feeding schedule help

i currently give my LOs 4 bottles a day with 8 oz.
my pedi today said no more than 16oz of whole milk a day.

how do i go about transitioning them?
currently this is their routine:
8 - 8oz bottle
930 - breakfast
10-11 nap
12 - 8oz bottle
130 - lunch
2-4 nap
4 - 8oz bottle
530 - dinner
730ish - 8oz bottle
8 - bed

 

When we got rid of bottles we just cut 1 bottle out every few days and moved meal time up and gave them a sippy of milk. They did wonderful! It took 1 week to cut out all 3 bottles. I did offer the sippies with only milk for awhile to make sure they were getting enough now they only get them with meals and sometimes for a little while after. Make sure they are eating enough dairy foods as well if they aren't drinking enough Good luck!

 

I did a gradual transition from bottles to sippies...I dropped the bottle they would least miss first, then the morning one and then the nighttime one.
I give them a sippy of milk during breakfast and about an hour after dinner. Initially they might not drink a lot of milk but you can supplement with other dairy products (yogurt, cheese, pudding, etc.). The rest of the day were sippies of water.
Another thing I did with the milk transition is I added a little syrup to flavor the milk to have them drink at first.
Good luck!

 

I just did it cold turkey right when they turned a year... went from warm bottles w/your same sort of schedule to cold sippies. Here's what they do now, give or take:

7:00am breakfast w/sippy of milk
8:30am small snack w/milk
9:00am nap
11:45am lunch w/milk
1:15pm small snack w/milk
1:45pm nap
4:00pm snack w/milk
5:30pm dinner w/milk
6:45pm bed w/a sip of milk

water in between for thirst... my babies are skinny & hungry a lot (thus all the snacks and offerings of milk) . They seemed to do absolutely fine but they had already started 'weaning' themselves. They had dropped to 12-16 oz of formula/day on their own and were eating solids well so it will depend on your individual situation. Some people whose babies really love their milk feedings keep the morning and evening feeds for several more months. Oh and I did switch to cold formula in sippies at first and over 4-5 days replaced w/milk (1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 3/4, etc)

 

When we transitioned to milk, we just decided it would be easier to give milk with meals instead of spacing it around meals like we did with bottles. So we pretty much went to sippies cold-turkey, and gradually tapered off formula and onto whole milk. We would give sippies of milk at every meal and snack; my guys were very skinny so they got 3 meals and 2 snacks per day.

It took them a little bit to understand how to tip the sippy cups back, and I had to help them for a week or so, but they figured it out pretty easily.

At 12 months our schedule was pretty close to this:

7:30am wake, breakfast, milk sippy
9:30am nap
11am snack, milk sippy
1pm lunch, milk sippy
1:30pm nap
3:30pm snack, milk sippy
6pm dinner, milk sippy
8pm warmed milk sippy before bed

 

im confused
so when the kids wake up, instead of putting them in their boppies for a bottle, they go in their highchair for a sippy of milk and a meal? what if i drive them to daycare?

how much milk was in each sippy cup?

 

I would drop the 12 bottle first, and move lunch up from 1:30. Then offer a snack before nap. Then I would drop the afternoon bottle next and offer a snack and milk.

For morning/night bottles I offered them milk in a sippy as I fixed their lunch, and then a sippy before bed, not expecting them to drain either one of them.

I just keep filling their cups over the day, I think they get around 16-20 oz or so, but it's hard to tell.

Mine get a sippy of milk with breakfast, a sippy of milk with lunch, then I give juice/water for snack, sippy of milk for supper, and either milk or juice before bed.

 

You can go about it any way you want to start but over time your eventual goal will be to give them sippy cups (full of milk) with meals in their highchairs. They don't necessarily drink all of it (I think mine drink about 3-4oz w/breakfast) but you put it back in the fridge and refill. No more counting ounces...
It's all a work in progress for awhile because even now, a month later, I am realizing that if they play for 10-15 minutes before breakfast they eat better than if we scoop them out of bed and put them directly into their highchairs. However, we have to give them a sip of milk upon waking so they'll play (b/c they still remember drinking milk upon waking all those months). So you just have to play with it and see what works for you. The cold sippies full of milk will instantly cut down on the amt of milk they drink so you won't have to worry about them guzzling 8oz in one sitting. Mine drink a max of 4-5 oz at a meal and only an ounce or two otherwise at snack time, etc. Total they only drink 1 1/2 cups/day approx. which is on the low end of the scale. My PED says it's fine if they drink 1-4 cups/day (8 to 32 oz) so very wide range. Average I think is about 2 cups. Good luck!!

 

This is what I do, but YMMV. My guys have in-home care, but if we had to take them out of the house, we'd just do milk/breakfast before getting in the car.

I just fill it and let 'em drink as much as they want; whatever is left goes back into the fridge and the sippies get refilled throughout the day. As the PP mentioned, you don't need to count oz. anymore (unless you suspect they're drinking so much that it's interfering with their solids consumption). After 1 year, most of their nutrition should come from solid foods; milk is just for hydration and calcium (and a good source of fat)!

The PP also made a good point: your eventual goal in life is to get them to eat like you do. You just find out what works for you in getting to that goal! :good:

Good luck!