The Sippie Cup War........Part Deux!

The battle is finally over!  A winner has emerged and the bottle is gone!  Hooray Hurrah!!  Yes, what our wonderful children do not know is that parents are in it for the long haul.  Our commitment and dedication to getting our little one off the bottle paid off.  It seemed as if it would never happen.  He loved his bottle, and truthfully, I loved to watch him drink from the bottle.  He had this methodical, mechanical suckling that was so adorable and soothing to him, but as we all know he does not need to be on the bottle any longer.  I have to attribute it to waiting.  Everyone pushes for 12 months and makes a new mom feel pressure to reach these target dates.  As I mentioned before, I talked to veteran moms that said just wait until they are ready or that their children were not off bottle until like 18 months.  So I can say at 16 months, my son kicked the bottle.  I think what helped was that we decided to not push it until he really got familiar and comfortable with his sippie.  We probably started water out of a sippie at 12 months.  Now, don't get me wrong, we did initially try to rush the bottle and that totally back fired.  When 15 months came around we reintroduced the sippie with milk in mornings only.  He would have it as soon as he woke up when he was thirsty and desperate.  That seemed to be natural for him and hey, don't judge we had to take advantage.  After a few weeks of that we brought the sippie for his bed time bottle (bottle right before bed) and while fussing he devoured every last drop.  The second  night was a cake walk and out went the bottle.  Next is cold milk...we are almost there!!!

The Sippie Cup War........Part Un

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 vet