How many bottles at 12 months?

[timandtom]

Hi,
My little girl has just turned 1 and I'm wondering how many bottles she should be having in a day.
She currently has 3 (morning, afternoon and night) 240ml. Should I be trying to decrease this?
She LOVES her bottles and I am dreading taking one away. When I took her down from 4 per day, it just kind of happened by itself. Should I wait until she seems ready to give up her day bottle or is it something that I have to instigate?
Thanks!

[danniellabella]

My 13 month old is down to 3 bottles a day, Morning, afternoon (after lunch) and just before bed. I always offer her food first. I'm thinking about decreasing the amount of milk in each bottle first rather than trying to cut one altogether. My DD is now completely off forumla and having lactose free cows milk, the normal cows milk was giving her terrible wind. I'm about to try her on soy milk also.

[visitor1]

At 12 months DD1 was on 4 x 200ml bottles....and my MCHN said it was to many so i dropped it to 2 a day
DD2 is now 17 months old and ive just cut her from 4 x 200ml to 2 a day (morning and night).
Bottles are my girls comfort items and im not about to take it off them.

Its up to you whether you start taking bottles away...i know in this house if the girls dont get their bottles all hell breaks loose!

[timandtom]

I should have mentioned that I'm giving her bottles of formula. I gave her a drop of cows milk the other day and she hated it.

[visitor1]

Have you tired doing half half?

So for me when i got DD1 to go from formula to cows milk i started with 50ml cows milk...150ml water...then after a week i swapped 100ml cows milk 100ml water....until i got it to fully cows milk.

[alicia]

My DD went down to just 1 bottle (bedtime bottle of 250ml) from about 13 months. The MCHN let us know that her diet was really good and she was getting plenty of good stuff and calcium from her food so didn't really need the bottles anymore. Luckily DD was willing to give them up easily. For the bedtime bottle we started giving half formula and half cows milk and she is now happy to have just cows milk.

[Glamourcide]

I think I managed to get DD onto cow's milk (after formula) right around the time she turned one... DD isn't fussy though and will take just about anything you put in front of her so maybe your bub is different.
At 12 months, she was having 3 x 300ml bottles of cow's milk, one in the morning upon waking up, one to put her down for her midday nap, and one to put her to bed at night. As the comfort ones tend to be harder to eliminate, I decided to get rid of the morning bottle first, replacing it with 'real' breakfast (usually Weetbix and cow's milk, if your bub likes formula then give Weetbix a go with formula - or you could try it with cow's milk because the taste will be different due to being mixed with cereal) and now at nearly 20 months she is starting to go without her other two bottles if I have given her a full belly and worn her out I find it's easier to replace that morning bottle because they've just woken up and they're in a good mood, happy to accept food over a bottle, but at nap times they can get cranky and stubborn, kwim?

I was told that bottles aren't an essential part of their diet at this age, but again, it's more a comfort/familiar routine thing than a nutritional thing, so just go with what your gut tells you. Of course you can seek advice from your doctor, but every child is different (for instance, when DD was born she was feeding every hour rather than every 3 hours, and eating as much every feed as the 3-hour feed babies were consuming - our midwife told me to flat-out refuse her feeds but the fact is she was just a hungry baby, her advice didn't help), so you will work out what is best for you guys.