Tips on Weaning a Baby Off the Bottle

Getting Ready

• You can begin transitioning baby to a sippy cup as soon as he can sit independently. He should also be able to bring toys to his mouth easily. If you are still holding the bottle for baby, he is not ready to transition to a sippy cup. Start by encouraging baby to hold his own bottle in preparation for the bottle weaning process.

  Shop for everything you will need before beginning the transition. Buy different brands of sippy cups. Look for some with soft tops made of a material similar to a bottle's nipple. You also need some cups with hard tops. Babies can be picky, and it might take time to find a cup that baby likes. If baby continually rejects a cup, try offering a different style or brand.

Start Young

• Begin weaning a baby from the bottle as young as possible. Some parents think it is better to wait until a baby is old enough to understand what is happening, but in reality that is much worse and makes weaning more difficult. Taking the bottle away before the first birthday is ideal. Young babies are much more adaptable to change.

  Toddlers are stubborn. They become creatures of habit. If a bottle is part of that habit, many tears will be shed during the weaning process. Not long after the first birthday, most children begin to throw tantrums. If the bottle-weaning process occurs after the tantrum phase has begun, things will not go smoothly. Your child will kick and scream and beg for his bottle, and it will break your heart.

  Save yourself the frustration and aggravation by beginning the weaning process somewhere between 8 and 10 months old, when your baby is much more open to change and is far less stubborn.

Switch To A Soft Cup

• On the first day of bottle weaning, offer your baby a sippy cup at lunch time or at a meal that includes solid food. Put something interesting in the cup that will get the baby's attention. For example, if baby never gets to have fruit juice, make an exception to get her interested in the cup. If she does not seem to like the juice but shows interest in the cup, put her milk in the cup instead.

  She will probably not drink much the first day. That is fine, because she has filled her belly with solid food. For the rest of the day, return to the bottle. Continue this for about a week. At that point, your baby should accept the cup once a day when offered with her meal.

  Once she seems comfortable, begin replacing more bottle feedings with a soft top cup. It will not take long for your child to realize that the cup is easier to drink from and allows her to get more fluid with less work. Continue to offer the bottle once or twice a day for a few weeks. Your baby might naturally begin to reject the bottle in favor of the cup, or she might be willing to drink from both. If she is easily switching back and forth from bottle to cup, you can simply stop offering the bottle. She will probably not even notice at that point.

  Once baby is only drinking from the soft-top cups, you can begin switching to hard-top cups, which are better for her teeth. Use the same process, offer a hard cup once a day and slowly increase the amount of times you offer a hard cup versus the soft ones.