How do you begin trying to introduce a sippy cup to your bottle-fed baby? My daughter is a bottle-hound and won't raise her hands to touch the bottle let alone hold a sippy cup. She barely eats Gerber baby food - she wants the bottle! Any and all ideas are welcome.
My daughter is 10.5 months. I've been putting a sippy cup on her high chair with water in it and she just throws it on the floor. She likes the noise of shaking the water, but has not put it to her own mouth for a "test" sip. I like the idea of giving it to her to play with so its not a battle but I'm concerned that she is ambivalent to any food EXCEPT her formula! Urghh!! Thank for your responses. I'll keep trying.
You do not tell her age, but I do not understand the big thing about getting
them on a sippy cup so early. I know the whole thing about teeth etc.
So then you set limits. Babies have always used bottles for comfort,
please let her have it.
Give her the sippy cup as a toy at first with some water in it. She will eventually realize that she can get something out of it and will become more interested in it. I don't know how old she is, but my daughter and I turned in into a game and I said Yeah! and Good job! when she drank out of it so she would get really really excited and felt good about it. If your daughter is old enough to understand that maybe it will help!
Good luck!
**Adding This:
many kids just HATE high-chairs... and will not eat strapped into one. Both my kids were like that. I fed them, at a child height table... or the coffee table. Maybe she will eat if not jailed into a high-chair???
How old is your baby?
Next, well my kids were breast hounds. LOL
But what I did, was introduce the sippy-cups from about 6 months old.
What I did was not only bring it out at feedings/'meal' time... but, I had several sippy cups out and about, putting them out on the coffee table, places where they played... or on the floor if she is not yet sitting/standing. And, even in their crib too... And I put water in it. The point being... for the baby to get used to seeing it, and even playing with it... and picking it up... all in a child friendly way. Not making it a "have to" only at the dinner table etc.
Kids also like to be able to grab things at their height & explore... thus, I put them out on the coffee table, their kiddie table or on the floor etc. It makes it more approachable.
Then, my kids did use it and drink from it.. Because then it was not a "battle" nor a my "making" them do it. But it was just more child friendly.
And maybe your baby is just not ready for a sippy sup. Or try a straw cup.
And you said she is not really eating gerber baby food/solids... so maybe she is just not ready.
Again, how old is she????? That makes a big difference.
All the best,
Susan
I am guessing she is still young for sippy cup and it int unusual for her to not care for much food yet. Just try again in about 5 days..
At about 11 months, I started telling our daughter the bottle will go bye, bye on her first birthday.
I took her to the store and let her pick out the one she liked. I also purchase a couple of other styles in the same form. I kept them on the kitchen counter so she could see them. When I would prepare her bottles, we would talk about the big girl sippy cup.
The night before her birthday, I reminded her that in the morning, she was going to "get to use the big girls sippy cup."
I threw away all bottle paraphernalia and had the sippy cup on her high chair. I asked if she wanted juice or milk? She said milk.. She took the first sip and her reaction was 'Ooo!" that day at her birthday party lots of people included sippy cups in all varieties.. From then on I would ask her which cup and she would point to the one she wanted.. I also let her pick th eone for her diaper bag, so when we went out, she knew that was the "diaper bag cup"..
I can't guarantee this will work for you, but it did for me. My daughter would not hold her own bottle so I thought a sippy cup was out of the question. My pediatrician recommended a cup that has a straw instead of that flat sippy top ( I forget who makes it, but you can find it in Duane Reade and probably other discount drug stores); it says it's for ages 2 and up by since the pediatrician recommended it I tried it (Téa was 10 months at the time) It has a slightly hourglass shaped base and my girl grabbed it right away and drank it up! I was amazed. Now it is a treat for her and I can get her out of a crabby mood just by offering it to her.
Good luck!
S.
Hi,
You don't say how young your baby is, but why not let her keep the bottle?
For some perspective, my grandson was about 2 - 2 1/2 when he would come home from nursery school and head straight for the frig, where he would pull out the GALLON jug of milk, and take it to his mom for her to put some in his after-"school" bottle! We have an hysterical video of it.
The jug was almost half his size! And quite heavy. The kid knows what he wants!! (He was totally off his "fix" before 3, BTW, and he's a brilliant, well-adjusted child.) You know, it's easier to deal with these situations if you wait until they can talk. ;)
Good luck, young mother...the fun is just beginning! ;)
"Grams"
from the Pocono Mts. of PA
This may sound weird, but what if you drank from sippy cups yourself? Monkey see, Monkey do, you know? Not that I've tried this, I just let my kids take the next step when they were ready, stretched out those baby years as long as I could, and it was still a flash of light!
Our kids were both the same as your daughter with sippy cups. They could have cared less about them.
On both of their first birthdays, we went cold turkey on the bottles and only offered sippy cups. We had several different kinds for them to try so we knew which they took to.
Neither had a problem taking to the cups.
Good luck!
I started giving my EBF daughter the sippy cup when she was around 6 months old. I took the spout out and put just a small amount of my warmed milk in it. Having the spout out she didn't have to try to figure out what that thing I just handed her was supposed to do. She got the idea very quickly that if she put it in her mouth she got good stuff. We just kept working with it until she got it. I would try the spout out since your daughter is older but maybe pour some from her bottle to the cup while she is watching. You can also try a straw cup. Some babies never like the sippy cups.
Also, don't worry about the food. Just keep offering at regular intervals. She'll get it when she's ready.
I first introduced water in the sippy cup to my daughter at 7 months. We bought the training cup with different shape nipples, first we gave her the one that looks just like the bottle nipple, then moved to the more wide and flat one. I made sure that she was drinking water from it after meals, and in between. It took a couple of months for my daughter to drink from the sippy cup by herself. By 12 months, she was drinking 90% of the time from her sippy cups. At that time we were using the Gerber ones with the handles on the side. Few weeks after her first birthday we went on vacation, and I only took one bottle for just emergencies. She was drinking everything out of her sippy cup. As soon as we got home, I put all the bottles in a plastic bag and gave them away. She never asked for them!!
My 14 mo. old still drinks all of her milk from a bottle...(we actually still mix a little toddler formula in), but she drinks juice and water from a sippy. Don't force the milk in the sippy right now- I think they get very used to associating milk/formula and bottle, but start to give her juice and/or water in sippy cups...our daughter likes juice enough (we do 1/2 juice 1/2 water) that she's happy to take if from a sippy! Eventually I'm sure she''ll take milk from a sippy, but I'm not worried about it for now!
