One year old - how to get him off bottles and prevent meltdowns?

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Hi everyone

My son is 13.5 months old and we’re trying to move off formula and off bottles and onto whole milk in a cup.

Problem is, he bloody loves his formula in a bottle. Every morning is a battle with absolute hysterics - he has a cup of milk to drink from during breakfast but when he realises a bottle of milk won’t follow it, a melt down ensues.

Any tips would be very welcome. He’s a really happy little boy, eats really well and drinks water from his cup no problem. Just struggling to move away from the bottle.

thanks

Ignore the histrionics? If he is neurotypical he will gey over it with a bit of firmness

Any other ideas for how to wean a child off bottles?

Honestly, I chucked the bottles in the bin. There's no going back and forward when you do that!

Will he drink normal milk in a bottle? DS kept his bottle until about 18 months. I just brushed his teeth after and didn't bother fighting that battle.

Why the battle? I let my DD keep her bottle for much longer, one day she grew out of it. Maybe if you stop battling him, the bottle will become less interesting anyway.

Mix formula and cows milk to start. Don't worry about the bottles yet - doesn't matter that much if he has a bottle or cup.

Can you just drop the milk feeds altogether? Or wait a little longer?

With DD we stopped at 20m and even then only because she was ripping through new teats with her teeth 😬 I was nervous to do it because she'd been upset when I'd tried to replace the bottle with a cup before. But, that had just been for milk feeds, she was fine with a cup at mealtimes. So, that's all she had and I offered water in between. I remember a couple of days of mild grouchiness because that little comfort had gone but after that we all adjusted, it was fine.

Is there any rush?
The risk of bottles damaging their teeth would surely only be relevant if leaving them to suck on the bottle for hours.

A bottle morning and night until he is 2 isn’t going to hurt him :)

mine had a bottle until she was 3

What’s the rush? He’s still a baby and if it gives him comfort and makes him happy then just carry on. All 3 of mine had bottles well past 2 and have perfect teeth and drink from cups now like everyone else. As long as you clean his teeth after and he’s not using them all day long there’s no issue.

Honestly I didn’t until much older.
my children have never had a comforter or a dummy, never sucked a thumb- but they liked a bottle of milk before bed. My eldest we stopped at about 3, offered her milk in a cup she never touched milk since. My youngest is just under 2, drinks all other drinks out of beakers and drinks bottles- it’s just that bottle of whole milk before bed she likes and I see no harm.
id switch to cows milk first then tackle the vessel in a few months personally.

My dd loved her formula in bottles. I got her off the formula first by mixing it with cows milk, started with just quarter cows milk for a week or so then upped it to half and then it was fully cows milk.

Then milk went into a cup during the day (bottles out of sight) and the only bottle was at bed time.

Gradually phased out the bed time bottle when she was old enough / didn’t really want it anymore.

Also we warm the whole milk- 1 min in our microwave- maybe that helped with the formula transition

My DS loved his bottles. Still had a bottle morning and night well after 1. I think we got rid sometime between 2 and 3.

No problem with teeth, no problem with eating, not problem with other drinks from straw cups and open cups.

Why do you need him to drop his bottles?

DS2 would never drink from a bottle and is on straw cups from 12 months. So it's such an individual thing.

Ds had his bedtime bottle until he was well over 3, he had a feeder beaker for everything else. You wouldn't expect a BF child to drink it out of a cup so why the worry over a bottle fed child?

This

Could you try him with a new cup but a straw bottle?
I taught my DD to use a straw around 6/7 months and she weaned quite easily from breastfeeding with that as a replacement (slightly different as she never really took a bottle).
Definitely worth trying, especially if you get him to pick a straw bottle, it might make him more inclined to want to use it and it could just be his bottle for milk. You could do a mix of formula and whole milk and increase the amount of milk every few days until it's just whole milk

Try a bottle with a straw/spout?

I bf until a year so my DC all went on to a cup in the day but I let 1 child who did not settle to sleep as well have a mini bottle of follow on formula milk just before bed. He liked the sucking. The other 2 were happy with their cups. Could you let DC have a bottle of formula just before bed?

This is all incredibly helpful - thank you.

The health visitor at his (virtual) one year review was very clear he needed to be off the bottle by 13 months. I went for a face to face follow up (he wasn’t born in this country and we moved back some months ago, so they wanted to weigh and measure etc) and the health visitor was really adamant again that he must be off his bottle.

I am so reassured by all you lovely posters saying it’s ok, his teeth won’t all fall out by age two, he won’t have braces by age five (well, he might, but that’s ok - I had braces), I’m not failing him as a parent, there’s no rush.

Thank you. Will do what’s currently working - cup of water with meal times bar breakfast where it’s cup of milk, then bottle in the evening for the comfort and, if he doesn’t drink much from the cup, bottle of milk in morning too.

Yeah he has a dummy too often when he goes to bed, so he does like the sucking. He gets sleepy on the bottle in the evening in a way he doesn’t with a cup - he finds attempting to waterboard himself very exciting…

Our 15 month old still has a bottle for breakfast and bedtime, and a dummy to fall asleep. She has water the rest of the time, and can drink from cups and straws. We are choosing to pick our battles! I value my sleep 😂

Do his bottles have soft "baby" teats? If you're worried about his teeth, could you move to hard teats?

When my twins were 13 months, we held a "ceremony". I got a big box and they said bye-bye to their baby bottles and threw them in the box. One twin was fine. The other twin realized something was up and cried. Finally she threw in her last bottle and we cheered and got rid of the box.

Then at nighttime I got bottles with a hard teat (they were fine with cups during the day). For 3 bedtimes she wouldn't drink from the hard teat bottle, then the next night just grabbed it and drank from it.