[shy_bear]

We have introduced the cup to A; he will drink from it, but still is having a hard time holding onto the cups that don't have the handles. He also still takes a bottle at night. I was lectured the other day by the WIC lady on how I need to stop the night time feedings and start to wean him off the bottle. Logically I know this!! He still demands his bottle and I hate to upset him so much by refusing to give it to him. How many of you stopped the bottle at one? With my girls they were in the trash on their first bday and we had no problems. If you did not stop the bottle at one how long did you let your child continue with it? He goes for his one year check up soon and I am going to talk with is ped. about this; he is very small for his age and not getting enough nutrition is also a concern of mine. He is only 19lbs and 27 in. Any suggestions????

[kelceesmom]

The day time bottles for us stopped at about 15 months. The night time bottle stopped at about 26 months. It was the only thing that Kelcee wanted before bed and I didn't see the harm in it. The middle of the night bottle stopped around 12 months for us.

[blessedbybug]

Originally Posted by shy_bear

We have introduced the cup to A; he will drink from it, but still is having a hard time holding onto the cups that don't have the handles. He also still takes a bottle at night. I was lectured the other day by the WIC lady on how I need to stop the night time feedings and start to wean him off the bottle. Logically I know this!! He still demands his bottle and I hate to upset him so much by refusing to give it to him. How many of you stopped the bottle at one? With my girls they were in the trash on their first bday and we had no problems. If you did not stop the bottle at one how long did you let your child continue with it? He goes for his one year check up soon and I am going to talk with is ped. about this; he is very small for his age and not getting enough nutrition is also a concern of mine. He is only 19lbs and 27 in. Any suggestions????

You're supposed to stop the bottle???? DS is nearly two and still gets one before bed. DD was even later before we gave it up for her. I'm not into pushing 'ends' on kids. It depends on the kid and their momma. Personally I think one is too early. But that's just me.

[mommamarci]

We stopped the bottle at about 15 months. Cameron just refused it one day so we did without and never tried again! Too easy. What are the chances it will be that easy this time???

[blessedbybug]

The night time bottle stopped at about 26 months. It was the only thing that Kelcee wanted before bed and I didn't see the harm in it.

I agree. DD had it longer than most kids as we faced several major changes during the time we had "planned". She didn't need any more stress and it was a comfort to her, and frankly to her Momma too! DS will probably take a night time bottle til late summer (he turns two in a week) because we are moving and it's a major stress and he doesn't do any transitions well. It is a personal decision.

[buttascotchbaby]

Just to add my 2 cents... On one hand I totally agree about not sticking too closely to "end" dates, etc. Sometimes different kids are just not ready at those dates. My bio son was on a pacifier (waaay too long!) for quite a while, he was my first child, he got sooo much comfort from it... yadda, yadda, yadda I swore that any future children I would make a concerted effort for them to be off the pacifier by their 1st birthday. My subsequent kiddos have not been pacifier babies, so I have not had to test that theory yet! LOL

However! My little FD who just was r/u was VERY attached to her sippy cup. Now, I have to come completely clean here: the "sippy cup" was just about as close to being a bottle as you could get without it actually being called a bottle! It was from WalMart, the ones with the real soft, silicone tops (notice I did not say "nipple" ). At first I thought it would make an easier transition from the bottle to the cup (which we did start a little late, after her 1st b-day) and it did! Unfortunatley she flat out refused any other cup! She would also "REQUIRE" anywhere from 2-4 cups from the time she was falling alseep and throughout the night. I DID switch the milk at night to water and she did pretty good. Then somewhere before her 2nd b-day she got sick and I kind of fell back into sometimes giving her milk in the middle of the night. She also started overnights with her bio parents and I am pretty sure they were giving her a lot of milk at night too.

We went to her last dentist appointment about a month ago and she had 2 cavities! At 2.5 y.o. (and these were not her first ones!) and we all were pretty good with her brushing. The dentist said "Hmmm, it almost looks as if she falls asleep with a bottle in her mouth. We did not see this at her last check up." Yikes!

So, she was back on the only water at night REAL quick! I really felt guilty because there is a good chance she would not have had those cavities (and had to have those fillings! ) if I had been more diligent with getting her off the cup, or, at least, only giving her water...

[jalapeno]

Our son turned 1 year a week ago. Over the past 7 days, we took him off the bottle, switched him to whole milk, and turned his nighttime bottle into a dinnertime cup of milk. (We stopped middle of the night bottles a few months ago). He's also small for his age (19lbs, 10oz) so I was a little leary of making the switch to milk in particular for nutrition reasons. It took his sister a few weeks to really start drinking as much milk as I wanted when we made the switch with her. So we are really focussing on having fun at mealtimes and encouraging him as much as possible. And giving him extra time to eat. I've also been giving him extra cheese and yogurt (both of which he loves). And I just give him lots of variety in types of food and presentation. We had the added complication of having another baby in the house who still gets bottles. So I've kept those out of DS's sight as much as possible this past week. Today for lunch, my younger baby was able to sit at the table with his bottle while my DS sat at the table with his sippy cup of milk. And things went fine!

We've been giving my DS a sippy cup with either water or juice to practice with at least once a day for several months. If he were less confident with the sippy, I probably would have held off a month in getting rid of the bottle. I don't think it would have worked with my son to wean him off a bottle more slowly - I think continuing the use of a bottle at any time would have just kept reminding him what he's missing. He can be quite dramatic and clingy and so a quick switch was really the only way for us. And I definitely considered waiting on everything because of his size. Ultimately, I decided that issue wasn't going to be any different in 3 months and so we might as well get it out of the way while we have the time for it - (ie. this week we didn't happen to be making any other major changes to anyone's eating, sleeping, or potty training schedules.)

[tomandcate]

With our older DS we let him stay on the bottle a little longer because we were in the middle of a job transfer where my DH moved 2 months before we did, then we moved to a temp. apartment for 2 months, and then we finally moved to our new home. So we let him stay on the bottle a little past 18 months just to try to keep a few things in his life consistent during the upheaval.

With younger DS we took him off (recently) at 15 months old. We started the transition at 13 months and just let him have one bottle per day until we got rid of the bottles altogether. I too had concerns about him getting enough nutrition (he is only 5th percentile for height) but I am just feeding him a lot of food!

Neither of our boys required any overnight feedings once they started sleeping through the night at 3-4 months old, thank goodness! I would just say if you're going to give anything other than water at night, make sure you brush their teeth!

Cate

[MamaS]

I stopped the nighttime bottle when my son had enough teeth to bite through the nipple and pour formula onto the crib! About 20 months. However, I still put a sippy cup full of milk in his crib just before I went to sleep at night. He would wake up at 6:00am HUNGRY! Then he would drink the cup and go back to sleep until 7:30. I would never have given up that nighttime feeding!

[Barksum]

Shucks. True confessions here, huh? I have one who still has a bottle at bed time. He's almost 4.

In my defense he had a very rough first year and we've continued to have issues with stuff, so battling about something that I decided wasn't a big deal just didn't seem to be of Huge Importance.

With my other kiddo we started doing the Diminishing Milk routine at age 3. He still had his bottles, but instead of 6 or 8 ounces of milk he'd have 5 or 7, and the other ounce was water. We slowly switched it out so that he had 7 oz of water and 1 of milk. It helped, but he was VERY attached to his bottle, and only reluctantly switched to a sippy. Now he still, at age 6, has a sippy before bed. Again, in my defense, he also has special needs, so it was not just me being a weenie mom. Honest!

Three of my five kids did the switch by age 2 without issues and with relative ease. We lost the day time bottles first, then only had the before bed bottles. I don't think any of them were off the bottle by 12 or 15 months, though. More like 18-ish months, but definitely by age 2.

I kind of figured it like this: if whole cultures breast feed their kids until age two, my kid having one or two bottles per day until age two was going to be ok. I cleared this with our pediatrician who didn't have a problem with the plan I outlined for each of the kids - because he knew my kids' various issues and he knew I was aware of them and working on certain goals. Sometimes our main goal for a particular child at any given time wasn't always the same as the guidelines WIC works with, so we didn't always do things within WIC's time lines.

WIC hasn't always been spot on with their suggestions for my kids, so I usually run any concerns WIC has expressed by my kids' dr and work out plans with him/her.

[Shadowfaerie]

Our son is 16 months and still uses a bottle. I have sippy cups, I have several different kinds in the cupboard. I have tried many different kinds with him but he does the same thing with all of them- pours them on himself. So, I have no plan to push him into the sippy cup, or cup until he's ready for it, I'm hoping sometime next year or maybe even the end of this year. As long as he doesn't go to kindergarden with his ba ba I think he'll be emotionally okay.

[shy_bear]

Thanks for all the replies! I was thinking I was going to "ruin" him in some way if I didn't stop the bottle!!! And the night time feedings; I don't mind getting up most nights. He is obviously hungry. His bottle consumption has gone from a full 8oz down to about 5oz bottles. Again thanks!

[Adopted-B-4]

Our twins were off the bottle by one but it was a bit of a weaning process. We switched one feeding at a time to a sippy cup over a matter of a couple of weeks and by the end, they preferred the sippy cup over the bottle. I don't think it's the end of the world to go over one year, I just think ours sort of said, we're going to make a goal to be done with it by x time. Not sure about the night time feeding, if he's hungry, he's hungry but none of ours woke up for a night time feeding after 5 months. It could have become a habit for him too but I would just talk to the pediatrician about it when you go and otherwise, keep on doing what your doing.

[Linny]

I'm now 51...have raised two babies (adopted as well) when I was in my twenties, and now, in my forties (and fifties) am still raising babies. To this day, I've never understood weaning a baby from a bottle or pacifier. Each baby is different, each has it's own needs.....but to force the issue is something I've never been able to wrap my brain around.
Have we encouraged it? Sure. But none of the kids ever went cold-turkey....and we'd have never done the 'you're done with this NOW' method.

Ohhh, I know.....SOME will say, "That's awful!" Some will say they'll become too attached; they should learn to 'self-soothe', etc......we say that's baloney.

To each his own, certainly. But, just like the book states, at some point between their wedding night and now....they'll be off a bottle, toilet trained and not wanting a pacifier.
I think the first four were somewhere between 15 and 18months before they weaned themselves. It was a slow process. I've never been one to lay a baby down with a bottle or cup or anything. For our family, night time bottles have always been taken with the baby in our arms.
The same is seemingly true with our youngest now. He's 18months and not wanting one as much, as we encourage the cup more....but I won't--make---him do without if he really wants one.

To me, life's just too short; their childhood is short; and in the grand scheme of things....does it really matter at what age they 'stop'??? (To the OP...ask your WIC person THAT question!!!!!!! LOL)

Sincerely,

Linny

[nikkianni]

Shy: I'm so glad you asked because we're in the same boat you are.
DD is 14 months, and still mostly uses bottles. We've tried the silicone topped sippies and she might try to take a drink, then she decides she'd rather flip them upside down and try to chew on the bottom. Very effective.
We switched her to whole milk throughout the day with only formula at bedtime at around 11 months, and as of last weekend, no formula at all. She handled that perfectly, but we can't seem to get away from the bottle.
Here's the crazy thing: She wants to drink out of a cup. A real one. If we let her take a drink from a bottle of water or a cup and we hold it, she does pretty well. But she's nowhere near ready to hold a cup on her own and not dump it everywhere.
But that's the only thing she's interested in.