How to Easily Transition Your Baby from the Bottle to the Sippy Cup

Depending on your child’s personality and how attached they are to the bottle this method may take longer than 8 weeks. Also this depends on how many bottles a day your child is getting. When your child turns 12 months old the pediatrician will usually recommend switching from formula to whole milk.

Our pediatrician told us to slowly transition our son to whole milk over a period of several weeks. This is how we decided to proceed to get him off the bottle and drinking from only a sippy cup.

First, never put formula in the sippy cup. Never put whole milk in the bottle. This helps with the transition and your child learns what tastes come from which source.

We only made changes to his schedule once a week but at the same time of the day. The first week we replaced his noon lunch time bottle of formula with a sippy cup of whole milk. Everyday at lunch he would get whole milk in his sippy cup for 1 week.

Week 2: We continued giving him a sippy cup of whole milk at lunch time. Then we switched his dinner time bottle with a sippy cup of whole milk.

Week 3: Continuing with the previous changes we then switched his breakfast bottle of formula with a sippy cup of whole milk.

Week 4 and 5 maybe one of the hardiest if your child takes a morning and afternoon nap right after having a mid morning and mid afternoon bottle. Try switching these the same way as all of the other ones previously.

Week 6: If you child is still taking a bedtime bottle you may have some trouble. Just gradually replace the nighttime bottle with the sippy cup every other day the first week of trying this. Then the next week try switching the bottle with the sippy cup totally.

We had great success using this method. Good luck with your child’s transition!