My son transitioned to cow's milk so smoothly. Actually it was a little too smooth. I mean I expected there to be some major telenovela dramatics when he discovered his milk was no longer coming from mommy. I was a little sad to see that he didn't skip a beat. The truth is, I was the one that needed to be weened. It made me feel so crucial to his life when I was breastfeeding. Then he started eating more solids so we reduce the amount of milk and we decided to implement water with a sippie. There was a lot of spilling and choking in the beginning which gave me constant heart attacks. After a couple of months or so, he mastered the sippie....with water. Around 13 months, we decided we wanted to try to get him off the bottles. Everything we were reading said "Get Them Off The Bottle" with such urgency as if it's a critical situation (Let me point out, we never found a concrete explanation for the urgency). We figured this would be a piece of cake since everything else went so smoothly. Besides, he was starting to drink water so well from the sippie....WRONG!!! Apparently these little ones know their liquids and have developed an affinity for how they drink their milk. For example, I have to have my hot liquids extremely hot. My husband likes his coffee black. I like to eat ice cream out of a cup and apparently my son will only take milk from a bottle. The first time we tried it we held the cup to his mouth and he took some and spilled most. He wasn't really interested so we would pour it back in the bottle and he would have his way. My husband is in a daddy group so one of the dad's told my husband his ped said it was imperative that they get their son off the sippie. The ped further explained to just take the bottle away cold turkey and that the baby would fuss for like the first four days and then be over it. Of course my husband translated that as, let's do that for our son. He put up a fuss at the morning milk, but he drank some (approximately 2 oz.). The afternoon milk went the same, but we noticed he was fussy all day. At night, we have a pretty set and extremely consistent schedule that he knows to the "T". The key part is that I put the bottle on our night stand and we put him in our bed to have a relaxing bed time drink. Well instead of a bottle we had the sippie cup and I carried him in the room to protocol and he took one look at the sippie and lost his marbles. He screamed bloody murder and in fear of not getting him to sleep, I caved and gave him a bottle. Of course, we did not initially give up and decided it was the sippie. Approximately 3 cup types later, we ultimately decided that my husband and I would revisit the sippie cup later down the road. I talked to veteran moms and they said everything from waiting until 1.5 years to "I just waited until he was ready". Now, at 15 months, we came up with something that seems to be working (after buying another style of cup). Sippie cup of milk in the mornings, when he wakes up starving. It seems to be working quite well although occasionally he'll only drink half which would never happen with a bottle. The funniest part is we are going with the original cup in which he started and mastered with the water. So for now the war wages on.....
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