12m old won’t drink water

[fortheloveofcollies]

I am trying to phase out bottles for my 12 month old. She is completely fine to not have her bottle and have solids instead. But she will not drink enough cows milk or water to make up for losing the fluid. On Saturday, I gave her just 1 bottle before bed and offered her water or milk regularly all day but she had about 200ml total. Which meant she only had 2 very minimally wet nappies all day so I’m worried about dehydration.

She usually just drinks a sip when offered. She sometimes looks like she drinking lots but when I look after it’s barely 10ml.

She has a 360 cup, a weighted straw cup and open cups. She uses them all to about the same success apart from she will tip out the open cups regularly.

What can I do to encourage her to drink more? I don’t think it’s the taste as I tried formula in one of her cups and she still doesn’t drink much of it. But I am mixing formula into the milk (50:50) to try to encourage her a bit.

She'll get used to it, just keep offering sips.
You could give her wet foods like soup, juicy fruits, yoghurt too to keep up her fluid levels.

I was going to suggest water high foods too. Things like broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries, jelly and custard all all good too.

She’ll get used to it soon

Just keep offering sips, you could also offer water heavy food
cereal and milk for breakfast, fruits and veggies like watermelon and cucumber to snack on, and water down Greek yogurt and make ice lollies.
lots of other fruit will be water dense
you could also try a drink of coconut water, or meals with lots of liquid if she will accept them.
if she has a sip everytime you offer then offer more. I found those 360 cups looked like dd was drinking loads but it seemed to be really hard work and not much was actually coming out. I also tried one of dds bottles with a straw when I noticed the water never actually seemed to be decreasing and I found it was hard for me to get water out of because of the mechanism to make it no spill, so it’s worth a check on those things and getting her a different cup potentially

And if she tips out the contents of an open cup, try giving it to her in the bath. Sometimes the novelty helps.

It’s worth trying some different styles of cups. Some are designed to not spill which is a great idea in theory but in reality they can be v hard work for them to get any liquid from. The 360 cup is particularly bad for this. Try drinking from them yourself and see. Also this seems to be a somewhat controversial idea on here but on the advice of my mum I started giving DD a splash of apple juice in her water and it worked, she loved drinking it. Then once she was drinking enough we phased it out. She’s 8 now, happily drinks plain water and has perfect teeth so no harm done.

I think my baby gets most of her fluid intake in the bath. Bathwater is apparently a delicacy, whereas milk, water and juice are for peasants and go straight in the bib.

Thank you. I’ll try all those. I’ll have a look at the cups and see if any are easier. Maybe I’ll experiment with a normal straw in a cup and see if she drinks more then to see if it is the non spill aspect