Hellobee Boards

Hey! FWIW I went cold-turkey from bottles of expressed milk (during my work hours) to sippy cups of cow's milk. I continued to nurse at the normal times for us (morning, afternoon and night) but maybe because of the introduction of cow's milk he just sort of slowly lost interest and dropped a session at a time. Then I got pregnant and he REALLY lost interest. (He regained interest when his little sis was born but that's another post LOL.)

@jennylynn: My LO is 16 months now so we recently went through this. She is in daycare as I WOH FT. I can only tell you what worked for us so here goes:
We switched her to sippy cups of milk around 11.5 mos cold turkey. She was used to the straw cups because she got water in them with meals. She was not that interested in the bottles anymore, and the 1 y.o. room at daycare discouraged bottles, so we switched early so she was not switching rooms and giving up the bottle at the same time.

I pumped and continued to provide cups of milk, the same amount I would have sent in bottles, until 13 months. After this point, we began 25WH/75BM with the freezer stash, and then went up to 50/50 then 75/25 before finally switching to full cow's milk. She may have been fine cold turkey but I had the stash so it seemed worth using. I think it took about 2 weeks to do the switch which was determined by the amount of milk I had left. My daycare has the kids have one cup of milk that comes out at snack & lunch time so I just sent one cup for the day instead of several bottles.

We are still nursing morning and night although the sessions are getting shorter. Let me know if you have more questions--it can feel so daunting!

@jennylynn: My doctor said as long as she's getting milk through other products (yogurt, cheese, etc.) it should be okay if she drops a nursing session. LO is 12 months and she doesn't take a bottle or expressed milk. I nurse her in the morning, after picking her up from daycare, and before she goes to sleep.

@mediagirl: @jennylynn: I stopped pumping completely at 13 months and have been able to maintain supply since then without any pumping at all. It is soooo liberating!

As far as bottle amounts, I used to send two 5 1/2 oz bottles (usually eaten at 10 & 2) then nursed at wake up, 5 pm, 7 pm (approx), and once at night. The last month or two she stopped taking as much so I started sending 2 4 1/2 oz bottles, which fit nicely into 1 9 oz straw cup when we switched. Sometimes she drinks more milk than other days and I try not to stress. She also loves yogurt so that helps. I think if you follow her lead you will figure it out...