When is it important to transition off the bottle -- really?
My almost 15-month-old son is still on the bottle..... He knows how to use a sippy cup, and he even knows how to drink from a straw. Most days, he drinks a good chunk of water from the sippy cup. At about 12 months, he was on three bottles a day, and we replaced one of the drinks with the straw and cup. This lasted for about a week or so -- he drank his 6 oz dutifully, and then over a couple days decided that he didn't need milk anymore at that time. So instead, I increased his milk volume for his other two drinks, which was probably not the right thing to do, but I get concerned he's not getting enough calcium (though when he does eat yogurt, I compensate with less milk).
I've read a couple of blogs where people just say leave them be -- that they'll usually figure it out before the age of 2 and wean on their own. Others warn about the cavities, which we're not as concerned about because we never let him run off with the bottle or drink in bed. He gets what he gets in the sitting, and that's it.
So, my question to the guild.... How important is it really to force the weaning from the bottle? Is this something that they do figure out on their own, or should I get more aggressive and go cold turkey? Or something in between?
2 Answers
-
Our oldest son drank 1 bottle a day until he was 3. An extreme, I know, but neither the dentist nor the pediatrician was worried about it. He just found it soothing on the way home from daycare to have a bottle in the car. Our littlest is now a little over 1.5 and still drinks from a bottle. He'll go through phases where he'll only drink from cups but then want to go back to the bottle. So we do. He doesn't drink it at night so I'm not (too) worried about cavities.
Our almost 4 year old still drinks from a sippy cup which makes me crazy. But we just went through a 2-week long period where I would only give him stuff in a glass or cup and he wouldn't drink it at all. (He only drinks out of a regular cup at preschool though.) So I finally relented and we went back to sippy cups.
Basically, I would just let your kid have a bottle now. I like that you are giving him the opportunity to drink regularly from a sippy cup. That's good. And he'll drink out of a sippy cup or regular cup when he's ready.
-
For us, the idea of our toddler (she's 14 mos now) drinking from a bottle was unconscionable. She was forgoing drinking from sippy and straw cup during the day though she could easily use them. So the bottle wasn't only unnecessary, it was keeping her from hydrating during playtime and mealtime, and after a bottle at night, she'd wake up with a very wet and cold diaper.
We gradually phased it out over a three week period when she was 12 mos old. First we reduced the amount of milk, then the number of bottles per day, then we heated it less and less each time until we were down to one cold bedtime bottle. One night we swapped it out for a cup of milk, and she didn't even notice. (Weaning was different, and much harder, but we did that right after bottle-weaning, and only had to suffer about a week of cranky baby.)
Update: We asked our pediatrician about this as his 15-mo appt. Our doctor was not very concerned -- said that since he's already learned to drink from the sippy cup and straw, he'll likely start using it himself over time. So we're not going to worry about this too much for now.....
- Evelyn, Jun 10, 2010