So yesterday my son had his 12 month check up and our doctor gave us the nudge to start weaning him off formula and bottles. She suggested maybe starting by diluting his bottles with cow's milk to ease him into drinking milk instead of formula. Today I tried this method, but it seems to me that with our son taking away the bottles cold turkey might be the way to go. He still associates bottles with mealtimes, so rather than having them along with his solid meals and snacks, he prefers to drink his bottles by themselves after he eats. Would it bad to just stop offering bottles and formula altogether and to start only offering him some milk in a sippy at meals and snack times? I plan on keeping his nighttime bottle for now simply until we establish a good routine during the day. If you weaned your child off formula, what was your method?
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I weaned DS off formula cold turkey - we started offering cow's milk in a sippy with his meals about a week before he turned 1, and when we ran out of formula after that, we just stopped bottles completely. It didn't even occur to me to mix them since he didn't mind cow's milk straight.
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@Msglass: DS is 13 months I did the method your pedi reccomended and he got it, he wouldnt do WCM straight at first.... he still takes 3 bottles of WCM a day in bottles, he is now taking a straw cup for water amd I plan to wean him to cup only for water and milk in the next month
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It’s definitely fine to just put it in sippy cups and offer with a meal. We kept the bedtime bottle until probably 14-15 months, and even now she’ll often have a cup of milk before bed which is fine. We had more of a sleep-eat association (bottle before naps also) and it ended up not being a problem so it should be even easier since you don’t have that.
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My kid is 2.5. We do a straw cup of milk when she wakes up and a straw cup after dinner probably 30 min before bed. . It's a nice routine since it gives her quiet time at either end of the day. The post dinner milk calms her down after playing after dinner and signals "almost bedtime". Sure, there's an association but I don't view it as a hindrance or a negative thing.
ETA: we skipped sippies. Dropped the bottle around 11 months and I had already introduced the weighted straw cup around 9 months.
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We went cold turkey and she didn't skip a beat. WCM tastes a million times better than formula so I think a lot of kids do well cold turkey from formula. We had been giving her water in sippies since 9 months, and we ditched bottles at the same time we went to WCM.
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If yours will do it then there’s no issue with doing it cold turkey. Mine wouldn’t and I found the weaning method (mixing wcm and formula) worked better. All in all it only took a week or so to get his bottles to all wcm and then over a few more weeks we dropped the bottle one by one.
Doing it that way he never protested or skipped a beat. We were still done with bottles entirely by 13/14 months which is what my ped recommended. -
Thanks for all your replies! We're taking it slow this first week or so and continuing to use bottles with a mix of formula and WCM until we run out of the formula we have. Then I'm going to try switching to just the cow's milk, and then dropping the bottles one by one and transitioning to sippy cups. Also if anyone has suggestions as to good sippy cups please pass them along! We have a Nuk 3-stage one that he seems to like okay, and I got one with a weighted straw in it for him but he didn't really care for it. Maybe once the sippy cups are his only option he'll learn to drink out of them more efficiently.
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@Msglass: I liked the ThinkBaby straw cups for that age. With handles. Eventually took handles off.
It was the one he could drink from easiest, didn’t easily spill, and was pretty easy to clean since the mouth piece and straw all come apart (with milk I’m extra worried about crevices and hidden areas).
Beware that with pretty much any straw cup, milk will dribble out the top as it gets warmer (like not WARM but sits out of the fridge for a bit). It’s the slow temp change from fridge cold to room temp and pretty unavoidable. It doesn’t happen with insulated straw cups like thermos foogo/funtainer, but those aren’t really great for that young because they DO spill when turned upside down. But they are awesome at keeping milk cold. Starting 2yo we exclusively use thermos funtainer for milk. But until then we mostly used thinkbaby. -
With my first, she was on formula 9-12 months. We just did cold turkey a week after her 1st birthday. Put warmed WCM (it was winter) in a straw cup and she was fine! DD2 is still EBF at almost 1 year, so I will do the same thing but keep nursing whenever.
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