Hi folks! I have been away a long time, but I am posting to find out more from those of you who have weaned your toddlers off the bottle. My little one is almost 16 months and still taking 20-24 oz of milk a day (four 5-6 oz bottles). She eats fine, three meals a day and a couple of snacks, with varying degrees of consistency in her volume of food (as I am sure is typical). Sometimes she'll drop one of the daytime bottles, but not always. I'm also not with her during the day (she's in daycare) so it's hard for me to know for sure what she's drinking there, though I have told them no more than 12 oz a day total. Anyway - I know we were probably supposed to have already weaned her from the bottle, but she loves her milk! She is definitely used to getting a 6 oz bottle when she wakes and another near bedtime. So far she has refused milk in a sippy cup at home and at daycare, and shows no sign of wanting to ditch the bottle. Help - how did you guys do it?
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Has the ped or dentist said you need to drop it? I wouldn't stress unless they're telling you to! I know a lot of folks who have LOs that gradually drop the bottles on their own before 2.
For us, since I kept nursing past one, it wasn't a battle we fought at home. Daycare insisted no bottles in the toddler room, so they did all the transitioning. Have you talked to daycare and asked them to ditch the bottles? I believe in the power of peer pressure... I think DS switched so easily because all his buddies were drinking from sippies.
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Thanks - we stopped nursing at just after one year so she's been on all bottles since July. Yes, the ped said to drop bottles by 15 months, but wasn't surprised when we went for her checkup and she wasn't off them yet. They are concerned about 1) too much milk and not enough food, and 2) too much milk leading to anemia. But, she has gained plenty of weight and is healthy, so I'm not worried.
She's in a transition room between baby and toddler at daycare but probably next up to move to the toddler room in Nov or Dec - no one has said anything about having to get rid of bottles in that next room but maybe that's the case? They have just told me in her current room that they have tried to give her milk in the sippy and no dice.
I was hoping to hear that the transition might come naturally at some point, so thanks for sharing that.
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@tinypiglet: Ours has been very late (developmentally) to all things eating and drinking and she still has a bottle at night at 15 months. After 1, I switched her 2 daytime bottles cold turkey to straw cups. For the first week or two, she hardly drank out of the straw cups at all, then she slowly started getting more into it (she loves water out of a straw cup, just not milk) but dropped one completely.
So for a long time she had 1 morning bottle, 1 straw cup at day care, and 1 evening bottle and just water the rest of the time. Our ped said after 1, anywhere from 16-18 oz a day of milk is all she needs.
We just dropped the morning bottle and it's not going so well but I know it will take a while--we offer a straw cup of milk, but right now that's kind of pissing her off and she's refusing is, so I give her a morning snack instead until I get her breakfast made.
Dropping the bottles and therefore, her milk take really increased her food intake. So that's been one good benefit.
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