When I took my son to his 9 month old well baby check up, his doctor told me that she wanted to make sure that he was off the bottle around his first birthday. I really didn’t think this was going to be possible to wean him from the bottle by the time he was a year old but it was easier than I expected it to go. I was planning on weaning him from the bottle after his first birthday but I really wasn’t trying to rush him or force him to grow up to fast. I was a bit sad when his doctor suggested transitioning to the sippy cup because that meant that he was growing up and becoming a toddler.
Time to Purchase a Sippy Cup for My Baby
I went home and was puzzled by his doctors comment since I was never told to wean to wean my other children by a certain age before. However, I gave it some thought and decided to try offering my son a sippy cup. So that we could see if we were going to be able to accomplish this task by his first birthday. I went to the store and purchased him a sippy cup. His first sippy cup had handles on it so that he could easily grasp it with his hands.
Introducing the Sippy Cup for the First Time is a Messy Experience
We offered it to him with a tiny bit of water between feedings. Mom’s be prepared (Dad’s too), the first time your child uses a sippy cup it they will get pretty messy. I remember that my son would make a huge mess of his outfit and be covered in water after a few attempts to drink water from his cup. Most babies will end up getting half of it all over their shirt or outfit because they suck too much into their mouth and have to spit it out so that they don’t choke on it. Remember a bottle comes out slowly compared to a sippy cup, so when they use the sippy cup they get a larger amount of liquid at a time. I recommend that you put a bib on your child to help catch some of the water that your baby spits out of his or her mouth. However, as they practice they will learn how to control how much they water or milk that they take into their mouths.
Babies Learn Quickly How to Drink from a Sippy Cup
After a few months of practicing with water, I slowly began replacing my son’s bottles with milk with a sippy cup. He was still pretty messy at first with the sippy cup but he was slowly getting the hang of drinking out of his sippy cup. As time went on, the better he got at using his sippy cup and was able to control how much milk or water that he would suck into his mouth. We were able to transition to a sippy cup full time just a few weeks after he celebrated his first birthday.
Sippy Cups that I Recommend
