirsty she is, so I think that's fair enough).

I'm feeling simultaneously daunted and excited at the thought of phasing out bottles, not least as I'm expecting another baby in October.

My plan, such as it is, is to start out by giving daytime milk (i.e. mid-morning and afternoon) in a cup, then the morning milk and finally the evening milk. My first attempt at daytime cup-drinking just resulted in DD drinking about 1 1/2 oz (not unusual for this time of day), with quite a lot of spitting out.

So, any advice? I'm assuming I just need to persevere and trust that she'll get used to the cup rather than starve herself of essential nutrients ...

OP posts:
GrizzlyMum · 31/05/2010 12:04

My advice is to avoid advice from health visitors! Just do what you're doing, and gradually phase the bottles out, and let your daughter get on with it. It all sounds fine.

Al1son · 31/05/2010 17:21

If you push her to move on from bottles now she'll just want to go back to them as soon as she sees the new baby with them.

If she's not drinking juice from a bottle I can't see what the problem is.

Offer cups if you want to but if she want to stick to bottles for a bit let her. Let's face it nobody worries about getting breastfed babies drinking from cups at 11 mths!

ExistentialistCat · 31/05/2010 21:03

Oh dear. Now I'm a bit confused. I actually rather like my HV (in fact, I've asked her to move in with us in the past ) and trust her. And the NHS guidelines all go on about stopping bottles at around a year old. But there's all sorts of other advice that seems to indicate that there's no rush with the sippy cup. DD had almost no milk at all during the day today, when I was offering it in a cup, so now I'm wondering whether I'm rushing things. Perhaps I should try the cup during the day for a week...?

OP posts:
Mimi1977 · 02/06/2010 13:53

Hi, sorry to confuse you more but my daughter is 21 months and still has a bedtime bottle!! So do many of her contemporaries. I know it is advised against by the HVs but she has never taken milk from a cup and frankly I just feel it is more important to get the milk in her for extra calcium and also extra fluids through this summer. This is far more imp to me than the risk of it hindering her speech - which it isn't doing remotely and she doesn't wander about with a bottle in her mouth all day. I plan to stop when she turns two because I know when I do I'll be giving up bedtime milk (and milk at all as won;t drink it in a cup).
HV can be great but not everything they tell you is set in stone. You have to allow yourself to be guided a by your own child and how you feel.

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