DD won't drink her milk from a sippy cup. What should I do??

[peasprout]

I'm trying to wean DD from a bottle to a sippy cup. She normally drinks water from a sippy and has had no problems. But now that I'm putting her milk in there, she refuses it. What should I do? I know she's hungry and wants her milk, and she knows there's milk in her cup, but the minute I hold it near her, she gets even more upset. I don't want to keep giving in to her but I don't want her starving either! I just went through a two hour battle with her before caving and pulling out the bottle. :( Help please!

[alleyoop]

How old is your DD? I could never get my DS to drink milk (formula or whole milk) out of a sippy cup until AFTER I dropped the last bottle!

By the time he was 12mo, I had dropped all of the bottles except for the right-before-bed bottle (in favor of solids) and just pushed cheese and yogert to keep his calcium high. On our 12mo appt, the ped told me to drop the remaining bottle and just keep offering the whole milk in the sippy cup with every meal and at snack time, along with a water sippy (and be prepared for it to go flying). She said that he would do fine for a couple weeks without milk until he learned to like it. Wouldn't you know, she was absolutely correct! It took him about 1.5 weeks to warm up to it, and now he loves his milk sippy, and will always choose it over water.

Hope that helps a little bit!

[KUvsOU]

I can understand where you are coming from as far as the battle. Unfortunately, I let my son drink his milk from a bottle a little too long. He never liked sippy cups so we bought him the cup with the straw. He loves to drink his water and juice from it, but is not too keen on drinking his milk from it. I don't know if he doesn't like it because the milk tastes different. I have been pouring a little milk into his drinkable yogurt and have been trying to load up on other milk products. I know another mom said her son would not drink his milk out of his regular sippy cup, but would drink it out of one of the disposable sippy cups. She would just wash and reuse them. However, this did not work for us either.

My SIL is a pediatric nurse practioner and suggested that I keep offering him milk. She also suggested that if he hasn't drank all of it by the middle to almost the end of the day to add a very small amount of chocolate or strawberry syrup to barely flavor it. I had thought about this, but was afraid he would only drink it flavored, but I am getting to the point this may be my only choice. Then slowly, I could start putting less and less until he is completely off of the flavoring.

Good luck and let us know if you find something that works! :)

Shawna
Mom of Cade 6/16/02

[peasprout]

DD will be turning one next week. Yikes! I didn't realize I'm supposed to drop all the milk feedings! Now I'm worried that she's going to starve! She's not a very good eater (not to mention no teeth still!). OK, I guess I better start getting more serious with the solids now!