Bottles, beakers and cutlery questions

[Elbbob]

Hello - I wondered if anyone had any advice on how to get my 11mo DD to use a beaker/sippy cup and a spoon? And at this age when babies are bottle-fed do they hold the bottle themselves?

I know at 12 months I need to switch to cows milk and the NHS advise moving away from bottles but I can't imagine how I'll do that as DD has no interest in holding any kind of drinking vessel.
I have a Doidy cup and a sippy cup that she sips small amounts of water from but I have to hold it for her. If I give it to her to hold she just throws it around and doesn't even attempt to drink from it.

With the spoon, she mostly refused to be spoon-fed so eats finger foods but she has occasionally allowed me to spoonfeed her a few mouthfuls her and there so she knows what it's for. She likes playing with a spoon but if I put food on it and give it to her she just waves it around.
I've been trying both of these things for 5 months now... Any ideas?

She's not a particularly hungry baby (milk or food) so I'm worried about her not getting enough milk if I switch to a beaker. At the moment she has about 650ml milk a day and 3 meals but only actually eats small amounts.

They only need about 300 mls of cows milk from 1 year or 3 dairy portions if they don't want to drink much. Have you tried a fork? Mine liked to stab food with their fork rather than scoop with a spoon.

For a beaker, you really need to hold it for them. It’s too heavy for them to tip above their heads until much later. Just offer at meals and in the bath to play with. Alternatively, you might try using a straw cup. My youngest took easily to a cup from 6 months, but my bottle fed one absolutely refused until 13 months and only from a straw cup. There’s no hard and fast rule that bottles have to stop at 12 months, just start moving in that direction. And no they shouldn’t really be holding a bottle themselves. Actually the advice is not to leave them with bottles as it’s the long term sipping on them that can encourage tooth decay, so a quick feed by you and done is generally considered better.

For spoons you just have to do spoon loading, put yogurt on the spoon and hand to them or lay on tray to be picked up. I use two spoons and rotate between them, handing a full one over and taking the empty one back. But it does take time especially if baby hasn’t been self feeding already. We did blw and mine could both eat from a spoon about 8/9 months but it has to be pre loaded. They don’t usually use cutlery independently until closer to 18 months, 2 years.

Sounds like you’re doing fine so I’d just keep offering both and see what happens.