My daughter is turning one next month and i'm not sure how to get her off the bottle and off formula. Now she has 4 bottles a day- one when she first wakes up, one after lunch, one for a late afternoon snack, and one before bed, do I just subsitute a sippy cup with milk (and how much) now instead of the bottle. What are some of your feeding schedules like, I want to make sure she's getting enough food. Thanks so much!
At first I would mix a little (1/4) whole milk with her formula for a day, the 1/2 milk til it's 100% milk. I'd transition to milk in a bottle completely then start replacing the bottles with sippy cups gradually until the last bottle (usually the bedtime O.) is replaced with a sippy cup/snack. Good luck!
We introduced a sippy cup of water that she would take with her around the house when she was about 8 months old. She was only on 3 bottles a day when we made the switch to sippy cups. First we took away the afternoon bottle and substituted it with a sippy cup, then the morning and then the evening. Our daughter didn't seem to care one way or another so it only took us about 1 1/2 weeks to get rid of the bottles and we probably could of done it cold turkey. At 15 months my doctor told me that our daughter should have between 15-18 oz of milk a day, and the rest food. Now we give her milk when she wakes up, breakfast (cereal and fruit) 1/2-1 hour later, nap around 11, lunch (always with a veggie) when she wakes up, snack (something with fruit) around 3, dinner (always with a veggie) around 5:30, milk around 7, bed at 7:30. If she needs a snack between breakfast and nap we give her a snack. She also gets water throughout the day and with meals.
I think every child transitions differently. For my little one, when she turned one, I put whole milk in her bottle. I thought about diluting it with formula, but then I decided to just see what she would do. She drank it!
About a month later, the day she started walking, I stopped giving her milk in the bottle and gave it to her in a sippy cup. She was fine with that too.
I think you just have to decide what you want to do- and then see if it works.
My daughter's pediatrician highly recommended whole milk for the extra fat for brain development. I think that was for one year- from age 1 to 2.
Good luck! I also found that I would give my daughter mik right when she first woke up from sleeping- both over night and after a nap.
That way, she got the milk in her~!
e-mail me and I can send you a cheat sheet G.
...and then when she is 2 yrs old. Now you have to get her to drink fat free milk. My daughter took to it right away. I didn't have to start w/ 2% 1% she did fat free from day one.
GL
Just start adding a little milk to the formula each time. Very gradually increase the amount of milk vs. formula. There is no deadline for this switch to happen, so use your judgment and allow your daughter to get used to the new taste.
There is also no deadline for doing without bottles, and no necessity to ever using sippy cups, unless you chose to. Sippy cups have become more socially acceptable (as bottles are looked down upon), but kids are capable of drinking out of regular cups/glasses at about 14-16 months at meals, and still need to suck on a bottle to sooth themselves at other times.
