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Hi everyone, Melissa here, back blogging from my bathroom. Welcome to CloudMom. Talking
today about how to make the move from the bottle to the cup. My partner, Katie, has
been having an issue with this with her baby, Juliette, just over a year old. She's tried
all sorts of sippy cups, and Juliette is saying, "No thanks, momma". So, I talked to her about
this the other day and I gave her really the things that I've learned to do with babies
four and five that have made this an easier transition for me. The first thing that I've
done is I've kind of actually forgotten about the sippy cup, and I have opted for a bottle
with a soft straw, here's an example of one of them. And my older kids use these too for
water in the park. Let me get this in front of the camera. There you go. "Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-da".
And, as you can see, this has got this really nice, flexible thing here. So, it's not like
the sippy cup where often you have a hard spout and the baby has to learn to sort of
force the thing up in order to get the liquid to flow down, so I think it's an easier transition
in some ways. Now, what do I do with this? Well, what I do is I start giving water in
this, and my kids have loved this. They're like, "Water! Water!", and they think it's
so much fun. They have their ice cubes, and this keeps them hydrated. Then, at around
18 months or before, I make the switch. And I start to put in milk or warm milk into this
bottle. This has kind of worked for me. Now, a lot of people worry about having the baby
on the bottle for too long. And the American Academy of Pediatrics, I did check my notes,
does suggest that babies are off the bottle by 18 months, and they worry about tooth decay,
and they worry about babies getting too much milk. What my doctor told me is limit the
amount of milk to 6 ounces, and do this four times a day. So, this is what I've done with
babies four and five, and it has worked. All of my kids have been off the bottle by age
two or before. None of them have gone to kindergarten with the bottle, so more or less it's worked
out. But I wanna hear what you've done when it comes to making this all-important move.
So, please comment on my blog on cloudmom.com or you can also tweet me @CloudMom. And I
will see you next time.