couple of basic questions about cups and drinks...

[FTMum]

at the postnatal baby group i attend they were talking about coming off bottle and on to cups. but ds decided to started to get agitated at that point, so i completely missed that part of the talk.

so.. when do you introduce cups? during weaning? water, right?

when do you phase out bottles? they were saying something about stopping at some point for dental heigene reasons. so does lo then drink formula from a cup??

when do you stop giving milk/formula?

TIA
from a First Time Mum

If your baby if ff, then you can offer water whenever, but before 6 months it should be cooled, boiled water. If bf, then they don't need water until solids are introduced at 6 months.

The aim is that they shouldn't have any bottles by a year, and should be drinking any fluids out of freeflow cups (not the Anyway up type with a valve). They can switch to cows milk from formula at a year old. Bfing should continue to 2 years if possible.

when you introduce solids introduce water in a cup - they won't drink much for ages but keep offering and eventually they get the hang.

at 12m you can give cows' milk instead of formula and some people find this a good time to switch from a bottle to a cup but there are not strict rules so long as teeth get cleaned after milk before bed.

thanks ladies!

ds hated all cups except for the tommee tippee tip it up ones btw. we have a cupboard full of ones he won't drink out of. you can get them in tesco.