Bottles, or go straight to a cup?

[lalemma]

You ladies previously helped me pick a pump (a Medela Pump in Style), and now I'm hoping for tips on helping my 8-month-old baby figure out how to drink from a bottle.

We've been practicing, but he's clearly kind of befuddled. He has a great time gnawing on the nipple, mouthing at the bottle itself, etc., essentially treating the bottle as a toy, but he's not actually drinking.

Any tips? I've been offering practice bottles when he isn't actually hungry - is that a bad idea?

If I need to figure out an alternative to a bottle, where should I start? Our guy occasionally takes sips of water from a cup, which he finds very interesting and fun, but... he's a messy drinker (he must hold it himself). It makes me feel stressed out to think of pumping milk only to have half of it go down his shirt. You know?

He has a sippy cup that he likes to play with, but he pretty much treats it as a toy. I don't think he understands that these are vessels for liquid, really.

Any ideas? I think bottles would be easiest if he could get used to them - if I just keep practicing, are the odds decent that he'll get the idea, or should I try to figure out some other feeding method?

[Mrs-Mama]

My kids did take bottles from time to time, but I didn't wean from breast to bottle to cup. It was basically breast to cup with a few bottles in there when they were away from me.

That said, neither of mine like the traditional sippy cups. They liked the cups with the soft straws (like these) much better. I think it must feel more like nursing to them since the straw hits the back of their mouth, and they also don't have to learn to tilt the cup up. Good luck!

[lalemma]

Any ideas where I might find something like that?

Any other ideas, mamas? Still no progress on the bottle front (although it remains his new favorite toy, and he has figured out how to squirt water from the nipple. Hah.)

[emilysmama]

To OP:

Straight to a regular cup is fine. My dd played around with the bottle like that, never did figure out how to use it. Never figured out the sippy cup either. So at 4 months old, we taught her to drink from a regular cup. (We had to hold it for her.) Definitely messy! But will improve with practice. After a few months, there was no need to hold the cup for the baby, and the day care simply handed the cup to her to chug down. I think since your child is 8 months old already, your child will soon get past the messy stage.

As for the wasteful part, at the beginning, we used a one ounce medicine dosage cup, and filled it in 1/4-1/2 ounce increments. Essentially, we didn't have more in the cup that we wished to clean up. Had to refill very frequently, so somewhat time consuming, but less wasteful.

On the plus side, we never had to work on weaning from bottle to cup, because we were already there.