Bottle breaking and eating issues

I have recently started trying to bottle break my LO's. They are fine drinking out of a sippy cup when it is juice or water but they hate taking milk out of them. I've finally got them strictly to a sippy during the day but I'm not sure when I should replace the morning and night bottle with a sippy cup. Is it too early to completely get rid of the bottle. Also, they are using the soft spouts right now and I'm not sure when to switch to the hard spout.

Their eating habits are starting to concern me too. They used to take an 8oz bottle in the morning and at night and 2 6oz bottles during the day. Now they take a 6oz bottle in the morning and I'm lucky if I can get more than a few oz in them the rest of the day. It's almost as if they just don't want formula anymore. I thought it was because they don't like the sippy cups, but they won't take their night time bottle anymore either and it's in a bottle. They will take all the water and juice I will give them but they turn their heads away from the milk. They are mostly on table foods now and they eat that fine.

I just don't know if I should take away a bottle during the day or what. I would appreciate any advice. Also if anyone has advice on how to switch from formula to whole milk I would appreciate that too ! TIA!

 

It is not too early to get rid of bottles if they will take milk/formula from a sippy cup and still get the appropriate amount (12-16 oz. is what our pedi recommended at the 12 month checkup).

I started the process of switching from bottles to sippy around 10.5 months and our boys had their last bottle on their first birthday. I first switched the daytime bottles, then the early morning bottle, and last the night bottle was swapped for a sippy. So now they get a half sippy of milk with each meal and at bedtime (about 4 oz. each time). They still seem to really want the bedtime milk, so we have kept that up. It sounds to me like your LO's are starting to naturally cut back their intake, which happened with our guys, too.

As far as soft vs. hard spout, we have used mostly straw cups, so I can't help you there. With switching to whole milk, we did it VERY slowly because our boys were previously milk intolerant. So out of a 4 oz. cup, we started with a 1/2 oz. of milk and the rest formula in just one cup of the day. Every other day, I would switch out another 1/2 oz. If your LO's do not have concerns with dairy, you can probably start off with 1/4th milk, wait a few days, go to 1/2 milk, then 3/4 milk, and finally all milk. We did it over about 3 weeks because we needed to make sure they wouldn't have a reaction.

 

We were switching to whole milk at 11 1/2 months. We just make a formula bottle and did 3/4 formula, 1/4 milk then continue to cut down on formula over about a week and a half time period.

As far as bottles we cut out night time first since we knew it would be hardest and worked our way from there. However, my two at that age were no longer dependant on that bottle for sleep. WE were down to one bottle at one nap at their 1st birthday and i just took it cold turkey a few days later.

Once on table food, my LOs cut down their milk intake on their own as well.

 

Agree with PP's.. more of their nutrition is starting to come from solid food now, so they will probably want less formula. You could probably start making the transition to cow's/goat's/rice milk if you want to now. That might make sippy cups a little more fun too! Mine really took to sippy's once they got cow's milk, they refused to drink formula or breast milk out of them.

 

Thanks for the replies. I have started adding cow's milk to their formula but I'm going slow since Olivia is on Alimentum. I also decided to take away the late morning bottle since they weren't drinking it anyway. Today was the first day and they seem to have handled it well. Since they are doing better with the sippy I'm going to make the morning bottle in a sippy later this week. Thanks for the tips!