Everyone Thursday: Wrap-Front Jersey Dress

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1. KJ says

   04/02/2015 at 10:14 am

   Experienced Moms, can you tell me about transitioning from bottles of formula to cups of milk? My baby is turning one soon, and her daycare expects her to make this transition by 13 months. I also think she needs to cut down on the amount of milk/formula she’s getting and get on a better meal/snack schedule. Currently she’s getting formula in a bottle at approximately 4am, 7am, 9:30am, 1:30pm, 4:30pm, and 6:30pm (bedtime). She eats finger foods for three meals plus an afternoon snack each day. I would love to see her eating three meals and one or two snacks a day accompanied milk in a cup. But how on earth do we get from here to there? For some reason this seems like a very daunting undertaking.

   • Shayla says

     04/02/2015 at 10:25 am

     Every transition is daunting, because you’re finally in a groove and then things have to change. This isn’t meant to be snarky, I’m commiserating. As soon as we figure it out, the rules change :-(

     The way we did it was put formula in a sippy cup/straw cup. We just experimented to see which cup she took to. We gave that to her at lunch and dinner, but increased the food offerings, and would absolutely cater to whatever she asked for more of. Foods to try: black beans, garbanzo beans, frozen peas, frozen green beans, tater tots… I’ll reply if I can think of any other good ones. Slowly, with emphasizing the food, but not “taking away” the formula she switched to foods. One morning instead of giving her a bottle, I did the same thing for breakfast. She never protested, though (I know, count my blessings). So, other mommas might have helpful hints for if your kiddo protests.

     Oh, and we slowly mixed her formula with milk in the cup. So, the first week it was 90% formula topped off with cow’s milk. Over the course of a month, I think, she was at 100% milk. She did refuse switching to cow’s milk cold turkey.

     ETA: we didn’t really discuss what was happening with kiddo. We just did it. We didn’t say “instead of a bottle you get a cup!” We just gave her a cup and looked at its pretty pictures. She ended up focused on a Hello Kitty cup.

   • Maddie Ross says

     04/02/2015 at 10:33 am

     We started introducing a sippy of water on demand and in between feeds around 8 or 9 months. By close to a year, she was proficient with both a sippy and a straw cup, and we started doing a few experimental sippy cups of formula with meals. It helped that daycare was doing the same at the same time. Around her birthday, we got rids of bottles altogether and all her non-b**b liquids came from sippies (she was still nursing am and pm). I weaned around 13.5 months.

   • pockets says

     04/02/2015 at 11:00 am

     How much formula is she getting per bottle? I would try to cut out the 4am bottle (should be going overnight w/o eating) and then up the 7am bottle to eliminate the 9:30am bottle. Then she’d be at 7, bfast, lunch, 1:30, 4:30, dinner, 6:30. My kid naturally cut out the 6:30 bottle so I have no advice there. She also doesn’t like to drink milk from a sippy (I tried, failed, figured I had more important things to work on so long as she drank water from a sippy so obviously knew how they worked) so again no help.

     The problem I found with finger foods is that although my kid is a champ eater, she gets bored/distracted really easily and don’t really eat to fullness. So she’ll eat a bunch of diced chicken and then start playing with the leftovers, but if I offer a pureed fruit she’ll gobble it down. So you might want to try a pureed fruit/veg or yogurt to supplement.

   • TBK says

     04/02/2015 at 12:03 pm

     My guys turned one last month and we’re still not there. They do milk in bottles at (roughly) 5:00am, 9:30am, 1:30pm, and 7:00pm. We try sippy cups but they take two sips and throw them if they know bottles are available (little creeps — if we’re out and about, they’ll stick with the sippies, but at home, it’s all about the bottles).

   • Meg Murry says

     04/02/2015 at 12:12 pm

     Does daycare already offer sippies at meals (with water, or formula)? My kids made the transition at daycare just find, but didn’t give up the bottle at home for first thing in the morning or last before bed until 14-15 months, which our ped was ok with, as long as they were sitting down to drink from the bottles and not wandering around with them sipping all day, and only drinking milk or formula from them.

     Honestly, the hardest part of the transition was going from warm formula to cold milk, so you may want to microwave milk for just 10-20 seconds just to bring it from fridge cold to at least room temp as part of the transition – for one of my kids we had to make only one change at a time, while the other perferred them to be 2 separate things – warm formula bottle vs cold cow’s milk sippy.

   • anne-on says

     04/02/2015 at 12:16 pm

     I literally had to toss (put in the attic) every single bottle in our house when we moved over from bottles to sippy cups. If my son even saw a bottle in the cabinet that was it, he’d refuse a sippy cup. To this day he still prefers milk in the clear thinkbaby sippy/straw cups b/c they looked the most like bottle to him. Water, juice, etc. are all fine in a straw cup, but he’ll only drink milk out of those. Our ped was strict with limiting milk to 18-20oz a day, so we did either OJ cut with water or plain water at breakfast, 2 5oz sippy cups during the day (lunch and snack, so 12/3:30ish) and an 8oz sippy cup with milk at night before bed in a chair with a book. Not offering milk at dinner also seemed to ensure he ate more real food.

   • dl says

     04/02/2015 at 12:51 pm

     Related, any advice on cutting out nighttime bottle? My 13-mo old guy does fine with milk from a cup during the day but still had a bottle at night time before bed – it’s a fixture of the nighttime routine we’ve had establsihed since he was 2 months old (subbed bottle for b**b at 11 months with no issues). He always goes right to sleep so I’m nervous about getting him out of his groove, but I do want him to get off of the bottle. Help?

   • EB0220 says

     04/02/2015 at 1:43 pm

     This was a tough transition, so I tackled one thing at a time. When my daughter was 11 months, I started putting milk in her bottles (25% milk, 75% formula; then 50/50; etc.). After her digestive system was happy, I started dropping bottles – once a week. It was still tough. I must have spent $100+ trying to find a sippy cup she would use. It probably took us 3 months to fully transition, and for a while I was kind of worried about her liquid intake. I’m not sure I have much advice but good luck! Daycare has already started letting my younger daughter try a cup so I hope her transition is much easier.

   • Carrie M says

     04/02/2015 at 3:47 pm

     We are in the middle of this and I also felt like it was going to be an impossible task! Our kiddo was still having 5 bottles a day. Here’s how we’ve approached it. The switch to milk was easy for her; it’s been losing the bottles that have been harder!

     – We started adding in whole milk to her formula bottles. We increased the ratio every two days or so until she was at all milk.
     – At the same time, we decreased the amount of milk in her bottles going to daycare. Instead of 3 six-ounce bottles, we sent 2 six-oz and 1 five-oz, and then 1 siz-oz and 2 five-oz, and then 3 five-oz.
     – For about 2 weeks, we packed 3 bottles for daycare but told them to try giving her the formula/milk combo in sippy cups first. She’s been using sippy and straw cups well for a while. She started out using a Nuk cup with a soft spout (same material as bottle nipple). So basically, we asked daycare to do the hard work!
     – She transitioned okay to the sippy at daycare, except for the afternoon – she wanted a bottle.
     – After about another week, she was willing to give up that last bottle at daycare.
     – We’re still bringing in 15oz of whole milk (the amount she was getting in her bottles) to daycare for them to give to her in a sippy cup at meal and snack time. She does not drink all of it, but there have been some nights when I go pick her up and she is starving. She will guzzle the rest of her milk on the drive home. So I’m glad to have that reserve.
     – On the weekends, we did whatever she did at daycare the week before (e.g., all sippy cups, or a combo).
     – We haven’t forced the transition for her morning and nighttime bottle yet, but I think we’re going to try doing it cold turkey this weekend.

     Good luck!

     • Nonny says

       04/02/2015 at 6:43 pm

       Thanks for this! I am in exactly the same place (we have transitioned to milk but I haven’t figured out how to transition from milk in bottle to milk in sippy cup) so this step-by-step is great. I have been feeling guilty about not starting the process so am motivated now to get on it next week.

   • NewMomAnon says

     04/02/2015 at 4:56 pm

     My position – if daycare is drawing a line in the sand at 13 months, then they can do the heavy lifting on the transition. We took about 2 months to transition from b*milk in a bottle to cow’s milk in a cup. Our steps were like this:

     1. Mixed b*milk and cow’s milk in the bottle, slowly reducing the amount of b*milk in the bottle
     2. Started offering bottles of cow’s milk only at meal times (nursing at wake up and bedtime still) – snacks were water and finger foods only
     3. Daycare started offering only the cup, not the bottle, at meal times – we had to experiment with different cups, and some days they had to offer a bottle because she wasn’t drinking and wasn’t making wet diapers, but after a month we got off the bottles completely

     We started with cups that had soft spouts; we used Munchkin and Nuk, but Nuk was way easier to put together and less leaky. Then we moved to the continous edge cups, like the Munchkin Miracle 360 and the Avent 360. Munchkin won this battle; easier to assemble and clean, less leaky, easier to use. Now we use a mix of cups – we use whatever she pulls out of the cabinet (she can open the cabinet with the cups and play with them). Daycare uses the Playtex cups with the hard spouts, doesn’t seem to be a problem.

   • RR says

     04/02/2015 at 6:29 pm

     I just started dropping bottles. So, I’d start by dropping the 9:30 or 4:30 one and replacing with a snack. A week or two later, drop the other. A week or two later, drop the middle one. A week or two later, drop the morning one. A week or two later, drop the bedtime one. Particularly when you start slightly before or right at a year, it really isn’t a tough transition. At least it wasn’t for any of my 3.

     I scheduled it so I was down to just morning and evening at their first birthday, dropped the morning right at their first birthday and dropped the evening a week or two later when we ran out of formula. Replaced morning bottle with sippy of milk at breakfast and just gave sippies of milk or water at other meals and snacks.

2. Poop question says

   04/02/2015 at 10:26 am

   OK: poop question. My near-4 year old has peeing down, but still poops in his underpants because he says he can’t “feel it.” At first I worried it was a constipation problem so we added a regular serving of dried fruit to his morning routine (and are generally trying to add in more fibery food too). Then we worried it was a power struggle thing, so we’ve tried all manners of bribery (an extra 30 minutes of tv time! a cookie!). The other morning has me scratching my head, though — we encouraged him to sit on the potty. After 30 minutes he pooped. Yaaaay! Happy dances all around. He got up… and 5 minutes later went in his undies again, saying he didn’t feel it coming.

   Has anyone been through this — does it sound like a problem you had? Really at a loss for how to help him here.

   • PinkKeyboard says

     04/02/2015 at 11:38 am

     This may not be super helpful (because my google-fu is failing me) but I did read an article about how you can still be constipated even if you are going regularly. Bits are sneaking around a large mass and it leads to issues like you are having. It was an article in reference to potty training. Apparently most pediatricians wont’ investigate constipation further if the child is going regularly so it gets missed.

   • PinkKeyboard says

     04/02/2015 at 11:38 am

     And 30 seconds later my google-fu kicked in. It’s from Huffington Post but it might be worth checking into?
     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-hodges-md/potty-training_b_1370852.html

   • Meg Murry says

     04/02/2015 at 12:05 pm

     Is he really gassy? Any chance he can’t tell the difference between feeling like he has to pass gas and feeling like he has to poop, so he expected to just pass gas but poop came out? When my son has an upset stomach he gets like this, and now that he’s older we’ve had a conversation about “if you feel like you’re going to fart and you’ve been having diarrhea you need to go sit on the toilet” which seems to be finally clicking in early elementary school.

     Is he sitting to pee or has he transitioned to standing? If standing, can you make him sit at predictable times 3-4 times a day?

     I think the “can’t feel it” part is worth a conversation with the pediatrician – maybe the pediatrician can ask the right questions. I also second the comment above about possible partial constipation – I’ve heard of that happening, and it makes sense to me.

     But I hear you on the pooping in the underpants kid – it gets so old, so fast. Give yourself permission to just throw away the underpants and buy more on days you just can’t take it, because washing poopy underpants every single day is just not worth it when I can get a new pack at Target for under $10.

   • anne-on says

     04/02/2015 at 12:20 pm

     Does he pee sitting down? My son pees sitting down at home, and that seems to really help encourage him to poop at the same time. Daycare now has him stand, but we had already established a lot of success on the potty before then. Honestly we were all about the bribes to encourage potty training, so if that works, go for it.

   • In House Lobbyist says

     04/02/2015 at 2:32 pm

     My 4 year old still sleeps so sound that he needs a night diaper. I’m a little concerned about this but my ped says that is normal for little boys and we can discuss options at 6. But I noticed that some nights he would poop overnight and never even know it til morning. So we now have a rule that he poops every night before bed. He sits on the potty every night and it only takes 2-3 minutes total. That might be worth trying so it just becomes part of the bedtime routine. I’ve noticed that he is finally starting to get the clues that he might need to poop when his belly hurts so that’s progress. And also I’ve noticed that his poops are more normal going every day now so I think this is much better for him.

   • mascot says

     04/02/2015 at 2:49 pm

     Is he at least going at consistent times? Once we were able to predict our child’s schedule, we were able to “condition” him to going at certain times (first thing in the morning, before his bath at night).
     Anytime he said his belly hurt, we encouraged him to sit. And +1 to Meg Murry’s advice about disposable underwear. This stage doesn’t last forever.

   • MomAnon4This says

     04/02/2015 at 4:08 pm

     This one actually sounds like a medical problem, to at least ask the pediatrician about.

     Did you already try bribes? Like, go to the toy store, and he picks out super-duper cool toy (light saber? SuperHero House?) that is HUGE and too expensive but just for big boys who go poop on the potty 10 times. Then, make up a sticker chart. Then, put the toy where he can see it but not get to it (on top of the bathroom cabinet or something) and the sticker chart where he can get to it.

     But of course, the bribe advice is moot if he really does have a medical pooping problem. Maybe try a pediatric GI?

     • Anonymous for this says

       04/02/2015 at 6:37 pm

       This. Very much this. Talk to your pediatrician, go see a pediatric gastro, and maybe a behavioral psychologist that specializes in this. I almost hate even responding because I feel like I’m going to scare you, but it’s my story and it may be helpful. My 7 year old is just finally starting to show improvement in this. Story is the same you articulated, starting with what seemed like late potty training at 4. We were fairly laissez faire until he was 5 because we thought he was just slow to potty train. We started Miralax, and that didn’t help. We saw the gastro, who was able to rule out physical issues at that point and started us on a mild laxative as well. Having determined it was behavioral, he sent us to a pediatric behavioral psychologist who specializes in this. We worked with him for a few months, with little improvement. We are just starting to see improvement at just over 7 years old, and I think it’s coming from his growing maturity and willingness to take responsibility for his toileting. There are a lot of things you could accidentally do wrong right now (says a mom who probably accidentally did a lot of things wrong on this journey), so I strongly advise medical intervention. Our situation is very much toward the “worst case scenario” end of the spectrum, so I hope I don’t alarm you.

       • Poop question says

         04/02/2015 at 7:49 pm

         Thank you guys! Definitely will talk with his pediatrician. he stands to pee but will happily sit on the potty if he gets to play with the iPad… We’ve tried the sticker chart too (but for general behavior) without too much success. I think pediatrician is the next step. Sigh.

         • Meg Murry says

           04/03/2015 at 8:15 am

           If the pediatrician rules out any medical issues, I would suspect you get hard core on sitting on the potty. And not “playing with the iPad sitting” but “you will either sit there for 10 minutes or until you poop, whichever comes first” – 3 to 4 times a day. Basically, you bore him into pooping. My 3.5 year old will start to pick up on the number of “accidents” that were basically “I didn’t want to stop what I was doing until it was too late and I went while running to the bathroom” and we have to reset by having forced potty breaks.

           Things that helped us:
           1) make the kid comfortable with a stepstool, insert seat, etc etc – no one wants to sit on a seat that they are about to fall in or with their feet asleep
           2) Give him some privacy – maybe he just doesn’t like pooping with an audience? My older son preferred this. Tell him you are giving him some privacy, then step out and leave the door just cracked and wait on the other side of the bathroom door.
           3) Don’t use bathroom breaks only as a transition, especially from a fun activity (playing) to a not-so-fun (nap, bed). Halfway through playtime, stop and “take a potty break” and then come back to playing – that stops the argument about not wanting to use the bathroom when its really about not wanting to end the fun activity.
           4) Be very clear after he’s went (or if you letting him up after he hasn’t). “Are you sure you’re all done? All the poop came out? Ok, if you feel like you have to go poop even a little bit, you RUN to the bathroom.”

           Last, we don’t use the word accident or try to soothe our kids or smooth things over when they go in their pants (once they are thoroughly trained). We don’t shame them either, but we’re very matter of fact about it – oh, you got pee/poop in your pants, that’s no fun, let’s clean you up. Then when done “ok, you’re all clean with dry pants, isn’t that better?” For times like middle of the night bedwetting, especially if they are upset, we are a little more soothing – but for middle of the day, its all matter-of-fact “nobody likes this, lets get it over with” attitude. And if there needs to be a bath due to a preventable accident, it isn’t a fun one with toys – its a rinse off under the tap with lukewarm water or a quick wipe down in the tub with a washcloth – fun bathtime is before bed or at its regularly scheduled time, not post-accident.

           I got most of this advice from the comments on this thread, and I have to say, it’s worked pretty well for us: http://alphamom.com/parenting/potty-training-wars-dealing-with-the-halfway-there-kid/

   • Anon says

     04/04/2015 at 9:04 am

     Y’know, at four, he’s also old enough to help with clean up. If there’s nothing medically wrong, some of the signs may not be very noticeable to him. But even the moderately unpleasant task of waiting in the bathroom for you, having to flip his own underwear inside out, put it in the toilet, flush the toilet, then get cleaned up, then put the dirty underwear in the laundry, then go back and wash his hands, then get dressed — well, it’ll start frustrating him too. He may start paying closer attention to his body. And it’ll teach him a lot about responsibility. But don’t do it in a punishing way, just in a way, we need to clean up now and you’re a big enough boy to help. (But definitely do the medical checkup first.)

3. Anonymity says

   04/02/2015 at 4:42 pm

   I got positive results today from amnio! I’m so relieved. Pregnancy is just one waiting game after another.

   • Anonyc says

     04/02/2015 at 5:50 pm

     Congrats! I know that feeling well; it’s a huge relief.