Transitioning to milk and sippies - questions

I'll be joining you all in two weeks!! Yay. Right now the boys are 11.5 months, and on 3 bottles a day. They get sippies at meals, and do so so.

How did you transition to sippies only?

If you had them on alimentum - how did you transition them to milk? Max threw up some after his 1 oz milk/7 oz formula bottle today.

 

I'll be joining you all in two weeks!! Yay. Right now the boys are 11.5 months, and on 3 bottles a day. They get sippies at meals, and do so so.

How did you transition to sippies only?

If you had them on alimentum - how did you transition them to milk? Max threw up some after his 1 oz milk/7 oz formula bottle today.

 

I would stick with the formula while you make the switch to sippies. I just replaced one bottle at a time with a cup. I started with lunchtime and gave them a cup instead of the bottle. Then I did dinner, then breakfast, then bedtime last. They couldn't hold their own sippies at first. I'd lay them in the boppies to drink them or I'd hold them up for them. Once they were only getting liquids from the cups, I started just giving it to them and let them figure it out with me only helping a little. hth

 

I don't have any advice as my girls are still getting 3 bottles + sippies of water/juice a day. I've just not had the gumption to drop the bottles yet. They are on whole milk, made that change with no problems, but they WANT their bottles! If you think your little one may be reacting to the whole milk, wait a week and try again. Or just keep at it for the rest of today and see what happends. As long as he isn't losing the whole bottle, it may just take him a little while to get used to it.

With my son, we made the change cold turkey to sippies. I was a stubborn about it and after a couple of days, it was no problem whatsoever, but I've just not had the energy to do it yet with the girls!

Best of luck to ya!

 

At about 10 months my girls really started getting the hang of the sippy cups. I was giving them the sippy with each meal and snack, and then pouring whatever was left into a bottle. Once they were drinking at least half of the sippy cup I stopped giving the bottle after, and it didn't take long for them to start finishing the sippy cup. Just keep at it - it won't be long before they're pros!

I don't know anything about the alimentum thing - sorry!

 

At around 11.5 months I dropped the lunch bottle by feeding them lunch first then offering the bottle. They didn't want the bottle with lunch first so after 3-4 days of not taking the bottle I didn't offer that one anymore. Then I did the snack bottle at 3:30. I just started putting them in their booster seats with a snack. Emilie only gets the a bedtime bottle, when she had fluid in her ear 3 weeks ago she was refusing the morning bottle, so I took advantage of it and dropped that one with her. She does pretty well with milk in a sippy cup. Trevor does still get the morning bottle before breakfast and a bedtime bottle. He doesn't drink from a cup as well. I will probably try and get rid of his morning bottle in a week or 2. I will keep the bedtime bottles for a bit longer as I'm not ready to give those up yet. When I do that one I will gradually start putting less milk in each bottle.

I also can't help you with the alimentum thing. Mine were on Enfamil Enfacare, but made the switch fine to milk. It could be his reflux still, he does have that right?

Good luck.

 

I'm not sure I have much advice. We switched to milk and sippies all at once just after they turned 1. If you think he is not tolerating the milk well then you might want to put off the transition until you talk to your pedi at their 1 yr check up.

 

quote:
Originally posted by FirstTimeMom814:
I'm not sure I have much advice. We switched to milk and sippies all at once just after they turned 1. If you think he is not tolerating the milk well then you might want to put off the transition until you talk to your pedi at their 1 yr check up.


I did the same thing as Trish. They learned the sippy cup with water. I started having it at meal times at around 9 months of age onward. A little over 12 months we went cold-turkey and got rid of bottles and formula at once and started milk in the sippies only. For us the tranistion was fine. A little resistance in the beginning, but that was their only option so they adjusted.

If they are not tolerating milk I would probably cold-turkey the formula in sippies only.

If you are concerned though, I would check in with the pedi at the 1 year visit.

 

Several people suggested switching gradually and that is what we are doing right now. First we took away the last bottle and gave the milk to them in a sippy with dinner. Now 2 weeks later we've taken away the lunch time bottle and give them a straw sippy with milk. In 2 weeks we'll try to take away the morning bottle and see how that goes. So far it's going pretty good

Also when I switched them to milk I did it gradually too because Daniel's stomach couldnt handle straight milk or even half milk half formula. The switch took us about 2 weeks too.

HTH's

 

Isn't the formula they're on for babies who don't tolerate cow's milk proteins? I think they may be allergic to milk -- puking after drinking one ounce of it is a pretty strong reaction. I'd hold off on switching them until you can discuss it with a doctor... perhaps get a referral to an allergist. I don't know much about food allergy testing but I believe there is a test for milk allergy.

As for cups, mine didn't do well with traditional sippy cups but they do great with straw cups. If you haven't tried them, I'd give those a shot.

 

We switched from formula to milk right at 12 months, right in the middle of the bottles-to-sippies transition. One day (after the ped said it was OK) we simply replaced all the formula with milk, whether it was in a bottle or a sippy. They were just on regular Similac though.

As far as the sippy transition -- We started with the 10am and 2pm bottles, and just replaced one at a time with a sippy, giving it to them with their snack (in their high chairs) instead of 1/2 hour beforehand, like we used to do with the bottles.

Then we switched the wake-up routine from giving them a bottle first thing, to putting them straight into the high chairs for breakfast, with a sippy of milk.

That just left the bedtime bottle, which we kept until about 13.5 months. Then one night DH said "They seem to be drinking fine from the sippies, let's just not give them a bottle tonight!" so we didn't -- we just gave them their sippies again. They didn't drink much from them for the first few days, but it wasn't really a problem.

They drink mostly water now -- we only give them milk at breakfast and dinner, and they only drink a couple of ounces at breakfast and maybe 6-8 oz at dinner. But now that they're getting most of their nutrition from food, they don't really need much milk.